The thing about news like the Michael Bianco raid in New Bedford, MA is that it’s the tip of a very large iceberg. By that I don’t mean ZOMG! the hordes of brown folks are like, totally invading our shores! No, it’s just one small indication of a huge system that grinds people into dust.
Our companies run from the very idea of paying a living wage. Better to pay executives the overinflated wage and bonus they now get rather than use the profits for the people who sweat for the companies. So companies will spend money to lobby for things like NAFTA and CAFTA. They will advocate and use export processing zones, also known as free trade zones, also known as “free to trade your lives for our mountains of plastic crap” zones.
Saying this invariably gets at least one person pissily declaring that I’m guilt-tripping them, that I’m acting like an elitist, and that I’m being mean. I know it’s oh-so-elitist of me to point out that maybe, just maybe, we don’t have a birthright to buy lots of stuff at other people’s expense.
This issue grinds my gears because it’s so huge. You can’t just point to one thing and say, If we just do X it will be better or If so and so was out of office, things would be better. Go on, try it: If we just bought less things would be better. Except they wouldn’t be because the things we buy would still be produced by people who are treated as just so much fodder for our needs and wants. Brown people in poor countries who we don’t see, brown people from poor countries here in the US who we choose not to see. We can choose not to buy as much, but thanks to planned obsolescence, we’re going to have to eventually replace things. Things like say, computers that still work perfectly well and continue funding the rape war. And we’ll have to do that because now, if you want to find a job or do your assignments for college or grad school, you need a computer. You need email. You didn’t need it fifteen years ago, but you need it now.
And well, who pushed NAFTA? That was Bill Clinton and the DLC. This isn’t about the left vs. right. This is about entitlement.
And yet. And yet.
When someone tells me that yet another thing they bought was so cheap that they just had to buy it (also known as spaving) I have to roll my eyes. Because. . .why? Were you going to die without yet another purse when you have about twenty, ten of which you’ve lost track of? Were you going to crumble into dust if you didn’t get yet another freaking TV for your place when you’ve already got two? Oh, but this one’s a flat screen! And it’s HDTV! You know they’re going to switch it all to hi-def and it’s either get the HDTV or get the $30 converter so why not just get the HDTV? And who cares where it’s assembled or what resources went into it and how much waste making it generated? It will go so well in the living room of the starter mansion I bought, but damn I wish we’d win the war in Iraq so oil prices could come down since it’s expensive to heat these things. And who cares that the Disney doll you bought was made in a factory in Thailand, that the factory burned down and killed and maimed young female workers in a disaster that dwarfed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire? Who cares that since then, nothing has changed?
I can proudly declare myself the queen of personal purity if I forgo TV and buy my clothes at thrift shops only and never, ever drive anywhere. But even if I managed to find used clothes made of fabric that wasn’t woven by glorified slave labor in an EPZ somewhere, even if I ate only food grown in a local farm, even if I participated as little as I could in a rotten system of global feudalism, the system would still exist, and all of the smug high-five’s I’d give to my fellow travelers wouldn’t change this one whit. My neighbors may not have the time or the luxury to scout out farmer’s markets (and you do have to drive a distance from where I live to get to one). And they don’t know that the banana they put in their smoothies was the product of terrorist wars and corporate colonization in Central America funded by Chiquita/United Fruit. And now its the citizens of the very nations that were exploited and ground down in the name of cheap bananas who are now coming into the US desperate for decent work, some of whom were taken in a raid to Texas or Florida, wondering who’s taking care of their kids.
Chris had pointed out before that the politics of personal purity are counter-productive, and I agree. It’s not as simple as declaring yourself more aware, or better, or above the system because you don’t participate in it. The one thing about the Kader fire in Thailand that I mentioned earlier was that there was almost no coverage about it. I first heard about it when I read No Logo. The other side of this coin, though, is that we can’t ignore the cost of what the Global North is doing to the Global South. We can’t just tut-tut over it and buy a hybrid and give to Unicef and figure that our work is done. We can’t just reduce this to individual action and decide that our hands are clean. We know enough, by now, to acknowledge that something must be done. We have no excuses, and can just drop the whining over how guilty it makes us all feel.
