Oh, I understand, AJ. One commodity China has always had in abundance is people, and their attitude toward this sort of tragedy is sort of hard for us in the West to understand. The Chinese have dealt with far worse, far more often, than most Western societies could bear.
The statistic Deed quotes on deaths in China's mining industry is one I have seen often before. It usually comes up in discussions on workplace safety and I wonder sometimes if it won't eventually be used to make the arguement that we're being too cautious, not that they're not cautious enough. If you break down the numbers, it comes to more than 16 people per day. If we lose 16 miners in one day here, it makes the news for weeks. That's one area where I'd rather not compete with China.
A while back, I had a side contracting business, restoring old houses in a major Midwest city. I dealt with inspectors all the time, and while there were a few I was pretty sure were, lets say, 'malleable', the vast majority were strict in their enforcement of the building codes. That suited me fine because so was I. I worked on several hundred houses and, because I didn't cut corners, I sleep well at night. I guess what I really don't understand is how the contractors and inspectors there sleep when they're seeing the bodies of children being taken from one of their buildings.
