"That’s the price of doing business."

Accepting dangerous goods, from lead-painted toys to toxic pet food, is a price of doing business, the trade-off we must absorb for enjoying affordable merchandise? Funny, but that was the same argument made by the meatpacking industry a hundred years ago against having sanitary standards and worker safeguards imposed by a suddenly activist federal government. Yet the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed into law, and grudgingly absorbed by the industry, and we've long since come to expect our domestic food supply to be safe. Similar standards must now be enacted for imported goods. From today's New York Times:

It is definitely not in America’s interest — economic, political or strategic — to erect a barricade against Chinese imports, which could spark a mutually destructive trade war. American businesses and the Bush administration must send a clear message to Beijing that it has to clean up its act or its export-led boom will falter.

What China needs is an effective and transparent regulatory system to enforce product safety standards. The United States and other countries can help with technical advice and warnings about what would happen if Beijing refuses to take it. But the dangers are too immediate to wait.

These days, many of our goods come not from avaricious domestic manufacturers, but from equally avaricious overseas producers, including China, who are so hellbent on achieving profit and economic growth - not unlike the Swifts and Armours of a hundred years ago - that they will cut any corner to do so, including endangering the lives of their own customers.

Regulatory action, on both the part of the Chinese and American governments, is clearly warranted. But the Times editorial cuts to the heart of the problem:

Unfortunately, the Bush administration, which disdains America’s regulatory system, has cut personnel and squeezed budgets at both the Food and Drug Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, impairing their ability to monitor the quality of products made in China or, indeed, anywhere else.

At a time of ever-rising imports, the F.D.A. has lost hundreds of food scientists and field inspectors. And the White House is proposing cutting the agency’s budget next year, in real terms. The C.P.S.C., which sets safety standards for toys and many other consumer products, must inspect tens of billions of dollars worth of goods sold every year with only about 100 field investigators and compliance personnel. And it has suffered a 10 percent cut in its budget in the last two years.

The corporation-loving Bush Administration is relentlessly obsessed with relying on market-based solutions to many problems which would better be solved with government regulation. "Leave it alone; the market will weed out the bad apples," the administration says again and again. "People can just stop buying products from irresponsible companies, thus giving those companies incentive to do the right thing." We don't need costly inspectors and compliance standards, we are told; the market will take care of it.

If it were only that simple. In the particular instance of toys, decades of conservative economic policies have driven most toy manufacturing overseas, most of it to China, where the industry operates beyond the reach of even our enfeebled regulatory mechanisms. If American parents want to buy toys for their children, particularly those character-emblazoned items that kids so love, they really have no choice but to buy China-made toys, and accept any accompanying health risks.

And there will be health risks, as long as China values economic growth, and Chinese corporations value escalating profits, over safety. For all corporations, whether in China, America or elsewhere, are driven by one thing: the profit motive. They will do whatever they can to boost their profits, even if it means exploiting workers, destroying local economies, or ruining the environment. For too long, corporations have been given too much slack in conducting their affairs by those who blindly believe in free markets; those corporations have proven, time and again, that they are either incapable or uniterested in being responsible corporate citizens. They have proven that they believe profit is paramount, and that once a reasonable profit can be guaranteed then, and only then, can other issues - worker safety, environmental standards - be considered.

I'm not here to bash China. Chinese corporations are no better or worse than their American counterparts; it's just that American corporations operate under regulatory constraints, while Chinese corporations, in terms of dealing with the American consumer, do not. We need regulation of all corporations, regardless of location. And, no, I'm not some wild-eyed socialist. I fully believe in capitalism, but not the unfettered, laissez-faire brand of capitalism. Instead, I believe in controlled capitalism, in which companies may operate and compete as they please, given that they adhere to a specific set of standards and playing rules. Companies should be free to pursue profit, just as long as they don't trample society and the common good in doing so.

Like children, companies often have to be told what to do rather than freely deciding for themselves, or otherwise they will recklessly pursue their own selfish needs. Fortunately, unsupervised children are rarely capable of inflicting significant damage when allowed to do whatever they please; unfortunately, the same cannot be said of corporations.