In Capitalism, Exploitation, and Globalization, Tom G. Palmer, of the Cato Institute, gives his response to an anti-globalist challenge:
Here’s the challenge: 1) Capitalism requires the existence of poverty to function. Without a poor underclass to exploit, the wealth that capitalists brag about cannot be created. Globalization is all about finding new pockets of poor people to take advantage of. If poor people ceased to exist, it would be the end of capitalism as we know it.Here’s my response: Let’s assume for the sake of argument that it’s true that the wealth of some requires a poor underclass to exploit. If “Globalization is all about finding new pockets of poor people to take advantage of,” then it would be because the previously exploited poor underclasses were no longer available to be taken advantage of. Otherwise, why seek out new ones? If that were true, it would be either because the previously exploited poor had died out, or because they had ceased being poor. Since we know that the former is not true, it must be the latter. And if such a system entailed that the exploitation of poor people resulted in their no longer being poor, in what sense were they exploited?
But the claim (“Without a poor underclass to exploit, the wealth that capitalists brag about cannot be created”) is not true. [...] The argument that voluntary exchange is exploitative has several loose threads which, when pulled, unravel the whole thing.