The Cruelty of Kindness

I get bothered by "do gooders" who blindly apply their own logic to the world. In the last US election a lot of Democrats are motivated by worries about US jobs and see a salvation in demanding an "even playing field" which throws up barriers to third world countries by demanding industrial work and safety standards and environmental standards that effectively bar the really poor from getting onto the first rung of the ladder to a better standard of living.

Nicholas Kristof at the NY Times has written many articles to push his concern about the poor and wretched around the world. Here is his latest op-ed:

Mr. Obama and the Democrats who favor labor standards in trade agreements mean well, for they intend to fight back at oppressive sweatshops abroad. But while it shocks Americans to hear it, the central challenge in the poorest countries is not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don’t exploit enough.

Talk to these families in the dump, and a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children.

“I’d love to get a job in a factory,” said Pim Srey Rath, a 19-year-old woman scavenging for plastic. “At least that work is in the shade. Here is where it’s hot.”

Another woman, Vath Sam Oeun, hopes her 10-year-old boy, scavenging beside her, grows up to get a factory job, partly because she has seen other children run over by garbage trucks. Her boy has never been to a doctor or a dentist, and last bathed when he was 2, so a sweatshop job by comparison would be far more pleasant and less dangerous.

I’m glad that many Americans are repulsed by the idea of importing products made by barely paid, barely legal workers in dangerous factories. Yet sweatshops are only a symptom of poverty, not a cause, and banning them closes off one route out of poverty. At a time of tremendous economic distress and protectionist pressures, there’s a special danger that tighter labor standards will be used as an excuse to curb trade.

...

When I defend sweatshops, people always ask me: But would you want to work in a sweatshop? No, of course not. But I would want even less to pull a rickshaw. In the hierarchy of jobs in poor countries, sweltering at a sewing machine isn’t the bottom.

...

Cambodia has, in fact, pursued an interesting experiment by working with factories to establish decent labor standards and wages. It’s a worthwhile idea, but one result of paying above-market wages is that those in charge of hiring often demand bribes — sometimes a month’s salary — in exchange for a job. In addition, these standards add to production costs, so some factories have closed because of the global economic crisis and the difficulty of competing internationally.

The best way to help people in the poorest countries isn’t to campaign against sweatshops but to promote manufacturing there. One of the best things America could do for Africa would be to strengthen our program to encourage African imports, called AGOA, and nudge Europe to match it.

This is one place where the Left has an ugly legacy. Pursuit of simplistic "solutions" has created sad facts on the ground. The developed world keeps moaning about the lack of development in the under-developed parts of the world, but they don't open their markets up to accept products from third world countries. Instead "foreign aid" is slathered over the open sore of poverty to make it better when all it does is lines of the pockets of the corrupt and blocks real progress.

In the 1970s/80s I worked on projects that delivered prestige projects to under-developed countries. These high tech toys were under-utilized and sometimes left to fall apart. Canada got to chalk up its contribution to "fight" poverty, but in reality the money was simply a subsidy to buy these prestige toys from Canada that had little or no real benefit to the under-developed country.

Oh, and while I'm complaining, I should mention that Canada has horrible pockets of poverty especially on native reserves. These are places where "dependency" has become a way of life. Suicide and drugs, unemployment, alcohol, depression are rampant. Canada likes to be smug about its social policies, but there are some real horror stories in out-of-the-way places.