Whether sweatshops are good and whether we should buy from them are two different questions. I think it’s perfectly consistent to say sweatshops are terrible, but boycotting sweatshops only makes things work. Like some of the other comments have said, sweatshops are exploitative, sweatshop workers are dehumanized, and informed consent is a serious issue, to put it mildly (I’ve read about young girls essentially forced by their families into multi-year contracts that they cannot escape from, in order to pay off family debts). People who reject the idea that sweatshops are “good” or even a “net positive” aren’t totally wrong—in a genuinely good society there should not be any sweatshops.
That said, buying from a local company that makes you feel good does not do anything to help the sweatshop workers. At the end of the day, saying we should boycott sweatshops is saying we should put the workers out of business, and saying we should buy locally means we should keep our wealth within our wealthy communities. Buying locally is a self-centered solution because it focuses on alleviating the feeling of guilt at benefitting from exploitation of the poor. But it’s probably not the right response for someone genuinely seeking to benefit those poor.
Sweatshops are probably a “net positive” compared to buying locally, but they are not a “net positive” compared to factories that treat their workers well and share the profits fairly. People may be put off by the framing of sweat shops as “good” because it sounds like saying that the exploitation of poor workers is desirable. A better framing might be that the exploitation is already happening, and buying from sweatshops is likely better than boycotting if you’re concerned about the welfare of those workers. But that’s not to say that sweatshops are not sites of many terrible abuses, and that seeking to eliminate those abuses through other avenues would not be a good thing.
You may not be particularly interested in moral judgments of sweatshops as good or bad if you are focused on the utilitarian question of whether they are causing a net harm or a net good, but acknowledging that they are “bad” in the sense that they are exploitative and abusive may make it easier for people to swallow the separate argument that buying from sweatshops may nonetheless be more beneficial than harmful to the workers.
Whether sweatshops are good and whether we should buy from them are two different questions. I think it’s perfectly consistent to say sweatshops are terrible, but boycotting sweatshops only makes things work. Like some of the other comments have said, sweatshops are exploitative, sweatshop workers are dehumanized, and informed consent is a serious issue, to put it mildly (I’ve read about young girls essentially forced by their families into multi-year contracts that they cannot escape from, in order to pay off family debts). People who reject the idea that sweatshops are “good” or even a “net positive” aren’t totally wrong—in a genuinely good society there should not be any sweatshops.
That said, buying from a local company that makes you feel good does not do anything to help the sweatshop workers. At the end of the day, saying we should boycott sweatshops is saying we should put the workers out of business, and saying we should buy locally means we should keep our wealth within our wealthy communities. Buying locally is a self-centered solution because it focuses on alleviating the feeling of guilt at benefitting from exploitation of the poor. But it’s probably not the right response for someone genuinely seeking to benefit those poor.
Sweatshops are probably a “net positive” compared to buying locally, but they are not a “net positive” compared to factories that treat their workers well and share the profits fairly. People may be put off by the framing of sweat shops as “good” because it sounds like saying that the exploitation of poor workers is desirable. A better framing might be that the exploitation is already happening, and buying from sweatshops is likely better than boycotting if you’re concerned about the welfare of those workers. But that’s not to say that sweatshops are not sites of many terrible abuses, and that seeking to eliminate those abuses through other avenues would not be a good thing.
You may not be particularly interested in moral judgments of sweatshops as good or bad if you are focused on the utilitarian question of whether they are causing a net harm or a net good, but acknowledging that they are “bad” in the sense that they are exploitative and abusive may make it easier for people to swallow the separate argument that buying from sweatshops may nonetheless be more beneficial than harmful to the workers.