by Not Ezra Klein dag nabbit Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math
Dani Rodrik spots The Ethicist not knowing how to answer a question about the merits of clothing donations to the developing world. It turns out the import of free or cheap clothing into a poor country undermines the local apparel industry in that country. To Rodrik, though, the answer is simple. He claims that "[t]he importation of used clothes creates net gains in the poor country (the consumers gain more than the garment producers lose out) and that's that." I find myself wishing I were an economist and could thus answer the question so easily.
The problem, it seems to my non-philosophy, non-economics trained mind, is that while the net gain to the third-world garment consumer may be much larger, I have caused losses to a third-world garment producer who had very little to lose in the first place; I have "robbed" a very poor Sherrif of Nottingham some amount, say, fifty silver pieces, in order to "pay" a not-quite-as-poor peasant of Sherwood Forest a larger amount, say, two hundred silver pieces. What's more, Westerners derive much of their utility from clothing either as leisure/luxury/entertainment spending, or as a status marker; presumably this value runs close to zero in the developing world. On the other hand, the original producer of my clothing was quite likely a former peasant in Thailand or Indonesia or China who may be enjoying higher living standards working in the clothing factory than he was enjoying working on the farm, which weighs in favor of the purchase and donation of clothing. All of these complicating factors makes the situation even murkier, but perhaps because as only an untrained amateur simple problems often seem complex.
Usually when I have problems like this, I re-read parts of Charles Wheelan's Naked Economics, which assures me that in the long run prosperity does reach everyone. I do find it quite reassuring. But the long run sometimes seems to be very far away. Perhaps other armchair and professional economists and moral philosophers have additional thoughts.
