'Inevitable' Globalization meets Inevitable Disaster

Geoff Evans, director of the Mineral Policy Institute, said, "Serious accidents like this are an inevitable and tragic consequence of using cyanide for gold extraction."

The word inevitable leaped out at me. Favorite word of globalization enthusiasts! Free trade, the global economy, it's all inevitable. Don't try to block the train; your only choice is to get on and ride.

But economics is not physics. It doesn't operate by laws we can't revoke. An economy is a human invention designed to serve human purposes. It is probably inevitable that there will be spills from huge open pools of cyanide. It is not inevitable that companies from one country be allowed to mishandle deadly chemicals in another country and spill them into a third. Not inevitable, unless we believe it is and do nothing to prevent it.