There is a cost to this system. We aren’t paying the cost right now. The people who assemble our motherboards, who sew our clothing, who put together our cell phones, who mine for the minerals we use, whose lands are decimated for big Agra, they are the ones who suffer. The nations whose governments weren’t that enthusiastic about handing their people, their sweat, and their resources over to us were met with CIA-sponsored covert wars and overthrows.
There is a cost to this system. We use the greatest proportion of resources, and are the biggest polluter in the world. That’s quite an accomplishment, and yet we’re still not paying as dearly as say, island people who are losing their homes and lands thanks to the storms and higher sea levels brought by global warming. We tut-tut over clear-cutting forests and would rather spend our way out of supporting the system, instead of knocking down the whole damn system.
There is a cost to this system, and it’s a far worse penalty than paying a little more for the cute coffee table at Target or the button down shirt at Macy’s. It’s time we paid more, we sacrificed more, and we stopped sucking up the resources and time and sweat and lives of others.
61 Responses to “The cost of the system”
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
And there is more….
The people who are laboring to produce cheap exports (our imports) could be manufacturing things for domestic consumption. Thus their economies are warped. They can’t afford the very things they’re manufacturing.
One might also ask why American workers should have to compete with economies that have slave wages, no safety laws and who are environmental pirates?
So you got to buy it cheaper at Wal-Mart. Think so? How about all those taxes you have to pay to support displaced workers? Of course you’re seeking cheap things because you pay all those taxes and don’t have a lot of disposable income. Bit of a viscious circle.
And who cares that the Disney doll you bought was made in a factory in Thailand, that the factory burned down and killed and maimed young female workers in a disaster that dwarfed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire?
Believe it or not … Disney cared. They now have an extremely strict policy about where you can order your stuff from, even if you’re just getting a silkscreened hat to give away to the people in your department. You always have to order from an approved vendor who has undergone overseas inspections and signed various pledges to allow worker complaints, unionization, higher-than-market wages, etc.
Do they care on a deeply personal and humanitarian level? Of course not. But they at least realize that hiring shady companies that abuse their workers reflects badly on them.
There is a cost to this system. We aren’t paying the cost right now. The only way to change is to figure out the cost and apply the increase in price to what people pay for goods and services. This of course will never happen because it would require tariffs and/or taxation - neither of which are popular with Americans.The sad truth is that in America most people only listen to their pocketbooks.
No Sweat makes quality clothing under humane conditions. I have some of their T-shirts and shoes. The quality is higher than you’d pay off the rack, and the prices are comparable.
I’m a big fan of the Chuck Taylor style of cloth shoe, but the last couple of pairs of real Chucks I bought disintigrated after only three months of constant wear. My No Sweat Chuck knock offs are still goind strong after a full year. In addition, the habit of well-worn Chucks to delaminate near the toes and heel, meaning you get wet feet standing in a quarter inch of water, is completely absent from the No Sweat version - the weak link appears to be the eyelets, which are easy to fix or even simply ignore.
You know, it’s funny to see you saying that, Luke, because you’re assuming that everyone has a choice. A lot of people, yes, even in America, have no choice but to buy the cheapest things - because that’s all the money they have.
I’ve been refusing to buy anything from WalMart for years now, and even lately have refused to even set foot in the store to cut through (there’s one in the mall just by my place).
People occasionally ask me why, at which point I go on about how poorly it treats its workers, how sexist the company is in its promotions, all the rest of it. And sadly, most of the time, the response I get is “But everything’s so cheap there!” But of course it isn’t, not really. They just don’t see the cost.
People do only listen to one thing, and that’s their pocketbook. And spending your way to higher status by having more stuff you don’t need. Two things. There are two things people listen to…
but what can we do?
this is the major reason i’ve stopped reading magazines like adbusters and the like. their idea of “doing something” is just to buy your way out via American Apparel, CSA’s, etc. or maybe signing a petition, attending an anti-globalism rally, etc.
what can we do, that will actually accomplish something? short of armed overthrow of the capitalist system, i mean? by which i don’t mean to be either snarky or naive. where do we start? i would assume that to even begin to accomplish anything from within the system, we would have to have better elected officials who are willing to put that approach to policy on the table. and even that is an incredibly uphill battle.
