By 'we', you mean the multinational corporations that write 'free-trade' treaties (that usually encompass much more than just tariff reductions). Because voters tend to not get much say (and sometimes not even senators!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership#Secr...
As a consumer you are voting with those corporations by buying from them or using their services.
It might not seem like it's a choice, because the plurality of consumers have made the choice to go along, so if you do otherwise you're in a small group.
It's still a choice though. You either live the modern lifestyle, which includes (though reducing) consumption based on what could be classified in many cases slave labor. Or you choose a lifestyle that doesn't.
How nice. First subvert democracy through lobbying so they can offshore production, so the only 'choice' consumers have is go along with it, or live in the stone age. Then when consumers don't all retreat to caves and huts in the woods, claim this means they agree with and 'voted' for this course.
Buying is not voting, and deceiving people into believing this has been one of capitalism's greatest successes.
But the opposite direction does not hold. More expensive products are not necessary more ethically. Often the cheap and expensive products are made by the same workers and just sold under different brands.
So the customers cannot know which products are ethically or not.
They would need to vet the entire supply chain of every product. That is a full time job just to check one product
Unfortunately history would indicate that actual slave labor, or something close to it, (high volume, low unit cost) is required to rapidly scale new technologies to the point that they are ubiquitous. This is invariant on the amount of subversion of democracy there is or not.
The choices are 1. Slow down 2. Use bad labor practices 3. Completely automate production. Nobody seems to want to do #1 and we're not advanced enough for #3
It might not seem like it's a choice, because the plurality of consumers have made the choice to go along, so if you do otherwise you're in a small group.
It's still a choice though. You either live the modern lifestyle, which includes (though reducing) consumption based on what could be classified in many cases slave labor. Or you choose a lifestyle that doesn't.