Surely it must be possible to have economic development in poor countries without sweatshop-level exploitation.

For sure it might be possible, but historically it hasn't happened. Furthermore, there are still, to this day, occupations in the West which have deplorable working conditions. For instance, construction, mining and oil field work - where workers are outside in conditions as cold as -40 degrees, and work 12-16 hour days for 2-3 weeks strait without days off...

The fact that something happened due to economics doesn't mean there aren't other ways it could happen.

Probably not, all of the developed countries went through a sweatshop phase at some point in their past.

That's true, but just because something happened a certain way in the past, doesn't mean it's absolutely necessary it proceed that way in the future.

As an industry, the technology sector prides itself on innovative thinking and using new approaches to solve old problems in a better way. It doesn't seem like economic development should be a path-dependent process.

It saddens me to see people shrugging off human misery as though it's required by some ironclad law of economics. Instead, we should devote serious effort to figuring out how to get from "poor, subsistence farming" to "developed economy" without the "child labor and sweatshops" step.

Rawanda is already trying to make that leap: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-11/04/paul-kagame-e...

Care to name an example from the last 100 years?

Elsewhere I gave the example of Rwanda attempting to do this: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-11/04/paul-kagame-e...