Homeless Japanese Men Paid Minimum Wage To Clean Up Fukishima

The news agency Reuters reported today on what can best be described as the most flagrant and appallingly slimy practice in the nearly three year effort to clean up the dangerous disaster caused by the Fukishima Nuclear Meltdown.  As Reuters reports, 

"(Reuters) - Seiji Sasa hits the train station in this northern Japanese city before dawn most mornings to prowl for homeless men.

He isn't a social worker. He's a recruiter. The men in Sendai Station are potential laborers that Sasa can dispatch to contractors in Japan's nuclear disaster zone for a bounty of $100 a head.

"This is how labor recruiters like me come in every day," Sasa says, as he strides past men sleeping on cardboard and clutching at their coats against the early winter cold.

It's also how Japan finds people willing to accept minimum wage for one of the most undesirable jobs in the industrialized world: working on the $35 billion, taxpayer-funded effort to clean up radioactive fallout across an area of northern Japan larger than Hong Kong."

When liberal thinkers like myself look at these situations we have a natural repulsion to people being used as cheap throwaway labor.  But it seems clear to me that in some boardroom "they won't be missed," was a prominent theme when looking for the cheapest labor for the most dangerous job.

I like to talk about "Libertarian Land," a Galts Gulch look at the problems and ask what we should do about this situation.  In this case there is no doubt that putting homeless to work, even at minimum wage, is a good thing.  But, in Libertarian Land, as soon as one of these workers is diagnosed and requires treatment the cost of that treatment should be born by the owners of TEPCO, or their board members, personally.  If one of these workers dies as a result of the work these same people should be brought up on manslaughter.  And if the efforts to protect the workers was slack, irresponsible, or otherwise missing, it should be reckless manslaughter and people should go to jail.

Currently they just get docked a bit on their performance bonus.

We don't need regulations to change the world, we need to change who we throw in jail.