Sweatshops in a realistic light.

[AyeYo]

The violation is that someone took their land or other property by force, not that someone built a factory and offers them a job.

Survival pay is extortion. Beggars can't be choosers. A man with an empty stomach is not a bargaining man. Arguments about choice regarding a starving man are dishonest arguments.

If you truly want to hold that view in your head, then you must also be saying that the hungrier a person is, the more immoral it is to offer him a job.  So the hungry man is unable to get a job, lest his employer be called an exploiter by you, and therefore he becomes either a parasite or dead.

You're no saint.

Sorry, not even close.  Not in the same ballpark, not even in the same universe.

[michaelmclees]

The violation is that someone took their land or other property by force, not that someone built a factory and offers them a job.

Survival pay is extortion. Beggars can't be choosers. A man with an empty stomach is not a bargaining man. Arguments about choice regarding a starving man are dishonest arguments.

If you truly want to hold that view in your head, then you must also be saying that the hungrier a person is, the more immoral it is to offer him a job.  So the hungry man is unable to get a job, lest his employer be called an exploiter by you, and therefore he becomes either a parasite or dead.

You're no saint.

Sorry, not even close.  Not in the same ballpark, not even in the same universe.

Explain.

[AyeYo]

The violation is that someone took their land or other property by force, not that someone built a factory and offers them a job.

Survival pay is extortion. Beggars can't be choosers. A man with an empty stomach is not a bargaining man. Arguments about choice regarding a starving man are dishonest arguments.

If you truly want to hold that view in your head, then you must also be saying that the hungrier a person is, the more immoral it is to offer him a job.  So the hungry man is unable to get a job, lest his employer be called an exploiter by you, and therefore he becomes either a parasite or dead.

You're no saint.

Sorry, not even close.  Not in the same ballpark, not even in the same universe.

Explain.

Offering someone a job != offering someone a wage slavery position in which they are only kept alive enough to work.  Your entire post is one big strawman.

[LastBattle]

Offering someone a job != offering someone a wage slavery position in which they are only kept alive enough to work.  Your entire post is one big strawman.

Okay. You would prefer they get no "wage slavery" position and starve? Or that they go toil in the fields with barely enough food to stay alive (subsistence farming) with the bonus of, unlike the "wage slave", making no extra money on the top, meaning their children are doomed to the exact same fate while a "wage slave" could conceivably grow his wealth and his child could live a decent life?

What is this person going to do otherwise if they aren't employed in a sweatshop? Serve coffee at Starbucks? Get a tenured position at Harvard? These people don't have skills that make them employable in anything else, and if they don't work these jobs neither they nor their children will ever have them.

Also, why is it that every person from these countries who I have asked, as well as those on this thread, have announced that they are happy when the sweatshop comes into town? Is it possible that they know more about this sort of thing than arrogant liberal activists?

[AntiVigilante]

If you truly want to hold that view in your head, then you must also be saying that the hungrier a person is, the more immoral it is to offer him a job.  So the hungry man is unable to get a job, lest his employer be called an exploiter by you, and therefore he becomes either a parasite or dead.

You're no saint.

I know the difference between putting enough gas in the tank to get home and back and putting enough in the tank to go sight seeing.

Only an idiot thinks he can get away with paying someone to break even.

[AyeYo]

If you truly want to hold that view in your head, then you must also be saying that the hungrier a person is, the more immoral it is to offer him a job.  So the hungry man is unable to get a job, lest his employer be called an exploiter by you, and therefore he becomes either a parasite or dead.

You're no saint.

I know the difference between putting enough gas in the tank to get home and back and putting enough in the tank to go sight seeing.

Only an idiot thinks he can get away with paying someone to break even.

Exactly.

[michaelmclees]

If you truly want to hold that view in your head, then you must also be saying that the hungrier a person is, the more immoral it is to offer him a job.  So the hungry man is unable to get a job, lest his employer be called an exploiter by you, and therefore he becomes either a parasite or dead.

You're no saint.

I know the difference between putting enough gas in the tank to get home and back and putting enough in the tank to go sight seeing.

Only an idiot thinks he can get away with paying someone to break even.

Only a person who considers workers to be idiots would feel the need to prevent the transaction from ever happening.

[AyeYo]

If you truly want to hold that view in your head, then you must also be saying that the hungrier a person is, the more immoral it is to offer him a job.  So the hungry man is unable to get a job, lest his employer be called an exploiter by you, and therefore he becomes either a parasite or dead.

You're no saint.

I know the difference between putting enough gas in the tank to get home and back and putting enough in the tank to go sight seeing.

Only an idiot thinks he can get away with paying someone to break even.

