companies that use child labor should be punished.

The economy of the 21st century is a mind bogglingly complex phenomenon filled with new technologies and processes, but many aspects of it have been with us for a long time – and one of those is child labor. I’d like to start by clarifying to readers exactly what my position is, what it is not, and why I think my opponent is mistaken. I would prefer that every child will be born to loving, responsible, kind, and educated parents, and guided into prosperity and happiness. However, that is not at all the reality of this world. Some of us were so fortunate as to have had that experience, but there are millions who live on the edge of despair. Both children and adults are exploited around the globe on a tragic scale, many of them taken as sex slaves. There are even some places so poor that parents actually give their children away for free; perhaps these individuals consider slavery to be a superior fate than starvation [1]. Do we as human beings have a responsibility to help our brothers and sisters who are in such dire straits? I think it is safe to say that both my opponent and I would answer that question with a resounding “yes”. Our disagreement comes not with respect to the importance of this issue, but rather over the course of action that would best address it. My position is that some policies intended to help the misfortunate can actually end up hurting them worse, and my opponent’s suggestion falls into that category. Abolitionist Benjamin Skinner discussed a recent example of a Scandinavian evangelical group that raised 3 million dollars to buy Sudanese slaves during their civil war in order to set them free, but in the course of doing so they 1) incentivized the taking of slaves further, which induced slavers to go out and capture even more slaves, and 2) potentially prolonged the conflict by providing currency to the violent rebels [1]. He also mentions that there are 300,000 slaves in Haiti. If an organization went down there and purchased them all in order to free them, that would send a signal to suppliers that business is good, and in no time at all there will be 600,000 slaves available. Sometimes the action we take to try to solve a problem ends up making it worse; it is like struggling in quicksand. Most major American Corporations benefit from using low cost inputs which have at some point in the chain involved child labor. Companies like Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Apple, etc… have all been dragged into the spotlight to be vilified [2]. My opponent would like the government to crack down with tougher laws and penalties against corporations using products traceable to child labor, but here’s my question: what happens to those kids once the corporations leave and business dries up? The $0.65 per day that they receive doesn’t sound like much to me or you, but that could mean the difference between eating and not eating. Education and schools aren’t going to magically appear once these corporations are forced to pack up shop. Rather than them starving, I suppose the best case scenario is that a Chinese corporation will take up that turf instead, and start paying $0.55. I submit to readers that governmental regulation that punishes American corporations will only pave the way for either diminished commerce, and thus the deepening of impoverishment in those places, or for less scrupulous companies and countries to gain from harsher exploitation. Perhaps there are no easy or perfect solutions, but there clearly are ways to struggle in the quicksand and make things even worse, such as what my opponent proposes. 1) . http://www.alternet.org... 2) . http://viewmixed.com...