Further to my post about the collapse of the Rana Plaza buiding near Dhaka last week, here's Justin Forsyth (£), chief executive of Save the Children:
The wrong response to Dhaka would be for companies to disinvest in the light of the international outcry. Bangladesh's women garment workers need decent jobs so they can raise and educate their children. Bangladesh as a nation needs to grow its private-sector jobs and investment to raise its population out of poverty.
Investment from the private sector is a big cause of growth in poor countries and has played [a] powerful part in creating jobs, lifting people out of poverty and improving the prosperity of countries such as Bangladesh, where headline rates of poverty have fallen from 57 per cent in 1992 to 31.5 per cent in 2009. That means a child born in 2008 can expect to live to 66, while in 1970 it was 44. Economic growth has also provided tax revenues that have led to investment in healthcare and education: there has been an impressive rise in girls attending school, to as much as 82.5 per cent in 2009.
But we need to go further, not just in Bangladesh but across the developing world, and companies have a big role to play. Tragic though this week's events have been, we don't start from zero. The sweat-shop campaigns in the 1990s have had a serious impact on the behaviour of companies such as Nike and Gap. But progress has not been even and too many companies still turn a blind eye to unacceptable business practices.
More companies need to sign up to the "Do No Harm" approach championed by campaigners; this means ensuring basic health and safety standards, protecting labour rights, paying decent wages and addressing environmental impact. It also means paying fair taxes. Despite the outcry over Starbucks' tax bill in the UK, the bigger scandal is that developing countries are estimated to lose as much as $160 billion in tax dodging each year - more than the entire global aid budget.
The final, vital element is greater concerted international action by governments to incentivise business leaders and to regulate against unacceptable practices.
So: capitalism but with more acceptable business practices. It would seem hard not to prefer this to capitalism with less acceptable business practices.