The Bangladesh Catastrophe and International Supply Chains

For instance, there’s a difference between using 9/11 to talk about “blowback” and imperialism and saying that the 9/11 victims were literally responsible for their own murder. That they “chose” it.

As b9n10nt points out, you seem to be attacking Matthew Yglesias for holding a position he has explicitly rejected, i.e. that what happened in Bangladesh was an unfortunate consequence of defensible institutions. (I don’t know if you intend to.)

Now no one will hear what you’re saying about Bangladesh or lazy intellectual heuristics. There’s that annoying that once Yglesias is mentioned, no one hears or talks about anything else. (See what I’m writing now!)

Bangladesh’s citizens deserve honest and uncorrupt government rather than government that’s excessively under the sway of the interests of apparel factory owners.

Do Bangladesh’s citizens deserve things – rights, safety standards – that are different from what American citizens deserve?

As I said in a Bloggingheads with Conor Friedersdorf, there is no sense in trying to remove Yglesias’s comments on that issue from his general comportment, which is a deliberately provoking callousness designed in part to inflame traditional liberal sensibilities and in so doing achieve Slate’s existential mandate. Yglesias constantly says shitty, callous things. This time, he picked a particularly inapt example. That lack of tact isn’t the reason that his post was wrong; it was wrong for the reasons laid out by Beyerstein. But it is the reason why I don’t extend to him the benefit of the doubt Michael Collins advocates for here. Why would I extend the benefit of the doubt to someone who makes a living trying to tweak people? When you’re constantly being provocative, eventually, people are provoked, and you deserve the consequences of that. That’s adult life.

Henry: Comparative advantage didn’t really have anything to do with the argument Matt was making. His argument was merely that people in different situations value risk differently, and therefore it’s appropriate that laws vary to accommodate those differences of opinion. If Bangladesh was an autarky, the argument would be equally valid. Matt’s post didn’t really mention trade at all.

“As I said in a Bloggingheads with Conor Friedersdorf, there is no sense in trying to remove Yglesias’s comments on that issue from his general comportment, which is a deliberately provoking callousness designed in part to inflame traditional liberal sensibilities and in so doing achieve Slate’s existential mandate. Yglesias constantly says shitty, callous things. This time, he picked a particularly inapt example. That lack of tact isn’t the reason that his post was wrong; it was wrong for the reasons laid out by Beyerstein. But it is the reason why I don’t extend to him the benefit of the doubt Michael Collins advocates for here. Why would I extend the benefit of the doubt to someone who makes a living trying to tweak people? When you’re constantly being provocative, eventually, people are provoked, and you deserve the consequences of that. That’s adult life.”

This is a fantastic summary of the situation. MY was looking for a reaction and then, when he got it, feigned surprise that anyone could be offended.

Freddie: Absolutely on point. If his response had been genuine remorse I’d feel differently. Instead, he claimed that his reaction was annoyance at being misinterpreted. Really? In his initial column he

Showed a picture of dead people being hauled away from a tragedy
Used it as a springboard to advocating weaker safety standards for countries like theirs.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this is a very, very dangerous combination. Now add in “didn’t even research basic facts about how they died” and you’re left with two possibilities: sociopath or provocateur. Neither is a happy place to be, and the latter is actually more charitable to him as a person. Sadly.

“There’s variation of course, but a decent bit of academic literature (he mentions some of it) has both shown this and shown that many national governments in developing countries don’t care all that much about worker protections. They are corrupt and/or have other priorities. Foreign capital isn’t really “forcing” them to do anything… local capital is oppressive all by itself. The owner of this particular building in Dhaka was, indeed, a local politician. My finger isn’t exactly on the pulse of the local situation, but from news reports it seems like the Dhaka protests have been directed at local officials, not multinationals.”

It’s very true that local capital can be just as oppressive-or more so-than multinationals. My impression of the protests is similar to yours. To be frank, I don’t think that many people would really deny this, but would only add that MNC’s are also part of the problem.

“So I return to the most simple question: what would increase the power of local labor enough for them to exert greater control over their social environment? So far, since this tragedy has occurred I haven’t heard any single thing that would do it as quickly as we’d all like.”

I don’t really know what specific measures could be taken. However, I think that strengthening the role of labor unions, and encouraging more organizing might be a good start. Also an anti-corruption drive of some kind seems essential to this case, given that Bangladesh’s own laws weren’t being followed. I don’t think this can really be done quickly. I disagree with prasad about many things (though his latest post makes me realize he’s more reasonable than I had estimated), but I don’t disagree that this process will take time. In fact, it might take decades to really sort out the problems here.

So I return to the most simple question: what would increase the power of local labor enough for them to exert greater control over their social environment? So far, since this tragedy has occurred I haven’t heard any single thing that would do it as quickly as we’d all like.

As recently as a couple of months ago, Bangladesh had significant legal barriers to the establishment of effective trade unions. Bangladesh is still promoting all the factory space available in Export Processing Zones, where trade unions are legally forbidden.

Eliminate restrictions on union membership and end reporting requirements that allow factory owners to easily identify and retaliate against union organizers. It’s not a matter of the government needing to do more to empower unions, more like do less to hobble them. Which of course parallels the history of unionization in the West.

@16 and @18

Agreed, but recall that my premise was that the domestic government is corrupt or uncaring. Pointing out particular ways in which the domestic government is corrupt or uncaring is useful in terms of locating the particulars of the problem, but not in terms of altering the underlying dynamic.

