Walter E. Williams on Nonsense Ideas

The libertarian economics professor writes: "Some U.S. companies have been accused of exploiting Third World workers with poor working conditions and low wages. Say that a U.S. company pays a Cambodian factory worker $3 a day. Do you think that worker had a higher-paying alternative but stupidly chose a lower-paying job instead? I'm betting the $3-a-day job was superior to his next best alternative. Does offering a worker a wage higher than what he could earn elsewhere make him worse off or better off? If you answered better off, is the term exploitation an appropriate characterization for an act that makes another better off? If pressure at home forces a U.S. company to cease its Cambodian operations, would that worker be worse off or better off?....How many times have we heard: If it will save just one life, it's worth it? The "it" could be bike helmet laws, childproof medicine bottles, or formaldehyde and asbestos safety regulations. A good economist cringes hearing such statements because they only consider the benefits of an action while ignoring the cost. Looking at benefits only, just about anything is worth doing because there's usually a benefit.....How about academics and researchers seeing grinding Third World poverty and chalking it up to a 'vicious cycle of poverty'? This vision of poverty sees people as too poor to save. That means they can't create investment capital. Because they can't invest, they can't develop, and that keeps them poor. In other words, people are poor because they're poor. According to the 'vicious cycle of poverty' vision, the only escape is foreign aid. The only way this theory of Third World poverty would have any credibility is if every country were poor. There's no country that wasn't at some time poor, including our own. If poverty is so vicious, how did today's rich countries escape it?"