Tony Rubolotta

Affordable Righteous Indignation
November 26, 2008

The thought of children not working in the fields or doing their chores would have been unthinkable in colonial America. Survival depended on every able bodied person working. Children were also taken as apprentices by craftsmen to learn productive trades. Schooling was done largely at home or through churches. We frown on child labor today and have any number of laws banning the practice. We can afford to do that because of the wealth produced by previous generations, including child laborers.

It was capitalism, competition and free markets than enabled past generations to create the labor saving technology and improved agricultural methods that eliminated the need for child labor.

When a nation reaches a certain level of wealth, it can afford righteous indignation. You may recall the outrage directed against Kathy Lee Gifford when it was revealed that some of her clothing line was produced by child labor in Guatemala in 1995. I think most of us were even more shocked to learn that a sweatshop in New York was also producing that clothing line. We can afford our indignation because we are wealthy, but I have always wondered what happened to those workers in Guatemala, which isn’t wealthy. What did their families do when that source of income, no matter how meager we think it is, was cut-off? The media mercilessly pounded Kathy Lee but never reported the consequences to the “exploited workers” after their attacks had succeeded.

The fact is many third-world countries have not reached the stage of economic development where they can afford the same level of righteous indignation we allow ourselves. They cannot afford to ban child labor, especially in agriculture. They cannot afford our obsession with environmental laws, work place safety, liberal labor practices, sanitation and a myriad of other things we consider standard for an advanced civilization. Many third-world countries compound this problem by following the socialist economic model that discourages capital formation, competition and the free markets that are essential to creating the wealth that will permit them to rise above poverty.

Given a choice between electricity and clean air, a poor nation is going to chose electricity every time. Reliable electrical energy is a prerequisite for industrialization, building wealth and a higher standard of living. Industrialization and wealth are a prerequisite for affording pollution controls, but for a developing nation, that may be a distant concern compared to water, sanitation, food, transportation, health care and other needs. It would be foolish for a country to waste precious resources on pollution controls when the leading cause of death may be malnutrition, malaria or inadequate health care. The choice between breathing clean air and eating is easy to make.

The option of assisting third-world countries with socialist style foreign aid leads to the economic malaise that has arrested most of their economies in the first place. It removes the incentive for economic advancement, fosters dependence, rewards failure and stimulates corruption. It also assumes the wealthy nations are much wealthier than they actually are. With Europe and America becoming more socialist by the day, they are destroying the engines that have produced their wealth. Once that wealth has been consumed, righteous indignation becomes a luxury none can afford. The world economy must pull itself up and not drag everyone down.

We must also deal with the international “climate change” fear mongers like Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who recently called on the developed countries to “alter their unsustainable lifestyle” while aiding undeveloped countries to control pollution. China expends a great deal of its wealth on its military, space program and nuclear arsenal. India pursues similar policies. These developing countries have chosen to pursue the very costly symbols of advanced technology over the substance of improving the living conditions for their people. Their failed socialist economies can’t do both and they want the developed nations to subsidize their bad choices. China wants the United States to lower its standard of living and clean up China so they can pursue guided missile cruisers, nuclear submarines and astronauts.

We should be thankful our economic system of capitalism, competition and free markets has allowed us to address our concerns about child labor, pollution and working conditions. We must also not forget that correcting those concerns meant enduring them until we could afford to address them, both economically and technologically. The economic system that leftists condemn was able to fix itself because it made it affordable to make the corrections. The economic system that socialists support fails to meet basic needs and cannot afford to correct itself.