[xorcist]

But it will, as long as you can lock up children and force them to work off some debt.

Free labour is one of the things which led to the fall of the Roman empire. Nobody needs technology when you have slaves. And there are a lot of slaves in the world, just read the latest UN report on it.

[TeMPOraL]

But poor children still need to eat, sleep and it takes a while to replace them when they wear out. Machines on the other hand can run 24/7, on just electricity, and there are both practical and economical systems already in place that will let you replace broken ones with new ones quickly. I think machines will be cheaper long before sweatshops run out of children.

[CmonDev]

Also: higher quality and a feel-good brand factor "we don't use child labor anymore".

[xorcist]

That has been tried and didn't work. Neither did cheaper machines. Remember that textile machines pretty much gave birth to industrial automation, so the technology is as tried and cheap as it gets. Still not enough.

[johnchristopher]

What about an `artisan revival` where people sewing clothes would have a decent life and we would get high-quality clothes (let's face it, $5 t-shirts don't last long) ?

[xorcist]

That could be it. It's certainly what a lot of people are trying right now.

One big problem with it is that it's such a cheap target for PR. It's cheaper to build an "artisan trademark" that people associate with quality in other ways than to actually sell high quality products. And even if you do manage it the hard way, your trademark would become a very valuable acquisition target, with obvious consequences.