Which gets to what @16 says. MNCs may be part of the problem. They may be a bigger part of the solution, however, not by “corporate social responsibility” but simply by altering the distribution of power. The entrance of foreign capital reduces the power of local capital by reducing the reliance of the domestic government on the support of local capital. If Locke is correct that national governments have a great deal of ability to “impose their will” on foreign investors, and a good bit of research suggests that he is, then a solution would seemingly begin with the entrance of foreign capital. MNCs provide national governments with “room to move”, as Layna Mosley put it, and gives labor outside options and thus bargaining power in the market and the government.

The first link provided by @18 suggests that this process may already be underway in increments. Bangladesh is democratic, at least for now, and it has been growing pretty quickly; if those gains can be consolidated and extended then the situation has a better chance of being improved than if we all boycott Nike (say).

Henry @ 11:

And those were two perfectly great blog posts. I just don’t see much daylight between Yglesias’ and your own positions.

Regarding any specific regulation of a workplace, Yglesias says “there’s nonetheless sometimes a decent case for labor market regulation. But you have to make the case! ” 7/6/12

And you echo this: “Partial indeterminacy doesn’t say that we get rid of regulation altogether; it suggests that (a) one wants to think carefully about the tradeoffs and possible abuses, as best as one can given limited information, before introducing regulations, and (b) to be very willing to incorporate feedback ex post and to alter or abandon regulations that aren’t working.” 7/13/12

Yglesias’ “make the specific case” is coming from a skepticism to his left that workplace regulation is a progressive tool. It’s simply insufficient for what we need to accomplish.

And your “make the case” is coming from an understanding to your right that the case for free labor market’s is hopelessly tied up in unrealistic abstractions.

And now, you both agree that using the Bangladesh tragedy to point out that poor and rich nations may rightly pursue different strategies to optimize social welfare was tactless. Here we have an opportunity to speak out against injustice and all Yglesias offers is…wealthier nations might, in some (“make the case!”) situations, rightly want to pursue more workplace regulation than poorer ones.

So the argument is rather minute, and yet it interests me. I think the argument is about the politics of sympathy. To what extent does tact matter, as a public intellectual. Can we say, “the labor movement is defunct, and not a very likely means of further social progress?’ Haven’t we just shown a gross insensitivity to all those who have suffered and fought for the labor movement. When are we allowed to ignore some need to publicly perform an Emotional Response and demonstrate our Goodness before we give our analysis?

Regarding the local Bangladeshi responsibility vs multi-national corps, Matt #18 up there hints at it — such special economic zones’ environments are union-free, tax-free, regulation-free and all the rest of the neoliberal capitalist hardons for the benefit of, and at the behest of, Western MNCs. The local scene complies because they’ve been persuaded that it’s the only way to get by. But they’ve basically got a gun to their heads and the MNCs are saying ease up on the rules and the wages we don’t like or else. The protests and arrest locally in Bangladesh prove nothing to the contrary IMO.

@22: The goal of writing opinion pieces is, presumably, to persuade. At minimum you want people to pay attention to your argument. If you’re deliberately offensive they are unlikely to do this. If your piece is sloppy and misinformed, why should we dig around to see whether there is anything of value to dig out? We’re not hunting for mercy scoring points in a freshman essay, are we?

If you have to rely on someone’s general comportment to show what’s wrong with specific statements they make, you’re failing. You’re failing at addressing the problem of their comportment, if there is a problem there, because you’re talking about something other than it, and you’re failing at showing what is wrong with the statements, because someone’s general comportment is irrelevant to whether there is something wrong with a specific statement they make. Clearly, people we don’t like, even who have done bad things in the past, can make correct statements that there is nothing wrong with. If you have a problem with that possibility, it is your problem, not theirs. It still doesn’t get the job of showing they’ve said something that is wrong (again) done to simply say that they’ve said things that were wrong before and that you don’t like them.

…As to Beyerstein showing why some things that a person might think about labor standards in Bangladesh are wrong, yes she absolutely does do that. None of them happen to be things that Yglesias wrote about those topics, but yes, she does knock down a number of ideas that a person would be mistaken to hold.

“As it has everywhere else it has ever happened.” And unions, threats of violence and the need for the state to persuade workers that they had a stake worth defending from the state next door had nothing to do with it. Nothing at all. Nothing to see here. Move along please.

“And unions, threats of violence and the need for the state to persuade workers that they had a stake worth defending from the state next door had nothing to do with it. Nothing at all. Nothing to see here. Move along please.”

Excellent, more than one possible cause then. Anyone care to try to ascribe how much to which? My example would be China where manufacturing wages have risen some 6 x in the past 15 years or so. Not hugely convinced that legislation or unions have had much to do with that.

Your example is?

I think tone and comportment have a great deal to do with what’s wrong in Yglesias’s post (a fairly gung-ho post that begins with pictures of dead people is either clueless re framing or deliberately seeking to provoke. ) But if you get beyond tone, you do have to start with context, where the immediate context for his post is that he was replying to a pretty boneheaded (I think) policy prescription from someone else.

China is an interesting case because clearly wages have risen without the need for unions, riots or any other passive or non-passive form of activism

Clearly? China has a *lot* of riots. Also, strikes. You need to read Jamie Kenny’s blog.

