Are you as appalled as I am?

[Grog]

Well, always being one to offer a controversial perspective...are you suggesting that hard working people in poorer countries would be better off if we didn't employ them by purchasing their inexpensive goods?

It would be great if solutions to the world's complex problems were so easy! What I am certainly suggesting is that increased consumption is not improving anyone's condition beyond perhaps the immediate short term, not even for those who consume the goods. As much as I hate sounding like an old, bearded ideologue (I don't have a beard), there are still a lot of good times to be had by thinking about the relationship between the Master and the Slave, and how the Master is in fact enslaved.*

I suppose that while I acknowledge the existence of bad conditions, it's my sense that it's now the exception rather than the rule.

At the very minimum, unless you consider living in a perpetual cloud of thick, debilitating smoke to be a good condition, no, the bad conditions are far from being the exception. I will skip the details about authoritarian regimes precluding freedom of speech, freedom of association, and worker's rights, or anyone's rights, for that matter.

North American or European countries will not challenge the situation, as they increasingly see how the giant dragon could crush them if it cared to sit down. Individual outsiders - you and me - can try, but taking pictures or talking to people who know something about what's doing on (middle managers?) is difficult and dangerous. Ironically, as the current economic difficulties in China show, this is another great example of Master-Slave role ambiguities...

* Nobody cares to read Hegel anymore, but this page offers the gist of it: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/in...1104725AA2hpOZ

Edited to Add: There are also poor people in the United States. There sure are lots in Canada. They also bear most of the weight of pollution and stuff like that. Geez, there are so many problems and so few easy solutions.