Thread: In @Trent_Horn's book "Can a Catholic Be a Socialist?", he urges the logic (defending Capitalism's abuses) that tolerating sweatshops is acceptable because it prevents what would be worse alternatives (prostitution, drug muling, and so forth).

In my review for @chestertonsoc's Gilbert! magazine, this was one of the arguments I most criticized (while generally reviewing the book favorably). Yesterday, on the radio, @Trent_Horn repeated this argument during a 'pro-choice' call-in hour on @catholiccom Live.

On the show, @Trent_Horn contrasting intrinsic evils like prostitution as intolerable versus the sweatshop scenario, all by way of making an argument about abortion. Ironically, though, the logic he uses re: sweatshops is precisely the logic Aquinas used re: prostitution...

... i.e., that it can be tolerated for the prevention of other evils. I think the question hinges upon what is considered "intolerable" and also what are considered mala in se, and also distinguishing problematic systems from elements within those systems.

"Sweatshops" in this respect becomes a nearly useless term, because it admits of so much variance. Some "sweatshops" are merely places of drudgery like coal mines which are undesirable and perhaps degrading, but not involved in intrinsically dehumanizing constructs.

Other "sweatshops" are dens of genuine slavery involving the real degradation of persons and disrespecting human dignity. (One might say, in a similar way, that "sex workers" come in various stripes, variously degraded.)

Nevertheless, all "sex work" involves some degradation and immorality, whereas not all "sweatshops" necessarily do. But there are a subset of "sweatshops," maybe we can call them slave-dens, that are just as intrinsically corrupt.

I point all this out because I don't know whether @Trent_Horn read my review in Gilbert; but I think this is one specific point on which he needs to refine and more finely tailor his argument, because it is presently functioning as a kind of red herring or ruse:

that is, it establishes a false dichotomy among data that are really more diverse. All sweatshops may be better than sex trafficking; but only some of these sweatshops are *viable* alternatives absent consequentialism, because some are still instrinsically problematic.

Hope to hear from @Trent_Horn his thoughts on the matter. And if he ever wants to debate Distributism, I'll throw myself out there as a candidate for the conversation.