Ken, thank you for your gracious apology. It was, as I assumed, simply a misunderstanding in which, I am quite sure, my tendency to prolixity was no small contributing factor.

I think you are absolutely correct, there should be a way to pay the workers more and harm their enviroment less.

If I am GM and outsource production to a plant I own and operate overseas in an exploitative manner, shame on me. Alcatel, Siemens, whoever, same story, shame on them. If ,as an example, a (insert nationality of your choice here), owns and operates the factory, and contracts with a western corporation, and exploits his workers and rapes his country, shame on him. The core value displayed in both instances seems to be the love of money.

I suppose that a western corporation could look beyond ROI, build a factory, sell it back to locals at cost and stipulate low interest, long term financing contingent on fair wages, safe working conditions and maintaining sound environmental policies (exceeding by many factors the minimums required). The product would cost less than a western produced item and the corporation would have been a good global citizen.

Some possible problems come to mind. The first is that the heart of man, western or non, ( and the corporation’s heart? ) is desperately wicked, or so Scriptures tell us, and does not bend its knee to the King of Kings (yet) nor value His ideas on fair treatment in the employee-employer relationship. Forget about the environmental issues from a Christian point of view for now. (Eleanor on another thread has some really cogent, and important for me-Scriptural-insights on this ignored aspect of our Christian stewardship)

Why (from the selfish sinful perspective) bother to do anything other than maximize shareholders profits and make as many bucks as one can for as long as one can? If, I am the third-world local factory owner, why pay my workers fair wages? Without conviction of sin and repentance, the heart(s) in question will remain hard, and wicked.

Second, though there are, to any right thinking corporate honcho, tangible, long term benefits to model corporate behavior, the honcho might think, based on some previous experiences, that those benefits are fool’s gold.

In some countries, even sectarian aid workers are killed for no other reason than they might create a favorable impression of westerners. From that the western corporaton could deduce that a factory project as described earlier might also create a long term favorable impression of westerners and the factory, local ownership and even the workers themselves might be at risk.

Who could possibly wish to destroy the kind of factory project described? Yet it seems there are such people out there. Which goes back to my question in an earlier comment and that is does the negative impact of global industrial activity justify Madrid or 911?

(The second part of this post, which deals with the question of Christian unity, has been moved here. Apologies to Alario, but it’s an important new theme and worth exploring separately.)

From America-on Passion Sunday,

Your brother in Christ and friend,

Alario