For years, I've been saying that
Yeah, sweatshops suck, and in a perfect world they wouldn't exist, but what would you prefer? 8 hours a day, sitting down and hunched over making sneakers or 10 hours a day knee-deep in a rice paddy, bent over in the blazing sun?
For many folks, making sneakers for Nike (or sewing pants together for KMart, or printing T-shirts for Old Navy) is pretty much the only route available for upward social mobility. It's true that conditions are often horrible, and that the workers don't get paid much, and there's lots of room for improvement. But it's easier work than farming, and they do get paid.
Anyway, today in the Times, Nick Kristof says pretty much the same thing.
As a side note, I suspect that Kristof arrived at his conclusion as a result of his many years living overseas as one of the best foreign correspondents of our generation (his wife is also brilliant, which makes me wonder why he got the column in the Times and she didn't). It's easy to criticize globalism from an armchair in Manhattan; travelling through and living in the third world expands one's horizons significantly.
Thanks to Sasha for pointing this out.