I can't believe you're saying that it's our moral duty to buy the cheapest shit possible, in order to prevent child prostitution. That's just fucked-up, wilfully blinkered thinking.
The problem is that people just buy the cheapest shit possible anyway, without any thought whatsoever about the circumstances of its production.
Maybe it would be better to allow products made with child labor, so long as the children are provided with above-average education in return. I guess that would make children too expensive and companies would switch to adults anyway.
The best possible improvement would probably be to provide children with food, shelter and education free of charge, so they don't have to work at all. Unfortunately, very few people are actually willing to pay for that.
> The problem is that people just buy the cheapest shit possible anyway
Yes, they do. And regulations can control that. Regulations around building codes stop people from building shanties everywhere. Regulations around new vehicle safety means people can't put new, unsafe vehicles on the road.
What makes you think that the garment industry is any different? "Oh, I have to pay $7 for this T-shirt instead of $6? In that case, I'm going to import my own from overseas!". Nonsense. It is insane, the level to which people in this thread are defending gruelling child labour as some sort of unavoidable consequence of the supply chain.
