I've seen a similar argument about Chinese "sweat shops" where they were paying above the average salaries for the area & if the work went it'd be disastrous economically for the village. Sometimes you have to be realistic - if the amount earned is good for the area then it's trending in the right way.
> if the amount earned is good for the area then it's trending in the right way.
Absolutely not. There's no reason to accept sweatshops just because workers are being paid to be exploited. There's no reason at all that workers in those places couldn't be paid just as well (if not better really) without all of the other issues commonly found in sweatshops like horrific and dangerous working conditions, child labor, sexual abuse, and human rights violations.
There's no giving corporations a pass on their use of sweatshops just because they're giving the desperate people they exploit a little more than they could get themselves. That's not "trending in the right way" it's just greed and exploitation.
For example, a person who is starving to death will be extremely grateful when someone gives them even rotten and moldy food. They'll accept the food even if the person offering it makes them first perform horrible immoral acts to get it, but that doesn't make it right and the person forcing starving people to do terrible things for spoiled scraps is still an asshole even if it fills that person's stomach for the night
Remove the sweatshop and there are higher suicide rates, less access to healthcare, less schooling, and worse standards of living. These may be counterintuitive but have been studied.
Higher suicide rates when they aren't locking workers inside under watch and putting nets up around tall buildings?
Not exploiting starving men in exchange for spoiled food can be proven to result in increased deaths too. Doesn't make the exploitation okay. Companies can continue to employ overseas labor at attractive rates without allowing those workplaces to be sweatshops and we should insist that they do, not give them a pass to abuse people for profit just because they throw the people they hurt scraps in the process.
