Truemors
is reporting from
Member
NP Rank:
NP Rank:
Gap factory danger to African children, Capitalism unabridged
Share:
by The_Cynic | August 1, 2009 at 07:32 pm
237 views | 24 Recommendations | 5 comments
Following on from my: Capitalism isn't such a nice thing we have this story.
A factory that makes jeans for Gap and Levi Strauss is illegally dumping chemical waste in a river and two unsecured tips where it poses a hazard to children.
The scandal was uncovered by a Sunday Times investigation into pollution caused by a plant in Lesotho, southern Africa, which supplies denim to the two companies
Now we see that even the most ardent advocate of the capitalist system will have a say about how capitalism promotes wealth - but at what expense?
It does, as we see, give wealth to those who are abjectively poor, the pay for those who work in these factories must be immense - in comparison to living off of an income which is zero.
Yet we see - again, the pursuit of profit is the motivator of the capitalist - and the gigantic companies that Gap and Levi Strauss - plus many more.
The move away from China has begun - American and those of other nations need to the poor to produce - yet those companies do not care who they harm in their incessant pursuit of profit. This is the worst kind of out-sourcing, and yet we ask for a product to be as cheap as possible.
Is human life and human health worth our cheapness?
Seems it is so.
Advertisement
NowPublic on Facebook
What is NowPublic?
NowPublic lets people work together to cover news events around the world.
Most Recommended Stories in World
Recommendations (24)
Rhonda J Mangus
North Tonawanda, New York, United States
Babel-Fish
Negros Oriental, Philippines
Uwe Paschen
Narita, Chiba, Japan
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (5)
at 19:41 on August 1st, 2009
Good posting. Do not Buy name brands!!
at 19:41 on August 1st, 2009
At least it would be a start and help.
at 01:08 on August 2nd, 2009
Anything to make a buck! And unfortunately there are many that see nothing wrong with that . . . .
at 05:31 on August 2nd, 2009
Maybe many forget that the Communist regime in the former Soviet Union produced products for the sake of producing them. Fertilizer comes to mind, which the peasants used to dump in the river, because nobody needed it.
The fact that companies are greedy and consumers look for cheap products is the problem not capitalism. That's why companies like Walmart do well. They were the first with a foot on the ground in China. We ignored for decades what Walmart did to market cheap products.
Would you agree that the countries that allow these companies to exploit their population have to take some of the blame as well? I would suggest that this exploitation happens because the governments that allow those companies in, without decent standards, have to carry some of the burden.
I still maintain a mix of socialism and capitalism is the best balance. Each system on its own exploits populations. Each of those societies will have elites that will ignore the masses.
at 07:08 on August 2nd, 2009
We can go around and around the same may pole, ACP, but what the world knows is that the USSR wasn't a communist country.
Totalitarian, evil even, but not communist.
My highlighting this is to, broadly, agree with you, countries need to take some, if not a lot of the blame. IF this and these actions were not allowed then there would still be a lot more manufacturing jobs in the US etc.
Yet I disagree with you that it isn't capitalisms fault, capitalism has created this market and wants to keep generating the profit from it.