I say I don’t want a world in which those are the only choices. We have the power to make the world a better place, and we are using it instead to beef up Paris Hilton’s trust fund. Also, if you think the illiterate peasants in these labor camps are using them as a springboard to their careers as surgeons and accountants and TV pundits, I think perhaps you are mistaken.
As for the working poor, isn’t it shameful that phrase even exists in the richest nation on earth? We have taken their jobs and outsourced them to China and India and Indonesia, where poverty wages are acceptable, and we have handed their paychecks to those investment bankers as their reward. This is not a spike in the graph; it is accelerating.
I’m sure those whom you would deprive the opportunity to work in “sweatshops” appreciate that you don’t want to live in a world where those are the only choices. Unfortunately, they do live in that world, so your sentiments are cold comfort to them.
I’ve lived in Cambodia, and I know a little about the garment industry there.There are lots and lots of people who start off sewing in sweatshop factories (and lots of people want these jobs) but who leave after a few years to do all sorts of things like opening up small shops in their home villages, moving on to better work in the city after they’ve established themselves, returning home with a nest egg to start a family, and all sorts of things like that. Not everybody in any society can or should become “surgeons and accountants and TV pundits,” nor would it be a god idea for everybody to do so, so I have no idea what that comment is intended to mean. Does everybody in the US, where we don’t really have sweatshops, become an astronaut because of all their opportunity?
So, basically, lets keep the poor in other countries from ever having the opportunity to work in sweatshops (which are better than the alternative, at least for millions of people) so that we can protect people in the richest nations with protectionist trade measures. What a humanitarian! Aid for those in the richest countries, and let the poorest eat cake!
Yes, it’s terrible how we can’t be concerned about or take action against more than one problem at a time.
How Abu Dhabi and the UAE run themselves is up to them. What our most respected and well endowed institutions get up to does seem to be under the umbrella of “things I’d like to be run more in line with my values.”
I am only advocating that, barring clear violations of human rights, we should have little to say about other people’s freedoms.
I’m curious if you realize that we agree.
The challenge here is one of scope. Our most respected and well endowed institutions abuse people abroad because we abuse people at home. The behavior comes from somewhere. We have a fundamental societal issue. Please see Ferguson. We do not care about people.
