If prices go up sufficiently then there is no advantage to building a factory in Bangladesh. Bangladeshi workers then become unemployed.

Right now, Bangladesh needs wealth more than anything else. Once they have wealth, they can spend it on things like OSHA.

Or, you know, those countries could have factories that satisfy their markets, and we could have factories that satisfy ours. All without having to kill people in the process or burning dirty fuels shipping goods halfway around the world.

If they're only satisfying local (poorer) markets, then they have even less money to worry about things like safety.

Factories that satisfy their markets won't magically become safe and clean, much like the ones in the now "developed word" during the industrialization phase weren't.

theres an interesting course called economics 101 - check it out.

The problem with that is country borders. If China mandated safety then the factories just move to another country.

Yeah, and the solution is not to only mandate safety standards at your own factories, but to impose a stiff tariff on goods produced in countries without comparable standards (and without meaningful enforcement). Yeah, I know, "free trade," but it is not a fair market if some people are playing by a different set of rules, and we do not want to have a race to the bottom.

Agreed. Then some factory owners will build robots instead (as they're already doing due to wage rises in China) and wipe out any foreign competition along with jobs. It's for their own good, after all.

It is for their own good. Robots are inevitable, better to push them out now and start addressing what they mean for society than pretend they're never coming.

Isn't it better if they have time to transition to more services oriented economy first?

Sure, that would be better. It'd be awesome if they could transition to any type of better economy. But I think given all the circumstances and what is happening, facing and accepting reality is the best way to go. Because the robots are coming, waiting for the country to be ready just isn't going to happen.

What we need, I think, is international agreement on what those tariffs should be.

That's why I suggested the customers mandate safety. If Walmart/Nike/Apple/etc required safety it doesn't matter where the factories move.

Western nations could incentivize this by not assessing fines for firms caught producing their products in unsafe factories (I assume a couple billion dollar fine would be more impactful to Apple than a scathing NY Times article).

Ehh... No.

Because they would have nowhere to move to.

First... China has a humongous work force, which solely on numbers no other country can compete with, you need whole continents to get the same mass of workforce.

Second, in comparison to the rest of the BRIC competitors - Chinese workforce is relatively homogenous, well educated and most importantly of all they have a work ethic (Brazil? Hahahahah).

Third, low price is not the sole reason why stuff is produced in China (Go read why Ipad production is never returning to the US according to Steve Jobs).