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 Originally Posted by Renton
Sweatshops are a positive relative effect on the lives of sweatshop workers. In the absolute they are terrible, but they reflect the level of scarcity and desperation in the poorest countries and distribute that scarcity in the most favorable and equitable way. Sweatshop workers would be starving in the streets if it weren't for sweatshops.
Similar for pre-union meatpacking. In spite of the terrible conditions that industrial revolution era British factory workers endured, their standards of living compared quite favorably to those working in agriculture (the alternative).
I'm not prepared to debate the slavery issue. In my opinion a truly free market is not compatible with slavery. The places in the world that have/had slavery are/were far from free markets. I think in a society where wages are price-coordinated, business would much prefer to pay wages based on supply and demand than buy and enslave human beings.
Sweatshops and the like are simply a means of exploitation for profit; their predecessors are merely oppression for profit. The difference and why they arise is that the former is more profitable than the latter. The idea that sweatshops are a boon to the workers is nothing but mythology that could not exist if there was not an even more oppressed populace to pull from.
If you were curbstomped every morning you woke up, you too, if given the option, would choose to merely be punched daily instead of curbstomped. Rationalizing that this is a necessary socioeconomic benefit to you (other than simply not hurting you in the first place) is no different than the rationalizations for sweatshops and the like
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