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Every country starts out poor. And when these countries start to industrialize, sweatshops start to appear. Compared to the current standard of living in the United States, these sweatshops are just horrible. But compared to the other alternatives that exist in third world contries, for many people, these sweatshops are the best job opportunity available, and a great chance to become upwardly mobile.
The people who live in third world countries don't usually protest sweatshops. On the contrary, they are grateful to have them. It's the smug, stuck up, snobbish liberals in first world countries who protest third world sweatshops.
Why does someone work in a sweatshop for 30 cents an hour? Because it's the best job opportunity that's available to him. What happens when the sweatshop is forced to close because of protests from people like you, convenor, and Zorro? Then his only other alternative is to work somewhere else for LESS than what he had been making in the sweatshop.
Every country starts out poor. People like you and convenor and Zorro who protest sweatshops think that you can just magicaly snap your fingers and make a country rich. That's ridiculous. It takes decades of economic growth and capitalism and investment for a country to become rich. And sweatshops are the very beginning of this path. By trying to get rid of these sweatshops, you are trying to destroy these people's only chance to escape poverty.
A few days ago, Thomas Friedman had a great column in the New York Times where he agreed with me on every point that I just made. And he is a LIBERAL.
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