Firstly, it’s an enormous human tragedy, and I’m not justifying it. I’m trying to understand why the problem seems so widespread.
> "sacrifices are required in order to industrialize."
No, I’m making a different point. I’m not saying it ought to be that way (to industrialize) — only why it’s so naturally, and therefore what changes are needed to improve.
Safety margins in construction, and proper regulation/inspection are “overheads” which can only be paid once you have surplus (economic productivity). In some cases, the extra cost is minimal (just preventing corruption/carelessness in an already sufficient process/design), but in other cases it requires being willing to pay extra “for safety”, so it becomes a question of affordability & access eg: traveling in a well built car rather than an auto rickshaw, or discarding food past the "sell by" date.
To use another example from a sibling comment: a dozen children being crammed into an auto rickshaw on school commutes. Suppose the society starts enforcing a law mandating that no more than 3 humans (incl children) can travel in an auto rickshaw at once. The consequence is that the cost of commute has now increased manifold — does that take it beyond the regime of affordability for some fraction of the population — Will the kids now have to walk/cycle to school instead? What tradeoffs would those kids/families prefer?
So investing in safety requires not just that the business under consideration be profitable, but also that all customers have enough economic productivity which manifests in their willingness to spend larger amounts and demand safety and/or raise the floor forbidding unsafe products.
Reasoning in analogy with a minimum wage — if you raise the level too high, you just rule out a whole bunch of low-surplus economic activity. To make the trade off worthwhile, and not forbid essential economic activity, the wage floor can only be raised in tandem with economic productivity.
Consumer goods at least segment markets with price discrimination, so richer people can buy Eg. larger+safer cars. But they might have to drive on the same roads as everyone else (potholes and all), or use the same cable cars (to borrow an example from a sibling comment), or use the same medication — because "infrastructure" that needs to serve a larger population can only match the average (cumulative, in some cases) productivity. It’s an example where inequality hurts — however rich a single consumer might be, they only have access to are what the rest of the market is willing to buy (made viable with economies of scale).
Finally, what I'm trying to point out is that these are not "sacrifices in order to grow" (i.e. investments) to some rosy future -- these are tradeoffs necessary for functioning today. Growth is a separate story -- if and when it does happen, the prosperity helps bootstrap the system into safer operating modes, for which we may be thankful.
> "sacrifices are required in order to industrialize."
No, I’m making a different point. I’m not saying it ought to be that way (to industrialize) — only why it’s so naturally, and therefore what changes are needed to improve.
Safety margins in construction, and proper regulation/inspection are “overheads” which can only be paid once you have surplus (economic productivity). In some cases, the extra cost is minimal (just preventing corruption/carelessness in an already sufficient process/design), but in other cases it requires being willing to pay extra “for safety”, so it becomes a question of affordability & access eg: traveling in a well built car rather than an auto rickshaw, or discarding food past the "sell by" date.
To use another example from a sibling comment: a dozen children being crammed into an auto rickshaw on school commutes. Suppose the society starts enforcing a law mandating that no more than 3 humans (incl children) can travel in an auto rickshaw at once. The consequence is that the cost of commute has now increased manifold — does that take it beyond the regime of affordability for some fraction of the population — Will the kids now have to walk/cycle to school instead? What tradeoffs would those kids/families prefer?
So investing in safety requires not just that the business under consideration be profitable, but also that all customers have enough economic productivity which manifests in their willingness to spend larger amounts and demand safety and/or raise the floor forbidding unsafe products.
Reasoning in analogy with a minimum wage — if you raise the level too high, you just rule out a whole bunch of low-surplus economic activity. To make the trade off worthwhile, and not forbid essential economic activity, the wage floor can only be raised in tandem with economic productivity.
Consumer goods at least segment markets with price discrimination, so richer people can buy Eg. larger+safer cars. But they might have to drive on the same roads as everyone else (potholes and all), or use the same cable cars (to borrow an example from a sibling comment), or use the same medication — because "infrastructure" that needs to serve a larger population can only match the average (cumulative, in some cases) productivity. It’s an example where inequality hurts — however rich a single consumer might be, they only have access to are what the rest of the market is willing to buy (made viable with economies of scale).
Finally, what I'm trying to point out is that these are not "sacrifices in order to grow" (i.e. investments) to some rosy future -- these are tradeoffs necessary for functioning today. Growth is a separate story -- if and when it does happen, the prosperity helps bootstrap the system into safer operating modes, for which we may be thankful.