Only a person who considers workers to be idiots would feel the need to prevent the transaction from ever happening.

Guess you still don't get it.


You can work for just enough food to survive or you can die.  What's your choice?

Does the fact that you chose to work a wage slavery job mean that you were in a fair, open position to make that decision?

[michaelmclees]

When the choices are death or working for food, I'd choose working for food.  The question is sort of asinine though because unless you live off the charity of others, that's exactly the situation you're probably in now, isn't it.  Don't feel bad; so am I.  It's not unfair as long as the employer didn't put me in such a position in the first place.  It's just part of the human condition.

[blogospheroid]

Ayeyo and Antivigilante,

What are your alternatives to sweatshops?

If you open an industry in the third world, competing on fair trade principles, then what will be your allocation method for assigning workers to the jobs you're offering?

Since you're providing the workers with wages that are higher than their marginal product, price (wage) is out the window. Also, this reduces your ability to expand capacity in the future compared to the scenario where you are an exploiter. Even if you have started the industry for utilitarian reasons, you are hobbling yourself.

Consider the simplicity of the method of allocation by price. By offering the right wage, the one that balances the number of jobs i have to offer with the number of people seeking the job, I resolve so many utilitarian issues. I need not worry about finding out who is the most desperately in need of the job. The ones still standing after the lowering of the wage, obviously.

Why shouldn't the job go to the one who needs it the most and is capable of earning that wage?

[em3rgentOrdr]

Sorry I only read a few comments in your post.  But it reminds me of an article by the "Center for a Stateless Society" called "Do Sweatshops belong in a Free Market?".  Here is the tl;dr summary (last sentence):

In a free market, workers – should they choose to enter into the field of manufacturing – have a wide variety of options, whether those factories are simply unionized, cooperatively owned, or based on individual agreements between a worker and the factory owner. In all of these situations, if all parties adhered to the non-aggression principle, the conditions that give rise to sweatshops would not exist.

So yeah, in a free market without current day barriers to entry (such as immigration/emigration restrictions, licensure laws, ignorance, etc.) then you would most likely see far fewer sweatshops.

[AntiVigilante]

Offering someone a job != offering someone a wage slavery position in which they are only kept alive enough to work.  Your entire post is one big strawman.

Okay. You would prefer they get no "wage slavery" position and starve? Or that they go toil in the fields with barely enough food to stay alive (subsistence farming) with the bonus of, unlike the "wage slave", making no extra money on the top, meaning their children are doomed to the exact same fate while a "wage slave" could conceivably grow his wealth and his child could live a decent life?

A sweatshop is no different from subsistence farming - they only make enough to survive.
They make no extra money.
A wage slave cannot grow his wealth.
Their children are consigned to the same existence.

Sweatshops are also run by military (Enron), abuse, and threat of violence.

[AntiVigilante]

Ayeyo and Antivigilante,

What are your alternatives to sweatshops?

That's like asking what is your alternative to beating up the kid with glasses after lunch.

If you open an industry in the third world, competing on fair trade principles, then what will be your allocation method for assigning workers to the jobs you're offering?

Open a library with quality documentation and make it available to the workers.
Allow workers to acquire tutor status and charge the people outside for access to the library.
Promote those who invent to higher positions.

4 people can individually do the work of 4 people since they are able to adapt since there is in every person the observer, the planner, the doer, and the enabler.
However, 4 people together can do the work of 6 people because they can form 6 connections. They can also focus on several projects depending on what role they play.

Since you're providing the workers with wages that are higher than their marginal product, price (wage) is out the window. Also, this reduces your ability to expand capacity in the future compared to the scenario where you are an exploiter. Even if you have started the industry for utilitarian reasons, you are hobbling yourself.

By investing in a library, I'm getting expansion of knowledge for free and my employees make an extra buck. There's your gap filler. After the documentation is used up, I pay my workers a transition bonus and sell the documentation to the public. Later I take the documentation that is somewhat outdated and give it away.

Consider the simplicity of the method of allocation by price. By offering the right wage, the one that balances the number of jobs i have to offer with the number of people seeking the job, I resolve so many utilitarian issues. I need not worry about finding out who is the most desperately in need of the job. The ones still standing after the lowering of the wage, obviously.

Simplicity is asking for a divide by zero moment.

That's only going to become a smokescreen for low wages. A few companies might do it fairly but others will just hide behind the rhetoric.

Why shouldn't the job go to the one who needs it the most and is capable of earning that wage?

Because Papa Smurf was wrong. From each and to each is based on a deliberate flaw: no point of reference, pivot, mediation, and principles.

