Child Labor- Good for Me, Good for You.

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A student stands with a megaphone outside the Administration building on campus to protest Coca-Cola's unsavory business practic

On Wednesday, November 16th, a number of students marched in protest of the Coca-Cola corporation’s alleged involvement in a number of murders of South American labor leaders. Even the most cutthroat businesspeople would have serious moral trouble justifying such actions. While discussing the civic responsibility of big business with a colleague, we came upon the issue of child labor.

Clearly, forcing children to work for meager wages is not an ideal situation. People have devoted their lives to ending such practices, and countless rallies and protests have supported their cause. What I am about to say will shock some of you. This public outrage, this moralistic whining about civic responsibility and giving children a chance- it’s all completely misguided.

What would happen if the average global prices on simple goods such as food and clothing increased by ten to twenty percent? Worldwide economic turmoil would set in. America aside, in most developed nations, a twenty percent increase in the basic costs of living would cause mass unrest and poverty. Members of the working class simply do not have the sort of financial cushion needed to sustain such an increase. People receiving material assistance from their government would be drastically affected as well. Social welfare programs in the Western world are stretched extremely thin as it is, and even a small across-the-board price increase could break them.

Think the rioting poor in France are a problem now? Imagine that, but with a better reason, across much of Europe.

The fact of the matter is that in an economy as globally-integrated as ours is today, we are interdependent to a fault. Without cash infusions (“exploitation,” as idealists deem it) from industrialized countries, unemployment in the Third World would soar.

And, if multinational corporations stopped using child labor or started paying workers several times the going rate (as demanded by the people who view exploitation as a problem), there would be a plethora of problems going beyond the shame of making a purely idiotic business decision. Costs of production would rise, and jobs at home would need to be cut. Selling prices would rise, and inflation would set in. Shareholders would be irate as profit margins erode to nothing in the name of goodwill. These conditions would leave developed nations with a weakened economy, rising unemployment, and capitalists without money to start new business ventures. Mix together, apply heat, and you have mass unrest, with Westerners dead, angry, and unemployed.

The evils of child labor are indisputable, as is its economic necessity. I applaud the bravery and spirit of the masses who have protested against it, but I urge them all to understand our dependence on cheap foreign labor, and to perhaps pick up an Economics textbook. On an equal playing field, I agree with the notion that responsibility to one’s fellow man is more important than the responsibility to one’s shareholders. However, when taking the ethical way out seems like a surefire way to compromise the global economy, perhaps ethics should take a back seat to pragmatism.