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China shutting down private mines: Too many accidents

CFLarsen

Penultimate Amazing
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China is suspending production at a third of its coal mines, in an effort to reduce the huge number of fatal accidents that blight the industry.

...

More than 3,000 miners have been killed this year alone, in fires, floods and other work-related accidents.

Analysts say the closures may be hard to enforce, as jobs and energy needs can take precedence over safety.

Many of the mines are unlicensed and unregulated, but often when these have been shut down in the past, they have reopened almost immediately, as local officials and mine owners are anxious for their revenue.

...

It is unclear how many miners might lose their jobs, the China Daily newspaper reported.

But Li Wenge, from the Coal Industry Group of Shaanxi province, conceded that a lot of people would be affected.

"Those in private and small mines will lose their jobs and their families will become poorer," he told the China Daily.

Source
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What was that about an unregulated market being safer, shanek?
 
CFLarsen said:

quote:
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China is suspending production at a third of its coal mines, in an effort to reduce the huge number of fatal accidents that blight the industry.

...

More than 3,000 miners have been killed this year alone, in fires, floods and other work-related accidents.

Analysts say the closures may be hard to enforce, as jobs and energy needs can take precedence over safety.

Many of the mines are unlicensed and unregulated, but often when these have been shut down in the past, they have reopened almost immediately, as local officials and mine owners are anxious for their revenue.

...

It is unclear how many miners might lose their jobs, the China Daily newspaper reported.

But Li Wenge, from the Coal Industry Group of Shaanxi province, conceded that a lot of people would be affected.

"Those in private and small mines will lose their jobs and their families will become poorer," he told the China Daily.

Source
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



What was that about an unregulated market being safer, shanek?
Click to expand...

Larsen,

Don't you remember you are on pretend ignore, so I have decided to quote your OP so shanek can "SEE" it.
 
CFLarsen said:
What was that about an unregulated market being safer, shanek?
Click to expand...

There's a movie called "Blind Shaft" about some guys working in coal mines in China. They had a scam going where they'd find some young, inexperienced guy, offer to get him a job at a mine working with them (they were experienced miners) if he'd claim he was their cousin. After working a few weeks at a private mine, they'd kill the guy, make it look like a mining accident, and extort money from the mineshaft owners, who would do a payoff of who they thought was the dead guy's relatives to keep them quiet about it and avoid government interference. I can't speak to the accuracy of the film, but liability issues (and the fact that they probably DON'T face the same kind of huge lawsuits American companies face) really can make a difference in terms of safety. So does high unemployment (arguably an effect of managed economies), where workers don't have good alternatives even if they don't like the risks they face on the job. So it's really not simply a matter of regulated vs. unregulated.
 
CFLarsen said:
What was that about an unregulated market being safer, shanek?
Click to expand...

I'm assuming someone working in a small private mine is a risk taker trying to make money. In a free work market, people are allowed to take risky jobs.

Perhaps you should research the work of alaskan crab fishers. They have statistically the most dangerous jobs in the US. People always show up to take the jobs though because they weigh the risk versus the money.

I'm not sure if Shanek said an unregulated market is necessarily safer. I wouldn't agree with that statement. I just believe a worker should be allowed to take dangerous jobs at their own discretion. If that was not the case, we wouldn't have delicious seasonal king crab.
 
The whole OP is just silly.

China might have some free market reforms, but implying that it is a free country fully or even significantly consistant with libertarian principles is just absurd.

Libertarianism does not simply equal to deregulation of industry, there is also basic personal liberties that are more or less essential, as Ziggurat's post reflects.

But that is almost besides the point...

Plus now it would be upon you to show the following:

1) That the economic impact of shutting down the mines will cause less problems than when they are running. Sure, some miner won't die from a cave in... but economic devistation and delay of economic growth is no picnic. "Safety" is not an absolute and must be weighed against benefits. Libertarianism says is that the individual, and not the government is best at weighing this.

I'm sure we could regulate all economic activity to be perfectly "safe." Just ignore the number of people starving to death....


2) That the Chinese government mines are safer anyway...

Then maybe this data point will be anything more than just a random factoid on par with a gun control opponent posting examples of news reports where an old lady shoots a would be robber...


Futhermore, I think you are engaging in very poor behavior in directing this silliness towards shanek. Why do you wish to lessen the level of civility here by trying to create personal disagreement over what is a general issue?
 
CFLarsen said:
What was that about an unregulated market being safer, shanek?
Click to expand...

"Regulated" is not the same as "state owned".

The USA mining industry is heavily regulated and the federal government manages to enforce mine safety without owning the mines.

This has been true since the 1950s.
 
Legal Penguin hit the nail on the head. The desires in a poor country are totally different than the desires in a rich one. The miners in a poor country are generally people who have no other means to feed their family. They know mines are dangerous and take the job anyway. This was common in the US until we became rich enough to regulate away jobs.

