Another tragedy of the absence of capitalism

We hear enough of how appalling capitalism is in this modern world. We should, perhaps, pay more attention to the disasters that befall those in the absence of capitalism:

More than 100 people have died after an artisanal goldmine at a small village in western Central African Republic (CAR) caved in due to a landslide, local officials and aid workers said on Wednesday.

“Artisanal” in mining terms means men with shovels and little else but a shovel and their labour.

A second prosecutor from Baboua told the press that the incident is believed to have been caused by “the collapse of several underground tunnels in which miners were operating”. “The ground completely collapsed and buried people,” Cedric Mbango, a miner at the site, told the AFP news agency, describing the incident as “catastrophic”.

As we’ve noted before this is non-capitalist mining. The safer way to mine is to perhaps run with an open pit. Or, if tunnelling, to shore up said tunnels. But both of these options require much more money to be spent before there is any revenue from output. They require capital that is. Requiring capital does indeed usually mean requiring capitalists. You need bulldozers and diggers and scoopers and something to shore the tunnels up with. Capital goods which are afforded from capital provided by capitalists.

True, capitalist mining might mean that the workers will be exploited, the surplus of their labour being expropriated. They might have a greater chance of being alive too.

As Deirdre McCloskey, echoing Joan Robinson, has been known to point out, the only thing worse than being exploited by a capitalist is not being exploited by a capitalist.

Tim Worstall