Summary Needed- Bold and italic portion only

Exporting Hazzards byHenry Shue:

[A] general statement of the liberal no-harm principle is, It is wrong to inflict avoidable harm upon other people, and it ought often to be prohibited by law. While harming oneself may sometimes be immoral, it is harming others that ought generally to be illegal . No one may hurt or endanger others, except in cases of genuine necessity, in the course of justified warfare, in punishment for heinous crime, or in other quite special circumstances. Even the most one-sided advocates of freedom have rarely advocated the freedom to injure and endanger . [Some ethicists argue that the general no-harm principle does not apply where the costs of exporting old, unsafe technology is overbalanced by the benefit to foreign workers. Shue disagrees. Below he explains why, distinguishing mere costs to be weighed against benefits from true harms, which are never acceptable.] Yes, it is granted, there are costs to the foreign workers in the form of new dangers to health and safety, but there are also new benefits that are, so to speak, part of the same package. Andthis is the pointalthough the costs to the workers are undeniably real, the benefits are real too and they are greater than the costs. The worker might be safer sitting at home, but he or she might also be unemployed . [A cost, according to Shue, is a true harm when it involves all six of the following factors:] The first factor is that the damage done is physical: it is life, limb, and vitality that are at stake, not, for example, reputation or lifestyle only, but the adequate, continued functioning of parts of ones body . Second, the potential damage is not simply physical; it is serious, possibly fatal. The bodily threat is to vital organs. Some of the malignancies are still untreatable and certainly fatal. Third, besides being serious physical damage, the damage that is risked is irreversible. It does not clear up, and damaged portions do not grow back . [Fourth], the potential physical damage to the workers is undetectable for the victim without a level of medical care to which the workers have no access and [fifth] is unpredictable for the victim, even probabilistically, without a level of knowledge to which the workers have no access . [Sixth], the detectability and unpredictability are avoidable at the choice of the firms management. This double point is simple but quite significant: people poor enough to work readily in the conditions we are considering will not have enough moneyeven if doctors are available, which is unlikely given the low effective demandto afford routine medical examinations. So early detection by a doctor is out of the question. This is what I mean by saying the damage is undetectable for the victim: it is, for the person who has undergone it, discoverable only when it is so serious as to interfere with normal overall functioning, if not to threaten life. It is readily detectable by a physician with standard x-ray equipment. This is why the damage seems to be avoidably undetectable . Even people who have never before seen or heard about mining do not need to be told that shafts sometimes collapse and so might this one. But they would notand generations of miners did notrealize that there is such a thing as black lung and that they might well be developing it. This fifth factor is that potential victims do not know, and cannot figure out for themselves, how high the risk is, although their employers know the probabilities and keep them quiet. Thus, once again, we appear to have avoidable unpredictability . [Finally, Shue addresses the argument that, even if harm is being inflicted in a manner that ought to be stopped, it cannot be the responsibility of individual firms acting alone to stop it: This would amount to a form of forced heroics or martyrdom. Again, Shue finds this position unpersuasive.] It may also be suggested that firms are not in the business of protecting the interests of their workers, except when this is a means to their own goals [and that] if the government of a poor country wants the citizens of the country to enjoy safer workplaces, the government ought to impose uniform standards upon all firms, instead of expecting isolated firms to raise their own costs while their competitors are allowed to undercut them by retaining the cheaper, less safe technology . [B]ut no institution, including the corporation, has a general license to inflict harm, even if the infliction of harm holds down production costs. In order to maintain otherwise one must reject the traditional liberal no-harm principle. Protecting people against harm is another matter. What the corporation is being asked to do is simply not to inflict harm: not to prefer to a safer process a manufacturing process that harms a higher percentage of the people subjected to it than other readily available processes do. Second, the national governments of poor countries that try to protect their workers against such harms face precisely the same problem that the firms invokeand the governments face it because of the reasoning that the firms use. They first complain that they cannot be expected to go it alone (by unilaterally introducing more expensive, safer processes) because this would put them at a competitive disadvantage. But governments of poor countries that compete for foreign investment face an exactly analogous choice . [In the final section of this piece, Shue discusses the allocation of responsibility for preventing harms.] Whom does this leave to defend the victims of the harm who at present cannot defend themselves? It leaves us, fellow American consumers. Why us, or, to be precise, why me? To some degree the question answers itself. Why should I defend defenseless human beings? Because they are human beings and they are defenseless. But there are additional reasons. The main reason why one particular Samaritan must decide whether to do good is no better a reason than that this Samaritan happened to come along this road at this time, when (a) the victim was already in the ditch and (b) the previous travelers had already passed by on the other side of the road. To this Samaritans why me? there is no cosmic explanation, and there is no better answer than: You are here and therefore in a position to help this victimis there a stronger claim upon you now? We have been considering a case in which products consumed by U.S. purchasers and formerly made by U.S. workers are now made by Mexican workers as the result of a U.S.-based firms decision to continue to use a less safe process to which U.S. workers cannot legally be subjected. United States consumers are hardly Samaritans who just happen to be passing by an asbestos factory on the other side of the border. We pay lower prices, suffer less inflation, etc., because the health costs of the retention of the less safe technology are now borne by the Mexican workers and Mexican society. It is true, that most of us did not ask to have this arrangement made. But once we understand it, we are no longer unwilling (because unknowing) beneficiaries. We now must choose whether to continue to accept these benefits on these terms. In such situations, knowledge is not only power but also responsibility, because it places us in a position to act. Call this responsibility through complicitycomplicity by continuing acceptance of benefits.