In 2012, a Chinese student studying in the U.S. wrote a letter that was later shared by David Pogue in Business Insider. He described how his aunt had worked for several years in what Americans might call a “sweatshop”:
The student emphasized that, despite the difficult conditions, the factory job was a step up—it provided safety, legality, and stability she had never known before.
This story raises a profound moral question: Does an improvement from desperation make an exploitative system justifiable?
Let’s explore why this tension sits at the heart of modern global capitalism.
Better Than Nothing Isn’t the Same as Fair
A factory job may lift someone out of desperation. But an improvement from rock bottom does not equal justice.
The woman in this story is performing the same labor as someone assembling parts in Michigan. She’s not less intelligent or less valuable. She’s just on the wrong side of a global wage arbitrage system.
Corporations don’t pay her less because she’s worth less—they pay her less because they can.
What Is Exploitation?
Exploitation occurs when value is extracted from someone without fair compensation.
You can have:
Exploitative jobs that are better than the alternative, and
Exploitative systems that improve people’s lives short-term
But the core question is: Who captures the surplus value?
In this case, it’s not the woman. Her labor adds real value to a global supply chain, but she sees only a sliver of it. The rest flows upward:
To multinational corporations
To shareholders
To high-income consumers paying less for products made with underpaid labor
This is exploitation by design—not an accident, but a business model.
Does “Choice” Make It Ethical?
Many people argue:
“Well, she chose the job.”
But choice under coercion of circumstance isn’t freedom. If the only options are wage slavery or something worse, the system isn’t ethical—it’s merely tolerable.
Asking someone to be grateful for a better form of poverty is morally hollow.
So What Can Be Done?
This is where technologies like Bitcoin offer potential.
No, Bitcoin doesn’t magically fix global labor markets. But it creates an escape hatch:
A way to store value in a neutral system not subject to local currency collapse
A method of payment that bypasses middlemen
A step toward economic sovereignty
It lets workers keep more of what they earn. And that alone makes it powerful.
Final Thought
A factory job may save someone from a worse fate. But if it pays unfairly, concentrates profits far away, and denies workers ownership of what they build—it’s still exploitation.
We can be grateful for progress while demanding more. Dignity requires more than survival.
And we don’t have to wait for permission to build something better.
I have been reading and thinking about money, economics, wages,fair wages, trade imbalances and business stuff for years. This is a list of links and some books that I have found interesting related to the topic. I don’t have a take away conclusion from this reading yet.
“It is utterly clear to me that the highest priority need of world society at the present moment is a realistic economic accounting system which will rectify, for instance, such nonsense as the fact that a top toolmaker in India, the highest paid of all craftsman, gets only as much per month for his work in India as he could earn per day for the same work if he were employed in Detroit, Michigan. – Page 112 Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth, Buckminster Fuller
I am sharing a few articles I’ve read the last years about various impacts of higher wages in different parts of the world. I still don’t have a big conclusion from this.
As jobs are exported slowly the world wide wage should rise, but likely America’s will fall, which is fine.
I do share the concern that some businesses “can’t afford to pay people $15/hr” but if that is the case should they be businesses?
I mentioned that there are a lot of things that challenge starting businesses (wages/paying SS, and medicare/insurance).
I have been a big proponent that nationwide healthcare will allow smaller businesses to be more competitive with larger businesses because they should only have to compete on wages, not healthcare. This same idea came from Andrew Yang. His book “The War on Normal People” is very good, for many ideas, not just UBI.
I like the below articles for worldwide perspectives on income and economics.
The country allows lower pay for teenagers, and the labor deal McDonald’s struck with its employees currently pays 16-year-olds roughly US$8 an hour, not altogether different from what they’d make in the states. In an email, Greg Bamber, a professor at Australia’s Monash University who has studied labor relations in the country’s fast food industry, told me that as a result, McDonald’s relies heavily on young workers in Australia.
Jobs moved to Mexico. Seems to have worked out well for the new employees in Mexico. Seems to have “busted” the people who lost jobs in USA,
Now, of course, to an American audience this seems so minor, so unbelievably reasonable, it’s hard to see how there can be any opposition: Five bucks a day? As a minimum? It’s easy to be outraged that the U.S. government wouldn’t push for a minimum of more. Who can live on five bucks a day?
Haiti’s industry is focused on commodity white T-shirts for brands like Hanes. The commodity white T-shirt is one of the cheapest, easiest things in the world to make. With $500,000 you could buy a bunch of used sewing machines in Alabama or Guangzhou, rent a cement shell in some poor country, and be in business in a few weeks.
In short, Dominican textile workers have real bargaining power because they have real, globally competitive skills. I’m sure manufacturers would love to pay them $3 a day, but they can’t because the Dominicans know how to do stuff that commands a higher wage.
I have no idea what would happen if Haiti did have a $5-a-day minimum wage. But I do think it’s reasonable to assume that some factories would close and far fewer new ones would be built. Far fewer Haitians would be allowed to take that first tentative step on to the ladder of industrial development.
It looks like LOWRY sewing robot has been made into a company.
ABOUT SOFTWEAR AUTOMATION
We are an Atlanta-based advanced machine-vision and robotics startup disrupting the $1.5 trillion apparel industry. Our fully automated Sewbots enable on-demand manufacturing by moving supply chains local and closer to the customer, while creating higher quality products at comparable cost to imports from low-wage countries.
This is the future of everything. Automate as much as possible, for mass production. It is how the past has always gone and it’s the way of the future. More things will be automated. Automated things will be cheaper, or they wouldn’t be automated! Cheaper things means people can actually buy more things! Think of TV’s. In 1990 a 20” tv was relatively expensive and maybe a family had 1. Now it’s cheaper to have 3 55” tv’s.
LA garment worker pay- Many garment workers in the USA are here illegally. The employers should be held responsible for hiring illegal immigrants. They are also taking advantage of these people.
A 2016 U.S. Department of Labor investigation found pay violations in 85% of the L.A. garment shops it looked into. – How do these places stay in business? If they are investigated and found to be violating the US DOL how do they stay in business????
Vernette speaks in Haitian Creole, as he has trouble communicating in Spanish.
He arrived in the Dominican Republic “under the fence,” or irregularly, about a year ago.- It appears that illegal immigration is a problem worldwide, and they are treated poorly everywhere.
MyWheelLife.com 