How do you feel about sweat shops/slave/forced labour?

I dont like to see suffering or inhumanity on any level to any human being.

I also like cheap nike's

Does my distaste of child labour stop me buying cheap clothes....no it does not.

Will I spend my own money on expensive clothes...no i will not. Its a tricky situation. I would never knowingly support child labour or sweat shops, I trust that the stores I use dont produce their clothes in that manner. Do I research to make sure that isnt the case...no I do not. Have I unknowingly supported child labour....possibly.

@always_explicit: But if we never question are not we silent accomplices, we are actively supporting it through being passive. We feel bad but do it and do it because it easier, financially and effort/time wise.

Totally, its more than possible I have contributed unknowingly. But theres a long list of things I should worry about, If I worried about all of the things I would worry about in an "ideal" world I would never get anything done. Everything I wore, ate, bought. I should worry, but I honestly don't want to.

Do not like forced or slave labor, fine with sweat shops though

I'm kind of in the same boat. Working in a sweat shop is voluntary. I'm not necessarily against the low pay if they line up with the cost of living in that country and compare favorably with the pay of local jobs.

Child/forced/slave labor are definitely a no-no.

Involuntary labour is pretty bad for everybody except the slaver. Sweat shops - it's cheap and the people working in them obviously figure that they're better off there than elsewhere. I am not sure what you mean by "child labour". There is a strong difference in ethics between a Bangladeshi-style textile factory with terrible safety standards using children to work smaller scale/more dangerous tools, and a service provider (for example, an Asian family business) in which very young people such as the family children are employed.

I don't know how I feel.

Personally I don't pay full price for anything made in China.

They may be "better" of there initially. But doesn't mean it's beneficial in the long run. If the whole economy is dominated by a small number of landlords and capitalists over seas, people really have no choice (situational coercion), and the situation has no long term benefits for the population. If we are to get serous about world poverty, we would let people in third world nations manage their own resources. Not by creating and maintaining puppet states, which are just tools for the corporations to control their commons. There really is no large difference between sweatshop labor and chattel slavery.

I think it's terrible and consumers help propagate it....

Yep.

This is one of the reasons I buy support buying made in USA and ally-made (UK, Canada, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, etc.) products exclusively. If that can't be done, used is a good option. Here in the US at least, we have tons of thrift stores. You help out the people working there, recycle these products, find some good deals - it's a great system.

It is a double-edged sword. I have young family members in Cambodia (I was born in the US) and some of them worked in sweat shops in Cambodia. In SE Asia, child prostitution and human trafficking (black market) is rampant and I see sweat shops as hope. If you're a 12 year old starving and can't find a job, some may resort to prostitution to survive (telling themselves it will just be a temporary gig). If jobs are readily available, they will choose that over prostitution. One of them who started out doing really laboring work is now some sort of plant manager and she gets to travel all throughout SE Asia (Singapore, Thailand, etc.) and she seems to be happy.

It's one thing to say: give sweat-shop workers a minimum wage and health benefits. It's another to be actually willing to pay more money for that.

Can't get enough of em!

I feel like they dont give ample opportunity for career development

It's better than paying 10x as much as I do for underwear.

I don't understand half your post, but the existence of sweat shops and involuntary labour in other countries does not imply that "the economy is dominated by a small number of landlords and capitalists" anywhere. Also, third world nations already "manage their own resources" - they voluntarily chose to trade because they know that it's extremely good for them if they can use their population as a cheap workforce and get massive amounts of money from rich developed countries. This is vastly preferable to being protectionist and being hilariously poor and unproductive as a result.

Third world country resources are handled by corporate warlords while the country reaps no benefits...

Third world countries are handled by their government, corporations are regarded as their extended arm. That's why they are still third world countries as no corporations want to invest in that country. They are too corrupt.

There is a large difference between protectionism and autonomism. I believe people in the third world would be better off without bureaucratic management of commons via private property. So states are the problem. Saying people in third world countries have control over their own resources because they get to trade with pocket change from the west is ridiculous.

