In a country plagued by internal and external conflict, political strife, food insecurity etc, is it really a free choice? If the alternatives are subsistence farming or working in local businesses that could disappear tomorrow because they don’t enjoy support from rich foreigners, then it doesn’t seem like much of a choice at all.
If the other alternative are that bad, giving a new alternative increases the amount of choices is benefitial. Providing the workers with food security likely matters to them.
As long as the area around the factory (which, remember, is only there for the cheap labor) is destitute, the factory makes higher profits than it otherwise would. As soon as the local economy begins to compete its way toward higher wages, the value of the location as a destination for factories begins to vanish.
If cheap labor is all the people who create sweatshops would care about we would have a lot more sweatshops in Africa. Sweatshops care about factors like infrastructure, political stability and often also the talent pool.
Whether or not sweatshops generally take actions that damage the surrouding opportunities for work to be able to compete better is an empiric question. There’s a high incentive to tell stories like that in Western media and for Western academics to run studies that find those effects.
There are many ways in which you can run a sweatshop that produce damage to the local economy but if we look at the decision to build a sweatshop we can decide to build one that’s benefitial to the local economy.
The practical question is whether or not the effort that current multinationals exert on sweatshops to operate in an ethical matter results in sweatshops that are worthwhile to have.
If the other alternative are that bad, giving a new alternative increases the amount of choices is benefitial. Providing the workers with food security likely matters to them.
If cheap labor is all the people who create sweatshops would care about we would have a lot more sweatshops in Africa. Sweatshops care about factors like infrastructure, political stability and often also the talent pool.
Whether or not sweatshops generally take actions that damage the surrouding opportunities for work to be able to compete better is an empiric question. There’s a high incentive to tell stories like that in Western media and for Western academics to run studies that find those effects.
There are many ways in which you can run a sweatshop that produce damage to the local economy but if we look at the decision to build a sweatshop we can decide to build one that’s benefitial to the local economy.
The practical question is whether or not the effort that current multinationals exert on sweatshops to operate in an ethical matter results in sweatshops that are worthwhile to have.