“Freddie, is it your position that Bangladesh should adopt the regulations we have in the U.S? That would be disagreeing with Yglesias.”

No. One might say that Bangladesh should adopt its own regulations for any one of a number of reasons — national self-determination, for example. Yglesias’ post is factually wrong whether you agree with that policy outcome or not.

For instance:
1. People in Bangladesh are not “making choices on the risk-reward spectrum”, neither individually nor communally. A privileged group of rich people is making the choices on everyone else’s behalf, and “people in Bangaladesh” can only obtain a partial ability to make individual or communal choices after a lot of labor agitation.

2. “Safety rules that are appropriate for the United States” would *not* be “unnecessarily immiserating in much poorer Bangladesh.” In fact, basic safety rules don’t cost that much compared to the cost of labor, and if the costs were borne by foreign buyers, they would not be borne by people in Bangladesh.

3. Garment jobs are not “unusually dangerous” in the same way that “fishing, logging, and trucking” are. There is no good reason why anyone should have to be paid a risk premium for sewing, even if that was actually what was going on, which it isn’t.

4. Ygleasias elides any discussion of the difference between safety rules and wages. There is good reason to think that if Bangladeshis were paid a much higher wage, foreign business would stop buying from them — what to do about this is a matter for a different discussion. There is no good reason to think that better safety rules or enforcement would change Bangladesh’s overall status as the cheapest global labor pool for this industry.

The claims about China @34 and @35 are stunning in their sweeping generalizations that actually run counter to the available evidence. It appears that Matt Yglesias is not the only one who has relies on simple formulas to reach conclusions about matters on which he knows nothing. There is a very active workers movement inside China, with a remarkable number of strikes and collective actions that seem to grow year by year. China Labour Bulletin, founded and led by the leader of the independent unions at the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, has a wealth of information at its web site, http://www.clb.org, including this useful overview of the Chinese workers movement from 2100 on: http://www.clb.org.hk/en/sites/default/files/File/research_reports/Decade%20of%20the%20Workers%20Movement%20final_0.pdf

There is an entire web site dedicated to reporting on Chinese worker strikes and collective actions: https://chinastrikes.crowdmap.com/

If you want to have a discussion of Chinese economic development, by all means do so, but please start by getting the most basic information, easily findable with a google search, right.

The twitter exchanges from Paul’s post are quite revealing to me, though not in the way they are to him. Everyone of any political persuasion understands that at time t there are monetary tradeoffs involving safety and other goods. Everyone who’s thought more about policy than “human lives are priceless” at any rate. But the observation becomes politically or rhetorically suspect diachronically, and taboo combined with the knowledge that different places aren’t equally rich. And yet the tradeoff itself can’t be wished away by ignoring it in either of the latter cases.

Paul: “…as if labor laws or collective bargaining were part of some overarching plan, rather than an equalizing tension at best or the cause of worker deaths (Haymarket 1886, Centralia 1919, Triangle Shirtwaist 1911, Bangladesh 2013) either in conflicts or on the job. ”

And as I’ve pointed out, every single one of these was fought against using the exact same arguments that Matt used (‘can’t afford it’, ‘economically inefficient’, ‘workers chose the risk/rewards’).

I had made a comment before that Matt could simply search old newspaper and magazine editorials and do a search/replace to bring the specifics up to date.

This is an ungated version of a paper which was published (online, in early view) today by International Studies Quarterly. The gist as it applies to this discussion: if the central tendency of the cross-national sample holds, improving labor protections in Bangladesh would exacerbate inequality.

http://people.duke.edu/~ew41/Research_files/ChristensenWibbels_ForWeb.pdf

But if you get beyond tone, you do have to start with context, where the immediate context for his post is that he was replying to a pretty boneheaded (I think) policy prescription from someone else.

The context makes it worse. Yglesias was arguing against the idea of requiring everything consumed in America to follow U.S. labor standards. There are arguments against that idea, but a particularly terrible one is “there are very good reasons for Bangladeshi people to make different choices in this regard than Americans”, because current Bangladeshi standards aren’t necessarily “chosen” by Bangladeshis. What evidence does he have that Bangladeshis wouldn’t prefer that their factories making goods for America comply with American labor safety standards?

It doesn’t solve the problem to later admit that the current incident was not the result of Bangladeshi choice, because the core of his argument against Loomis’s proposal was that it would override Bangladeshi choice. If the current system isn’t respecting Bangladeshi choice either, Yglesias’s argument against Loomis’s doesn’t work.

– Jeez, I didn’t introduce that twitter exchange. Given exchange, I saw it as symptomatic a of certain desire to not debate the argument at all and taboo it. I also pointed to a BH discussion in my next, if that strikes you as less guy-with-a-sign.

– We’ll simply have to disagree on whether making a (fairly routine) argument on the acceptability of non-uniform standards – something Krugman and Jeff Sachs have come out for in the past – is usefully compared to flat-earth. Also, there’s some gap at least conceptually between bad and wicked arguments – you’d merely laugh at a flat earther. I’m identifying the tendency to see the argument as wicked and depraved etc – something no morally decent human could believe.

…But I nowhere said that Beyerstein or others don’t disagree with Yglesias about a number of these questions. I merely said that none of the things that Beyerstein successfully shows are wrong things to think are things that Yglesias wrote.

