[unimportant]

Sweatshops themselves aren't the problem, but rather the fact that the game is rigged against the average person.

They could just farm self sustainably, however they lack the knowledge and large landowners own the land. They also tend to have too many kids as well.

You can choose between being a peasant that is given some land to work as farmland in exchange for a shack to dwell in and some very basic food or be slightly less worse off in a sweatshop. You get fucked either way and there is no way out as education is a joke in cambodia and the like and there is no industry to employ any higher educated people to begin with.