Had a conversation with a Chinese colleague after the huge explosion in Tianjin; they were worried that this sort of thing - industrial accidents, spillages, etc. - was happening in China all the time and they wondered why it didn't happen in the west. Of course these things all happened in western countries in the past - My feeling was that china is going through a hundred and fifty years of growth in a couple of decades. It takes an Aberfan, or a Boston molasses flood, or a Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, to get a country to fix the liability and legal frameworks it needs. And China is going through all those learning events in a much compressed timeframe. Open question whether it's actually learning from these events, too.
But why should they even need to make the mistakes to learn from themselves? The lessons are already there from decades of other countries' disasters and solutions.
Because distance reduces disaster's cost, and in every industry the guys who operate on luck can deliver cheaper and faster than the guys who do it right. One of those groups will kill someone eventually, but until they do they'll out compete everyone.
Everything that can go wrong will go right, and you'll take more risks every time, winning every time, until you experience catastrophic failure.
I know it is cynical, but a part of it also is because it isn't worthwhile for them yet.
If large numbers of people cannot afford to say "I won't work/live there because it is too dangerous", a capitalist doesn't need to work on safety.
That's why, for example, clothes factories can get away with counteracting the "employees may steal stuff" risk by locking down windows and emergency exits or why coal mining companies can ignore all kinds of warnings of upcoming disasters, even if similar warnings have been followed by deadly 'accidents' recently and in the same company.
If someone does take these things into consideration, it will supposedly slow them down and cost them money. There's always someone else who is willing to do the job without these hindrances.
Similarly, one of my children hurt themselves climbing a tree and ended up in hospital. Our other child was taking high risks a week later. My second child said "it won't happen to me".
Because the foreign investors don't want to learn those lessons.
Textile mills moved from places like Lowell, MA and Utica, NY to the south for more docile workers and lower safety standards. They moved to Bangladesh for even cheaper workers and no regulation.
