If being cheated means being able to buy cheaper consumer goods, come by and cheat me any time you like.
Just because a market is not perfect, doesn't mean it provides no benefit.
Just because a market is not perfect, doesn't mean it provides no benefit.
Imperfect markets that permit slave labor provide a clear benefit to the slave holders. No real benefits for the slaves--they're worse off.
1st & 2nd theorems of welfare economics say markets in equilibrium are Pareto optimal: In every transaction, at least one party does better, but nobody does worse. Since slaves are clearly worse off, we know there's no general equilibrium in such an imperfect market.
The ultimate impact of foreign slave labor on US free labor boils down to this: Is free labor superiority per hour more than counterbalanced by labor that can be flogged, worked to death, and quickly replaced? Is there slave labor with which no free labor can compete? If your answer is no, then go on buying cheap goods produced by slave labor, because it will have no consequences for the US standard of living. But if the real answer is yes, then buying slave-made goods paves the road to slavery for America.
(And for the record, the Chinese are not making inroads because of slave labour. They make inroads in spite of some slave labour.)
I'd like to see everyone's standard of living go up. But when equilibrium doesn't exist because of cheating, Pareto optimality no longer obtains, and some people profit at the direct expense of others. Slavery is a prime example. It shouldn't exist at all.
I'd recommend anyone reading this thread take a look at "Apple (and America’s) Chinese Slave Labor Problem" by Karl Denninger at http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/karl-denninger/20...
Social justice. I am not from the US of A after all (and even if I was, I don't see the point about worrying about some accident of geography / history).