All things are not equal

[IQS.RLOW]

[Super Nova]

Englands industrial revolution was powered by Sweatshop jobs.
Then came the unions.
Then come in laws.
Then come in minimum standards.
Unions lose some power when the state provides the protections they fought for.
Worker have choice where the minmum choice, even welfare, gives them a living.

This argument make best sense when we consider the wests ecconomic history.

We continually in the west don't want the poor nationals to go through the same process the west did because some of the historical practices like, heavy polution, no health and safty standards, poor working conditions and exploited workers on low wages. We insists the world meet our current much higher standards when they have not evolved their societies and ecconomies to our standards.

[IQS.RLOW]

Nail on the head SN.

The left want business to flounder without thought for the consequences for the people. Guilt the consumer into not buying widget A because company B didn't do as we told them despite knowing that it would not be viable... So company B shuts shop...and now those poor taken advantage of sweat shop workers have to take lower paying longer working hour jobs because some left wing group in a 1st world country has decided that 1st world consumers should not support pulling people out of poverty under the disguise of teh evil corporations

Its moral equivalency gone mad and driven purely by unthinking ideological leftwing idiots

You can guarantee that not one if these so called sweatshop workers agrees with anything a lefty fuckwit from the west says

[Super Nova]

I guess it is the left but some on the right may feel the same way.

On balance anything that helps these people live better lives is a good thing.

These sweatshop workers do have a choice even thought it is limited b our standards. Work or die. Not much of a choice.

When I started to travel and work in the 3rd world I come in with 1st world morality. When you speak to the people and see the choices they have you appreciate how lucky we are now and develop respect for what people do to feed their families.

I have seen and spoken to women who sell sex because if they did not they could not feed their children. I have seen fathers work in shit because if they don't their families starve. I have reached a point where I do not judge these people anymore. I wish they had a better lot in life but I am not a billionaire and can not help them. Where I can I have helped.

The video does raise some interesting issues.

Do gooders do more harm than good if they don't understand history and always us 1st world current values and seek to impose them on 3rd world corporations, companies, communitoes and nations.

People will do what they have to do to survive. It is in our nature. It's in every living things nature.

[Mattus]

This is of course a human rights issue whereby he left right divide does not apply. IQ is shadow boxing with imaginary lefties, yet the video is by an eminent libertarian philosopher Matt Zwolinski. The pro-sweatshop philosophy itself derived from Nicholas Kristof - a liberal journalist, and Nobel laureate and Clintonite economist Paul Krugman. Most US sweatshops are of course in China - which is about as left as they come, being communist.

That said, The concept that sweatshops are a force for good is certainly going to be challenging for a lot of people, left and right. It's a great thread idea, if you can lay off the pseudopartisan bullshit for a while.

[AnimalMother]

China - which is about as left as they come, being communist.

Communist in name only, now. China has become the equivalent of Dickensian England with its ruthless application of harsh capitalist economics. The only remaining link to communism is the dictatorship by the Party.

If anything, China is now a Fascist state, where big capitalists and big politicians co-operate to screw everyone else, unfettered by democracy or freedom of speech.

I've developed a little theory about Marxism: Communist revolution isn't the stepping stone between Capitalism and Workers' Paradise, it's actually the stepping stone between Feudalism and Capitalism.

In the more advanced countries, capitalism is being succeeded by the Welfare State. But that, too, has its flaws, and will yield to something new.

[Super Nova]

Wiki has a balanced definition, both sides and history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweatshop

Looks like Australia played it's part.

Between 1850 and 1900, sweatshops attracted the rural poor to rapidly-growing cities, and attracted immigrants to places such as London and New York City's garment district, located near the tenements of New York's Lower East Side. These sweatshops incurred criticism: labour leaders cited them as crowded, poorly ventilated, and prone to fires and rat infestations: in many cases there were many workers crowded into small tenement rooms.

In the 1890s a group calling itself the National Anti-Sweating League was formed in Melbourne, Australia and campaigned successfully for a minimum wage via trade boards. A group with the same name campaigned from 1906 in the UK, resulting in the Trade Boards Act 1909.[1]

[Super Nova]

Extract from Wiki. A compelling argument.

In 1997, economist Jeffrey Sachs said, "My concern is not that there are too many sweatshops, but that there are too few."[29] Sachs and other proponents of sweatshops cite the economic theory of comparative advantage, which states that international trade will, in the long run, make all parties better off. The theory holds that developing countries improve their condition by doing something that they do "better" than industrialized nations (in this case, they charge less but do the same work). Developed countries will also be better off because their workers can shift to jobs that they do better. These are jobs that some economists say usually entail a level of education and training that is exceptionally difficult to obtain in the developing world. Thus, economists like Sachs say, developing countries get factories and jobs that they would not otherwise. Some[who?] would say with this situation occurs when developing countries try to increase wages because sweatshops tend to just get moved on to a new state that is more welcoming. This leads to a situation where states often will not try to get increased wages for sweatshop workers for fear of losing investment and boosted GDP. However, this only means average wages around the world will increase at a steady rate. A nation only gets left behind if it demands wages higher than the current market price for that labor.

When asked about the working condition in sweatshops, proponents say that although wages and working conditions may appear inferior by the standards of developed nations, they are actually improvements over what the people in developing countries had before. It is said that if jobs in such factories did not improve their workers' standard of living, those workers would not have taken the jobs when they appeared. It is also often pointed out that, unlike in the industrialized world, the sweatshops are not replacing high-paying jobs. Rather, sweatshops offer an improvement over subsistence farming and other back-breaking tasks, or even prostitution, trash picking, or starvation by unemployment.[29][30]

The absence of the work opportunities provided by sweatshops can quickly lead to malnourishment or starvation. After the Child Labor Deterrence Act was introduced in the US, an estimated 50,000 children were dismissed from their garment industry jobs in Asia, leaving many to resort to jobs such as "stone-crushing, street hustling, and prostitution." UNICEF's 1997 State of the World's Children study found these alternative jobs "more hazardous and exploitative than garment production."[31]

Writer Johan Norberg, a proponent of market economics, points out an irony:[32]
“[Sweatshop critics] say that we shouldn't buy from countries like Vietnam because of its labor standards, they've got it all wrong. They're saying: "Look, you are too poor to trade with us. And that means that we won't trade with you. We won't buy your goods until you're as rich as we are." That's totally backwards. These countries won't get rich without being able to export goods.

[AiA in Atlanta]

For about 20 years, at the very beginning of the Industrial Revolution, almost the entire city of Manchester, England had a drinking problem. Workers disoriented by the very sudden shift away from agricultural looked to the city's gin carts to relieve their psychological pain.

[Neferti]

For about 20 years, at the very beginning of the Industrial Revolution, almost the entire city of Manchester, England had a drinking problem. Workers disoriented by the very sudden shift away from agricultural looked to the city's gin carts to relieve their psychological pain.

They drank beer because the alternative was water=shit due to problems with disposal of human waste. Everyone NEEDS fluids .... beer was the best of a bad bunch. So?