When western countries moved their manufacturing to China and other developing countries they also shipped their pollution over there, which is one of the reasons it is so much cheaper. But we are all living on one single planet. That is why free trade agreements aren't really free, they should include western environmental standards as well as labor standards. Of course that will never happen since giant corporations are the ones that really write our laws. At the current rate we won't be leaving much resources for our grandchildren.
I think we should be very conscious of our material privileges as rich westerners before we start demanding that people in third world countries live up to the same safety and environmental standards that we hold ourselves to. $1000 in safety equipment isn't a big deal in the US, but it could be more than a third world-worker makes in entire year.
And if you complain that the problem is that we aren't paying third world worker enough, that's because they don't have enough capital to be as productive as workers in developed nations. You would need a really massive transfer of wealth from the developed world to the third world for their adopting western labor standards to not result in mass starvation. Safety conditions in third world factories might be bad, but third world farms are actually much more dangerous.
All of this isn't to say that the specific behavior in the article is acceptable, it's obviously going beyond the pale and ought to be stopped. It's just that your proposed solution is entirely unworkable.
>$1000 in safety equipment isn't a big deal in the US, but it could be more than a third world-worker makes in entire year.
We're not talking $1 a day subsistance farmer when we talk free trade agreements. We're talking about the standards billion dollar multinational companies must comply with to do business between countries. Indeed, $1000 in safety equipment means almost nothing to these companies, but they'll only do it if we force them to. Our efficient free market system favors those that can reduce their costs of operations to the minimum level possible. If we don't make the rules of the playing field encompass these standards, everyone will be beholden to the guy that meets only the bare minimums, because he can sell his stuff the cheapest.
> We're not talking $1 a day subsistance farmer when we talk free trade agreements.
Yes, you are.
He is part of the same local economy and by placing a cost on those higher up the chain, you will affect him just as much.
> Indeed, $1000 in safety equipment means almost nothing to these companies, but they'll only do it if we force them to.
If that was the case, they wouldn't have out-sourced the manufacturing to begin with. They wouldn't be buying expensive robots to replace that minimal-cost labor as we speak. Every penny counts.
> Our efficient free market system favors those that can reduce their costs of operations to the minimum level possible.
This is true, but to a point.
> If we don't make the rules of the playing field encompass these standards, everyone will be beholden to the guy that meets only the bare minimums, because he can sell his stuff the cheapest.
Frequently, consumers take many other factors into a purchase decision. Not just the price. If I know that a product was manufactured in a responsible manner, I'm willing to pay more for it.
If this wasn't the case, the organic movement wouldn't exist. Neither would the local-food movement.
People are willing to pay for higher quality goods and even identical goods that were manufactured in a more responsible manner.
Why would you insist that those workers who happen to be working in jobs associated with export be treated differently than those workers who don't? If a worker spends all day in a Nike factory, or if we succeed in getting that factory shut down for not complying with our ideals of safe operation and he goes back to work on the farm then it's tempting to say that their poverty in the first case was our fault but not in the second. But really, it's just as much our responsibility in the second case as in the first. If we really find their poverty intolerable we should do our best to fix that via foreign aid, rather than demand all the responsibility for dealing with situation fall on the only party which is already help, but giving the worker a job which is marginally better than was otherwise available.
When I worked in procurement at <large engineering corp> I was really happy that we ran QA and H&S checks on all suppliers, but environmental standards literally weren't a factor in deciding whose bid to go with. Wasn't encouraging. I think the QA and H&S checks were a legal requirement, I am certain that your proposal for environmental standards to be upheld would do much to alleviate the problem.
The whole global economics is currently based on shifting inconveniences around to other countries. Cheaper countries are simply countries that are not charging the social/environmental cost. That, in turn, favors corrupt governments.
That's why BRIC will never have true democracies or truly good HDI. If people in these countries make money and consume in the same level of Europe and US, there won't be cheap workers and corrupt governments to turn the economy wheel.
