Cheap but expensive

Subject: Cheap but expensive.

The fire which broke out in a factory in Delhi, causing the death of over 40 people who it appears were mostly sleeping inside the factory is part of the jigsaw which makes up the global economy. It's that part we don't see but which is essential to the slave economy  and the price we so ignorantly accept in our shops in the high street. We never question the price of a garment, there are the expensive labels and there are the myriad cheaper brands manufactured in just such a place which burnt down. It's all part part and parcel of the bonanza inherent in globalisation, the ability to exploit workforces and working conditions across the globe. It's a two edged sword, with the advent of 24/7 advertising which exploits the people living in the more affluent parts of the world stimulating them to buy things they don't need but are excited by slick presentation and the low price, a price dependent on people living and working on the other side of the world, living in abject poverty, working 15 hours a day for a penance, sleeping on the factory floor when not actually working. 
Can you imagine the discussions around the boardroom tables of investment banks discussing the financial opportunity given by exploitative manufacturing, exploiting men and women because they can. No minimum standards, no health and safety features, no limit to the hours demanded, all part of the delicious laissez a faire, market driven, smorgasbord of human manipulation practiced well away, out of sight but which similar industries, within our shoreline used to try to compete with.
The new economic order brought about in part by the use of the internet and immediate interactive communication. The factory in Delhi or Bangladesh an adjunct of Matalan  but seen only in terms of orders and delivery, a simple entry in a ledger with no sense of what happens in the factory. The rapacious public little concerned about a price which allows the purchaser to cast the dress away after a couple of nights, distressed only at the thought of being seen wearing something too often yet not distressed at the way it is landed in the shops at a price impossible to be made locally. 
We are all complicit in this exploitation of human misery. We all know but never the less  traipse off in search of the cheapest bargain but is it a bargain for everyone concerned, who cares. 
The argument that without these sweatshops the poor doomed employee wouldn't have a job is compelling in a society where inequality is engrained in the spectre of caste  an abomination of religious principles if ever there was one but to be so complicit, to not ensure that there has to be some sort of quid pro quo and that our 'Order'  is accompanied by some sort of audit as to the wages and conditions. Surely we should all be concerned to ensue this is the case.