I think the Econ 101 textbook actually makes a solid point that buying a sweatshop t-shirt makes the workers better off than not buying it (that it would be wrong to refrain from buying it in the name of morality), and then it’s a separate (and debatable) question whether one should donate money to help the world’s poorest.
I 100% agree!! None of what I wrote aimed to put that into question! For brevity’s sake in this already long post I might have not emphasized that enough. Of course, the win-win is an absolutely crucial insight.
In fact, when I say I put into question the imho not automatically valid ‘win-win → absence of exploitation’, the entire thing also can be viewed from the angle of pointing out to those instinctively opposed to sweatshop trade, that just there being a potential dimension of exploitation doesn’t imply one ought to stop the trade; that instead a third solution besides ‘boycott’ or ‘simply benefit’ exists: yes, do the trade (stopping win-win is unambiguously bad), but in parallel consider more broadly whether/what you want to do for the poor (or for improving the world’s fate more generally).
But back to the blind spot I really claim there to commonly be in econ 101: Krugman insinuates—almost bluntly claims—the “win-win” absolves us of any questions about it being ‘exploitation’, even providing a fallacy-name for the (supposed) fallacy of seeing exploitation in the sweatshop trade.
In opposition to that, I maintain: What seems rather unquestionable is that the “win-win” actually DOESN’T by default automatically RULE OUT “exploitation” the way the term is used in common parlance! And that’s the only thing that the simplified & exaggerated though-experiment as an intuition pump, whose parallels and differences can be openly discussed, helps ‘remember’ more easily.
Btw, I now read the other sentence you quote “maybe one can only justify the trade *if* dedicating extra resources specifically to improving conditions for the poorest.” and realize I was sloppy in the text: in reality the discussion is more subtle, the point being really that common sensitivities don’t automatically preclude a trade being morally questionable just because it’s a ‘win win’. I’d now write this differently.
What seems rather unquestionable is that the “win-win” actually DOESN’T by default automatically RULE OUT “exploitation” the way the term is used in common parlance!
If you go to someone on the street and say:
I want to talk about an example of exploitation. Alice is exploiting Bob. Bob is desperate for Alice to continue exploiting him—he is going way out of his way to get Alice’s attention and literally beg her to continue exploiting him. Indeed, this whole setup was Bob’s idea in the first place. Initially, Alice had nothing to do with Bob, but then Bob flagged her down and talked her into entering this exploitative relationship. What do you think of that story?
I think that the someone-on-the-street would hear that story and say “wtf is wrong with you, you obviously have no idea what the word ‘exploitation’ means in common parlance!”. Right?
Back to your story:
By my definition, the idea that I let someone toil day in day out just for me to get a 20th t-shirt dirt cheap just because I can and just because the worker has no other choice than to agree or starve to death, corresponds rather perfectly to “taking advantage” aka exploitation.
Firstly, you emphasize that I don’t need the 20th t-shirt. But consider that, if my friend’s kid is selling lemonade, I might buy some, even if I don’t need it, or even particularly want it, because I want to be nice and give them the sale. Not needing something but buying it anyway makes the purchase more kind, not less kind, if the seller really wants the sale. So why did you include that detail in your story? It’s a sign that you’re not thinking about the situation clearly.
Secondly, the whole story is phrased to sound like my initiative. If we change it so that I was happy with my wardrobe but then the exporter advertises on TV how great and cheap their t-shirts are, begging me to buy one, and then I say “sigh, OK well I guess that does seem like a nice t-shirt, I guess I’ll buy it”, then the whole tenor of the story really changes. Right? But the transaction is the same either way. The exporters and sweatshops obviously want me to buy the goods, and indeed they are specifically designing their goods to jump out at me when I walk by them in a store, so that I buy them instead of just passing by in the aisle. This is a sign that you’re setting up the story in a misleading way, trying to make it superficially pattern-match to a very different kind of situation.
Couldn’t disagree more with your interpretation/claims/reproaches. [And preliminary remark, as I worry you might have sloppily misread: I could understand some of your framing better if I had claimed one ought to stop the trade with these poor people and leave them to themselves. This is exactly not what I advocate for, as it should be clear from full reading of my OP.]
I grant that everyone may have a different definition of what all exploitation means. But your example and take imho are off as follows:
Your example starting with
I want to talk about an example of exploitation. [...]
leaves out the obviously crucial feature: Alice is dirt poor! Has barely bread to survive if I disregard her. She might be starving to death if I don’t continue. If I then have her do +- as much work as I can for extremely low pay—as that’s what equil wages among an overwhelming amount of destitute people results in—then, no, it turns out people won’t call me out with your “wtf is wrong with you” if I ask them whether they also find there’s some exploitation going on. If for you this extra feature of deep poverty doesn’t make a difference in moral feeling about the whole thing, that’s your characteristic but it sure isn’t representative of usual human feelings or definitions regarding justice/fairness/morals/exploitation.
