I'd buy that in many cases, moving your production into overseas sweatshops is better than not doing it. But my suspicion is that when doing so, there often will remain a lot of room for improvement, and the world would collectively be better off if we continue to pressure companies to improve in that area. (This is based on limited research on my part - I don't know what the conditions in the average modern sweatshop is like. Probably better than they were 50 years ago, but I don't know by how much). But I don't think having more, shinier, cheaper widgets necessarily makes most people happier either (depends on the widget and the people in question).
there often will remain a lot of room for improvement,
Of course. But typically that improvement comes from them working their way up, not them being offered a better deal to start off with. Sweatswop labor was good enough for England, good enough for the American Northeast, and is good enough for China for now.
But I don't think having more, shinier, cheaper widgets necessarily makes most people happier either (depends on the widget and the people in question).
Alright, but that's an argument why we don't benefit from sweatshop labor, because we just ...
Lately I've been thinking about all of the various services and products I consume and how pretty much all of them are bad for the world in one way or another, large or small. Some of the problems associated with them I am less concerned about. Some of them could be construed as good things (i.e. sweat shop labor DOES provide jobs, whatever impact it might or might not have on the overall quality of life).
In general I'd like to live my life having as minimal a negative impact on the world as possible. But "negative impact" is a hugely broad topic and there are a million variables to consider and I just don't have time.
The best solution, I think, would be to have a wikipedia-like website where individual people with knowledge of specific problems can start tagging specific products with the types of negative consequences associated with them, and (somehow) sort those consequences into categories that individuals can decide how much to worry about. Over time it could eventually become a fairly efficient way to track the utility value of things.
I'm sort of hoping something like this already exists, even if in an infant form, and that someone here knows about it. But I doubt it, so the I guess this falls mostly under the post category of "hey someone other than me should devote a bunch of time and energy to this project that I myself am not qualified to do." But maybe a few people here at least have a better idea than I do of the scope of the requirements for it, so the idea can be refined a bit.