[savanaly]

One of my all time favorite pop economics essays is by Paul Krugman, addressing this topic:

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/19...

His argument is summed up thus:

"And as long as you have no realistic alternative to industrialization based on low wages, to oppose it means that you are willing to deny desperately poor people the best chance they have of progress for the sake of what amounts to an aesthetic standard--that is, the fact that you don't like the idea of workers being paid a pittance to supply rich Westerners with fashion items."

[xorcist]

"No realistic alternative" -- that's a bit of a dishonest either/or argument. Of course there are alternatives. It's not like it hasn't happened before.

In the Western world this gave rise to the biggest social movement in a century, with demands to assure workers all kind of rights.

Krugman needs to motivate why we should deny third world children the same rights we demanded for our own a hundred and forty years ago, if he really wants to make that argument.

[pluma]

I'd argue that Europe in the Industrialisation was in a slightly different situation because the world economy wasn't as globalized yet.

If Cambodian labourers unionize and become more expensive, the business could easily move to the next third-world country, leaving them economically worse off than before.

The problem is that the suppliers they work for are as dependent on the international companies paying them as their workers are dependent on them.

Basically, either the international companies have to act against their immediate economical interests and invest money in improving the working conditions and pay at their suppliers, or the suppliers in different countries would have to "unionize", too.

Alternatively, all labourers in all countries would have to unionize in the same timeframe (so the business can't just keep country-hopping) or the businesses would have to be forced to act against their own interests.

I think the most realistic sequence of events is that as the national economy in each country improves their workers begin to unionize and within a few decades the conditions may have improved universally. But that won't be an easy process and will likely result in a lot more protests and violence than the alternatives.

The naive ideal would be that customers force the businesses to pressure the suppliers to improve the situation, but outside a few marketing stunts I don't think that is very likely. All previous calls for boycotts have been unsuccessful and the average citizen doesn't care enough about these issues to do anything politically (aside from the obvious difficulty of out-lobbying the established lobbies).

We'll see.