By: B.P.T.

B.P.T. — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 19:09:43 +0000

Well said. Policies handed down from on high about how things “should” be have generally done more harm than good in most instances.

By: Stella

Stella — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 05:23:24 +0000

I think what you fail to realise is that it isn’t that governments don’t *want* to offer their citizens “economic advantages”, and it’s not that they *want* to see their children working in these horrible conditions, but the fact happens to be that in a lot of developing countries things like “quality education” and “air quality” that you bring up so easily are luxuries. People are a great deal more worried about where their next meal is going to come from and whether they and their children have any kind of a future beyond mere survival. I agree that it’s sad that such things happen, but we also have to realise that what “should” be happening is very different from what *is* happening and what governments and authorities in many cases have the ability to do. And I’m not going to say that sweatshop owners are humane, or that they do what they do out of altruism because, obviously, they don’t. Their economic model is based on exploiting people who don’t have access to other forms of employment and I’m willing to admit that. But that’s also, in essence, the point: these people don’t have options. It’s sad and terrible that these sweatshops are the best or only option but it’s also a fact, and given the absence of more favorable forms of employment, what authority do we have as people in the First World, who don’t know that kind of suffering, to declare that sweatshops are unequivocally bad and try to abolish them? What is going to happen to the people currently employed in them? In the absence of state welfare, what else can they turn to? Crime? Prostitution? Or will they simply starve? It’s easy for us to ignore these realities as armchair observers but, for the people working in those places, concerns about how you’re going to feed your children and keep a roof over their heads are real and pressing and they endure the inhumane conditions in sweatshops in order to achieve these things. And there are parents who make the best of the situation and work fourteen hours a day in these places to earn as much money as they possibly can so they can afford to give their children the education they never got. It’s easy to say that it’s terrible and that it can’t go on, but the fact is that the world in general is a sad and terrible and profoundly unequal place and we need to look at *all* of it instead of isolating some small part and trying to make it go away to alleviate our guilt so we can wash our hands of the other painful things in the world that require our attention. There are a great deal more things that should hurt our collective conscience as human beings and which we can do something about. We need to look at all of them and get the big picture before we can begin to right the wrongs of the world.

By: Irish Dave

Irish Dave — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 01:09:37 +0000

American companies operate sweatshops in developing countries for a reason. They are allowed to pollute as much as they wish to because they don’t care if these people drink water with toxic waste in it. They don’t care if the air quality is poor. They don’t care if these children get killed in these sweats shops because there are more children where they came from. They also are looking for cheap labor. And the last thing they really want is for these developing countries to become thriving economies with better standards of living because where are these poor companies going to find people to work for next to nothing? These countries need to step up to the plate and offer better economic advantages to their citizens and say no to sweat shops. The children need to receive quality educations so they don’t repeat the cycle of destitution and poverty. No one with any morals or ethics would ever claim that sweat shops work.

Comments on: Outsourcing: The Good Side of Asian Sweatshops

By: B.P.T.

By: Stella

By: Irish Dave