You know, it’s funny to see you saying that, Luke, because you’re assuming that everyone has a choice.They do, theoretically, have a choice for whom they cast their votes. But instead of voting for candidates that could help increase their spending power, for candidates that could implement policies to help address the wrongs you point out in your article, the people choose the same old pro-business government. Our government is a pretty good reflection of the will of the people.
Its pretty easy to offend people if you go off on a rant that mixes up a bunch of issues, offers no clear policy solutions and blames individual consumers for collective action problems. Complaining about my shopping at Walmart hurting brown people in Thailand is a little like criticizing Gore for using a lot of electricity. To the extent that I acknowledge that there are things we should be doing differently, its not something my purchasing decisions really impact. You’re never going to get enough people to stop shopping at the cheapest place in town to really make a difference. Maybe sales will dip if the worst abuses in the production line get publicized, but that’s not what you’re limiting your complaints to.
And its totally bogus to claim that our consumerist culture, by itself, is hurting anyone else. Do you understand China’s economic policy? They are buying US dollars so that we can continue to buy Chinese goods. This is driving their economic expansion which is going to benefit them in the long run.
So our running a trade deficit is actually to their benefit. What we need to be worried about is that that pie gets divided more evenly. And not just in the sense of benefiting foreign workers strictly at the sense of Americans. Because that will only make the inequality worse over here and negatively impact the only voting bloc that has a chance at having a positive impact in this labor-management relationship. We need to preserve the bargaining power of labor versus management on both sides. That means supporting unions at home, supporting labor abroad, and preventing companies from bringing in foreign workers who will be at their employers’ mercy.
I appreciate these issues. But I think your message is misdirected.
How?
I don’t mean to be facetious, but I wonder if we can ever upright the system or if it is going to capsize in a violent decline.
me:
yes, but if the poor are exploited by the system and essentially pushed into spending habits and behaviors that prop up that system, I don’t think they’re really the focus of anti-materialist ire. I think Luke is talking about the lower-middle and middle class (and so on) who have the buying power to make smarter choices about what kinds of products they buy and where they buy them from, but for reasons of convenience or discount price (which doesn’t reflect the real socioeconomic and environmental cost its production requires) these people continue to shop at WalMart or BJ’s or whatever….
In the days when I shopped at WalMart, there were BMWs in the parking lot. The big box stores see a lot of traffic from people who can afford to shop elsewhere, yet don’t.
We’re right to focus on individuals and the system as a whole, but the almighty shareholder fields a lot of the responsibility for what we’re dealing with today. People of conscience need to vote their proxies and become familiar with the corporate meetings held by the companies whose stock they own. One of the best things we can do is build equity in the most offending companies and use power to affect major decisions through basic shareholder activism.
and happening as it did, in a state that is not all that hostile to immegrants, the story also shows how disconnected the federales are from the rest of the levels of government.
It may yet come to light that facts are otherwise but at this moment, Patrick Daval’s enforment branch are claiming that the fed’s and I&N did NOT keep them in the loop about actions that were were planned or taken.
The grinding machine has many parts and they are badly connected.
And who or what, precisely, is forcing the citizens of, say, Thailand to take these ‘terrible’ jobs? Doesn’t the fact that there’s such high demand for them indicate that it’s better than anything the local economy provides? If we made the products unsaleable by raising prices too high, then the factories would close, and then where would the workers be?
Oh man - this reminds me of my ‘Advertising and Society’ course in university, which was a Communications course but had maybe 25% business students. I think they were expecting a ‘How to use Advertising to get people in Society to buy your stuff’ intead of the critical examination of rampant consumerism. Our textbook was No Logo - you’d think that would have warned them off.
Anyway - a couple of months in, one of them finally snapped, and began lecturing us about how “These companies are supposed to make money, and if Disney or Nike are making big profits than we should be learning from them and looking up to them not criticizing them for doing what they are supposed to do.”
I wish I would have had your post then. Although, she got ripped into pretty well by a number of people.
