Originally Posted by JohnnyB
The irony is that moving manufacturing to other low-cost centers, as has already been happening with Vietnam, Bangladesh, Myanmar etc. means actually moving manufacturing back to places where factories are less developed, less well regulated and more likely to have unsafe worker conditions, child labor and corruption.
If people in Canada only want to adhere to the ethical standards and practices of domestic industry, they better accept only doing business in Western countries. Fine if that's what people want. If not, then regardless of where else you go, there are stages of development that countries go through, and there are different cultural values. That means doing business that supports some people and practices you probably do not like.
It's easy to turn a blind eye to these relationships for the average consumer, as long as those people don't eventually come and buy houses in your neighborhood or send their kids to uni along with yours. That's the way it has been before and the way it will likely continue being. It's not as if 2020 is the first time people in Canada have heard of human rights abuses in countries where manufacturing happens, and it's also not as though the changes being pushed in product sourcing now are primarily about human rights either. As Nik has pointed out, these changes were already taking place, and it had nothing to do with human rights issues.
Of course, if companies and regulators did demand strict adherence to Western standards that eliminated outsourcing of work to developing markets where these sorts of things happen, it would also make it much more difficult for people in those markets to climb out of poverty. It would mean continuing high levels of child mortality, deaths from curable diseases, lack of education and associated societal ills.
Personally, I'm of the view that billions of people climbing up out of poverty is worth it. Children having enough food, education, housing and healthcare is worth all sorts of unethical business practices in my mind. So is the fact that countries with integrated economies are much less likely to go to war. What good will it do the Uighurs or political dissidents in Hong Kong if China and the West become separated? Would anyone believe that we should expect more peaceful and prosperous development out of that circumstance? The negatives have already just been accelerating with Trump's trade war and hostilities.
So, I am on the side of Western cultural values, but I care less about whether the world is shaped according to Western values or Chinese values and I can more about the economic development of humanity such that basic horrors associated with poverty and war can be minimized. As a Canadian millennial from a middleclass background, I also recognize that globalization has reduced the economic advantages for me and my generation relative to what enabled prosperity for my parents, but I consider that loss in my community versus the elimination of horrific suffering for hundreds of millions of people as a good thing for the world on the whole.
I also hope to live in a world where there are hundreds of millions or billions more minds working at full potential to solve our problems. Will that, again, reduce the value of my human capital as an educated Westerner in a global marketplace? Of course. But to the extent that all of that potential is activated and integrated with each other in a global economy I believe we stand to have a better human experience overall, and that is more important to me.
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