Where do you think wealth comes from? It is the product of knowledge and institutions and economic growth. It is not always off the backs of others. In fact most of it is not. We are about a hundred times wealthier than we were before the industrial revolution. We can’t have stolen this wealth as not the smallest fraction of it existed in all the world before the industrial revolution.

If we deny these people the prospect of working in factories we are doing them no favours. How is removing demand for their labor going to make them wealthier?

It is not the sweatshops fault these people are poor. It is their poverty that makes a job you find unappealing appealing for them. By all means lobby to increase foreign aid. By all means donate cash via Give Directly.

But don’t think for a moment you are enriching these people’s lives by reducing the demand for their labor. Such thoughts are economic insanity.

> Where do you think wealth comes from?

In this case it's very clear where wealth comes from: Bezos and the rest of the Amazon shareholders are severely underpaying these workers in violation of China's labor laws. Did you read the article?

> We can’t have stolen this wealth as not the smallest fraction of it existed in all the world before the industrial revolution.

The capacity for self-deception is always a bit surprising. Confronted with a clear and concrete case of labor exploitation and wage theft you insist, never the less, it is not labor exploitation and wage theft. That is economic insanity.

> How is removing demand for their labor going to make them wealthier?

There's no need to appeal to vague self-serving questions. The impact of labor standards on global trade have been studied and their impact can be quantified. Here, in particular, the California Effect [1] has been proven to be very effective in increasing labor and environmental [3] standards around the world. California alone could likely help here a lot by demanding regulatory advertising on these products. The first step would be to educate American consumers so they understand the enormous suffering that goes into these products.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_effect

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/opinion/free-trade-by-its...

[3] https://www.nature.org/magazine/archives/the-california-effe...

Neither Amazon nor Bezos do not py them directly. They pay Foxconn for assembled devices. If they paid more, Foxconn would probably just have better margins.

Not, if they demand better working conditions in their contracts.

> It is their poverty that makes a job you find unappealing appealing for them

What? these inhumane working conditions aren't appealing to any human. Nobody is asking to reduce the demand for their labor, maybe the product should be priced accordingly to facilitate good working conditions and pay instead.

>What? these inhumane working conditions aren't appealing to any human.

This is your privilege talking. Billions of people find them far more appealing than a precarious life of backbreaking farm labor.

seems like your privilege talking; nobody is comparing to field farming here.

Most of those people wouldn’t have gone to the city if they could have stayed on their farm. It’s capitalism forcing those people from their land, not some innate desire to be exploited in a factory.

>Where do you think wealth comes from?

From paying labor less than it’s worth and keeping the difference for yourself.

People use sweatshop labor because they can steal even more of the value created by these worker’s labor, knowing there’s not a damn thing they can do about it. And they’ve done so for so long, amassed so much wealth, that they now can pay for boatloads of “intellectuals” to justify their exploitation as good and necessary, leading to us having this conversation now.

I am going to recommend a book to you. Doing Good Better by William MacAskil. It is not a work of right wing “intellectuals”. It is a book I think may cause you to rethink things. In exchange, I will read any book you recommended, Marxist or otherwise.

I’m aware of the rehabilitations of the Effective Altruism movement and find their arguments unconvincing. Not to mention entirely the product of right-wing TINA thinking.

Am I right in assuming you consider communist revolution the only solution? Just so you know it is unlikely you will be the Stalin of that eventuality, just one more of his slaves.

No, not at all. I believe in democracy and its potential for transformation above all, just as a fundamental right in the workplace/economy, in addition to government.

> It is not the sweatshops fault these people are poor.

Rather it is the sweatshops fault that it is an inhumane sweatshop which treates the people who work there inhumanely.

> We can’t have stolen this wealth as not the smallest fraction of it existed in all the world before the industrial revolution.

Ummmm evidence? Is there an article or study or book which backs this idea up?

This sounds like one interesting idea (the wealth production enabled by ideas, knowledge, systems, etc) coupled with a big dose of denial of reality, namely, the exploitation (of natural resources in Africa, India, and the americas, and of human labor and lives via slavery) which allowed the industrial revolution to come into being.

Plus, the article mentions how other regions in China such as Shenzhen _do_ have better labor practices. It’s not a binary choice between zero opportunity and abusive sweatshops.

Who's wealth are you revering to, those that own the knowledge and institutions, or those that do the work ? In modern democracies we used to try and, what do you know, 'democratise' wealth. In the last year 81% of the wealth created went to 1% of people. This is why capitalism is failing humanity, and why it will be rejected.

The vast bulk of 'wealth' is generated by perpetual rent-seeking by those that maintain artificial scarcity. There are exceptions of course, and most of those are to be found in new technologically driven enterprises.

In India people sell thier children into slavery because they are so destitute. Sweat shops are an alternative that allow them to not have to do so.

In several generations, they may industrialize to the point where they achieve a western standard of living.

Is it ethical to deny them this chance because it makes you feel bad about thier current condition compared to your own?

What if we could improve their conditions by being willing to pay more for luxury products like tablets, smart speakers, and higher-end smartphones?

Wouldn’t advocating for human rights then also be part of this progression you describe?

Sell child -> Work in sweatshop -> Gain basic labor right of 8-hour -> etc ...

>Seems like a pretty good alternative to me.

Even when you include the part you conveniently left out about the poor living in even worse conditions that make their current situation a far better option?

Do you really think they were pulled from a cozy office doing 9 to 5 to this?

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Not sure what you got from my comment or if you replied to the wrong person, but I do not support the tariff being discussed.

Sorry must have replied to the wrong comment.

When you say "wealthy people", do you mean super-rich people like Jeff Bezos, or all of us who buy luxury products? Truly curious.

I mean Capital owners, which includes Bezos and a few strata below him. Everyone else is labor, whether they’re an Indian sweatshop worker or a startup employee.