# Resolved: The American Consumer exploits third-world workers. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 13, 2010, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-american-consumer-exploits-third-world-workers/539345 "2010-05-13T20:59:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-american-consumer-exploits-third-world-workers/539345/1 "2010-05-13T20:59:23Z")
Disclaimer: This isn’t meant as a dig on Americans or America, please do not take it as an insult. Canada is just as guilty, but hardly a world player in the global market. In my recent thread [“Third-world workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited”](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=562726) there doesn’t seem to be much disagreement that third-world workers are being exploited. However, my contention is still that the companies aren’t necessarily exploiting the workers, they are exploiting a system that allows for lower cost of labour. But what’s more important is why? I believe that the real fault lies in the American consumer for two reasons: 1. The demand for ever cheaper products. 2. Complete and willful ignorance of where products come from. I don’t believe that there is something inherently evil about the _American Company_. Their goal is profit, if that means a kid in Malaysia has shitty working conditions, well, that’s how it goes. Part of the drive for profit is to minimize both material and labour costs. If Malaysia wants to they could put in minimum wage laws. The reason I don’t think Wal-mart et al. are evil is that they aren’t about to circumvent the law, or seek to overthrow the government (although they may lobby). Instead, they’ll simply move to Indonesia, or where ever they are able to achieve the lowest labour costs. And this is all done to provide the ever desirable “roll back.” If Wal-mart suddenly established some altruistic labour policy where no one gets paid less than $5 an hour, their profit would shrivel and their prices would rise. Would consumers continue shopping there? Hell no, they’d drive down the street to the next cheaper alternative. The American consumer doesn’t care about where their products come from, or the working conditions involved. And therefor the exploitation of third-world workers is all on them. ---
**Author:** ![athelas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5e9695/32.png) [@athelas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/athelas)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-american-consumer-exploits-third-world-workers/539345/2 "2010-05-13T22:55:13Z")
If there were no multinational companies, what would be happening to the kids who currently view assembly lines as a viable option? School, light work on the family farm, and a scholarship to Harvard? Or even harder labor in the fields, prostitution, or joining a gang? It is not corporations or consumers that “exploit” otherwise well-off Third Worlders. It is only the poorest of the poor, with few other options, that take what we Americans regard as work below our station. Their lives were already shitty, and just because they’re their employment means we notice them now doesn’t mean that they’re worse off. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-american-consumer-exploits-third-world-workers/539345/3 "2010-05-13T23:29:08Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > I don’t believe that there is something inherently evil about the _American Company_. Their goal is profit, if that means a kid in Malaysia has shitty working conditions, well, that’s how it goes. Part of the drive for profit is to minimize both material and labour costs. If Malaysia wants to they could put in minimum wage laws. Suggesting a company is evil is as nonsensical as suggesting that a snowstorm is evil. In order to be evil, you have to be a self-aware entity capable of making moral judgments. Corporations are not self-aware. The unit of morality in a corporation is the individual decision-maker. And I do think that the structure of corporatism has a **tendency** to reward evil people. That said, I agree that American consumers participate in the guilt of worker exploitation. Whether we consumers are more or less culpable for the exploitation of third-world workers than the decision-maker who chooses to set up exploitative working conditions is a question that I’m not sure how to answer. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-american-consumer-exploits-third-world-workers/539345/4 "2010-05-13T23:47:58Z")
Let’s say you are right. So what? ---
**Author:** ![Rafe\_Hollister](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/fbc32d/32.png) [@Rafe\_Hollister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rafe_Hollister)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-american-consumer-exploits-third-world-workers/539345/5 "2010-05-13T23:52:12Z")
The workers’ lives are improved by these jobs. Just because the conditions and pay are not what we would want in America does not mean that people who buy their products are evil in some way. What do you think the answer would be if we gave those employees the option of keeping their jobs or closing the factory due to American guilt? ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-american-consumer-exploits-third-world-workers/539345/6 "2010-05-13T23:53:31Z")
