Yes, most of these jobs are better than the alternative, namely, starvation in the countryside where there are no jobs. In the worst cases, (not all) these jobs pay so little that the workers can't accumulate capital, can't send their kids to school, etc. And due to the magic of subcontracting, the large Western employers have no long term investment in the country -- they'll pick up and leave when the next country over offers them a slightly better deal.

In Thailand I met a woman who was working for a private museum. She had figured out that her boss had basically made his fortune through selling slaves. Voluntary indentured servitude for several years, sold out of villages. And this isn't just some backwater, Thailand is where a lot of manufacturing is happening lately.

My family is originally from Taiwan, and both of my folks grew up when Taiwan was still an inconsequential tropical island consisted mostly of fishing villages and a hodgepodge government-in-exile. Both of them are beneficiaries of the "abusive" practices of foreign businesses. My father worked in a plastics plant, and once had to outrace a cloud of deadly chlorine gas, and survived by the grace of a low wall surrounding the factory (chlorine crawls along the ground). Safety practices were almost non-existent - my mother is still missing a small chunk of her right index finger (and she was lucky). My mother's family was desperately poor - my grandfather eventually succumbed to years of breathing in coal dust with no protective equipment, and all of his children worked from as young as 10 years-old to put themselves through school.

But here's the thing: people in that country could not afford to educate themselves, and if it were not for the willingness of employers to hire child labor and form sweatshops, they would never have had the opportunity to climb out of that hole.

If you had insisted on no child labor, minimum pay standards, and rigorous safety adherence, there would have been no reason to set up shop in a backwater island like Taiwan, and then where would we be? My family would likely still be living in the jungles up on some mountain somewhere, starving.

That's part of the problem, though, isn't it? The tremendous migration of manufacturing jobs to third world countries has been in large part because they are not limited to a 40 hour work week and first world safety standards. Of course it's cheaper to manufacture in China, their regulations are a lot more lax than ours, although that may be changing.

I, too grew up in a Third World country. My parents were missionaries in Central America in the 80's. I grew up playing soccer with children who's bellies were bloated from parasites and could not afford shoes.

I've worked in communities that were essentially indentured servants to the tomato packing industry. The tomato company owned the housing, ran the schools, provided plumbing, etc.. to their workers. The employees were willing to put up with indentured servitude, because on a certain level because it was better than starving. It was better for their children to get a 6th grade education and then go off to pick tomatoes than to have no education at all.

Why did that happen? So we can have tomatoes at our local grocery store for $1 a pound.

I agree that it is better for the people in the third world to have jobs rather than not have jobs, but I'm pretty conflicted about the entire situation. Starving children, vs children working 16 hours a day in a tomato field? That's not a good choice to have to make.

I'd be careful where you draw the line in your judgment.

For instance, the next generation of people will start with a 6th grade education and a minimum standard of living. Their challenge is to move the goalposts further.

That's just how the rest of the world did it, in fact, starting off with child and virtual slave factory labor and slowly moving to better and better conditions. If you've got some kind of shortcut to make it happen inside of one generation, I'd love to hear it.

The point I was trying to make, albeit not too successfully was that it's a difficult situation, and there aren't a whole lot of great options for people in those situations.

Take the invasion of France in WWII. The Allies killed over 14 thousand French civilians in bombing in preparation for the invasion. Would you say that's a good thing? It's obviously an awful thing, no matter how you slice it.

But looking at the longer picture, sometimes good things come out of bad things. This was the case for the invasion of France, and I believe this is also the case for child labor and sweatshops in third world countries.

That doesn't make bad things into good things, that just means that context is important.

I'm pretty sure it IS an easy choice. B is clearly the correct answer. Over time it will get better but even if it DOESN'T, even if it onlways comes down to: A) Starve or B) 16hrs in a farm field. B is the easy right answer.

Now option C is something that's going to take a lot more then simply buying more expensive tomatoes.

I guess that is assuming an open market, too. It does not quite apply to dictatorships and slavery. Unless you count "flee to a neighboring country" as an option, which it probably isn't in most cases.

Edit: I guess even slavery does not completely invalidate the concept. If demand was high enough, prices for slaves would rise. Eventually it would be high enough for slave owners to sell, and effectively the new owners would have to offer freedom as a price.

Also neighboring countries would be willing to accept refugees if they had a high demand for labor.

Japan, being as nationalistic and xenophobic as they are, chose to invent and develop robots rather than allow as many foreigners into their country as was "needed."

With one caveat -- as long as there are well-enforced laws that protect the rights of workers to organize or protest, and a strong local government that isn't powerless with respect to foreign companies, that can direct investment to make permanent upgrades in local conditions. Taiwan obviously got it right, somehow -- I don't know the history. Perhaps you can enlighten me, but maybe it's due to their democratic assembly and their strategic relationship with the West.

Other places in the world seem to be getting a worse deal -- often due to the deficits of the local government or culture, I'll admit. But globalization also seems to move a lot faster than it did, with less commitment to the host countries. If it takes literally just weeks to set up light manufacturing somewhere else that's just a little bit more desperate, how does a place like Cambodia hold onto the little gains they've made so far? I'm not an expert in that country either but I hear they've had serious problems with that.

Anyway, I have to bow to your superior understanding of the realities, but I just don't think that my microwave ovens or cans of cola had to be paid for with so much misery. It just doesn't seem like this is truly required.

Indentured servitude is prominent in American history too--it's how many of our ancestors got passage to the New World. And now here we are with air-conditioned offices, OSHA regulations, and paid leave.

How do you suggest we remedy this? The OECD gets together and forces a minimum wage on the developing world?

That might work, but I think the shortest, fastest and simplest way out hell is let their economies grow as fast as they can.

That's a pretty reasonable analogy for the cycle of debt that one can get stuck in with "payday loan" stores.

Not the same thing at all. To make this analogy work the choice would be 1) LET THE PERSON DROWN. 2) Help him by letting him work for you until the next ship comes around.

In some ways I feel like the tone pieces like this take when discussing Chinese life is condescending. For some people this is just 'work.' Consider using this kind of pity to talk about American blue collar workers - does it seem appropriate?

Do I owe the local worker a living? Of course not. But we both pay taxes to the same government, and he is getting shafted due to China's MFN status, and I as a professional who can afford iPhones am getting an awesome deal.

The local vs remote worker argument works when there's something inherently preferable about the local worker, like you and him are cousins or form the same tribe, or something like that. But nationalism aside, isn't everybody entitled to the same opportunities?

Free trade agreements are negotiated painstakingly to make the treatment of investments uniform across countries. In the process, they usually accord some special treatment to professional classes. I myself am a beneficiary of such rules -- as a Canadian professional, I can skip across the border to the USA with just a little bit of documentation.

We don't have anything equivalent for labor. This seems to me to be a great omission, if not an outright scam. Even after free trade between the US and Canada and Mexico, we don't allow workers to cross borders. Nor do we have uniform standards for the treatment of labor like we do for capital, either.

It seems to me to be deliberate -- they want the workers to be stuck with the local situation, and they want local governments to compete on lowering benefits and labor standards.

I live in San Francisco. When the big earthquake hits and someone has to pull me out of the rubble, they won't be outsourcing that job to the Philippines. It'll be some guy who lives near me, probably the kind of guy with a broad back and an unironic mustache, who has to make do with underemployment since all the local jobs seem to be for douchebags with iPhones.