Made In China: Corporate Greed or Cheap People

I was reading in the Post today about the continuing saga of unsafe Chinese products. More toys are being recalled, taken away from teary eyed youngsters because their Batman action figure could kill them. Well, maybe it's not such a bad thing to have killer toys because it would remove the surplus population of stupid children in the world. I kid of course.
Now the socialists are inevitably blaming corporate greed for this problem.

According to the article in the National Post, one man only going by the name of Dennis noted that "The first thing it makes me think is these companies are only thinking about money. They want to make money, they’re outsourcing their manufacturing and basically contributing to exploitation" (CanWest News Service, August 15 2007)

I have to say that "Dennis" is way off base here. Do corporations have to share some of the blame for this? Definitely they do since they should have been paying closer attention to their contractors. It's negligence. However, I don't think corporate greed is at the root of these problems. These corporations aren't exploiting the workers either. The Chinese government is. Remember that the People's Republic of China is supposed to be a communist country. The Chinese government and its people don't really give a rat's backside as to whether or not their products are dangerous as long as we keep buying them. Indeed we are the real problem.

North Americans demand luxury goods en mass at the lowest price possible. Most goods made in China are luxury goods. You don't really need that Chinese made video game or toy to survive. Ironically, we want luxury on the cheap and we won't pay more. We as consumers are the ones that are fueling demand. Such so that in a population of over one billion people, China actually has labour shortages in some regions. China is good at mass producing things and they can do it cheaply. Corporations turn to Chinese factories not because of greed or the desire to exploit workers but because nobody would buy their products if they were made in North America. Why? Because it's several times more expensive to produce goods domestically due to high taxes and union fees. It's been proven that consumers will not absorb the costs. Businesses exist to make money. They're not their for your egalitarian benefit. If businesses don't make profits, nobody will invest in them and our economy goes down the toilet. They cannot sell domestically produced goods since people deem them to be "overpriced". Therefore they turn to other countries to manufacturers at a lower cost. If you don't want to buy inferior Chinese goods, then you're just going to have to get used to paying more, or doing without.