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)
Hi Maxim, welcome to the EA Forum :-)
Before answering how, people in EA tend to first ask if. I.e. is the cause area of improving working conditions really a better use of our resources than something else (e.g. tackling poverty). To assess this, we could use the ITN framework. To illustrate this extremely quickly (i.e. without doing the analysis justice)
Indeed, some economists (e.g. Jeffrey Sachs) have suggested that we should want more sweatshops, as they are a valuable step in economic development.
I haven't looked carefully at the question of whether tackling working conditions in the developing world is high impact, but as the above illustrates, I would guess it probably isn't.
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However, what I've said thus far risks sounding unhelpful. You didn't ask for challenge on the premise of your question, you asked for how to go about making things better for workers.
Again, I haven't thought about this carefully, but some thoughts off the top of my head:
I guess if I were tasked with turning a substantial amount of philanthropic money into better outcomes for workers in the developing world, my first step would be to commission further research.
If I were really pressed to come up with an answer without researching it further, I guess I would suggest GiveDirectly. I don't think it directly solves the problem, and recipients of cash transfers may still end up working in sweatshops, but it's at least easier to decide whether you want to put up with it if you have savings.
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)