General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Are you going to change your buying practices because of the Bangladesh building collapse? [View all]Donald Ian Rankin
(13,598 posts)The reason people in countries like Bangladesh work in such awful conditions is because all their alternatives are worse, because there are so few better jobs available there.
If you want to help in the way you shop, the best thing to do would probably be to actively seek out and purchase goods made in poor countries, especially those which can guarantee they were produced at least moderately ethically.
The worst thing you could do would be to limit your purchasing to stuff made in the first-world, making Bangladeshis even more desperate and forcing them to compete harder for jobs, and hence letting labour standards drop.
The people posting about how they try to limit themselves to buying US-made stuff are a big part of the problem, not part of the solution.