Do you remember the Bhopal disaster? Thousands of people died in an accident but most of the local population wanted the plant restarted. They were willing to take the risk of industrial accidents rather than the guarantee of crushing poverty.

Also China does not have a free market in any true sense of the word. The mine workers are not allowed to form unions which would protect them. Clearly a tyrannical, corrupt government will not. Impoverished people without rights are cannon fodder for tyrannical governments and their business cronies.

CBL
 
The mines are privately owned, not state owned.
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Nothing big occurs in China without the approval of some government official. The mine owners are cronies and/or bribers of the government.

CBL
 
CBL4 said:
Nothing big occurs in China without the approval of some government official. The mine owners are cronies and/or bribers of the government.

CBL
Click to expand...

These mines were not state controlled. Hence, the crackdown.
 
CFLarsen said:
These mines were not state controlled. Hence, the crackdown.
Click to expand...

Yeah, for "safety" purposes. The country that executes people with little attention to due process and that tends to ignore basic human rights is now really concerned with the safety of some random rural sad-sacks mining coal....

I'll just submit that some skepticism as to motive here is not unreasonable...
 
CFLarsen said:
The mines are privately owned, not state owned.
Click to expand...

You missed the point. There are mines that are privately owned, AND there are mines that are state owned (though as pointed out, corruption can blur the division).

The mines that are privately owned are being shut down because of their bad safety record, the presumption being that the state-owned ones are safer. Your original post implied that this shows that unregulated markets create unsafe working conditions compared to regulated markets. But that argument doesn't hold water, because (a) whether unregulated or not, the privately owned mines in China are still operating in a market that is heavily distorted by government intervention, and cannot be considered to be indicative of unregulated companies in a free market, and (b) what they're being compared to (government-owned mines) are state owned mines, which are likewise not the same as regulated companies in an otherwise free market. Neither end of the comparison are equivalent to the conditions in a capitalist system, and so one cannot really conclude anything meaningful from this about the relative merits and costs of regulation in a capitalist system.
 
CBL4 said:

Also China does not have a free market in any true sense of the word. The mine workers are not allowed to form unions which would protect them. Clearly a tyrannical, corrupt government will not. Impoverished people without rights are cannon fodder for tyrannical governments and their business cronies.

CBL
Click to expand...

I'm sure the % devoted to kickbacks just to get the government officials out of the way is staggering, too. Also not exactly a "free market".
 
CFLarsen said:
These mines were not state controlled. Hence, the crackdown.
Click to expand...

No, no. This cannot be! The totalitarian government over there is interested in safety, not in using force to shut down the competition. In any heavily socialized or communist-run mining operation, the operation is easily as efficient as a privately-run concern. So there won't be any compention the government-run mines might lose out on as they are just as competitive, if not more so, owing to the great love and hard work people have for a totalitarian communist or heavy-handed socialist regime.

Therefore your statement is complete BS. The government has no economic need of using force to shut down the competition. And the good hearted communist and heavy-handed socialist types wouldn't lie and use an excuse to do so even in the unlikely event the government-owned mines were grotesquely inefficient and losing business to the private ones, which is a rediculous laugh.
 
Re: Re: China shutting down private mines: Too many accidents

Originally posted by Santa666
Larsen,

Don't you remember you are on pretend ignore, so I have decided to quote your OP so shanek can "SEE" it.
Click to expand...
Just in case he has you on ignor too, I'll post this so he can see your post.
 
Re: Re: China shutting down private mines: Too many accidents

Ziggurat said:
There's a movie called "Blind Shaft" about some guys working in coal mines in China. They had a scam going where they'd find some young, inexperienced guy, offer to get him a job at a mine working with them (they were experienced miners) if he'd claim he was their cousin. After working a few weeks at a private mine, they'd kill the guy, make it look like a mining accident, and extort money from the mineshaft owners, who would do a payoff of who they thought was the dead guy's relatives to keep them quiet about it and avoid government interference.
Click to expand...
Social commentary on the rapid changes in Chinese society, by the sound of it. Are the scam-artists worse than the owner of an unsafe mine? Very chick-flick.
I can't speak to the accuracy of the film, but liability issues (and the fact that they probably DON'T face the same kind of huge lawsuits American companies face) really can make a difference in terms of safety.
Click to expand...
In the libertarian world, is there any liability? Guy takes job, other guy pays him, that's a contract. Guy who took job dies, other guy stops paying him. Where's the liability, and who's to enforce one anyway? The dead guy's brothers?
So does high unemployment (arguably an effect of managed economies) ...
Click to expand...
Persistent high unemployment in unmanaged economies is more evident.
... where workers don't have good alternatives even if they don't like the risks they face on the job. So it's really not simply a matter of regulated vs. unregulated.
Click to expand...
The answer, of course, is a united front by the potential workforce, on whom the employer is dependent. The nature of the job then becomes a matter of negotiation, not dictation.
 
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