Bad Wolf - the products would only be unsaleable because the ‘developed’ world feels entitled to paying unethically low prices that are subsidised through the suffering of everyone else. There’s an entire system built upon it, and - like the post said - it can’t be undone through simple measures (everyone stop buying at Wal-Mart! Everybody recycle paper! Everybody buy one less present at Christmas! but needs to be dismantled through systematic social, legal and political efforts.
just pay more? sure, some brand will come along and charge you more with feel good pictures and story text slapped on it (witness: whole foods). but it’ll be made for the same cost by the same people. the extra money? it goes entirely to the middleman (executives are one type of middleman). Systemic change doesn’t start with consumers volunteering -more- of the imaginary cash they don’t have.
Floyd– Let’s take the example of dolls, in this post. I’ve never been doll shopping, but let’s say an average doll now costs $10. Let’s say that to get it up to standards where it’s acceptable to you (or Sheezlebub, or whoever the divine arbiter of ‘ethical labor’ is), and now costs $30. It’s basic economics that the doll won’t sell as many units. Even if people wanted to buy them, many simply couldn’t afford it. You’ve effectively improved the lot of some workers, while throwing others out of a job. Is that a net improvement?
Isn’t it better to let people enter into voluntary contracts? I’d be all for curtailing the abuses where pay is withheld, but if two parties want to enter into a contract, in general they should be allowed to do so. As noted, these factories are already better than any other work the local economy can provide. Why do you think you’re more qualified to make decisions for these workers than the workers themselves?
Bad Wolf, why do we need to sell lots of dolls/TVs/cars/clothes anyway? Our current economic system of constant growth isn’t the only one that will work - what about people buying less, selling less, and living on less?
Floyd– You seem to have conflicting goals. It seems that you can help the factory workers by continuing to provide full employment, superior to anything else available in the area. Alternatively, you can cut back on consumption.
It seems you can’t do both. Less consumption means less production, which means fewer employees are needed. So, less consumption puts people who are experienced at working in factories out of a job. What are they supposed to do then?
I don’t think the prices would necessarily have to be increased all that much. Compared to other western countries, the U.S. has the biggest wage gap between the CEO and and the guy in the mailroom. I want to say it’s something like 400%, whereas it ranges from 12-15% or something like that in places like England, Scandinavia, etc. My numbers may not be right, but there is a vast difference.
We need to stop equating wealth with personal value. We need to collectively quit believing that someone with more money is a better person. Because that is what fuels the wage gap. “What? I have to make several times more than my underlings…otherwise where’s the proof that I am superior to them?”
Cutting the CEO’s salary in half and spreading it out amongs the workers would be a good start.
Bad Wolf:
Wow. That argument sounds really, really familiar. I believe I learned it in history class. Something along the lines of, “But, if we end slavery, the Negroes don’t know how to take care of themselves! What will happen to them then? Besides, their own people sold them into slavery in the first place!” Very similar to your argument that if we end the practice of abusing other people in other countries, they’ll “suffer” b/c of it and btw “it’s not my fault”.
“Unsaleable” in in the eye of the beholder, I’m thinking. If companies headquartered in the US were required to follow US labor laws regardless of where they do business, then folks in Thailand would make $5.15/hr. They would have more money to buy more things and the Thai economy would boom, rather like ours did when Henry Ford came up with the idea of paying his workers enough to be able to afford the products they were making. We’re still riding that wave even if greed is making it ebb now.
Sure, it would make the price of a pair of shoes go up. So…we each might have a pair or two of shoes, instead of a closet full of them. It’ll make the price of a T-shirt go up, so we would think twice about buying the ‘Fuck you’ t-shirt, thinking about how many places where it would not be appropriate. So we don’t buy an new Rooms-to-Go living room suite every 2 or 3 years.
The upshot for us would be that quality would win out over quantity and the stuff we buy would last longer. We wouldn’t have to replace as often. And for that, we would be willing to pay more. So even the more expensive stuff would be saleable.
