Reddit reviews Where am I Wearing?: A Global Tour to the Countries, Factories, and People That Make Our Clothes

I'm kicking it off with Cheap (which some of us discussed on MFA last summer), but for future months I'm lining up Global Denim, Consumed, The Overspent American, and Where Am I Wearing. Other suggestions are absolutely welcome!

http://www.amazon.com/Global-Denim-Daniel-Miller/dp/1847886310

http://www.amazon.com/Consumed-Markets-Children-Infantilize-Citizens/dp/0393330893

http://www.amazon.com/The-Overspent-American-Want-What/dp/0060977582

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Wearing-Countries-Factories-Clothes/dp/1118277554

I've been reading Brad's site since way back when it was called Commerce with a Conscience, and I'm really thrilled to start contributing. If you haven't read it before, definitely out this post on why clothes cost what they do - it's one of my favorites.

I read a book last year called Where am I Wearing which is essentially about the many clothes manufacturing jobs around the world.
Obviously these jobs go to some of the poorest places around. But the book also showed the situation from the perspective of the workers. The author spent time with families, seeing how they live, and what they think of their situation. From what I remember, some people were grateful for having the opportunity to work there. The book ends up leaving the question of whether these jobs are good or bad for the people.

Now I can feel idealistic hatred about to rain down on me. But you need to look at this in perspective, a perspective outside of our very nice and sheltered lives. What else could/would we do for them? What if making clothes became automated and they no longer were given those jobs? Where would they be? All those people that live off those (admittedly extremely low) wages? And obviously not every situation is the same, and I know next to nothing about this nestle thing so I'm not going to talk about that. Saying that having those jobs (speaking about the book again) was "definitely not good for those people or places" seems entirely misguided. And calling it exploitation seems a bit of a stretch in some cases.

I'm genuinely curious how you would answer those previous questions, because I honestly don't know how well those people would do if those jobs disappeared. And I don't know how we could make their lives better. That's a lot of people in very poor countries.

TL;DR This isn't something you can easily generalize as just "exploiting poor people."