Column: End world poverty? Shop Wal-Mart?
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"These improvements ... [are]the indirect and unintended result of the actions of soulless multinationals and rapacious local entrepreneurs, whose only concern was to take advantage of the profit opportunities offered by cheap labor. It is not an edifying spectacle; but no matter how base the motives of those involved, the result has been to move hundreds of millions of people from abject poverty to something still awful but nonetheless significantly better."
The Nobel laureate economist Robert Lucas once said, "Once you start thinking about economic growth, it is hard to think about anything else." Non-economists, especially those associated with the environmental movement, regard this as evidence that economics is a form of brain damage, a cancer on our Earth. But rural Chinese peasants surviving on less than a dollar per day do not regard economic growth, or Wal-Mart factory jobs, as a cancer. When a Mongolian student at a U.S. workshop on globalization heard U.S. college students denounce sweatshops, he shouted: "Please give us your sweatshops!"
An unreflective passion for social justice may be one of the biggest obstacles to creating peace and prosperity in the 21st century. While there are most certainly factory owners in China whom we would rightly regard as criminal in their treatment of their workers, it is important not to confuse these incidents with the phenomenon of globalization. It is a good thing that Wal-Mart is encouraging more humane standards in its suppliers' factories.
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