Imperalism at the Brown Bookstore?

This Parents Weekend, the Brown University Student Labor Alliance unveiled its petition to Brown University parents, asking them to support a Designated Suppliers Program (DSP) that would discriminate against any clothing manufacturer that does not meet the wage and working condition expectations of the DSP. If adopted on a wider scale, this plan will simply lead to the unemployment of thousands of workers in the developing world by effectively pricing them out of the labor market. Therefore, it is no surprise that some of the strongest supporters of Designated Suppliers Programs are American labor unions and workers who are openly resentful of the transfer of high paying American jobs to the developing world. This naked self-interest is made even more disgusting by the fact that it is disguised as benevolent concern for the plight of poor workers.

This is not a recent phenomenon. As far back as the 1940s, economist F.A. Hayek remarked, “To the worker in a poor country the demand of his more fortunate colleague to be protected against his low-wage competition by minimum-wage legislation, supposedly in his interest, is frequently no more than a means to deprive him of his only chance to better” his conditions by gaining a wage and working experience previously unavailable to him. Hayek highlighted what many people, including those agitating for DSP, do not understand: workers in developing countries know much better of what is in their best interest than even the most bleeding heart of Ivy League students. More than being simply economically unwise, the “we know better than you” attitude towards our “little brown brothers” smacks of imperialism and racism.

This is not an exclusively conservative view. For example, Paul Krugam, author of the recent bestseller, The Conscience of a Liberal, who was named “America’s most dangerous liberal pundit,” has taken a similar position on the use of cheap labor. In The Great Unraveling, Krugman points out that while many workers “are very badly paid by First World standards…to claim that they have been impoverished by globalization, you have to carefully ignore comparisons across time and space—namely you have to forget that those workers were even poorer before the new exporting jobs became available.” Krugman’s argument would be enough to persuade “fair trade” advocates to see the error of their ways if it were really the workers of the developing world that they are concerned about. Alas, it is not the interests of the workers around the world for which they advocate for.  It is a movement sponsored by and designed for the benefit of organized labor that opposes the acceleration of globalization.

In a story that appeared in New York Times Online in January of 2004, Times reporter Nicholas Kristof put this situation in perspective. Reporting the struggle of impoverished Cambodians, Kristof described the typical day of Nhep Chanda, one of countless Cambodian children who picks through trash, scavenging for food, scraps of metal or plastic, or anything else that she can find to sell. Kristof reported: “Nhep Chanda averages 75 cents a day for her efforts. For her, the idea of being exploited in a garment factory—working only six days a week, inside, instead of in the broiling sun, for up to $2 a day—is a dream.” By pricing cheap third world workers out of the labor market with the Designated Supplier Program, it is unlikely that Nheph Chanda or the millions of children like her in southeast Asia or Africa will ever be able to escape miserable, disease-ridden existences of scraping for survival.

Brown University would be wise to ignore the well-meaning, but inevitably idiotic, push to join the Designated Supplier Program. Contrary to the Parents Weekend protesters assertions, “sweatshops” (as some may call them) are not comparable to slavery. Rather, these “sweatshops” are an investment in the developing world through the creation of manufacturing jobs. To compare the expanded opportunities of globalization that improve the lives of million of workers around the globe to the immoral practice of slavery is a dangerous and demented delusion. As Walter Williams has said, “Would you guess there are higher paying jobs around but the people are too lazy to look for them? Here’s my guess: No matter how unattractive to us that $2 a day job is, it might be that person’s best known prospect.” Give Nheph Chanda a chance, just say “no” to DSP.