I'm somewhat uncomfortable admitting, and yet will anyway, that images like this remind me that I have much more in common with the purchasers of a service like this than I do with the working people who end up poisoned by mercury or whatever. I live in Southern California, so I know I'm exposed to all sorts of horrific pollution (in the air, surely in the water and soil too, this having been the center of aerospace research and industry for the length of the Cold War). That said, I associate pollution with preventative regulation and public-sponsored, sometimes even public-executed, cleanup efforts (think Superfund). Thinking of this Peruvian example, I'm reminded that Latin Americans, especially poor workers out in Amazonia, are living lifes much closer to the utopian fantasies of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman. For them, a Swiss pollution clean-up company might be the closest thing they'll see in their lifetimes to the work the E.P.A. does here in the U.S. That's abhorent to me as a beneficiary of state services here. But I'm also exposed to the infrastuctures which do arise in a neoliberal setting. I'd call this level of regulation and caretaking negligent and minimal, but at the same time, these services are more than nothing. Rand Paul would likely look at this image and conclude that corporate welfare does function. These companies do clean up after themselves because the total destruction of the environment would constitute a risk to their investments and their future.
