Nicholas Kristof had a column on Tuesday that appears to have been missed by most of the big bloggers. Outside of one paragraph, a gratuitous swipe at conservatives that could have been easily omitted without weakening the article, it is something that could have been written in National Review or Reason. The subject: Sweatshops. The point: They're better than nothing, which would be the prospects the workers had without the factories. A sample:
[B]efore you spurn a shirt made by someone like 8-year-old Kamis Saboor, an Afghan refugee whose father is dead and who is the sole breadwinner in the family, answer this question: How does shunning sweatshop products help Kamis? All the alternatives for him are worse.
(This ties in very loosely with a post of mine from 7 June, with a quote from ExxonMobil's chairman, discussing the benefits of globalization.)
posted on June 28, 2002 08:05 AM
