I think the big question is if sweatshop labour still does do this.
AFAIK most of this work is now done via sub-sub-subcontractors and goes on in special economic zones. Workers are usually employed for the short term and the work may randomly migrate to a SEZ in a different country to take advantage of "tax holidays", periods of no tax for when a company first sets up in a SEZ. There are no permanent factories or permanent jobs. Wages don't rise because it's easy to just go to some other place where people are desperate for work, literally shipping the workshop to the new location.
So what ends up happening is that the workers never work at the same thing for long enough to acquire skills or wage rises and that they don't make enough money for a proper education. And the assembly lines are so ephemeral and set apart from normal society that no infrastructure or know-how ever accumulates in the country.
So this ain't your parents' kind of sweatshop. Literally.
(Note that I'm talking about the kind of sweatshops that assemble consumer goods in general here, not specifically the one in the article. I have no specific insight about that one, but this is the general trend - this is where the west gets its clothes and gadgets from.)
At a certain point the host country has to start taking responsibility for whoring its people out. You can be disgruntled with Apple because Chinese workers got hurt making ipods, but the honest truth is that as long as there are people selling cheap labor there will be people buying.
> At a certain point the host country has to start taking responsibility for whoring its people out.
Yes, but this in no way absolves us. You don't have to buy just because someone's offering.
> Apple should under no circumstances be held accountable for China's inability (or unwillingness) to regulate its economy.
In your example, Apple should absolutely be held accountable. If I buy goods I know are stolen, I'm committing a crime. So why shouldn't a company be accountable for buying goods that it knows were made through exploitation?
You don't have to buy, but if you want what they are freely offering quite frankly I don't see where Apple (I'm using Apple as example, I mean Apple et al) is wrong.
Apple should under no circumstances be held accountable for China's inability (or unwillingness) to regulate its economy.
And yes, you absolutely have to regulate both the supply and the demand, it's just WHO has to be doing the regulating. China is no fool: if they regulated their GDP would plummet and their ridiculous 9% year on year growth would finally stop.
So,for example, if a family need money and they sell their young little girl as a prostitute, just to make money, you know, but in a country where the State is not so hard in fighting that behavior, the "buyer" should under no circumstances be held accountable for that Country's inability (or unwillingness) to regulate its economy?
I think your point of view it's too simplistic and auto-absolving.
I think you are missing entirely the value of a cultural and societal system. The alternative to what is currently going on in China isn't a workers' paradise where everyone is happy with a middle class, 40 hour a week job. The alternative is a nation starving (Mao?). I think your view discounts the rubble that China has come out of and the place it is today entirely. I doubt many Chinese feel their parents were better of than they are.
As for prostitution, if the family doesn't need the money to eat and survive that is one thing, and actually based on the economic specifics going on there I don't actually think it's relevant. If they are selling their daughter for hunger/survival, well it really sucks but we with cushy lives forget that survival is actually the most important thing. In that case, sadly, the buyer is supporting the local economy. (hello downvotes...)
No, the alternative is that we stop making excuses for what we're doing and demand that the people who make our junk are paid a living wage. Yes, really.
Year after year stories like this appear, headlined, "OMG, Apple's bad labor practices", ignoring that unlike Martha Stewart et al., this labor news comes from Apple's own audits and public reports.
AFAIK most of this work is now done via sub-sub-subcontractors and goes on in special economic zones. Workers are usually employed for the short term and the work may randomly migrate to a SEZ in a different country to take advantage of "tax holidays", periods of no tax for when a company first sets up in a SEZ. There are no permanent factories or permanent jobs. Wages don't rise because it's easy to just go to some other place where people are desperate for work, literally shipping the workshop to the new location.
So what ends up happening is that the workers never work at the same thing for long enough to acquire skills or wage rises and that they don't make enough money for a proper education. And the assembly lines are so ephemeral and set apart from normal society that no infrastructure or know-how ever accumulates in the country.
So this ain't your parents' kind of sweatshop. Literally.
(Note that I'm talking about the kind of sweatshops that assemble consumer goods in general here, not specifically the one in the article. I have no specific insight about that one, but this is the general trend - this is where the west gets its clothes and gadgets from.)