2. To your “Firstly, you emphasize that I don’t need the 20th t-shirt [..] It’s a sign that you’re not thinking about the situation clearly.”: Thanks for helping me know what I do and don’t think about, but I reject. On the contrary, you have a imho rather unnatural way of interpreting this with your Lemonade example:
a. We of course mostly don’t buy our shirts to help the poor, we get many as they’re so cheap and we like to have more colors or what have you, and we carelessly get them for as cheap as possible, often not thinking about it much at all. That was my point which I deem rather obvious still.
b. Your lemonade seller child has both fun in the selling and producing the lemonade. Turns out the dirt poor workers would actually have better things to do with their lives—if only they had a chance and wouldn’t so awfully depend on this work.
Bottom line: Of course I’d not be saying you exploit people if you bought it just for their sake. But as long as there seem to be much better ways to help the poor or to improve the world than by buying t-shirts just for the sake of it, I’d simply question your ingenuity when it’s about doing the best you can with your resources.
This brings us to the overall main point: Key point is that we do not have only the choice between buying the sweatshirts or not buying them and leaving these poor to themselves. Instead there’s a third option: Take our resources, and do the best for these poor (or some other poor or some future of the world or so). To whichever degree we deem ideal. Maybe we even still buy the shirts, absolutely, but at least we have to admit there’s nothing that forces us to pay only the disastrously low equilibrium market wage and walk away with the shirt and 99% of our wealth left over for doing whatever fun we like. It does not appear to be what typical humans would deem an overall ethically ideal attitude if they think about it. Again, maybe you see it differently but at least, I maintain, it is a bit farfetched to reproach those who feel as such that they are having entirely unfounded/confused moral qualms (which, as I explain, to a certain degree, in econ 101 we uncarefully risk doing).
3. Your “Secondly...”—here I literally don’t see why you even think your point makes a difference to the gist of the post. There’s no reason for exporter & advertiser to make a significant dent in the whole story. I have no major moral care/claim about those actors in my assumptions or conclusions. Individually, any of these interchangeable intermediaries are not representing the ultimate demand deciding who does & gets what in the world. I buy the shirt there = more people toiling for its creation, I buy less shirt = less people toiling. I donate to improve the living of the poorest or to do something else = less destitution; I don’t = more destitution. These, plus the fact that I can remain incomparably rich under any of these decisions, are the salient points (for my post anyway). Yes there is a market in between, and if we could improve that intermediary one way or another, things could be better. But it’s a mostly different question than that of the moral engagement of the consumer engaging in the trade. Of course, if your point is to say ‘I shall not call you evil as average consumer, after all you’re not the one who thought about this extremely skewed scheme, it’s sb else (or: it’s the market)’ - I shall happily agree: you’re not outstandingly evil indeed. You’re just the usual rather careless human then. But I shall still appeal to your morals and try to remind you, if you’re the average consumer or the average econ 101 student: Mind—while there’s clearly a win-win in this uneven trade—don’t forget, the other person only agrees with you because she’s so so dirt poor and might starve otherwise, so maybe you should have a look into your heart to see whether you really consider your behavior vis a vis this sweatshoppy situation overall one that you really deem morally laudable and unquestionable, if you’re just enjoying and not donating or helping to improve anyone’s current or future life with the spare resources from your cheap trade.
Thanks!
I 100% agree!! None of what I wrote aimed to put that into question! For brevity’s sake in this already long post I might have not emphasized that enough. Of course, the win-win is an absolutely crucial insight.
In fact, when I say I put into question the imho not automatically valid ‘win-win → absence of exploitation’, the entire thing also can be viewed from the angle of pointing out to those instinctively opposed to sweatshop trade, that just there being a potential dimension of exploitation doesn’t imply one ought to stop the trade; that instead a third solution besides ‘boycott’ or ‘simply benefit’ exists: yes, do the trade (stopping win-win is unambiguously bad), but in parallel consider more broadly whether/what you want to do for the poor (or for improving the world’s fate more generally).
But back to the blind spot I really claim there to commonly be in econ 101: Krugman insinuates—almost bluntly claims—the “win-win” absolves us of any questions about it being ‘exploitation’, even providing a fallacy-name for the (supposed) fallacy of seeing exploitation in the sweatshop trade.
In opposition to that, I maintain: What seems rather unquestionable is that the “win-win” actually DOESN’T by default automatically RULE OUT “exploitation” the way the term is used in common parlance! And that’s the only thing that the simplified & exaggerated though-experiment as an intuition pump, whose parallels and differences can be openly discussed, helps ‘remember’ more easily.
Btw, I now read the other sentence you quote “maybe one can only justify the trade *if* dedicating extra resources specifically to improving conditions for the poorest.” and realize I was sloppy in the text: in reality the discussion is more subtle, the point being really that common sensitivities don’t automatically preclude a trade being morally questionable just because it’s a ‘win win’. I’d now write this differently.
If you go to someone on the street and say:
I think that the someone-on-the-street would hear that story and say “wtf is wrong with you, you obviously have no idea what the word ‘exploitation’ means in common parlance!”. Right?
Back to your story:
Firstly, you emphasize that I don’t need the 20th t-shirt. But consider that, if my friend’s kid is selling lemonade, I might buy some, even if I don’t need it, or even particularly want it, because I want to be nice and give them the sale. Not needing something but buying it anyway makes the purchase more kind, not less kind, if the seller really wants the sale. So why did you include that detail in your story? It’s a sign that you’re not thinking about the situation clearly.
