Working recently in a manufacturing facility outside of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, Chandra Das entered a debate at the factory’s inspection table. Das, a Hindu, apparently made a negative comment with religious overtones. They were seemingly his last words.
As New York Times reporters Saif Hasnat and Mujib Mashal described it, Das’s co-workers “accused him of blasphemy and dragged him out into the street. As rumors spread that Mr. Das had said something disparaging of Islam’s prophet Mohammed, an angry mob grew. They lynched him, tied his body to a tree and set it on fire.”
Hasnat and Mashal’s report indicated that the murder occurred “amid a wave of riots and mob violence” in Dhaka. It reads as an awful existence.
That it does is worth remembering given the tendency of Americans to lament the state of the U.S. Looking back to Election 2016, Clinton partisans said Donald Trump would “ruin” America, and Trump partisans said Hillary Clinton would do the same. Supposedly a Venezuelan-style situation loomed regardless of the winner… Clinton and Trump supporters alike insulted the U.S.
Fast forward to the present, and Trump’s critics tell us that “democracy” and “the U.S. as we know it” are threatened by the man in the White House. Except that the Founders weren’t exactly fans of the majoritarian, two wolves and lamb deciding what’s for lunch, mob rule nature of democracy. Don’t worry, Trump is no better. There’s a plaque in the White House with a description of Joe Biden as “the worst President in American history” who “brought our Nation to the brink of destruction.” As usual, both sides insult the U.S.
That’s because the United States is not just any country. Consider the lengths those not lucky enough to live here go to so that they can. As Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz wrote years ago, the minute foreigners step into the United States their productivity soars thanks to the copious investment that flows into the U.S., and that elevates the effort of workers at all levels.
To say that the aim of foreign businesses is penetration of U.S. markets is a waste of words. And it’s rooted in the fact that “affordability” and “crisis” as applied to the United States would be described as “abundance” and “choice” anywhere else in the world. In other words, the “crisis” in the U.S. isn’t one of “affordability,” but just what to spend all the money on.
Back to Chandra Das, he worked in a factory where clothes were made for high-end buyers in places like the U.S. While politicians stateside romanticize factory work, the reason Americans can afford their plenty is precisely because they increasingly don’t work in them.
It’s worth thinking about on Christmas Day. Das lived in a country defined by immense poverty, riots, and mob violence. And he was killed for merely expressing an opinion. What most Bangladeshis would give to live in a country as stable as ours, and with the leadership nominated by either side.
Which is the point, or should be. It’s not just that partisans in the U.S. sound foolish and spoiled when they talk of presidents and their capacity to ruin the U.S., it’s that they gloss over the more crucial truth that a country capable of ruination by one man or woman wouldn’t be that great to begin with. The bet here is that Das’s former countrymen would feel quite privileged to live in a nation carelessly described by it inhabitants as being “on the brink of destruction.”
Originally posted to Real Clear Markets.
