The most controversial part of William MacAskill's Doing Good Better is probably the book's eighth chapter, 'The Moral Case for Sweatshop Goods'. There, MacAskill argues that:
We should certainly feel outrage and horror at the conditions sweatshop labourers toil under. The correct response, however, is not to give up sweatshop-produced goods in favour of domestically produced goods. The correct response is to try to end the extreme poverty makes sweatshops desirable places to work in the first place.[1]
However, I don't think that if extreme poverty was eradicated, this would automatically also abolish sweatshops. MacAskill continues:
What about buying products from companies that employ people in poor countries [...], but claim to have higher labour standards [...]? By doing this, we would avoid the use of sweatshops while at the same time providing even better job opportunities for the extreme poor.[1]
We could say that buying products from companies that employ people in poor countries while offering adequate labor conditions is an interesting alternative to either boycotting sweatshop goods and buying domestically produced goods instead (which could harm the world's poorest by pushing them into work with even worse labor conditions) or continuing to buy sweatshop goods (which harms the world's poorest by not improving their working conditions).
Disappointingly, MacAskill doesn't really further examine this alternative in his book. He merely proceeds to criticize Fairtrade goods, but offers no discussion of any possible alternative to currently existing Fairtrade goods that actually would improve labor conditions in the world's poorest countries.
So my question is: how could effective altruists help improve working conditions in low-income countries? Have there been relevant cause areas or interventions that effective altruists have discussed? If it's possible to find cost-effective global health charities, could there then also be cost-effective charities or consumption choices that aim to ameliorate, in one way or another, the working conditions of the world's poorest (especially if they work in sweatshops)?
- ^
William MacAskill, Doing Good Better (ebook version) (London: Guardian Books and Faber & Faber, 2015)
Hello Sanjay, thank you for your response. I understand that improving working conditions in low-income countries is much harder to achieve than reducing extreme poverty, but that on its own doesn't imply that there are no effective relevant interventions possible whatsoever. I can definitely believe that more research would be needed to understand which interventions (if any) could be effective in improving working conditions in poor countries. Indeed, one big reason I made this post is to ask whether anyone on this forum is aware of relevant resear... (read more)