My friend David Sobel argues that even if sweatshops are benefiting the global poor, this doesn’t mean that they are fulfilling whatever obligations they might have to aid the less fortunate:

This activity on the part of corporations, I think it safe to assume, is motivated purely by economic self-interest on the part of the corporation. It involves no self-sacrifice and if it did start requiring self-sacrifice, they would presumably stop doing it …  I would think it better to say that one only discharges any duty one might have (let’s say it is not an enforcible duty) to the poor if sacrifices one’s own interests in doing so or at least was prepared to so sacrifice should the non-sacrificial way of benefitting the poor have changed and required sacrifice. People relentlessly pursuing only their own interests who happen to thereby benefit others are not thereby satisfying any duty they have to aid the worst off.

This seems quite wrong to me.  But it raises an interesting question: when we’re trying to determine whether someone has done their duty toward the poor, where do we look?  To the person’s intentions and/or motivations?  To the sacrifices they incur?  Or to the outcomes of their action?

My own view is that neither intentions, motivations, nor sacrifices matter.  Here’s a test case:

Bob the Builder: Suppose Bob really, really likes building houses.  There’s nothing he’d rather do, and he’s extremely good at it.  So he travels the world spending all his time and resources building houses.  Once a house is built, he leaves it and moves on.  He doesn’t care who lives there, but as rumor spreads of his activities, people who need houses start following him around and moving in to his completed projects.  As a result, many many people who need homes get them.

Bob isn’t acting with the intention or motivation of helping the poor.  And he doesn’t regard his activity as a sacrifice – sure, he spends time and resources on building, but only because it is the most personally satisfying way in which he could possibly spend them.  But while Bob isn’t trying to help the poor, he does help them – much more, let’s stipulate, than the great majority of the population does.

Is Bob failing to discharge his duty to the world’s poor?  Is he doing a worse job than someone who gives a relatively small amount of time or money to the poor (thereby incurring a moderate sacrifice) with the intention and motivation of helping them?

I don’t think so.  It might be plausible to say that Bob has a less morally virtuous character than someone who does charity work with more altruistic motivations.  But we can and should distinguish between the moral evaluation of Bob’s character, and the moral evaluation of his actions.  Bob’s character is less than ideal because he lacks the disposition to see others’ need as reason-giving.  And perhaps if Bob’s circumstances were other than they are – if building houses wasn’t an option available to him, or if he got tired of it – his flawed character would lead him to act in a way that failed to discharge his duty to the poor.  Even if Bob’s actions do good, we might say that he is an unreliable producer of his good, given that the only reason he promotes good is a lucky and possibly unstable coincidence between his selfish desires and good outcomes.*

But still, if we set aside issues of character and focus on what Bob does, it’s hard to find fault.  Maybe he could do even more good if he spent his time in some other way.  But even if he’s not maximally helping the poor, he’s certainly helping the poor enough to discharge whatever moral obligations he might have.

Moreover, I suspect that even those who think that intentions, motivations, and sacrifice matter in the evaluation of the actions of individual persons will have a different view when it comes to the evaluation of organizations and institutions.  Suppose, for instance, that instead of deciding whether Bob is doing his duty toward the poor, we want to ask whether the state is discharging its obligations.  Surely, here, the case for disregarding intentions etc. and focusing almost entirely on outcomes is even stronger, no?

* The distinction I am drawing here is similar to that made by John Stuart Mill in his Utilitarianism, chapter 2, footnote 2.

UPDATE: Here’s one further consideration to strengthen the argument.  Bob, in my example, just happens to be in a situation where doing what he most enjoys brings great benefit to the world’s poor.  If you’re inclined to doubt that he’s doing his duty, would your opinion change if he worked deliberately to put himself in that situation?  And isn’t this a closer analogue to sweatshops?  It’s no accident that sweatshops can help the poor by helping themselves, in fact it’s hard work.  The essence of market success, really, is finding ways to make yourself better off by making others better off, and that kind of market success generally takes a lot of hard work and talent to come by.