Secondly, the whole story is phrased to sound like my initiative. If we change it so that I was happy with my wardrobe but then the exporter advertises on TV how great and cheap their t-shirts are, begging me to buy one, and then I say “sigh, OK well I guess that does seem like a nice t-shirt, I guess I’ll buy it”, then the whole tenor of the story really changes. Right? But the transaction is the same either way. The exporters and sweatshops obviously want me to buy the goods, and indeed they are specifically designing their goods to jump out at me when I walk by them in a store, so that I buy them instead of just passing by in the aisle. This is a sign that you’re setting up the story in a misleading way, trying to make it superficially pattern-match to a very different kind of situation.
Couldn’t disagree more with your interpretation/claims/reproaches. [And preliminary remark, as I worry you might have sloppily misread: I could understand some of your framing better if I had claimed one ought to stop the trade with these poor people and leave them to themselves. This is exactly not what I advocate for, as it should be clear from full reading of my OP.]
I grant that everyone may have a different definition of what all exploitation means. But your example and take imho are off as follows:
Your example starting with
leaves out the obviously crucial feature: Alice is dirt poor! Has barely bread to survive if I disregard her. She might be starving to death if I don’t continue. If I then have her do +- as much work as I can for extremely low pay—as that’s what equil wages among an overwhelming amount of destitute people results in—then, no, it turns out people won’t call me out with your “wtf is wrong with you” if I ask them whether they also find there’s some exploitation going on. If for you this extra feature of deep poverty doesn’t make a difference in moral feeling about the whole thing, that’s your characteristic but it sure isn’t representative of usual human feelings or definitions regarding justice/fairness/morals/exploitation.
2. To your “Firstly, you emphasize that I don’t need the 20th t-shirt [..] It’s a sign that you’re not thinking about the situation clearly.”: Thanks for helping me know what I do and don’t think about, but I reject. On the contrary, you have a imho rather unnatural way of interpreting this with your Lemonade example:
a. We of course mostly don’t buy our shirts to help the poor, we get many as they’re so cheap and we like to have more colors or what have you, and we carelessly get them for as cheap as possible, often not thinking about it much at all. That was my point which I deem rather obvious still.
b. Your lemonade seller child has both fun in the selling and producing the lemonade. Turns out the dirt poor workers would actually have better things to do with their lives—if only they had a chance and wouldn’t so awfully depend on this work.
Bottom line: Of course I’d not be saying you exploit people if you bought it just for their sake. But as long as there seem to be much better ways to help the poor or to improve the world than by buying t-shirts just for the sake of it, I’d simply question your ingenuity when it’s about doing the best you can with your resources.
This brings us to the overall main point: Key point is that we do not have only the choice between buying the sweatshirts or not buying them and leaving these poor to themselves. Instead there’s a third option: Take our resources, and do the best for these poor (or some other poor or some future of the world or so). To whichever degree we deem ideal. Maybe we even still buy the shirts, absolutely, but at least we have to admit there’s nothing that forces us to pay only the disastrously low equilibrium market wage and walk away with the shirt and 99% of our wealth left over for doing whatever fun we like. It does not appear to be what typical humans would deem an overall ethically ideal attitude if they think about it. Again, maybe you see it differently but at least, I maintain, it is a bit farfetched to reproach those who feel as such that they are having entirely unfounded/confused moral qualms (which, as I explain, to a certain degree, in econ 101 we uncarefully risk doing).
3. Your “Secondly...”—here I literally don’t see why you even think your point makes a difference to the gist of the post. There’s no reason for exporter & advertiser to make a significant dent in the whole story. I have no major moral care/claim about those actors in my assumptions or conclusions. Individually, any of these interchangeable intermediaries are not representing the ultimate demand deciding who does & gets what in the world. I buy the shirt there = more people toiling for its creation, I buy less shirt = less people toiling. I donate to improve the living of the poorest or to do something else = less destitution; I don’t = more destitution. These, plus the fact that I can remain incomparably rich under any of these decisions, are the salient points (for my post anyway). Yes there is a market in between, and if we could improve that intermediary one way or another, things could be better. But it’s a mostly different question than that of the moral engagement of the consumer engaging in the trade. Of course, if your point is to say ‘I shall not call you evil as average consumer, after all you’re not the one who thought about this extremely skewed scheme, it’s sb else (or: it’s the market)’ - I shall happily agree: you’re not outstandingly evil indeed. You’re just the usual rather careless human then. But I shall still appeal to your morals and try to remind you, if you’re the average consumer or the average econ 101 student: Mind—while there’s clearly a win-win in this uneven trade—don’t forget, the other person only agrees with you because she’s so so dirt poor and might starve otherwise, so maybe you should have a look into your heart to see whether you really consider your behavior vis a vis this sweatshoppy situation overall one that you really deem morally laudable and unquestionable, if you’re just enjoying and not donating or helping to improve anyone’s current or future life with the spare resources from your cheap trade.