I don’t agree that they are exploited. Unless they’re being forced to take those jobs. As long as they can walk out the door, they’re not being exploited, they’re working. This is a subject that irritates Mrs. Bricker no end. “Come to the Dominican Republic,” she’s just asked me to tell you all. “See what other options are available and then realize that these folks are happy to have this work.” ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-american-consumer-exploits-third-world-workers/539345/7 "2010-05-14T00:24:42Z")
That is why libertarianism doesn’t work. If cars didn’t mandate seat belts and airbags, I’m sure tons of people would prefer to save the $200 on a car that didn’t have those safety features. However that money isn’t free, the $200 in savings on lower safety features would likely be offset by higher medical costs & lost productivity which occurred when people had accidents. So we mandate safety features. Most people have jobs, families, hobbies, interests, etc. and as a result can’t be expected to follow the supply chain of everything they buy with razor sharp logic, weighing every purchase against some external ideal. So we just mandate certain laws, and people go into a store and buy something. On the subject, people who work in factories in the third world usually make enough money to support themselves and send large (to them) amounts of money back home. I have heard that story many times from workers at various factories. Recently I was watching a documentary that interviewed a woman in Thailand. She made very little (maybe $100-200/month, something around that) and she still sent about 70% of her income home to her family. So they are making enough to support themselves and family. If they weren’t, they’d stay on the farm at home. Either way, the vast majority of Americans support higher labor/environmental standards overseas. So you can’t really blame the US consumer, who wants stronger regulations on what they buy. [http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/01/wtprw.html](http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/01/wtprw.html) > [@](#): > > When it comes to labor and environmental standards in trade agreements, public support is truly overwhelming. Since 2002, surveys by PIPA and CCFR have regularly recorded support of over 90 percent for countries involved in international trade agreements having to “maintain minimum standards for working conditions.” In the most recent reading (the 2006 CCFR survey), 93 percent endorsed such standards. In the same survey, 91 percent also endorsed the inclusion of minimum standards for protection of the environment in such agreements. > > Other polls have found very strong majorities in favor of including a wide array of other standards in trade agreements. In a 1997 poll by Peter Hart for the AFL-CIO, for example, Americans overwhelmingly agreed that trade agreements should include standards “so that all countries would have to meet workplace health and safety standards” (94 percent); “have and enforce laws against child labor” (93 percent); “protect basic human rights, such as the freedom to associate or have meetings, and the freedom to strike or protest” (92 percent); “pay their workers a minimum wage based on the poverty line of the country” (81 percent); and “ensure the legal right to form unions or bargain collectively” (78 percent). > > Most Americans also believe the United States has a moral obligation to try to improve workers’ conditions and rights in other countries. In a June 2005 PIPA poll, 74 percent endorsed the view that America has a moral obligation to ensure that the products we use are not produced in “harsh or unsafe conditions.” Only 20 percent thought “it is not for us to judge what the working conditions should be in another country.” This attitude has remained steady over time in PIPA polls going back to 1999. > > Americans also support the idea that wages in other countries should be allowed to rise through higher labor rights. In the June 2005 PIPA poll, 83 percent agreed with the statement: “While we cannot expect workers in foreign countries to make the same wages as in the U.S., we should expect other countries to permit wages to rise by allowing workers to organize into unions and by putting a stop to child labor.” This number has also been steady going back to 1999. > > Consistent with their views on America’s moral obligations, the public strongly believes that the United States should not allow products to be imported when their production has involved the violation of international labor standards. Case in point: In an October 1999 PIPA poll, 80 percent wanted to bar products made by children under the age of 15 when they “are required to work so many hours that they cannot go to school,” and 82 percent wanted to bar products when children are “forced to work under threat of punishment.” Seventy-seven percent of respondents to the same poll also thought that products made by adult “workers in factories that are unsafe or unhealthy” should not be imported into the U.S. > > Similarly, the public strongly backs protecting the environment in other countries. In an October 2004 PIPA poll, the public rejected, by a 71 percent-to-21 percent margin, the World Trade Organization’s current position that countries should not be allowed to restrict imports because they had been produced in ways that damage the environment. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-american-consumer-exploits-third-world-workers/539345/8 "2010-05-14T00:38:24Z")
