the patently obvious

One of the problems of living in a college town is dealing with the largesse of close-minded, self-proclaimed “liberals” who blindly hate anything that is part of The Establishment. Amongst this crowd, it is commonly accepted as “fact” that Wal-Mart and McDonald’s are run by baby-killers, George Bush is an idiot, and Amnesty International and the U.N. will save the world.

I usually keep my mouth shut during those lame bitch-sessions wherein they cry lamentations about what a sorry state the world is in, but sometimes, I enjoy playing devil’s advocate. One such annoying debate is that of sweat shops, and that they should obviously be boycotted because they are obviously exploiting all those poor workers over there, citing claims that they only make $5 a day or something. Nevermind the fact that it only costs $0.50 a day to live, and that $5 is 10x the daily cost of living.

The point of this post is that it’s refreshing to see some validation of my argument, as the Monitor agrees with me. The money quote:

We use “sweatshop” to mean those foreign factories with low pay and poor health and safety standards where employees choose to work, not those where employees are coerced into working by the threat of violence. And we admit that by Western standards, sweatshops have abhorrently low wages and poor working conditions. However, economists point out that alternatives to working in a sweatshop are often much worse: scavenging through trash, prostitution, crime, or even starvation.

Facts are kryptonite for the close-minded.