“We’ll simply have to disagree on whether making a (fairly routine) argument on the acceptability of non-uniform standards”

No, actually we won’t. Up at comment #40, I listed four things that were wrong with Yglesias’ post. I quoted from that post. None of those four have to do with the acceptability of non-uniform standards.

Since you seem to introduce a different common Internet argument trope with each comment, this one is the two-step of terrific triviality. First, right after a plane crash, someone says that frankly we just have accept planes crashing when they go over the edge of the world sometimes. Then after the storm of mockery and disdain you say “But he was only saying that world isn’t a perfect sphere, and everyone accepts that. He just made a routine argument about the non-total-uniformity of the Earth.”

Just throwing this out there because I think it fits with the discussion. In 2007 there was a New York Times report about manhole covers being made in India in foundries by bare footed workers. In my blog post (written back then) objecting to the whole affair, neoliberal economist DeLong commented:

So if you prohibit trade and shut down the foundry, have you done its workers a favor?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/26/nyregion/26manhole.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&

“The drawing of the line between ‘crime’ and ‘legitimate tactic of collective bargaining’ happened later, and it happened through struggle: the workers pushed, the owners pushed back, and when the music stopped the frontier of legality had moved over a couple of notches, with one or two more forms of action added to the list of non-criminal tactics.”

This is my earlier point – not a single one of the standards that the developed world was obtained other than despite the (basically identical) arguments deployed by Matt.

And Brad.

And Tim.

And Prasad.

And every other one of the clone army.

Rich, there’s one issue of whether the U.S (or other countries) should impose standards on Bangladesh. And then there’s a separate question of what laws are good for Bangladesh. Yglesias is indicating that if he were in their parliament and someone proposed a law setting standards as high as they currently are in the U.S, he would vote against it because such standards are inappropriate for a country as poor as Bangladesh. Based on point 2, you would disagree with him on that point. It wasn’t clear whether that was a hypothetical objection you raised as a possibility or your actual position, but the latter seemed most likely. Most responses to Yglesias I’ve read don’t focus on the small costs of safety regulations or the incidence of marginally higher prices on Bengali textiles, but would it be correct to say that is your primary objection?

Barry, that argument would work if Yglesias was taking a laissez-faire position. But his explicit argument is much closer to one would that justify any legal regime based on the fact that people chose it.

The numbered points in #40 are my actual opinions. The bit about national self-determination as a reason why someone might agree that the U.S. should not set standards for Bangladesh, and still disagree with everything that Yglesias wrote, was a hypothetical objection.

I wouldn’t characterize #2 as my core objection. Safety costs could hypothetically be quite high, and they’d have to be exceptionally high to push Bangladesh out of the lowest-cost labor position it currently occupies. And point 1 and 3 are more about why Yglesias’ premises and reasoning are wrong, not even necessarily about this particular case.

Rich @ 40:

Items 1 through 4 aren’t simple facts. They are fact-based interpretations.

#1) Citizens of Bangladesh have chosen to react to the tragedy, and may yet choose to riot, etc… for greater workplace safety. The concept of choice isn’t a “fact” that can be observed the way a sunflower can. Reasonable minds can differ as what choice entails. Not that you’re interpretation is “wrong”, it’s just not a fact.

#2) Safety rules may not ultimately add marginal cost to production, but you yourself would (IIRC) observe that rioting may be a necessary precondition to the adoption of such rules. In other words, the rules’ codification could be a cost borne by some of the most marginalized workers in the world.

#3) Your statement is that worker’s shouldn’t have to bear a cost for worker safety rules. First of all, “shouldn’t” represents either a statement of value or highly theoretical model of labor markets . This Econ. 1o1 reasoning, as internally pure as it is, is not a fact. It ignores that actual costs are socially embedded, socially determined. As a matter of fact, “should” has nothing to do with it .

#4) Again, “there’s no good reason” is not the predicate to a statement of fact.

Your points are well taken. They make a case. We rightly distinguish between a knave who plays loose with the facts and an honest attempt to make sense of a crazy, mixed-up world.

For all either of us knows, someone has written or is about to write an analysis that makes an alternate case: workers in poorer countries will sometimes eschew higher workplace safety laws out of self-interest. Support for this proposition is all that is required for Yglesias’ comments to be well-founded. For many of us, the claim has a prima facie reasonableness. Or someone will more fully demolish Yglesias’ case.

But the question isn’t one fact and probably could never be. And so the strong language, the denunciation…it’s a performance equivalent to “I’m the good guy; I’m the one who really care’s about the plight of the oppressed”.

Say that he was misunderstood or what you will, he’ll never live this one down. </blockquote?

Sadly, that isn't how Pundit World works. Being wrong about everything- especially if you do it in an outrageous and flagrantly ignorant / dishonest way- seems to be a great career move.

“Items 1 through 4 aren’t simple facts. They are fact-based interpretations.”

I’m not pretending that my opinions are facts. Yglesias’ post was both factually incorrect in many ways *and* in its opinions worth using strong language to condemn.

But you’re understating the factual basis for my opinions. For #3, to take one example, Yglesias was presenting a theory under which riskier jobs get hazard pay, implicitly in order to convince workers to take them. I’ll quote from Yglesias’ post:

“Jobs that are unusually dangerous—in the contemporary United States that’s primarily fishing, logging, and trucking—pay a premium over other working-class occupations precisely because people are reluctant to risk death or maiming at work. And in a free society it’s good that different people are able to make different choices on the risk–reward spectrum.”

