Further Thoughts on the Bangladesh Factory Disaster (Slate)
Senior Fellow Kimberley Ann Elliott's Q&A on worker safety following the recent Bangladesh factory collapse for the Washington Post is featured in a Slate article.
It seems like the entire Internet has registered its objections to this piece I wrote on the Bangladesh factory disaster. 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. But let me try to be mature about it instead and say—what happened in Bangladesh is a tragedy and a human disaster, and to the best of my knowledge it's also quite literally a criminal disaster under the existing laws of Bangladesh. The perpetrators ought to be punished. More broadly: Bangladesh ought to enforce its laws. Even more broadly than that: Bangladesh's citizens deserve honest and uncorrupt government rather than government that's excessively under the sway of the interests of apparel factory owners. Dylan Matthews has an informative interview with Kimberly Ann Elliott of the Center for Global Development in which she—a person who has relevant detailed knowledge of the situation—outlines a variety of modest measures that could improve the situation, and you should read it.
