College professor lets one liberal student know how wrong and naive his world outlook is.
Privileged democrats are constantly promoting fairness and equality for countries they deem as ‘in need’ of their support. What they fail to understand is that their support is often counterproductive. Children working in sweatshops for $2 an hour might seem like nothing to you but for them it’s a huge improvement from the past and it’s a stepping stone for them to advance their society.
Dr. Yaron Brook, an Objectivist academic who is Executive Chairman of the Ayn Rand Institute, was confronted by a college student who complained about Chinese worker conditions in sweatshops.
“You sit here in Europe, in your cushy middle-class chairs — I’m serious about this,” Brook lectures the college student. “And you wanna judge the African, or let’s take the Chinese cause that’s … you know an Apple, or an Indonesian so-called ‘sweatshop’ or whatever, and you wanna tell me that two bucks a day is not a dramatic improvement in their life?“ he said. ”It is.”
“And there’s no way for them to get to the point to be as rich as you are, unless they go through that phase,” he said. ”And if you deny them the ability to make two bucks a day, by insisting the companies pay four, and therefore they withdraw completely from the market.”
“Because you know what?” he continued. “I’m not paying 600 bucks for this. I’ll pay 300 (bucks). And if I stop buying this, who suffers? That Chinese kid, who’s right now making, whatever, three bucks a day or whatever. Right? And his alternative is to go back to the farm and you know what they did on the farms? Forty years ago and the Chinese were all producing agriculture they were dying of starvation. Forty to 60 million Chinese died of starvation under Mao. Suddenly you’ve given them opportunity to actually attain middle-classhood, to learn a skill, to have a profession, to make money to make themselves into something.”