Umm for the most part it seems like your logic is pretty sound. I dunno, if you're sure about the integrity of the company and all that and it's important to you, I say go for it. But what you were saying about having to spend less on another product is also very true, it mostly just comes down to is if the amount you think it will actually help is worth paying X amount extra.
I dunno if i answered your question, so I'll wax on about the topic a little bit more. I am personally not against child labor if it is voluntary, in that no one is threatening them with violence to work for them, they're not slaves. But if the fact that they have to work in order to sustain themselves and possibly their families is a factor of poverty, then I think there are worse consequences if you take away a source of income from an impoverished family. That income could mean their starvation, which I personally would regard as more torturous than working in a factory or what have you. That's not to say at all that I'm against people paying more than the bare minimum or donating money or going to help these children, I just think it's crap to say that earning an income and supporting yourself is worse than starvation. But think about it, the first factories built in industrialized society were shit, probably worse than the ones in these poor countries because of the technology, but you can't just all of a sudden put up a Japan or a Germany or whatever other modernized economy. The capital investment needs to start from the ground up, and the solution to the problem is as close to completely unfettered trade as is politically possible so that countries can get access to the wonderful technology around the world. So by that token, the ideologue in me says you should use the difference in price to support organizations that support global free trade. But make sure it's actual free trade, for a true free trade policy is just two words: free trade.
freetradefreetradefreetrade
