Slave Silliness
20 October 2006
The Editor, New York Times
229 West 43rd St.
New York, NY 10036
To the Editor:
Andrew Grossman writes that "It has been widely reported that workers abroad in Wal-Mart's suppliers' factories routinely experience forced labor" (Letters, October 20). Like space-aliens in Roswell, NM, this claim might well be widely reported but it is also wildly implausible.
The only marketable goods that slave labor can reliably produce are ones whose production requires mostly low-skill, easy-to-monitor manual tasks and whose quality cannot readily be degraded by uninspired workers. Examples of such products are sugar cane and cotton. Manufactured goods, in contrast, are too costly to produce with slaves. The quality of slave-produced manufactured outputs will be too low. Moreover, business owners have no desire to entrust slaves with the operation of expensive, complex, and easily sabotaged factory machinery.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
The Editor, New York Times
229 West 43rd St.
New York, NY 10036
To the Editor:
Andrew Grossman writes that "It has been widely reported that workers abroad in Wal-Mart's suppliers' factories routinely experience forced labor" (Letters, October 20). Like space-aliens in Roswell, NM, this claim might well be widely reported but it is also wildly implausible.
The only marketable goods that slave labor can reliably produce are ones whose production requires mostly low-skill, easy-to-monitor manual tasks and whose quality cannot readily be degraded by uninspired workers. Examples of such products are sugar cane and cotton. Manufactured goods, in contrast, are too costly to produce with slaves. The quality of slave-produced manufactured outputs will be too low. Moreover, business owners have no desire to entrust slaves with the operation of expensive, complex, and easily sabotaged factory machinery.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Tuesday June 5, 2007 at 6:35pm