Tyrannical China turning to capitalism leads to mass deaths?

[Thorgrim]

July 16, 2007 issue - Wang Hai's phone won't stop buzzing. Everyone in China seems to want urgent help from the country's No. 1 consumer-rights advocate. He helps not only ordinary buyers of defective goods but whistle-blowers who risk their lives by outing unscrupulous firms. "A good system for guaranteeing quality control simply doesn't exist in China," says Wang, who has spent more than 10 years trying to clean up the Chinese marketplace. "Even confidential informants can wind up dead, under suspicious circumstances. I personally know of two."

Americans may suppose they have worries about Chinese products these days: killer pet food, antifreeze-laced toothpaste, lead-painted toy trains, unsafe tires, seafood contaminated with unapproved drugs and additives—the list keeps growing. Authorities in Panama announced recently that at least 93 people have died there since July 2006 from cough syrup containing Chinese-made diethylene glycol. But last week Chinese authorities pointed out that only 1 percent of foodstuff exported to the West failed to meet quality standards. By contrast, nearly 20 percent of domestically sold goods flunked. What the world should really be concerned about, says Asian Development Bank (ADB) economist Chris Spohr, "are the implications for food and product safety in [China] itself." Until attitudes change in China—among regulators, manufacturers and consumers alike—goods produced there will continue to be suspect everywhere.

Activists like Wang are badly outnumbered. Entrepreneurs across China are cashing in on murky regulation, rampant corruption and consumer ignorance. "The regime is particularly weak at regulating a cutthroat market economy with millions of private enterprises," says Wenran Jiang, a Sinologist at the University of Alberta. It's not unlike America in the age of the robber barons, more than a century ago. In 1906, ordinary Americans' outrage over unsafe medicines and foodstuffs—and books like Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," with its horrific portrait of Chicago's meatpacking industry—led to passage of the landmark Pure Food and Drug Act. Right now, though, most Chinese are busy earning a living.

And they're paying the price. At least 300 million Chinese are affected by food-borne illness every year, according to a recent report by the ADB and the World Health Organization, and mass poisonings by adulterated and mislabeled products recur constantly. Unsafe infant formula killed at least 50 babies three years ago and left 200 others severely malnourished, according to local media. The ADB/WHO report adds: "Despite stepped-up measures, a string of similar infant formula problems emerged in February 2006, indicating that systemic issues remain unresolved."

Chinese writer Zhou Qing has even produced a book that evokes "The Jungle." His "What Kind of God," a 2006 finalist for the Lettre Ulysses Award, tells of monstrous abuses: soy sauce bulked up with arsenic-tainted human hair; hormone-infused snack foods that grow facial hair on 6-year-old boys and breasts on 7-year-old girls; dangerous drugs fed to pigs to make their meat look better. Zhou's book concludes: "While cracking down on the immediate perpetrators of food-safety incidents, it's even more critical that we crack down on the officials who bear responsibility."

For Profit's Sake, China's People Get Poisoned - Newsweek Health - MSNBC.com

This is the side of the free market that needs to be acknowledged...when little to no rules are in place, people are bribed, witnesses are killed, the truth is "bought out", millions are hurt or killed, and tons of horrible anecdotal stories

I'd just like people to realize that much like Communism sounded great on paper, but in reality turned into something much different...Free Market worship would be the same, it'd be a mix of the robber barons of the 19th century and feudal Europe...the worst of both of those worlds

[Stylerod]

Lack of good regulation, evil people selling bad products and having an ENORMOUS population seem to be the problem here.

[Thorgrim]

Originally Posted by Stylerod

Lack of good regulation, evil people selling bad products and having an ENORMOUS population seem to be the problem here.

regulation is always bad I thought?

what about people who sell cancer sticks without warning labels to kids? all those people were evil americans?

[Stylerod]

Originally Posted by Thorgrim

regulation is always bad I thought?

what about people who sell cancer sticks without warning labels to kids? all those people were evil americans?

Their are regulations on cigarettes. You have to be over 18 to smoke. I'm not against that. What makes you think I am?

[Thorgrim]

Originally Posted by Stylerod

Their are regulations on cigarettes. You have to be over 18 to smoke. I'm not against that. What makes you think I am?

I'm talking about the past when there were no labels and no age restrictions

[Ardentfrost]

If a 3 year old wants to smoke and work in a coal mine, that's his business.


bahahah, j/k, it's the parents.

[Stylerod]

Originally Posted by Thorgrim

I'm talking about the past when there were no labels and no age restrictions

So you thought I was against Regulations 40 years ago before age restrictions and labels? Say what?

[Thorgrim]

Originally Posted by Stylerod

So you thought I was against Regulations 40 years ago before age restrictions and labels? Say what?

No, the post was not aimed at you, it was aimed at the point...you are trying to say there are these evil people who don't have "good regulation" selling unhealthy products

Sounds like Ralph Nader complaining about Ronald Reagan's administration, I'm just saying I don't think it's that simple because we had the same thing here in America...in many ways we still do (American Spinach that caused illness, meat that caused death, workers fighting corporations for health benefits after taking in near-lethal doses of abestos when they were told it was perfectly safe)

[David Octavius]

I think most reasonable people would concede that Laissez Faire capitalism does not work from the perspective of a healthy and reasonably fair society - and that is where the bar should be set, how it affects the people as humans, not how efficient the system is or how much money and innovation it can bring but how it affect human beings.

However capitalism is still the best system in comparison to socialism and communism in that it gives us the most freedom to own ourselves to gain prosperity and greater liberty.

But of course no system is perfect, regulation is needed where capitalism is illegitimate (in that it takes away from the people and society) AND where the society is incompetent to handle it efficiently itself.