Do I have to go through all of the ways in which this theory, already rather shaky, factually breaks down when you go from applying it to logging jobs to sewing jobs? There was no premium paid to workers for “accepting risk” that was illegal under Bangladesh law. There is no kind of risk inherent to garment industry jobs that requires this kind of risk premium. There is no sense in which workers obtain any kind of added profit that factory owners get from cutting safety costs to illegal levels. If you’re talking about a country-wide average, there is every reason to think that collapsing buildings cost as many jobs as the additional safety costs involved in not working in illegal buildings would.

“And so the strong language, the denunciation…it’s a performance equivalent to “I’m the good guy; I’m the one who really care’s about the plight of the oppressed”.

Oh, your delicate feelings! I’m so, so sorry.

Bangladesh has experienced one of the most dramatic increases in living standards of any country in recent decades (admittedly from a truly horrifying starting place). You can probably attribute that to greater participation in a global market economy, as well as improved governance and public health and everything else.

The particular facts of last week’s building collapse aside, conflating globalization with criminality is tendentious and self-serving.

See this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAJC2YAJw_A

Rich @ 70:

“There is no kind of risk inherent to garment industry jobs that requires this kind of risk premium.”

If it requires a riot for the state to begin enforcing building codes, then one could argue that’s a risk for workers. If the riot is successful, there’s a risk that future garmet factories will be built in other localities that revert to having poor enforcement of building codes. Race to the bottom. Etc…

Now, you argue that Bangladesh is already at the bottom, so no risk of losing employment. Okay, maybe it’s true. But it’s not a fact. You can’t know that it’s true. It’s certainly a point worth considering. I’m glad you made it. If I were for some strange reason in a position to support more stringent workplace safety laws, you’ve argued clearly why there may not be as much risk to that position as Yglesias would.

But we haven’t established facts that close the case (and perhaps wouldn’t be able to). & we certainly haven’t established any basis to strongly condemn a competing view.

No need to apologize. I’m very thankful to have delicate feelings that are easily wounded. Sensitivity to the emotional tone of a discussion provides useful information, I think, about the discussion’s social import.

I agree! Improved working conditions, higher wages, and enforced
Labor law would all be great things for Bangladesh. But it’s also true that all of them seem much more possible now than thirty years ago. And whether or not the arrival of the global garment industry in Bangladesh caused improved living standards across the country, it was certainly not incompatible with those improvements.

“Now, you argue that Bangladesh is already at the bottom, so no risk of losing employment. Okay, maybe it’s true. But it’s not a fact. You can’t know that it’s true. ”

Have you ever considered that not everything is bullshit?

Seriously, look at some poverty stats. Then look at the the basic infrastructural characteristics of the only countries that have worse poverty stats than Bangladesh. There’s no “it’s not a fact”, “You can’t know that it’s true” about it. Of course, at some point in the future, the facts could change. Also, at some point in the future, we could all be hit by a meteor.

I call this to your attention because I’ve noticed that there’s a strong sense of unfalsifiability to your comments. This is a familiar characteristic of market fundamentalism — being named, as it is, with an implication that it’s a religion. According to market fundamentalism, all market outcomes reflect choices made with regard to costs, benefits, risks, and so on, and it is unfalsifiable because of this kind of linguistic slippage that you’re using.

Someone like Yglesias says that loggers are paid more because they chose a higher-risk occupation. That sets the tone, and makes this a “market” question. From then on, there is nothing the people involved can do, rational or irrational, chosen or not, which does not result in “Well, them running the risk to do that involves paying a cost. So they’re really choosing X and and taking risk Y and the market will respond accordingly.” Protestors could be pouring gasoline over themselves and setting themselves on fire and the market fundamentalists would say “Yes, they’re advertising their preference,” police could be hauling them off and executing them and “The protestors chose that risk to make the regime’s policies more costly”, etc.

Rich @78 :

“Of course, at some point in the future, the facts could change.”

Exactly, countries could regress in labor conditions, making them more alluring to the garment supply chains. Other countries could rapidly progress toward Bangladesh’s level of infrastructrure. We’re discussing history: we can’t isolate variables and replicate conditions for study.

And of course, just like ourselves, ithe Bangladesh public does not know that it’s strategically located to demand safer working conditions without fear of reprisal.

” I’ve noticed that there’s a strong sense of unfalsifiability to your comments.”

I don’t understand this. What is an unfalsifiable claim I am making?

I suspect we are both appealing to Econ. 101 logic to investigate and predict society.
The formulation you give above goes: comparatively low wages to workers + sunk costs in infrastructure for garment manufacturing = market power for Bangladesh labor. & that’s a perfectly fine formulation. It’s abstract and arid. But it’s very well a rough approximation of how the world would work All Else Being Equal.

But…Isn’t that an unfalsifiable formulation given that “wages” can be redefined (for more weazel room) “compensation” and “infrastructure” is likewise fraught as a stable, objective thing? I mean, say Nigeria becomes the new low-wage garment manufacturing center and I say “well, there you go, you were wrong about the reasoning”. Then you can say “no, no, no there were these technological improvements in infrastructure in Nigeria such as Effective Governance and the relative compensation of Bangladesh labor increased because S. Asian rice became dear “. So the formuation can’t be disproved because the terms are too vague and it attempts to explain a historical process.

