Unless you’ve been enjoying the finer qualities of being a hermit over the last few weeks, you must have heard about the massive Mattel recall due to high levels of lead in certain types of paint used on their toys. This controversy comes on the heels of a slew of recalls; from food to poisonous toothpaste to dangerous vehicles. The blame game, expertly played out in US media, has zeroed in on a country already under fire for everything from human rights violations to price dumping to product cloning: The People’s Republic of China. But lost in the debate over how dangerous Chinese goods are is the fundamental question of how this situation came to be in the first place: Why is everything “Made in China”?

If you tune your TV to CNN on a weekday at 3 PM PST (6 PM EST), you’ll be met by an angry white-haired guy by the name of Lou Dobbs. A renowned journalist, he is on the very forefront of every debate that has to do with the “Protection of America” as he puts it. With tag lines such as “War on the Middle-Class,” “China Rising,” “Outsourcing America” and “Broken Borders,” he leaves little to the imagination in terms of what he is trying to accomplish with his show, which is a good thing seeing as most journalists these days go out of their way to conceal their true beliefs and agendas. A big part of the program over the last few months has been a frontal assault on China, and especially on the outsourcing of jobs to the country and how it effects the workers of the USA.

The recent lead paint scandal has only fueled the fire Dobbs is tending and given him more reason than ever to direct hard questions at lawmakers and CEOs alike. What he fails to do however, is address the underlying cause of all this: The reason why China is becoming the number one manufacturer of goods for American companies. Why is he avoiding this question you ask? Because the problem was brought about by the US government and people whose political views are the same as Mr. Dobbs’.

The problem of toxic food, lead paint and poison toothpaste is but a symptom of a policy put in place by governments and corporations during the 80s and 90s: The Free Market. The theory of a free market is that the price and quality of a product is decided between the seller and the buyer without any government interference. This policy fits perfectly in the political agenda of no government interference cherished by North Americans and is one of the building blocks of the American Dream. In theory it works pretty well, at least on a micro basis: The baker who bakes the best bread most effectively gets more business. But as the communists learned when their “ideal” societies collapsed in the late 80s, there is a big difference between theory and reality.

The problem with a free market is that we live in a global marketplace. The baker isn’t just competing with the guy down the street; he’s competing with the factory on the other side of the planet. The problem is worsened when the laws of the country that houses the factory on the other side of the planet are more relaxed, allowing them to pay smaller wages and push the prices down further. So while the local baker is bound by restrictions on production in his own shop, the owner of the other factory is stealing his customers by exploiting his workers and cutting corners. The end consumer operating in a free market will invariably pick the less expensive option, which leaves the local baker with the short end of the stick. To solve this problem, the local baker makes a deal with the factory: If he sells the goods the factory makes for the same price he sold his own products before, he can turn a profit while the factory earns the same as before. So the baker fires his staff, buys a truck and just like that he has outsourced several jobs to China.

Years later, one of his customers gets violently ill and tests turn up rat poison in the bread. An investigation shows that the flour used in the Chinese factory is tainted with rat poison due to poor quality control. But since the baker has become the middle man, he takes no responsibility for how the product is made and the blame is placed squarely in the hands of the factory owner.

This might seem a silly example, but it is exactly what happened to Mattel and is happening to thousands of jobs and millions of products worldwide. In a free market, the factory that demands the least amount of money and outputs the most amount of product the fastest wins the contract, regardless of their routines, practices and business standards because if something goes wrong, it is easy enough to hire a new factory to do the same job.

The problems of outsourcing, poor quality products, tainted food, child labour and human rights violations all stem from the same source: A free market full of oversights in their rules and regulations. This is cold hard logic – a free global market will invariably lead to massive outsourcing and loss of control. If a free market is to work in today’s society, strict guidelines have to be put in place in terms of product testing, worker rights and accountability. But this flies in the face of the principle; A free market is one without restrictions. And thus the theory falls on its own impracticality.

The moral of the story is simple: If you want cheap products and believe in a free market, you have to pay the price. Without government interference, there are no checks and balances in place to ensure that the stuff you buy is safe for you. And we all know that putting our trust in the hands of greedy corporations is about as wise as handing out blank cheques to perfect strangers.