But these recent stories should make all Americans have second thoughts. Over the past year we have seen:
- Twenty nine workers killed in the worst mine accident in U.S. history
- Billions of dollars evaporated because of high-risk financial ventures on Wall Street
- Eleven workers killed in the British Petroleum oil rig explosion.
- Apple has outsourced manufacturing of the iPhone to a plant in China that has seen nine worker suicides this year.
In all of these cases, the main problem was lack of government regulation. Massey Energy mines were infamous for their violations and owner Don Blakenship, had utter contempt for the federal government. Massey Energy racked up a total of 250 safety violations.
Wall Street created financial terms that were so risky and complicated that few people understood them. One of the monsters they cooked up were derivatives, where bankers took out insurance on people to default on loans they gave them.
And as for the BP explosion, under the Bush administration, the Mineral Management Service, was stocked with cronies who were trying to get jobs at the very companies they were supposed to be monitoring. And when they weren't lobbying for cushy government gigs, they were looking at porn or doing drugs.
So what can we learn from these debacles? One, corporations don't give a damn about their workers, and two, when the government lets corporations monitor themselves, workers die. Ideally, corporations would love to have slave labor, who they don't have to pay and who never complain. The closest we have got to that is illegal immigrants.
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