I tend to feel that emotionally charged language shows part of the problem preventing us from resolving these things. Morality is as much a social science as many things, however without taking into account a pretty cold analysis of why we are in this situation to begin with you can't solve it. Certainly naive calls for blockades and sanctions won't solve it. Since the people who would implement those sanctions are probably also the people benefiting from and causing the situation in those countries to begin with.

When child labour was stopped in the mills in the UK, there were similar arguments made about how we shouldn't curb the free market.

Here is Engel's account of working conditions for children in UK mines in the early 19th century:

http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/factmine/childmin.htm

Something hard, complicated, and expensive might work: say, a ratcheting minimum age requirement, stipulations that exporters provide documentation on the working conditions at all mines they buy from, extensive investment in the mines, and foreign aid to get early-childhood schools set up with local teachers.

Unfortunately, providing an incomplete or imperfect solution to a problem automatically makes everyone blame you for that problem, even when you provably helped fix it[0]. Anyone who helps fix the problem of child labour by slowly improving working conditions or by brokering a compromise will be blamed for anything and everything remotely connected to it.

[0] https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...

> until they start taxing business

What businesses? You just killed any business that isn't paying a comfortable living. In a place like the Congo, what makes you think any are left?

It doesn't matter to the Congolese child whether their step down from mining to something worse is morally satisfying to you because it also hurts a 1%er. Banning someone's best option, no matter how shitty, makes them worse off.

Excuse me, but did you read the damn comment that I wrote? When the United States government did what you did, the garment manufacturers responded exactly how you wanted: they fired the children.

What happened was _the children became prostitutes_ because they needed money. Some of the children that did NOT become prostitutes got jobs literally crushing up rocks, which leads to large particle inhalation that damages your lungs beyond belief.

How is that preferable to having them work in a sweatshop?

Bangladesh does not _have_ the money, anywhere, to pay for "proper public schooling, housing, and sanitation". There is no money anywhere _to_ tax. They are one of the poorest countries in the world with an income per capita of less than one thousand dollars.

I've got a fun story for you. The European Union recently introduced a set of regulations that make shipbreaking facilities in the EU face a large number of environmental and labor regulations. Bangladesh said "hey, cheap steel!" and scaled up its shipbreaking operations. The majority of Bangladesh's steel now comes from poorly paid laborers that disassemble large ships with a cutting torch and their hands, with no safety gear or regard for the environment. Net effect of the regulation: more pollution, more workers in unsafe conditions worldwide. There's a word for this: outsourcing. The EU neatly outsourced its problems to Bangladesh. Nice!

Some policy problems aren't some kind of global conspiracy by the 1%, they're actual hard problems to solve. This is a bipartisan issue in that neither side, no matter their particular slant, has an idea of how to solve the problem. If you stop the manufacturers you force children into prostitution. If you let them continue you're complicit in child slavery.

By the way, you can't just blockade or sanction a country like Bangladesh out of nowhere. First of all, a lot countries (small, densely populated countries in Asia) rely on access to Bangladesh's ports, so we'd be inadvertently sanctioning those countries as well. Second of all, you probably don't know how big it is. Bangladesh's population, 160 million, is bigger than Spain, Canada, Australia, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, Israel, Denmark, Finland, and Norway - combined. You're sanctioning all those people for something that most of them aren't involved in and can't change? And you want them to pay for "proper public schooling, housing and education" for all those people on a total GDP of under 200 billion dollars? For contrast, the Netherlands has a GDP of around 800 billion dollars.

Please reconsider your position.

[0]: Spain (46MM), Canada (36), Australia (24), Belgium (11), Greece (10), Sweden (10), Israel (8), Denmark (5), Finland (5) and Norway (5).

It's not 1%, it's the 10% of global population (the developed world) that benefits. Those cheap clothes you got your kids from Gap, they were probably made by similarly aged kids in Bangladesh.