> That's a very peculiar variant of the "think of the children!" argument; that you should buy things you don't want (stuff made with child labour) in order to stop children you don't know from crushing rocks.
It shouldn't be about the stuff, it should be about the children. The idea that you'd rather have children in worse conditions as long as they're not making stuff for you seems... weird to say the least.
> Jobs for those children, but not jobs from the economy, period. It's not like the demand for garments just dissipated into thin air with that legislation. The work is still there, and Bangladesh has a surfeit of labour.
Presumably other workers demand higher wages (reducing the country's competitiveness) and/or are less good at the jobs. Otherwise they'd already have been hired ahead of the children.
>The idea that you'd rather have children in worse conditions as long as they're not making stuff for you seems... weird to say the least.
It seems quite normal to me. I'd rather not point out the examples I'm thinking of, but I can come up with a number which I'm willing to be people would be against despite being better overall for the children involved, at least in terms of money earned per harm done, actually quantifying harm in a way that one can easily compare is itself a touchy issue. Even then money is more a generic metric itself, because there are many non-monetary things that one can earn, but which usually can be given a monetary value.
I can't believe you're saying that it's our moral duty to buy the cheapest shit possible, in order to prevent child prostitution. That's just fucked-up, wilfully blinkered thinking.
The problem is that people just buy the cheapest shit possible anyway, without any thought whatsoever about the circumstances of its production.
Maybe it would be better to allow products made with child labor, so long as the children are provided with above-average education in return. I guess that would make children too expensive and companies would switch to adults anyway.
The best possible improvement would probably be to provide children with food, shelter and education free of charge, so they don't have to work at all. Unfortunately, very few people are actually willing to pay for that.
> The problem is that people just buy the cheapest shit possible anyway
Yes, they do. And regulations can control that. Regulations around building codes stop people from building shanties everywhere. Regulations around new vehicle safety means people can't put new, unsafe vehicles on the road.
What makes you think that the garment industry is any different? "Oh, I have to pay $7 for this T-shirt instead of $6? In that case, I'm going to import my own from overseas!". Nonsense. It is insane, the level to which people in this thread are defending gruelling child labour as some sort of unavoidable consequence of the supply chain.
It shouldn't be about the stuff, it should be about the children. The idea that you'd rather have children in worse conditions as long as they're not making stuff for you seems... weird to say the least.
> Jobs for those children, but not jobs from the economy, period. It's not like the demand for garments just dissipated into thin air with that legislation. The work is still there, and Bangladesh has a surfeit of labour.
Presumably other workers demand higher wages (reducing the country's competitiveness) and/or are less good at the jobs. Otherwise they'd already have been hired ahead of the children.