Note: what I originally intended as a comment on SC's post turned into something that I thought was worth front-paging. But I've turned comments off for this post, so that the discussion can be all in one thread, the one that SC's already started.
Matt:
To which I say: bull.shit.
U.S. corporations are outsourcing this work to places like Bangladesh because they don't want to pay U.S. (or even Chinese, fercryinoutloud) wages, nor do they want to abide by U.S. (or even Chinese) safety standards.
They do this so they can make big piles of money even in the middle of the worst world recession in the past 70 years, and still not have to put people back to work here in America, and in exchange for going along with this, we get to pay a few bucks less for our sneakers and toaster ovens.
It has everything to do with us, and if we let ourselves be bought off that easy, then shame on us.
No, of course we can't tell the government of Bangladesh what to do. And saying it ought to have a government that's not excessively under the sway of its monied interests (when we can't even seem to manage that trick ourselves, alas) is saying that things ought to fix themselves.
But we Americans are, in theory, responsible for the behavior of American corporations. I would hardly expect them to impose, say, the standards of the Americans With Disabilities Act on a Third World factory that their goods are produced at. But they can damned sure make sure that those factories aren't deathtraps.
And here's how I'd propose to enforce it:
If a workplace in Country Y that helps produce goods for Corporation X has a disaster resulting in multiple deaths from one incident, then Corporation X loses its rights to import goods produced in Country Y, in whole or in part, for three years.
If, during those three years, it's found that they have been having stuff worked on in Country Y, then having it further worked on in Country Z and having it imported from there, then they lose their importation rights from Country Z for three years, and the clock is reset back to zero on their three-year import moratorium from Country Y.
I know it's a pipe dream, since we can't even seem to make life difficult for companies like the one that owned that facility in West, Texas that blew up last week, since monied interests have corrupted our government almost as surely as they've done that of Bangladesh, with a big hand from our bought-and-paid-for press (h/t Charles Pierce).
But it's the sort of thing we could and should be doing. Because the Bangladeshi factory worker values his life just as much as Matt Yglesias values his own, but as SC has already said, he's forced by desperation into choices that Matt never will have to face.
There are some choices that no one should ever have to face. And maybe we can't fix that for everyone in the world, but at least we don't have to have a hand in perpetuating that reality, for nothing more than saving a few bucks on sneakers. People, even people on the other side of the world, shouldn't be dying to preserve the American standard of living.
Matt:
what happened in Bangladesh is a tragedy and a human disaster, and to the best of my knowledge it's also quite literally a criminal disaster under the existing laws of Bangladesh. The perpetrators ought to be punished. More broadly: Bangladesh ought to enforce its laws. Even more broadly than that: Bangladesh's citizens deserve honest and uncorrupt government rather than government that's excessively under the sway of the interests of apparel factory owners.Which is the long way of saying: things over there ought to be better than they are, and that ought to just magically happen. We've got no role in making it happen, and if it doesn't happen, it's not our fault.
To which I say: bull.shit.
U.S. corporations are outsourcing this work to places like Bangladesh because they don't want to pay U.S. (or even Chinese, fercryinoutloud) wages, nor do they want to abide by U.S. (or even Chinese) safety standards.
They do this so they can make big piles of money even in the middle of the worst world recession in the past 70 years, and still not have to put people back to work here in America, and in exchange for going along with this, we get to pay a few bucks less for our sneakers and toaster ovens.
It has everything to do with us, and if we let ourselves be bought off that easy, then shame on us.
No, of course we can't tell the government of Bangladesh what to do. And saying it ought to have a government that's not excessively under the sway of its monied interests (when we can't even seem to manage that trick ourselves, alas) is saying that things ought to fix themselves.
But we Americans are, in theory, responsible for the behavior of American corporations. I would hardly expect them to impose, say, the standards of the Americans With Disabilities Act on a Third World factory that their goods are produced at. But they can damned sure make sure that those factories aren't deathtraps.
And here's how I'd propose to enforce it:
If a workplace in Country Y that helps produce goods for Corporation X has a disaster resulting in multiple deaths from one incident, then Corporation X loses its rights to import goods produced in Country Y, in whole or in part, for three years.
If, during those three years, it's found that they have been having stuff worked on in Country Y, then having it further worked on in Country Z and having it imported from there, then they lose their importation rights from Country Z for three years, and the clock is reset back to zero on their three-year import moratorium from Country Y.
I know it's a pipe dream, since we can't even seem to make life difficult for companies like the one that owned that facility in West, Texas that blew up last week, since monied interests have corrupted our government almost as surely as they've done that of Bangladesh, with a big hand from our bought-and-paid-for press (h/t Charles Pierce).
But it's the sort of thing we could and should be doing. Because the Bangladeshi factory worker values his life just as much as Matt Yglesias values his own, but as SC has already said, he's forced by desperation into choices that Matt never will have to face.
There are some choices that no one should ever have to face. And maybe we can't fix that for everyone in the world, but at least we don't have to have a hand in perpetuating that reality, for nothing more than saving a few bucks on sneakers. People, even people on the other side of the world, shouldn't be dying to preserve the American standard of living.