Secondly, we’d both argue, I guess, that we’ve seen first hand (see Health Care Reform) that Elites will behave collectively, strategically, even beyond their pure material interests. Might it be the case that, if the Bangladesh garment industry becomes Exhibit A of wealthy-state governments attempting to increase S. Asian living standards via uniform international workplace safety standards, the Capitalists might relocate to a more expensive locus simply to deflate the political movement? Political strategy can interfere with Econ. 101 reasoning, right?

So, you’ve a perfectly good story, but it has holes. Just like Yglesias, whose story goes: poor states pursue the goal workplace safety at greater risk than wealthy states. “The reason is that while having a safe job is good, money is also good.” Well, as you’ve so eloquently shown, there’s holes in that story too. So let’s acknowledge them!

“It’s very plausible that one reason American workplaces have gotten safer over the decades is that we now tend to outsource a lot of factory-explosion-risk to places like Bangladesh where 87 people just died in a [fire].” In other words, maybe our wealth hasn’t afforded us better standards, it’s just outsourced the misery.

“There are also some good reasons to want to avoid a world of unlimited choice and see this as a sphere in which collective action is appropriate…” In other words, maybe making this a market question is the wrong move.

“Bangladesh may or may not need tougher workplace safety rules…” In other words, the author doesn’t know.

Of course, as you’ve undoubtably guessed, those are all quotes from the infamous post. Yglesias, 4/24/13. He didn’t call Erik Loomis a monster. He didn’t say that Loomis was worthy of contempt. And for good reason: his understanding of the world is hedged, not confused for a fact.

This allows for humility. And humility spares my precious feelings.

This allows for humility.

You really shouldn’t mistake Yglesias’s coldness for humility. He doesn’t get mad at you for failing to care, he gets mad at you for failing to understand.

The exception to the above, of course, is if one had established a reputation in some other way before beginning to blog. But MY really hadn’t.

Well, speaking of rhetorical games, what, exactly, is meant by “more stringent” ? Enough to prevent 500 deaths but not 87? Maybe we are not even taking about “stringent”. Maybe even minimum safety precautions (enforced) would have prevented any deaths, either here or in a third-world country.

I got the exchange rate wrong, US minimum wage would come to 790 k rupees per annum. which comes pretty close to the highest income tax bracket of 800 k. Labor globalization carried out under these terms really would be a very negative thing, being exclusively a transfer from poor in rich to rich in poor places. But I guess there wouldn’t be any so it’s not a problem :)

“I think what follows demonstrates that you are frustrated, and insulting. But I couldn’t make sense of it otherwise”

It demonstrates that I’m making fun of what you’re writing. You keep insisting that things are unknowable that aren’t. For instance, you present this paragraph of you quoting and then restated Yglesias as an example of Yglesias’ humility:

““It’s very plausible that one reason American workplaces have gotten safer over the decades is that we now tend to outsource a lot of factory-explosion-risk to places like Bangladesh where 87 people just died in a [fire].” In other words, maybe our wealth hasn’t afforded us better standards, it’s just outsourced the misery.”

But all it is is an example of laziness. There are accidental death statistics for every country involved in large-scale international trade. Have places like the U.S. just outsourced their misery? No one needs to “be humble” and admit that we just don’t know. We can instead literally see whether as some countries’ accidental workplace deaths went down, others went up. It’s a manifestly answerable question that people like Yglesias don’t want to answer because that takes work, and it’s easier to pontificate based on knowing nothing.

And you are prepared to excuse everything stupid that he writes on the basis that if we do otherwise we are not assuming good faith. That is the usual function of telling people that we have to assume good faith — to tell people to shut up.

“Speaking of Loomis’s views […]”
I should mention that I don’t think much of Loomis’ post that Yglesias originally replied to either. Not because, like Yglesias, I’m interested in propounding economic choice ideology. But because Loomis nowhere mentions that the critical responses to the accident are going to come from Bangladesh, not from the U.S. People in Bangladesh aren’t going to wait for U.S. corporations to make Bangladesh employers use more stringent safety standards, or for the U.S. left to miraculously gain enough power to force U.S. corporations to do so, or for a wholly nowhere-on-the-horizon international enforcement agency to be created. Instead, they’re protesting / rioting, and getting results. Which is how it has been throughout labor history.

Assuming good faith means not accusing them of deliberate lying, frivolity, or fraud. It should not mean refraining from saying that they are mistaken.

When someone repeats talking points mindlessly at every opportunity (talking points that are misleading and/or contrary to fact (and which tend to benefit them and harm others ), however, it becomes difficult to believe that they are in good faith

Rich @ 90:

“Have places like the U.S. just outsourced their misery? No one needs to “be humble” and admit that we just don’t know. We can instead literally see whether as some countries’ accidental workplace deaths went down, others went up.”

No we can’t literally “see” statistics. They are a product of the methodology used to gather them, not something like a sunflower that we can…literally…see. And inverse correlation does not imply causation.

These are all elementary points I’m making:

-We can’t be certain that a toughening of Bangladesh safety standards to match those of wealthy nations’ will have no impact on garment industry employment there. Your argument back at 4o was a good one. But there were holes: unforseen historical developments such as but not limited to strategic political behavior by firms that appears to be against their immediate economic interest.