Once again, there seems to be no clear definition of “exploitation” at use. It’s all well and fine for fat, well-fed North Americans to pooh-pooh a $1/hour job, but it might be a hell of a lot better than $0/hour destitution. What exactly’s the NON-exploitative solution? ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-american-consumer-exploits-third-world-workers/539345/9 "2010-05-14T01:58:25Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Once again, there seems to be no clear definition of “exploitation” at use. > > It’s all well and fine for fat, well-fed North Americans to pooh-pooh a $1/hour job, but it might be a hell of a lot better than $0/hour destitution. What exactly’s the NON-exploitative solution? Fair working wage. As long as there are countries without rules on what an employer can do, the companies will go there. It would be interesting if we had a world minimum wage and equal employment laws. Then work would go to quality instead of price. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-american-consumer-exploits-third-world-workers/539345/10 "2010-05-14T01:59:58Z")
Nice job, gonzo. You have morphed a debate about the definition of “exploitation” into a debate about the definition of “fair.” At this rate, we’ll get somewhere in, oh, about a hundred thousand years or so. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-american-consumer-exploits-third-world-workers/539345/11 "2010-05-14T02:40:41Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Once again, there seems to be no clear definition of “exploitation” at use. > > It’s all well and fine for fat, well-fed North Americans to pooh-pooh a $1/hour job, but it might be a hell of a lot better than $0/hour destitution. What exactly’s the NON-exploitative solution? What about managers beating up workers, or forcing them to work overtime w/o pay? Or threatening anyone who forms a unions, or creating so much environmental damage that it costs the host country hundreds of billions in higher health costs, lost productivity and lost natural resources? China currently has a labor shortage in their coastal factories, and workers are free to leave one employer and work for another. That is not exploitation. If employer Y is offering better treatment, more leisure time and better wages than employer X, then the workers will leave and go work for employer Y. That is how it should be, however that isn’t always how it works. Child labor, slave labor, indentured servitude all stop employees from being able to protest low wages or bad treatment. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-american-consumer-exploits-third-world-workers/539345/12 "2010-05-14T02:47:11Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > Fair working wage. As long as there are countries without rules on what an employer can do, the companies will go there. It would be interesting if we had a world minimum wage and equal employment laws. Then work would go to quality instead of price. One of the issues I noticed was that “quality” is meaningless when we’re talking about sweat shops. Labour has become a commodity. When you pick up a crappy piece of plastic at Wal-mart do you ever say to yourself, “wow, this injection molding looks nice, must be Malaysian.” What I’ve come to realize is that there are a handful of tasks that we still need humans to do that robots just can’t do cheap enough. But these tasks are entirely without quality, like loading oddly shaped objects into a box. It simply has to be done, there isn’t good or bad, just done. So why not move your factory to where people are willing to do it cheapest? If you tried to set a world minimum wage, you’d just end up with countries offering the type of tax brakes/breaks that states do now to get more call centers or auto plants. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-american-consumer-exploits-third-world-workers/539345/13 "2010-05-14T02:51:01Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > What about managers beating up workers, or forcing them to work overtime w/o pay? Or threatening anyone who forms a unions, or creating so much environmental damage that it costs the host country hundreds of billions in higher health costs, lost productivity and lost natural resources? > > China currently has a labor shortage in their coastal factories, and workers are free to leave one employer and work for another. That is not exploitation. If employer Y is offering better treatment, more leisure time and better wages than employer X, then the workers will leave and go work for employer Y. That is how it should be, however that isn’t always how it works. Child labor, slave labor, indentured servitude all stop employees from being able to protest low wages or bad treatment. Wait a second, why is “beating up workers” an “employment issue”??? If the country is okay with managers beating up employees, they’ve got a lot of other shit going wrong too. I find it hard to believe that behaviour is some how unique in American owned sweat shops. Which makes it sound like we simply can’t have factories in shitty countries. