658. Who Is Really Responsible For Killing The Workers In Bangladesh?

658.  Who Is Really Responsible For Killing The Workers In Bangladesh?

The tragedy in Bangladesh is once more revealing the cruel truth about capitalism.   

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22296645

How many more victims are going to die, before people learn to attribute deaths elsewhere to the western habits of careless and unreflected consumption?  

It is easy to blame the collapse of a building upon those responsible for the illegal construction and neglect of safety.   

The real culprits are here, between us, in all the rich countries.   
 

The wholesale merchants and the managers of the big chains of markets and stores are the real murderers, they are murderer by proxy.    They use their economic power to dictate the low prices paid for the production in Bangladesh and other poor countries.   Those who there attempt to cope by disregarding building regulations and the basic human rights and needs of the workers act themselves under pressure, they are the hired killers.  They kill others to avoid perishing themselves, even when they add own greed to aggravate the workers plight.

 
When workers are not directly killed as has happened now, those dictating the prices are at least armed robbers.   They use the weapon of giving the choice of fast starvation by not having any job at all, unless they submit to be slowly destroyed by harsh and unhealthy underpaid work.

If I buy a t-shirt for 5 €, I know that it has been produced by someone suffering in misery.   But if I would pay 50 € instead for a luxury t-shirt in a fashion shop, this t-shirt would have been produced by the same exploited people in the same misery.   The additional price would add to  the profit of the shop owners or of the shareholders, it would not reach the workers.   

There are some organizations attempting to bring fair trade products upon the market.   But these products are difficult to find.    Shop managers and retailers also have power.  While those, who dictate the prices to the producers, are the primary culprits, those who decide to sell products from exploitations instead of fair trade products, are accomplices to murder and robbery.  


These culprits do not allow a choice to the consumers.   What happened in Bangladesh recently, is only an extreme example, much of what else is consumed, is also produced by killing, damaging and harming people.  Only exceptionally extreme events make it into the media.  Often it is impossible to know the truth about how much suffering was caused by the production of other goods.    

If I wanted to live without harming and exploiting anybody anywhere, I would starve and freeze to death, because there would be nothing to buy.   The entire global capitalistic system functions because of the differences between the economic power of rich and of poor countries.   


Most of these culprits do not even have a bad conscience, and they do not feel responsible.   First they offer consumers no alternative and thus they can correctly point out, that the consumers profit from their success in enforcing low prices.  Instead of feeling guilty as murderers and robbers, they feel as the consumers' benefactors.   

Therefore I have no hope, that they ever renounce the ruthless exploitation, as long as they can remain in denial and let others do the dirty work for them.  


The best remedy could be some kind of legislation, making the import of goods illegal, if they have been produced by the violation of basic human rights.    But to press politicians towards any such initiative would first need a shift in the focus and targets of pressure groups.  
Right now, those groups fighting for nature, for animals, for ecology, are much stronger and much more active than groups fighting for an improvement of the situation of exploited humans.    

Whenever the plight of suffering people in poor countries is noticed and recognized, it is wrongly considered as a need for charity by those, who are underdeveloped and incompetent and have brought the plight upon themselves.
   
It is an outrage and it is preposterous at the same time.   People exploit workers in Bangladesh by stealing the result of their hard labor from them and by thus driving them into dire undeserved misery,  Then the same exploiters condescend to relief a fraction of this misery by deeds of charity to allegedly inferior and unable savages.    

What they call charity is in reality nothing better than the restitution of a tiny fraction of what has been stolen.