How would they be protected in the free-market?
1) Workers often go to sweatshops because governments force them off their land
2) Sweatshops still, however, provide an alternative to starvation. Even Krugman realizes this: Slate article
3) Workers in Asia are not operating in a free market. Are you suggesting a free market is allowed in those countries? Then I might predict what happened in the US during the IR - increase in wages, productivity, and standard of living.
As the demand for producer goods increases (workers), the price of those workers (wages) will be bid up. So, it will be like what happened here in early America. Workers were treated poorly and as productivity increased and the demand for workers rose employers HAD to treat them better or they will leave their jobs for positions that treated their employees better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxBzKkWo0mo
Here is a video on sweatshops.
What could possibly benefit low wage earners more than the free market? Businesses are driven to the impoverished area to exploit cheap labor, the lower the relative cost of labor the larger the incentive to move operations there. The more businesses that exploit the cheap labor, the more that labor is driven into scarcity causing wages to rise.
Contrast this with government implementing a minimum wage, sure those that are employed make more, but the incentive for business to flock to the area is lessened, more people remain unemployed, labor is never driven into scarcity so wages never naturally rise, and less is produced so the cost of living is harmed relative to the free market alternative even for those lucky ones that got a minimum wage increase.
Imagine you were to take the entire Federal Register of regulations and you were to apply it to Bangladesh. Would the entire country suddenly get safe, air conditioned offices and a good pay? Of course not. There'd be even more poverty if it were enforced fully.
kylio27: How would they be protected in the free-market?
To paraphrase Marc Faber: We're all doomed, but that doesn't mean that we can't make money in the process. Rabbi Lapin: "Let's make bricks!" Stephan Kinsella: "Say you and I both want to make a German chocolate cake."
Rain, sleet, falling rocks, you name it.
Low wages of course. I think it's pretty well documented that low wages are the #1 cause of cancer in the opinion of idiots.
Ha! That was good.
John James: Low wages of course. I think it's pretty well documented that low wages are the #1 cause of cancer in the opinion of idiots.
Don't you know that low wages run around at night, gnawing at telephone wires, thereby disrupting Internet connections?
by the free market
Daniel Muffinburg:Ok. In all seriousness, let's first agree on definitions. How are you defining "low wages"?
Below a living wage. Duh.