Matt Yglesias is a piece of shit.
Well, actually, uh, Mobutu Sese Seko puts it better than I do:Matthew Yglesias-a Norelco marketing experiment to see if a hand-drawn Sharpie beard on a peeled potato could sell men's earrings-wrote a morally and intellectually odious article at his second job yesterday. His Slate column, "Different Places Have Different Safety Rules and That's OK," addressed the deaths of 161 workers in a factory collapse in Bangladesh with the tone they so richly deserved: bored.
Yglesias wrote his drek in response to this Erik Loomis column urging corporations to be held responsible when employees die on the job. It's the usual BUT THEY'RE POOOOORRRR AND THEY CHOOOOOSE TO WORK IN A FACTORY MAKING TEN CENTS A DAY BECAUSE OTHERWISE THEY'D STAAAAARRRVE libertoonian bullshit. Also, Bangladesh has "gotten a lot richer" in the last 20 years (uh, who in Bangladesh has gotten richer, Matt?), so shut up.
There are replies on LGM from Scott Lemieux and Loomis himself.
The idea that the only constraint on one's choices are those placed there by the government is of course total right-wing/libertarian/Gilded Age bullshit. So is the idea that poor people, especially poor brown people in foreign countries, are so gosh-darn grateful for any work they can get that they'll tolerate a high risk of being burnt or crushed to death. Loomis has also written:Turns out that Bangladeshi workers do make choices for themselves outside of theoretical “choices” about working dangerous jobs. In fact, they choose to engage in massive protests after over 250 deaths in the collapsed building this week.
Lindsay Beyerstein notes:A group of Bangladeshi and international trade unionists put forward a bold plan to make the garment industry in Bangladesh safer. A surcharge of 10 cents per garment over 5 years would raise $600 million a year, enough to radically transform the infrastructure of the garment industry in Bangladesh. Walmart and the Gap rejected the proposal in 2011.
(Via PZ Myers, who had already laid into Yglesias.)
Also, a survivor of the Tazreen Factory fire, which killed at least 112 garment workers five months ago, has urged U.S. retailers to stop blocking workers from escaping factories.
The owner of the collapsed building has been arrested. I'd like to hope, as Bloomberg.com asks, that this will be Bangladesh’s Triangle Shirtwaist Fire moment. I'm not sure if I should.
Here's Yglesias again, on all the flak he got for the initial column: "And I have to say that my overwhelming personal response, as a writer and as a human being, is to be annoyed by the responses that I'm getting." Followed by a stale disclaimer about what a tragedy the factory collapse was.
A great reply: "You might try the conclusion that you weren't misunderstood. That people simply reacted to the indifference coming off the piece like the smell of skunk off hot pavement."
Unlocked.
This entry was originally posted at http://ms-daisy-cutter.dreamwidth.org/1977030.html. Please comment there using either your DW account or OpenID.
Yglesias wrote his drek in response to this Erik Loomis column urging corporations to be held responsible when employees die on the job. It's the usual BUT THEY'RE POOOOORRRR AND THEY CHOOOOOSE TO WORK IN A FACTORY MAKING TEN CENTS A DAY BECAUSE OTHERWISE THEY'D STAAAAARRRVE libertoonian bullshit. Also, Bangladesh has "gotten a lot richer" in the last 20 years (uh, who in Bangladesh has gotten richer, Matt?), so shut up.
There are replies on LGM from Scott Lemieux and Loomis himself.
The idea that the only constraint on one's choices are those placed there by the government is of course total right-wing/libertarian/Gilded Age bullshit. So is the idea that poor people, especially poor brown people in foreign countries, are so gosh-darn grateful for any work they can get that they'll tolerate a high risk of being burnt or crushed to death. Loomis has also written:Turns out that Bangladeshi workers do make choices for themselves outside of theoretical “choices” about working dangerous jobs. In fact, they choose to engage in massive protests after over 250 deaths in the collapsed building this week.
Lindsay Beyerstein notes:A group of Bangladeshi and international trade unionists put forward a bold plan to make the garment industry in Bangladesh safer. A surcharge of 10 cents per garment over 5 years would raise $600 million a year, enough to radically transform the infrastructure of the garment industry in Bangladesh. Walmart and the Gap rejected the proposal in 2011.
(Via PZ Myers, who had already laid into Yglesias.)
Also, a survivor of the Tazreen Factory fire, which killed at least 112 garment workers five months ago, has urged U.S. retailers to stop blocking workers from escaping factories.
The owner of the collapsed building has been arrested. I'd like to hope, as Bloomberg.com asks, that this will be Bangladesh’s Triangle Shirtwaist Fire moment. I'm not sure if I should.
Here's Yglesias again, on all the flak he got for the initial column: "And I have to say that my overwhelming personal response, as a writer and as a human being, is to be annoyed by the responses that I'm getting." Followed by a stale disclaimer about what a tragedy the factory collapse was.
A great reply: "You might try the conclusion that you weren't misunderstood. That people simply reacted to the indifference coming off the piece like the smell of skunk off hot pavement."
Unlocked.
This entry was originally posted at http://ms-daisy-cutter.dreamwidth.org/1977030.html. Please comment there using either your DW account or OpenID.