Is this a specific case of the general argument that “you can’t ethically financially interact with people who are sufficiently poorer than you(r reference class), except through charity”? I think the arguments here:
Sufficiently poorer people might not feel able to reject your offers
SPP might not be able to make the best decisions
You might be motivated to keep SPP that way, if you have the option of getting any utility from trading with them
are more general arguments than the specific case of factory building. I don’t have a good answer to them, but kinda feel that it’s disrespecting SPP’s agency somehow?
I do not have a full solution to this, but my intuition says this: Suppose that it is ethical to employ your neighbor under certain conditions, and that you are already doing that. Then you find out that the average wage in Pooristan is 10 times lower than in your country. Ignoring the effect on your neighbor who may become unemployed when his job is outsourced, I would probably say that:
It is morally neutral to hire a person from Pooristan to work under exactly the same conditions, only for 10% of the salary you would offer in your country.
The right thing to do is to hire a person from Pooristan to work under exactly the same conditions for maybe 20% of your local salary. That way, you share the profit from the international trade. Note that you still profit a lot from this arrangement.
It is an exploitation to leverage this situation into offering worse working conditions, such as longer hours, health-damaging workplace, or abusing your employees in some other way.
Is this a specific case of the general argument that “you can’t ethically financially interact with people who are sufficiently poorer than you(r reference class), except through charity”? I think the arguments here:
Sufficiently poorer people might not feel able to reject your offers
SPP might not be able to make the best decisions
You might be motivated to keep SPP that way, if you have the option of getting any utility from trading with them
are more general arguments than the specific case of factory building. I don’t have a good answer to them, but kinda feel that it’s disrespecting SPP’s agency somehow?
I do not have a full solution to this, but my intuition says this: Suppose that it is ethical to employ your neighbor under certain conditions, and that you are already doing that. Then you find out that the average wage in Pooristan is 10 times lower than in your country. Ignoring the effect on your neighbor who may become unemployed when his job is outsourced, I would probably say that:
It is morally neutral to hire a person from Pooristan to work under exactly the same conditions, only for 10% of the salary you would offer in your country.
The right thing to do is to hire a person from Pooristan to work under exactly the same conditions for maybe 20% of your local salary. That way, you share the profit from the international trade. Note that you still profit a lot from this arrangement.
It is an exploitation to leverage this situation into offering worse working conditions, such as longer hours, health-damaging workplace, or abusing your employees in some other way.