[LastBattle]

Offering someone a job != offering someone a wage slavery position in which they are only kept alive enough to work.  Your entire post is one big strawman.

Okay. You would prefer they get no "wage slavery" position and starve? Or that they go toil in the fields with barely enough food to stay alive (subsistence farming) with the bonus of, unlike the "wage slave", making no extra money on the top, meaning their children are doomed to the exact same fate while a "wage slave" could conceivably grow his wealth and his child could live a decent life?

A sweatshop is no different from subsistence farming - they only make enough to survive.
They make no extra money.
A wage slave cannot grow his wealth.
Their children are consigned to the same existence.

Sweatshops are also run by military (Enron), abuse, and threat of violence.

Bull. The factories of the 18th century were much more unsafe than the ones now and definitely fell under the category of "sweatshops", but the sweatshop workers, unlike subsistence farmers, actually ended up with more money than they started with in the end. Almost all of the middle class was created by working these jobs, and even a large portion of the factory owners and industrialists came from the same class of workers (when originally the rich were exclusively aristocracy).

You will notice a pattern, actually. Sweatshops come to a country, a large portion of the population works for them, over time the supply of labour drops thus allowing workers to push for higher wages, better safety standards, etc and eventually the workers are no longer starving sweatshop workers at all but reasonably well off and the factories are no longer sweatshops, which have long since moved to places which have more poor people in need of jobs. This has happened in Britain, the US, Germany, and more recently is beginning to happen in China.

Also, you aren't addressing our issues. What do they do INSTEAD of sweatshop work? Starve? Again: Why have I heard not a SINGLE PERSON who works these jobs demand that they go away, yet I hear plenty of them say that they are happy that sweatshops exist? I was unaware that you knew how to make their own decisions better than they know themselves.

[AyeYo]

Offering someone a job != offering someone a wage slavery position in which they are only kept alive enough to work.  Your entire post is one big strawman.

You will notice a pattern, actually. Sweatshops come to a country, a large portion of the population works for them, over time the supply of labour drops thus allowing workers to push for higher wages, better safety standards, etc and eventually the workers are no longer starving sweatshop workers at all but reasonably well off and the factories are no longer sweatshops, which have long since moved to places which have more poor people in need of jobs.

Kind of magical how it hasn't happened anywhere other than the first-world nations, huh?  Can you cite me some examples of third-world nations that have pulled themselves up economically via sweatshops and wage slave labor?


The reality of the matter is that the sweatshops are necessary - 100% necessary.  The only reason we don't have them here anymore is because we outsourced them due to things like evironmental and safety regulations and unions driving up the price of labor (not some magical capitalism fairy).  The third-world doesn't have anywhere else to outsource them to, so they're stuck with it forever.

[AntiVigilante]

Offering someone a job != offering someone a wage slavery position in which they are only kept alive enough to work.  Your entire post is one big strawman.

Okay. You would prefer they get no "wage slavery" position and starve? Or that they go toil in the fields with barely enough food to stay alive (subsistence farming) with the bonus of, unlike the "wage slave", making no extra money on the top, meaning their children are doomed to the exact same fate while a "wage slave" could conceivably grow his wealth and his child could live a decent life?

A sweatshop is no different from subsistence farming - they only make enough to survive.
They make no extra money.
A wage slave cannot grow his wealth.
Their children are consigned to the same existence.

Sweatshops are also run by military (Enron), abuse, and threat of violence.

Bull. The factories of the 18th century were much more unsafe than the ones now and definitely fell under the category of "sweatshops", but the sweatshop workers, unlike subsistence farmers, actually ended up with more money than they started with in the end. Almost all of the middle class was created by working these jobs, and even a large portion of the factory owners and industrialists came from the same class of workers (when originally the rich were exclusively aristocracy).

Appeal to time period. Check.

You will notice a pattern, actually. Sweatshops come to a country, a large portion of the population works for them, over time the supply of labour drops thus allowing workers to push for higher wages, better safety standards, etc and eventually the workers are no longer starving sweatshop workers at all but reasonably well off and the factories are no longer sweatshops, which have long since moved to places which have more poor people in need of jobs. This has happened in Britain, the US, Germany, and more recently is beginning to happen in China.

Appeal to absurdity.

Also, you aren't addressing our issues. What do they do INSTEAD of sweatshop work? Starve? Again: Why have I heard not a SINGLE PERSON who works these jobs demand that they go away, yet I hear plenty of them say that they are happy that sweatshops exist? I was unaware that you knew how to make their own decisions better than they know themselves.

Appeal to irrelevance.

I hacked past your issues and produced a model far superior to sweatshops.

