Willingly exploited

Recently there is news that a Chinese worker at a manufacture site in China committed suicide because an iPhone 4G prototype was lost and he was suspected and apparently interrogated. When I heard the news, immediately I had the suspicion that he might have been killed by his boss from over beating, which is quite likely considering the situation in China, though it is entirely possible too that he indeed killed himself because of the pressure or mental instability.

Regarding the suicide, many people online are voicing about the exploitation of workers in poorer places like China. This is not something new and people have complained about it before. Being a relatively firm believer of free market, I tend to think that the workers in poor places are actually *willingly* "exploited" if we have to use the word exploit. They are free not to work for the manufacture if they don't want to work there. Instead they choose to accept the job, and they get paid for their work so that they have better life than they would otherwise have in rural areas. Since they have a choice, we can't say they are exploited. Or if we have to use the word, we may say they are "willingly" exploited.

But a second thought came across immediately. They choose to work there because that is the best choice for them. And the reason is that they had a lower starting point -- no wealth to start with, low education, etc. Instead, the rich people and the rich countries or the rich companies, or rich whatever controls more resources of the world so that they win in the game of free competition, which is the core of an efficient free market. In a place where competition is not "free", meaning unfair, due to corruption or ruling privileges or power, things can get worse. So in the free market, the poorer people lose, collectively speaking, and the rich half controls greater and greater portions of the total wealth. The poor have to work to sustain themselves. And the only places are the factories, that pay minimum wages. So they are willing to work there - to be exploited - because they need to survive, but rather unwillingly on the other hand if only they had any better choice. They same applies to workers in Walmart, for example. They may be happy for the job they get -- there may be 10 people behind them willing to take the job, but they don't have any better choices.