On this site there has been much discussion of lead laced toys, melamine contaminated foods and adulterated drugs from China. These are only the most noticeable impacts of the Chinese "caveat emptor" model of doing business. Evidence is coming out that harmful building products are also being imported. What is all this saying about our approach to economic transactions?
Expats and those working, (or who have worked in my case) in Asia , ASEAN guidance to the contrary, recognize the buyer beware oreintation of economic transactions there. When this fact of life is not recognized and there is no enhanced testing of imported goods from practitioners of such transactions, we have seen the result in adulterated heparin, melamine tainted pet foods, and pesticide/antibiotic laden seafood. Here is a recent article indicating possible issues with Chinese manufactured drywall.
The information in this article implies that:
Gases being emitted from the Chinese-made drywall have been tied to corrosion eating away at the guts of people's homes.
While it is known that binders/matrix/adhesives in building products exhibit a risk to people, such as outgassing of formaldehyde in urea cured materials (think Katrina cabins), I can't remember an instance of this with respect to drywall products.
I'm getting to feel as though the race to the bottom in wages is also being mirrored by a similar degeneration of marketing products to people. All of this comes with the downward adjustments that our leaders did not explain to us as we conform to our actual place in the world - a society of consumers with a hollowed-out industrial capacity. Buyer beware economic transactions used by sophisticated marketers on what they see is a gullible and easily manipulated population of consumers are an inevitable part of that adjustment.
Right now I don't see the stomach or will by either the government and citizens to create the conditions that will check our descent into a new era of snake-oil salesmanship.