If There's Something Worse, Anything's Better?

In a continuation of yesterday's comments, another thing occurred to me while I was reading Kristof's column on Cambodia and sweatshops. Southeast Asia is notorious for its sex industry. As Thailand has tried to legitimize itself and to seem "safer" for tourists, it has worked to diminish some of the less savory aspects of its sex industry. These elements are setting up shop in Cambodia.

If we were to tweak Kristof's column a bit:

I'd like to invite George Bush and the other Republican puritans to come here to Cambodia and discuss "morality" with scavengers like Nhep Chanda, who spends her days rooting through filth in the city dump. One of the most unfortunate trends in the Republican party has been the way nearly all of the major voices, including the President, have been flirting with anti-prostitution positions by putting the emphasis on human rights standards in international agreements.

My guess is that they sincerely believe that such policies would help poor people abroad — and that's why they should all traipse through a Cambodian garbage dump to see how economically naïve shutting down Cambodia's brothels would be. Nhep Chanda, age 17, averages 75 cents a day for her efforts. For her, the idea of being exploited in a brothel — working only six days a week, inside instead of in the broiling sun, for more than $2 a day — is a dream.

All the complaints about third world brothels are true and then some: they use child prostitutes, foster drug addiction, and spread disease. But they have raised the standard of living in the Philippines and Thailand, and they offer a leg up for people in countries like Cambodia. In Asia, moreover, the brothels tend to hire mostly girls and young women with few other job opportunities. The result has been to begin to give girls and women some status and power, some hint of social equality, some alternative to picking garbage or working in sweatshops. The fundamental problem in the poor countries of Africa and Asia is not that brothels exploit too many workers; it's that they don't exploit enough.

I'm not intending this to be a fair criticism of Kristof - he specifically recites the sex industry as a source of employment that the sweatshops permit women to avoid. But once you get past issues of "morality", his arguments seem to apply equally in both contexts - and he seems quite willing to set aside issues of morality in the context of the conduct and operation of sweatshops.

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