Tag: economy

Every dollar spent at a locally owned business pays dividends in your community. If you wish to see a viable economy, choose local businesses over chain stores.

In 1895, educator and author Booker T. Washington cajoled members of his community to “cast down your bucket where you are” instead of seeking labor or employment somewhere else. Likewise, I believe more can be accomplished for the benefit of our community by casting our talents and our dollars where we live by buying and producing locally, as well as abandoning a “there’s nothing I can do” attitude.

It’s tempting in the face of seemingly intractable problems to uproot and leave, convinced that nothing can be done. Individuals and families make this choice every day. I spoke to dozens of friends and acquaintances who have left Illinois for greener pastures over the past several years, and I can count myself in that number. 

For a community to be successful, however, a collective effort is needed to bring the kind of entertainment, businesses, and recreation you want to see, as well as support those places already in existence. Supporting local businesses means using your dollars like votes in favor of the businesses you want to remain. 

This article originally appeared at C4SS.org on November 17, 2011. It was the last in a series, the fallout from which led me to end my brief flirtation with “market anarchism.” There’s no room for genuine discussion in an echo chamber, and arguments over intellectual purity get boring pretty quickly. They’re still probably over at C4SS and Strike-the-root, churning out articles from the ideological vending machine.

In the past several months, Matt Zwolinski and Ben Powell took to the pages of the Journal of Business Ethics, as well as the Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog, to defend what they consider to be the mainstream libertarian position on sweatshops: that sweatshops represent a positive good in developing economies.

Citing Kevin Carson and I as representative of the “left-libertarian” position against sweatshops, Matt Zwolinski took us to task in his recent article, “Answering the Left-Libertarian Critique of Sweatshops.” I cannot speak for Mr. Carson, but I do not consider my opposition to sweatshops a “left wing” position; I consider it the only sensible position for libertarians and other champions of a free market to take.

First, let’s be clear about the definition of a sweatshop. A sweatshop is not any working environment in a developing economy; it is a working environment that is considered to be unreasonably difficult or dangerous. Many factors might contribute to a factory being labeled a “sweatshop,” including long hours without breaks, low pay, overcrowding, poor lighting and ventilation, unsanitary conditions, and few to zero considerations for employee safety. Low pay is just one of these factors and may not even be the chief factor in determining whether a particular place of employment can be called a sweatshop.

This article originally appeared at C4SS.org on April 2, 2011. It was the second in a series, the fallout from which led me to end my brief flirtation with “market anarchism.” There’s no room for genuine discussion in an echo chamber, and arguments over intellectual purity get boring pretty quickly. They’re still probably over at C4SS and Strike-the-root, churning out articles from the ideological vending machine.

When Paul Krugman defended sweatshops in the pages of the New York Times and Slate Magazine in 1997, he understandably raised a chorus of criticism, so when I wrote “Do Sweatshops Belong in a Free Market?” I expected at least some cognitive dissonance. After all, sweatshops are an issue that many feel passionately about. However, I was surprised at the level of the resistance that greeted what I thought was not a very controversial position. This article is an attempt to clarify my argument and respond to some of this criticism.

In my opinion, a sweatshop is an antiquated form of wage slavery that does not belong in a free society any more than conscription or the Atlantic slave trade. Economists like Paul Krugman have provided an ideological foundation for sweatshops because they are an integral part of the globalist worldview, but that is a worldview libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, and other like-minded individuals oppose. It is in our interest to not only distance ourselves from this exploitative form of labor, but to repudiate it entirely.

Force and aggression do not always involve the threat of immediate physical harm. A person may be coerced into surrendering their property (or their labor) under a variety of conditions. For example, being tricked into signing a contract he or she cannot read or understand, having the welfare of his or her family threatened, or being required to rent equipment essential to the job while being paid barely enough to cover those expenses. All of these are common practices at sweatshops.