[AntiVigilante]

If you truly want to hold that view in your head, then you must also be saying that the hungrier a person is, the more immoral it is to offer him a job.  So the hungry man is unable to get a job, lest his employer be called an exploiter by you, and therefore he becomes either a parasite or dead.

You're no saint.

I know the difference between putting enough gas in the tank to get home and back and putting enough in the tank to go sight seeing.

Only an idiot thinks he can get away with paying someone to break even.

Only a person who considers workers to be idiots would feel the need to prevent the transaction from ever happening.

A starving man isn't incapacitated by idiocy (your label not mine).

[LastBattle]

Appeal to time period. Check.

Because people of the present no longer consume food or use factories. Oh wait. I suppose this could be used to apply to just about anything; Fascism works just great, it just happened to be occurring before its time in the 1940s! etc

Hey, if you want some measure of proof, look at China now compared to China thirty or forty years ago.

Appeal to absurdity.

"The world is not flat? How absurd! I reject your preposterous claims!"

Appeal to irrelevance.

Yeah, those ACTUAL WORKERS wouldn't know anything about their own lives, would they? It isn't as if they matter at all.

Glad to clarify that.

I hacked past your issues and produced a model far superior to sweatshops.

Yeah, and I am Zorax, Emperor of Delaxia and ruler of half of the known universe.

The reality of the matter is that the sweatshops are necessary - 100% necessary.  The only reason we don't have them here anymore is because we outsourced them due to things like evironmental and safety regulations and unions driving up the price of labor (not some magical capitalism fairy).  The third-world doesn't have anywhere else to outsource them to, so they're stuck with it forever.

How did environmental/safety regulations and unions have the power to do anything, though? What reason would ANY factory have to open with a population of people unwilling to work at correct market prices? Also, why did those countries gain their middle class before such things existed?

Why do I even bother?
APPEAL TO TIME PERIOD

APPEAL TO ABSURDITY

CITATION NEEDED

Kind of magical how it hasn't happened anywhere other than the first-world nations, huh?  Can you cite me some examples of third-world nations that have pulled themselves up economically via sweatshops and wage slave labor?

Chile, China, India, Germany, the USA, the UK, Brazil

APPEAL TO IRRELEVANCY

HERP DERP I WON TEH DEBATZ

[AntiVigilante]

Yeah, and I am Zorax, Emperor of Delaxia and ruler of half of the known universe.

The reality of the matter is that the sweatshops are necessary - 100% necessary.  The only reason we don't have them here anymore is because we outsourced them due to things like evironmental and safety regulations and unions driving up the price of labor (not some magical capitalism fairy).  The third-world doesn't have anywhere else to outsource them to, so they're stuck with it forever.

How did environmental/safety regulations and unions have the power to do anything, though? What reason would ANY factory have to open with a population of people unwilling to work at correct market prices? Also, why did those countries gain their middle class before such things existed?

Why do I even bother?
APPEAL TO TIME PERIOD

APPEAL TO ABSURDITY

CITATION NEEDED

You fancy sexy time at the Time Cube Cabaret.

Correct market prices REQUIRE TWO TO TANGO. If one or both parties refuse a price, then IT'S NOT THE CORRECT MARKET PRICE.

Assuming price is the only bargaining chip is corporatist fail.

[LastBattle]

Yeah, and I am Zorax, Emperor of Delaxia and ruler of half of the known universe.

The reality of the matter is that the sweatshops are necessary - 100% necessary.  The only reason we don't have them here anymore is because we outsourced them due to things like evironmental and safety regulations and unions driving up the price of labor (not some magical capitalism fairy).  The third-world doesn't have anywhere else to outsource them to, so they're stuck with it forever.

How did environmental/safety regulations and unions have the power to do anything, though? What reason would ANY factory have to open with a population of people unwilling to work at correct market prices? Also, why did those countries gain their middle class before such things existed?

Why do I even bother?
APPEAL TO TIME PERIOD

APPEAL TO ABSURDITY

CITATION NEEDED

You fancy sexy time at the Time Cube Cabaret.

Correct market prices REQUIRE TWO TO TANGO. If one or both parties refuse a price, then IT'S NOT THE CORRECT MARKET PRICE.

Assuming price is the only bargaining chip is corporatist fail.

Too bad that a sweatshop worker working at a sweatshop, by default, accepts the price of his own labour. If sweatshops are evil because one/both parties refuse a price, then they cannot work because the workers would refuse to work there or the sweatshops wouldn't employ them, meaning that the problem of sweatshops would solve itself, but if the workers accept it then they are accepting the given price/wage therefore it is a correct market price making it is clearly disadvantageous for the workers to have their workplace removed. QED