Thanks for the comment, Ian. I think the conclusions hold as long as workers are calibrated about the distribution of their working conditions, including their pay, workload, treatment by managers, freedom to leave the job, go on strike, and coordinate with other workers, among others. A sufficiently low chance of being chained to machines is better than starving, and this may be the realistic alternative in some cases. So I think the existence of some of the working conditions you mentioned by itself is not enough to conclude it would be better for them not to exist. One would have to believe the workers are overestimating the quality of their working conditions (in expectation; it is always the case that some workers overestimate and others underestimate the quality of their working conditions).
One would have to believe the workers are overestimating the quality of their working conditions
It seems to me very possible that workers might not have complete information about working conditions. It’s not like they necessarily get to go on a factory tour beforehand. In fact, from my understanding, broken promises are the norm rather than the exception with this sort of thing.
I also think your argument implicitly assumes that the work is freely taken up, and freely withdrawn, which isn’t necessarily the case either. More egregious things like the forced labor situation in the shrimp and cocoa industries exist, of course, but we have decent evidence there is forced labor in Cambodia also.
To be clear, I agree with the main argument of the piece, I just think we need to acknowledge that it rests on these other assumptions which are not necessarily guaranteed (and should anyway at least be made explicit).
I agree workers have incomplete information, but it is unclear to me why they would systematically overestimate the value of jobs. If it is possible for foreign consumers to know that products from a given company or country were produced chaining workers to machines, I would expect the workers to also know about it given they have a much greater incentive to figure out their working conditions, as they directly reflect on their quality of life. My argument does assume workers freely take up jobs. The assumption that workers can freely leave their jobs is not strictly necessary, but it does help. In general, the greater the freedom of the workers to take up and leave jobs, the greater the transparency about the working conditions, and the greater the decision capacity of workers (adults have more than children), the stronger the case for assuming that taking the jobs was for the best, which I think is in agreement with what you are saying.
Thanks for the comment, Ian. I think the conclusions hold as long as workers are calibrated about the distribution of their working conditions, including their pay, workload, treatment by managers, freedom to leave the job, go on strike, and coordinate with other workers, among others. A sufficiently low chance of being chained to machines is better than starving, and this may be the realistic alternative in some cases. So I think the existence of some of the working conditions you mentioned by itself is not enough to conclude it would be better for them not to exist. One would have to believe the workers are overestimating the quality of their working conditions (in expectation; it is always the case that some workers overestimate and others underestimate the quality of their working conditions).
It seems to me very possible that workers might not have complete information about working conditions. It’s not like they necessarily get to go on a factory tour beforehand. In fact, from my understanding, broken promises are the norm rather than the exception with this sort of thing.
I also think your argument implicitly assumes that the work is freely taken up, and freely withdrawn, which isn’t necessarily the case either. More egregious things like the forced labor situation in the shrimp and cocoa industries exist, of course, but we have decent evidence there is forced labor in Cambodia also.
To be clear, I agree with the main argument of the piece, I just think we need to acknowledge that it rests on these other assumptions which are not necessarily guaranteed (and should anyway at least be made explicit).
I agree workers have incomplete information, but it is unclear to me why they would systematically overestimate the value of jobs. If it is possible for foreign consumers to know that products from a given company or country were produced chaining workers to machines, I would expect the workers to also know about it given they have a much greater incentive to figure out their working conditions, as they directly reflect on their quality of life. My argument does assume workers freely take up jobs. The assumption that workers can freely leave their jobs is not strictly necessary, but it does help. In general, the greater the freedom of the workers to take up and leave jobs, the greater the transparency about the working conditions, and the greater the decision capacity of workers (adults have more than children), the stronger the case for assuming that taking the jobs was for the best, which I think is in agreement with what you are saying.