communismkills:
I like to call them third-world investment capital.
Why does anyone want to close down sweatshops? Would they rather see “poor brown people” unemployed? Would they rather see these poor brown people starve to death? Would they rather see these poor brown people have to resort to cannibalism,…
You’re either a troll, very naíve or downright rotten.
I have a choice of two responses that spring to mind from reading this:
1. You’re looking at the problem with a flawed dichotomy; it’s not as simple as “If we don’t have the sweatshops, the “poor brown people” will die!” These workers are being exploited, but that doesn’t need to be the way. Here in England, over 100 years ago, we used to have similar working conditions to workshops in some places (though no doubt some people would question the extent of the comparison). To take one example: at the dawn of the industrial revolution we would have small children crawling inside massive sewing machines to untangle parts, with the great possibility of losing an arm, finger, or worse, all for measly pay that kept them in perpetual poverty. People then would have no doubt argued “Well, we can’t give these workers rights and better pay, it will break the economy! They’ll starve! It’s not nice, but imagine the consequences if we changed the system!” We did change the system, and the economy didn’t get destroyed. Heck, we even ended up with a lovely National Health Service by the 1940s (though she’s not at her best lately) and I’m currently ale to sit here on an Apple Mac typing this, whilst in my parent’s central heated house in a town that is most definitely working class.
Now why is a change like this impossible to imagine in the Third World? Why should poorer states cater to the needs of the richer states? They shouldn’t. That’s wrong. And if you think anything else I’d love to send you to work in a Nike factory for, say, a decade, and then we’ll see if capitalism starts to look a bit more painful.
There is of course a possible counter-argument I can foresee in that “Well, the example of the kid in textiles factory getting his rights is all well and good, but when he got his rights, his work just moved to the 3rd world.” I don’t think this is a foolish statement to make, but it still does not mean that it needs to be the state of affairs. With the increasing sophistication of technology, why do we need to have manual labour to, say, make clothes? We don’t. Ok, technology is doubtfully at the level to liberate humanity at this stage, but who says it can’t be? And who says we can’t begin making headway to that end? Do you know how long it took between the invention of the aeroplane and man landing on the moon? 66 years. Bearing in mind how long man has been walking this Earth, that’s phenomenal!
Poverty and exploitation do not have to always exist, they are merely a product of the current, flawed system. And if anyone doesn’t think the current system is flawed, I challenge them to either raise a family in the poorest area of Detroit or join an ancient tribe that is having their water supply stolen by Coca Cola.
2. Are you fucking retarded?!