-Given the obvious uncertainty, this does not mean “Do Not Act”, it does not mean “Don’t Argue Your Point Vociferously”

-But it does mean, I would argue: Be Nice. If a performance of rhetoric is to be lacking any emotional persuation, fine. But if you are to introduce an emotional tone as a means of persuasion, you’re better off “clearing your head”, so to speak, of insults and anger.

-3 reasons: First, it allows for better thinking. The bluster you’ve introduced seems clearly to have led you to overstate your case and overlook elemental points of logic and fact. Second, cool heads with open hearts attract more sympathy from disinterested parties. The emotional tone of left-wing blogging becomes an advertisement for left-wing activism. You attract more flies with honey, etc… 3rd, strident self-sure, insulting rhetoric will cause your detractors to likewise seek tribal loyalties rather than common ground.

Thus, if you’re simply trying to argue a point: you’re making your case poorly. If you are trying to rally the troops, you’re scaring them away. If you are trying to persuade, you’re instead inviting similar invective rather than appealing to logic and human sympathy.

& that is a fundamental point as well. You, presumably, want Americans etc… to care about Bangladeshi’s. You want them to step outside of their closed world of unchallenged ideas and see the world as it is. Insult and invective make that transformation less likely.

“Have places like the U.S. just outsourced their misery? No one needs to “be humble” and admit that we just don’t know. We can instead literally see whether as some countries’ accidental workplace deaths went down, others went up.”

No we can’t literally “see” statistics. They are a product of the methodology used to gather them, not something like a sunflower that we can…literally…see. And inverse correlation does not imply causation.

You are literally having a laugh now, aren’t you? Yes, we can literally “see” statistics – as ink on a page. And we can use those statistics to “see” – in the metaphorical sense on the word, rather than the literal – whether as some countries’ accidental workplace deaths went down, others went up. And we can use our “brains” to work out whether there is a correlation, and whether and how this correlation is indicative of causation. Your insistence that “facts” don’t exist make me suspect that you are a “brain” in a “jar”.

Rich: rather than us needing to come in and rescue them from us

A minor and mostly semantic disagreement here: the two “us”-es in this sentence are not the same. The “us” from whom the Bangladeshis and other beneficiaries of globalization need to be rescued are American corporations and investors and their political and media whores — essentially the 1 percent. The “us” who ought to ride to their rescue by reining in (or, preferably, stomping on) the other “us” are the rest of the citizenry, who can, after all, still reclaim our democracy by getting up off our asses and turning off the television set.

Consumatopia: ““Be Nice” is probably not great advice for Bangladeshi protestors. ”

In fairness to b9n10nt, I don’t think he or she ever said this. He or she said that people arguing against Yglesias should be nice.

Geo: “A minor and mostly semantic disagreement here: the two “us”-es in this sentence are not the same. ”

True. But the first signs of success of the second “us” of reigning in the first would be domestic within the U.S., I think. Reining in, much less stomping, is risky, and I think that people would be first motivated to take this risk on behalf of themselves or their neighbors. By the time the effects rippled out to Bangladesh, the U.S. would have essentially become a different country. Essentially I don’t think that the two “us”-es can ever become that distinct.

There are other theories by which the first “us” (the 1%) buys off the 99% in the U.S. by giving them a share of the loot from the rest of the world. This is less often brought up as wealth inequality within the U.S. increases. But it’s quite possible that from Bangladesh the two “us”-es could look the same, even if they were also in conflict with each other.

“getting people who read blogs to stop treating blogging pundits like Yglesias as good-faith writers when they aren’t”

Yeah, I definitely think there’s something to this. Even if not for political reasons, there are just so many more interesting and curious writers out there than the MY et al

Rich @ 102:

“On the other hand, if deaths in outsourced-to countries go up equally or more than deaths in outsourcing countries decline, then you can decide whether you need a causative theory to declare that the reason for this was outsourcing-as-business-technique, but in any case “we have outsourced our misery” is *descriptively* true if it just means that deaths have gone from happening in one set of places to another set of places.”

But I would assume the analysis of the data would be messy. American garment workers would relocate to other occupations. Bangladeshi garment workers would relocate from other occupations. Perhaps more garment workers injuries in Bangladesh and fewer in the US, but less malnutrition among Bangladeshi workers as they gain wealth. So we’re transferring our misery but also our wealth.

I can’t really write these sentences without saying that the whole things a nasty business: the social fact of “work and risk death or starve” is horrible. And a system that says you suffer unless you produce for an external market treats people as means, not ends in themselves.

I agree that Bangladeshi’s activism will do more for their situation that US-led policy.

“We can’t literally see as small entities right in front of us, but that we are nevertheless very confident about. ”

…because we are studying aspects of nature that are discreet, consistent and reproducable. Those conditions don’t obtain for social science. Which doesn’t mean we can’t make very plausible truth claims, just that we don’t know them with anything like certainty.

@LFC The best example of someone who came late to blogging, without a pre-existing profile, and did very well at it, is Glenn Greenwald.

moralistic chest thumping, and other rhetorical displays that call attention to the speaker rather than to the issue at hand are a diversion.

Morality is the issue, not a diversion. In a moral/political struggle, the way we behave is determined by either what we believe to be moral, or by our decision to be immoral. If you can’t bring yourself to say “that’s immoral” because you would hurt people’s feelings, then you will lose every moral struggle.

why the anger? ?

