Wealth Has Causes
Here's a comment that I left at Nicholas Kristof's wonderful January 16, 2009, NY Times column on sweatshops.
Don
.......
I'm surprised by the number of commenters who write as if harsh working conditions of the sort found in sweatshops are something exceptional, something visited upon people in developing countries by we rich folk in developed countries, something crying out for an explanation.
In fact, such conditions have been the norm throughout human history. Life on subsistence farms - which was the lot of the vast majority of our ancestors for the past 10,000 years - was grueling, dreary, and dangerous. And the material returns eked out from the work effort were, well, subsistence - except in the bad times, of which there were many, when these returns were at less than subsistence level. People then literally starved to death. (Indeed, compared with working in subsistence agriculture, working in a sweatshop is surely better - which is one important reason why so many people, today as in the past, have chosen to leave their bucolic hells for cities and towns.)
There is no real challenge in explaining harsh working conditions, for they are the overwhelming norm. They happen naturally - automatically, as it were - when societies are poor. And societies are poor 'automatically' whenever they do not have in place a sufficient number of prosperity-encouraging social institutions - which has been the common lot of humankind for nearly our entire existence.
What requires explanation is the exceptionally safe, comfortable, and high-paying working conditions that we modern westerners enjoy. The outliers are US; what is exceptional is OUR way of living and OUR historically off-the-charts prosperity that makes it possible for us to be appalled at the harsh working conditions still endured by so many of our fellow human beings.
Put differently, good working conditions have causes; poor working conditions do not. Good working conditions cry out for explanation; poor working conditions do not - except insofar as we want to explain why the underlying causes of good working conditions in some parts of the world have been kept from other parts of the world.
Don
.......
I'm surprised by the number of commenters who write as if harsh working conditions of the sort found in sweatshops are something exceptional, something visited upon people in developing countries by we rich folk in developed countries, something crying out for an explanation.
In fact, such conditions have been the norm throughout human history. Life on subsistence farms - which was the lot of the vast majority of our ancestors for the past 10,000 years - was grueling, dreary, and dangerous. And the material returns eked out from the work effort were, well, subsistence - except in the bad times, of which there were many, when these returns were at less than subsistence level. People then literally starved to death. (Indeed, compared with working in subsistence agriculture, working in a sweatshop is surely better - which is one important reason why so many people, today as in the past, have chosen to leave their bucolic hells for cities and towns.)
There is no real challenge in explaining harsh working conditions, for they are the overwhelming norm. They happen naturally - automatically, as it were - when societies are poor. And societies are poor 'automatically' whenever they do not have in place a sufficient number of prosperity-encouraging social institutions - which has been the common lot of humankind for nearly our entire existence.
What requires explanation is the exceptionally safe, comfortable, and high-paying working conditions that we modern westerners enjoy. The outliers are US; what is exceptional is OUR way of living and OUR historically off-the-charts prosperity that makes it possible for us to be appalled at the harsh working conditions still endured by so many of our fellow human beings.
Put differently, good working conditions have causes; poor working conditions do not. Good working conditions cry out for explanation; poor working conditions do not - except insofar as we want to explain why the underlying causes of good working conditions in some parts of the world have been kept from other parts of the world.
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Wednesday June 10, 2009 at 10:28am