The chairman of my department, Don Boudreaux, asks some interesting questions:
If, unlike me, you accept the logic of Ms. Lee's argument that it's wrong to let American consumers buy goods made by workers who toiled under government-regulatory standards that are less strict than those that American workes currently toil under, why limit the restrictions she endorses to other countries? Why not bring in the time dimension as well?
Why not prevent Americans from buying things such as antique furniture or vintage automobiles or houses constructed before World War II?
If the argument against buying things produced by allegedly exploited labor is chiefly a moral one -- an argument that such things are tainted by exploitation and, hence, are unfit morally for human consumption -- then things made in the past by U.S. workers are tainted because workers in the past didn't toil under the same "protections" that workers today toil under.
The same conclusion is reached if the argument rests principally upon the proposition that it's unfair for workers today, whose employers are commanded to offer greater amounts of workplace protection than were employers in the past, to compete with products produced by exploited workers. Why should today's house-construction workers have to compete with houses produced by their exploited brethren of 75 or 100 years ago?
With thoughts like this, Bryan Caplan thinks Dr. Boudreaux is a modern day Bastiat. I'm inclined to agree.
1 comment:
While I agree that Boudreaux is a modern-day Bastiat, I don't really see this as a good example of it. The fundamental difference between the two scenarios is that those working under poor conditions now can have that situacion changed by "voting with dollars" while our ancestors have already suffered and buried for the products we have available today.
A more appropriate analogy is the outlawing of these jobs because their danger obviously creates an undesirable work environment.
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