Yes, there is a large difference - from what I can tell "autonomism" seems to be another one of those crappy communist movements that always fail because nobody important supports them and are ten times worse than even the most closed up market economies. Why would you believe that when the largest sustained increases in living standards in both first world and third world nations have occurred as a result of capitalism, and private property is an integral part of this, while all the countries with both weak governments and weak markets all suck balls? I was not suggesting that the existence of trade proves that third world nations are independent, but that your assertion that third world nations are corporate puppets because is hilariously off, and that these nations trade voluntarily. What, is China a slave state to European, Japanese and American automobile firms now? :roll:

Well I for one don't know how much western corporations influence china's government. I do know it's incredibly authoritarian, and because of the states enforcement of strong private property rights, a lot of people in china work in sweatshops. You can call solidarity and workplace democracy evil, and inefficient (for whom?) all you want but it's more humane. I never called international trade a problem in itself. The west loots the third world because of state intervention. Capitalists don't support globalization in any meaningful sense.

A lot of people in China work in sweatshops because there is a massive supply of very cheap and unproductive labour (a.k.a. for a very large number of Chinese people, sweatshops are the best kind of work they can get) in addition to weak safety standards and a high level of demand for the kinds of goods that Chinese sweatshops produce. Strong property rights exist in the entire developed world, but somehow sweatshops do not dominate the American, Japanese, German, British, French, Italian, South Korean, Canadian, Spanish, Australian, Taiwanese, Dutch, Swedish, Belgian, Swiss, Austrian, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Greek, Singaporean, Irish, New Zealander, Luxembourgian or Icelandic labour markets do they?

I suppose that if you took away strong property rights you would have less people working in sweatshops alright. In the sense that there would be no investments from developed nations or domestic Chinese creditors to establish the factories that produce a fifth of the world's manufactured goods, and sweatshop quality jobs in China would disappear and be only partially replaced by lesser paid and probably harsher work in fields or mines. China was authoritarian without private property rights; in fact it seems it is less authoritarian now than ever in modern times. I assume you're talking about the co-operatives again, in which I would answer that they're less efficient for consumers, and that's the most important thing here.

How is the "west" looting the third world through "state intervention"? By allowing their companies to employ the third world's labour for higher wages than the third world can offer and by allowing their consumers to purchase the third world's goods for higher prices than they could get elsewhere, thus driving an unprecedented rise in the living standards of the third world?

Sweat shops tend to be the highest paying jobs in the region in most third world countries. And child labour, while incredibly heartbreaking when looked at emotionally, it is sometimes necessary as many children are the leaders of their households, and have to support many younger children because the parents have died of disease or war.

It's something that should be fixed, but it's understandable why it exists.

It's an awful thing to establish.

These markets don't have as much sweatshops because they are the management hubs of capitalism.

I suppose that if you took away strong property rights you would have less people working in sweatshops alright. In the sense that there would be no investments from developed nations or domestic Chinese creditors to establish the factories that produce a fifth of the world's manufactured goods, and sweatshop quality jobs in China would disappear and be only partially replaced by lesser paid and probably harsher work in fields or mines. China was authoritarian without private property rights; in fact it seems it is less authoritarian now than ever in modern times. I assume you're talking about the co-operatives again, in which I would answer that they're less efficient for consumers, and that's the most important thing here.

How is the "west" looting the third world through "state intervention"? By allowing their companies to employ the third world's labour for higher wages than the third world can offer and by allowing their consumers to purchase the third world's goods for higher prices than they could get elsewhere, thus driving an unprecedented rise in the living standards of the third world?

I don't know who anyone can believe people in the third world getting told what to do from the top down is superior to allowing them to take control of their own lives. If a market socialism like mutualism happened in the third world, prices might go up. But than at least everyone would have equal bargaining power. First world consumers may be able to get cheap crap right now, but at what cost? We don't have to raise our living standards by subordinating other people with Taylorism.

however you feel, I bet'chya got a conservative uncle that sends you emails telling you that Obamacare is worse than slavery

I don't even know what this is supposed to mean.

I have no idea what you're referring to with "top down" control. And no, third worlders would not have "equal bargaining power" with first worlders because they still don't have the technology, education or financial resources that they desperately want from first worlders, while first worlders would actually be rejoicing at the return of jobs. Any cost from free trade is temporary at best and primarily borne by the first world in the form of increased unemployment. In the long run both parties benefit.