Matt Zwolinski Sweatshops Analysis

On Monday, March 30, 2015, Matt Zwolinski presented and virtually debated Michael Kates at Georgetown University. Lasting about twenty minutes, Zwolinski provided three pillars supporting the idea of sweatshops during his presentation. Later on, Michael Kates provided a counterexample involving sex tourism which also seemed to be supported by Zwolinski’s principles (Jaworski). However, between the services provided and products produced by sex tourism and sweatshops, there is a significant moral difference, primarily due to the inherent nature of the respective works. In this paper, I will summarize Matt Zwolinski’s views supporting sweatshops and distinguish how there is a moral difference between exploiting someone into sweatshop labor and

According to Zwolinski, three things need to occur for a situation to be exploitative: a person must be in a position of vulnerability; another person must be in a position of power; and there must be an interaction between the two which benefits the person in power more than the vulnerable person (Jaworski). For example, say that a young, unpaid intern is working in Washington D.C. for a prestigious senator. After several months of the work, the senator calls the intern into his office and provides her with an ultimatum regarding her future on the hill: either she can have sex with the senator and he will promote her to a paid position or she can reject his proposition, meaning she will continue to merely be “the intern.” In this scenario, the senator holds a position of power whereas the intern holds the position of vulnerability. Additionally, with the ultimatum, the senator is conceivably benefiting more from the situation than the intern; he is abusing his position of power and thus exploiting the

First, the exchange between sweatshop owners and employees is mutually beneficial. He supported this claim by pointing out that both parties are better off because of the transaction. In other words, they are better off than if the transaction would have never occurred. With the senator example, although its ethics are certainly debatable, both the intern and senator seem better off because of the interaction. To further solidify this point, Zwolinski noted that if the exchange was not mutually beneficial, then people would not engage in the voluntary transaction—if the intern was not benefiting in some way from sleeping with the senator, she would not rationally do so. By employees making an economically-sound and well-educated decision to work in the sweatshop, it can be assumed that the sweatshop was their best available employment option. Secondly, Zwolinski argued that sweatshops are at least doing something good for people in developing countries while the lion’s share of Americans is not doing anything to help with global poverty. Most Americans do not donate to charities, and when they do, it tends to be domestic, not international. When comparing the majority of Americans to sweatshops, Zwolinski pointed out that sweatshops are helping families escape poverty in developing countries by providing the highest relative wage. Additionally, he made the distinction