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-american-consumer-exploits-third-world-workers/539345/14 "2010-05-14T02:53:35Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Either way, the vast majority of Americans support higher labor/environmental standards overseas. So you can’t really blame the US consumer, who wants stronger regulations on what they buy. If that was true, Nike wouldn’t still be in business, and dollar-store wouldn’t exist. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-american-consumer-exploits-third-world-workers/539345/15 "2010-05-14T03:04:22Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > If that was true, Nike wouldn’t still be in business, and dollar-store wouldn’t exist. Based on what? I think consumers want regulators to enforce the labor and environmental standards. The wages of the laborers in supply factories is a very small part of the overall cost of business. Walmart does about $300 billion in operations a year. Increasing wages and environmental regulation costs by $150/month (which would be a really high raise for many people, but is just an example) for a million manufacturing employees would cost 2 billion a year, less than 1% of overhead, some of which they’d offset by cutting costs in other areas. Its not going to drive up prices that much. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-american-consumer-exploits-third-world-workers/539345/16 "2010-05-14T03:06:05Z")
Soooooooooooooooooo whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat??? ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-american-consumer-exploits-third-world-workers/539345/17 "2010-05-14T03:20:24Z")
Some years ago, some sort of NGO went to Cambodia to protest the low wages paid to locals in the Nike factory there. The workers very nearly rioted AGAINST the protesters and forced them to leave the country. Although paid a pittance of their Western counterparts, Nike actually paid higher than most if not all other local employers, and the workers were very grateful. I have mixed feelings about the issue, but I can see Nike’s point of view. If they paid Cambodians exactly the same as staff in the West, they’d have a near-100% turnover every month. Workers would then take their monthly wage and leave; it would allow them to live like a king for months, maybe a year or more. A personal experience with this sort of thing was this local security guard at a friend’s company here in Bangkok. The security guard was new, had recently arrived in Bangkok from his village upcountry. He’d been working only a few weeks when the annual New Year’s party was held. My friend always held a drawing, giving away 10 cash prizes of 100,000 baht each. This party was before the 1997 financial crash, and the baht at that time was still 25 to the US dollar, so 100,000 baht was worth US$4000. This guard won one of the drawings. $4000! He could not believe his good fortune; could barely even imagine such a princely sum. Never went back to the company; acted like he’d never have to work again, he was so rich. Took off and disappeared. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-american-consumer-exploits-third-world-workers/539345/18 "2010-05-14T03:44:28Z")
Siam Sam, your facts are not welcome in a thread such as this. Our esteemed OP is trying to get his anti-American boner on (despite his protestations to the contrary). He is impervious to real world experiences. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-american-consumer-exploits-third-world-workers/539345/19 "2010-05-14T03:53:09Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > Siam Sam, your facts are not welcome in a thread such as this. Our esteemed OP is trying to get his anti-American boner on (despite his protestations to the contrary). He is impervious to real world experiences. Wow, bitter much? ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-american-consumer-exploits-third-world-workers/539345/20 "2010-05-14T03:53:42Z")
Well, as I said, I have mixed feelings about this. I don’t like to hear about Americans losing jobs. But then I do like to hear about people over here finding jobs, and unlike the portrayal in the West, it’s not always sweatshop conditions. Thailand is host to many, many Western companies’ factories – the auto industry is huge here, but just about any product is also made – and conditions are often very good. It’s been a real boon to the local economy, and the layoffs that had to be implemented during the recent global economic crisis really hurt families here. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-american-consumer-exploits-third-world-workers/539345.md?page=2)