The economic benefit was given to them in an opportunistic and exploitative way: for as long as they are cheap and not too demanding, happy to live and work in degraded conditions etc.
Probably less bad than being condemned in medieval living conditions but not an excuse for not thinking about genuinely better ways. The shape of humam economy (eg whether unequal, stratified, slave labor based or more or less egalitarian) is an entirely cultural choice.
Copenhagen theory of moral entanglement strikes again. A company that never gives workers from third world any jobs will never be blamed for their conditions, but another company that offers them salaries twice as high as they had before will be crucified for not offering the same rates as in the first world.
Honestly, your stance is not only irrational, but even immoral.
I don’t agree.
If a company creates jobs in a third world country which would have been otherwise created in their “own” [1] country if not for cost reasons is morally and ethically in a grey area.
On the other hand, said workers in the third world country that has seen their conditions and prosperity get better will only want their conditions to get even better. This is what happened in the first world. A company preventing that is immoral.
1: own in the sense the place that contributed (schools, taxes, stable political system) to their growth to a point that they have wealth and expertise to invest in other countries.
Pressumably your superior moral compass is intensily relaxed about third world sweatshops, lethal mines and systemic pollution given that the "rate" is 2x their prior earning potential.
Widespread abuse and exploitation of people by people would not possible if the beneficiaries were not extremely skillful to rationalize their self-serving ideologies.