I can’t answer for Katherine, but anger is easy to explain here. Your posts are a nasty combination of absurdity (looking to Yglesias for “humility”), incoherence (your weird trolling over “facts”), condescension (your advice for social movements), and arrogance.

No, really, I can’t believe you think you have any insight on this. Are you succeeding in rallying any troops to your side? I assure you, the moment I hear the leader of a movement start to sound like you, b9n10nt, is the moment I leave that movement. In the future I will probably find myself at some crossroads and think to myself “no, I shouldn’t do that, that’s the kind of mistake b9n10nt would have made, and look how badly that went”. Okay? Your advice is only useful as an example of what not to do.

I believe that left-wing discourse is strengthened by intellectual charity

I don’t know how useful it is to try to diagnose whether Yglesias is personally a sociopath (though Google points out that this is not a word that Yglesias avoids when describing positions both to his left and right). But Yglesias’s first post wasn’t just mistaken. He has adopted an analytical framework that has misled him repeatedly and will continue to mislead anyone who adopts it. And it’s not crazy to think that greater empathy would have helped him avoid both this particular mistake and see the weaknesses of that framework generally.

We need to talk more about this kind of analytical failure, and we need to guard against the character flaws that lead us–not just Yglesias, but all liberals including myself–to be vulnerable to those kinds of mistakes. It is not enough to address the issue at hand, we must address the mental process that lead to the error. That’s always going to be an uncomfortable process, and avoiding that sort of discomfort will tend to cloud, not clear, one’s judgment. As it did yours.

” If you can’t bring yourself to say “that’s immoral” because you would hurt people’s feelings, then you will lose every moral struggle.”

Entirely agree.

“looking to Yglesias for “humility”

I could’ve been clearer. I think a rhetorical style that (1) avoids insults and (2) acknowledges uncertainty where reasonable people with similar benign political goals differ is most effective. I saw these features in Yglesias’ post, and not in most of the critiques of his post here. Otherwise, needless in-fighting is engendered. That does not mean failing to call a war criminal a war criminal, or identify sociopathic action as such.

We differ about Yglesias’ post. I don’t find it obvious that Yglesias was clearly in the wrong in saying that Bangladeshi’s and other poor nations will often, for good reason, not value workplace safety laws as much as rich nations. I don’t think he’s obviously right. I do think his argument was repeatedly mischaracterized, and that some of that is his fault.

“condescension (your advice for social movements), and arrogance”

Yeah, but I assume that me sharing my thoughts & feelings on the internet can’t really be condescending and arrogant if it’s taken for granted that I’ve no real expertise or authority. It’s not like I’m reinforcing or establishing some social hierarchy by posting my opinions, is it?

I agree with what I perceive to be your and Rich’s politics for the most part. I don’t understand the central areas of disagreement with Yglesias, though. I don’t think ” ‘No, Matt Yglesias, Bangladeshi Workers Didn’t Choose To Be Crushed To Death.’ ” really addresses what he wrote in any meaningful way, and similar attacks on his post likewise didn’t make sense to me, except as I said a kind of social performance for self-gratification.

It’s taken for granted that these are norms for posting on the internet: the poster insults, shames, denigrates. The person disagreeing isn’t wrong about the topic, they’re wrong as a person. They’ve a character flaw, a “mental process” that must be addressed with vitriol.

But I really look forward to a new norm in which internet arguments live up to standards of charitable respect towards others.

Like everyone who goes on about good faith and being nice, for b9n10nt it’s all a big excuse to insult people. Look at the number of times he or she has insisted that other people can’t have honest moral indignation, that it must be a “social performance for self-gratification”, all “rhetorical displays that call attention to the speaker” so that the speaker can say “I’m the good guy; I’m the one who really care’s about the plight of the oppressed” (all actual quotes). You see, when someone else says that Yglesias’ theory is fake, that’s not nice, but telling someone that their morality is fake — that’s civility!

It’s a sad performance on his or her point, and I’m bored with it. I’ll just say, to make something more interesting out of this, that I’d even extend Consumatopia’s remarks —
“Morality is the issue, not a diversion”, yes, but what kind of morality can we even have around this that isn’t a “performance”? There is nothing that we can do, as individuals, that would actually help people in Bangladesh. That’s true of almost all issues of this kind, and people who try to derail them into purely symbolic volunteer help are just trying to defuse the issue. So what do people do when they have a strong opinion about something that they can’t actually do something about? They yell. They get angry in public and signal to other people that they feel strongly about this and that there is public opinion that says we should communally do something about it.

That’s about all there is to do. Moreover, there’s a whole category of political rights that’s intended to protect exactly this kind of social signalling — protests, petitions, free speech, etc. The people who say “stop yelling and be nice” are just advocating quietism, whether they know it or not.

“Morality is just a performance.” That’s a new low in cynicism. Translation: gravity and the laws of physics killed and maimed the Bengladeshi garment workers not human greed and wrongdoing. It was fate (or Progress, if you are a neoliberal).

The multi-nationals and their apologists may consider it a “performance” Nevertheless — they also consider it very undesirable PR — so, I would say to any indignant, right-thinking observers, go to it, perform away! Beat drums. Throw pies.

And if Disney were really concerned about workers, they would pull out, not of Bengladesh, but of their shameless parasitical distributor and seller Walmart, whose goods were being made in the sweatshops.