Besides, that is a specious argument anyway. Americans are willing to pay $300 for a purse that has a certain brand name on it, regardless of the fact that it’s made by the same people that sell the $20 one at Target. So, obviously Americans are willing to buy expensive things if it fulfills a need. It’s just sad that the “need” being filled is false self-esteem, false status and greed.
Marcy,
I don’t have the statistics in front of me, but I think you’re enormously underestimating the wage disparity in both cases, although it is somewhat smaller in the EU than the USA.
More like 400 times, rather than 400 percent.
There is a kernel of truth to all your cliches and anecdotes. But frankly, like mpowell said, you’re globing together too many topics. So he’s my response to your main point, which I think is:
The people who assemble our motherboards, who sew our clothing, who put together our cell phones, who mine for the minerals we use, whose lands are decimated for big Agra, they are the ones who suffer. The nations whose governments weren’t that enthusiastic about handing their people, their sweat, and their resources over to us were met with CIA-sponsored covert wars and overthrows.
You’re basically dividing the world into 2 countries: those who manufacture stuff for us (The Suffering) and those who don’t (CIA targets).
Let’s start with The Suffering. I assume you’re referring to manufactured goods that come from developing nations, correct? Because 50% of our manufactured goods still come from developed nations. Canada, which has strong labor protections, is still our #1 trading partner. But you probably know that already since you’re criticizing so many people for not knowing where their products come from.
Anyway, do you really think that life is so miserable in developing countries, or are you just assuming that life blows for everyone because of a few anecdotal atrocities? Those horrible anecdotes aside, all of this “lives-for-plastic-stuff” trading has created countless jobs in these countries, greatly increasing the standard of living. China has been going through a labor *shortage* for 2 years now. There are so many jobs available in the country that people are flocking to jobs with higher wages and better working conditions, not to mention higher education.
Yes, most of that progress is happening in cities and there is an increasing urban/rural disparity. But the cities became prosperous because so many people were willing to work and fulfilled the demand of Western countries. Now that there’s a labor shortage in the cities, you’ll start seeing more jobs created in rural areas.
Finally, the CIA launching covert operations against any country not willing to trade with the US is nonsense. Make no doubt about it: I hate the CIA. They’ve had more controversies than I can count, and there are probably more that we’ll never know about. But except for trading drugs, CIA ops are not about trade. They’re about stupid political decisions.
Sure, they may have wanted to assassinate the Castros of the world, but that’s because they considered dictators like Castro a threat. If he were out of power and US-Cuba trade relations re-opened, the increase of import revenue would be insignificant compared to just shopping around for a large country that is willing to trade.
It won’t sell as many only TEMPORARILY b/c people are used to the old price. Are you telling me that there are people for whom 30 bucks for a doll is too much? Do they never spend more than 30 bucks on anything, ever? If these same people for whom 30 bucks was too much to spend on a doll came across a car in pristine condition for 30 bucks, are you telling me they’d pass it by? No. So, it’s not that 30 bucks is a lot of money, it’s the perception that it’s a lot of money for a doll.
Most people who will spend ten bucks on a doll will probably buy more than one doll during their kid’s childhood. So, they could easily spend 30 bucks. And once they got used to the price of the doll and realized it was never going to be as cheap again, they’d start buying dolls at the cost of 30 bucks.
But this whole discussion about whether it’s noble of us to exploit people in developing countries with crap jobs b/c it’s better than anything else they could get is missing the point. The point is that a money economy is by default going to be exploitative and unfair and unstable. The system is totally fucked.
Our current economic system of constant growth isn’t the only one that will work - what about people buying less, selling less, and living on less?
Probably because “living with less” goes against human nature. I say less consumption would be a good place to start, but then you simply have to have fewer people around for the reason that Bad Wolf pointed out - fewer jobs. And people just love to keep having more people ….
Yeah, that sounds better. I read that information a while back in Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation and my retention isn’t what it used to be.
opoponax–If it weren’t for the specter of nations like China, I’d be tempted to advocate for armed overthrow. Problem is, that crap gives us more of the same. China does have its own record of human rights abuses and sweatshops–it’s feudalism.
Honestly, I think one thing we can do is start educating ourselves and holding our elected officials accountable for enabling this bullshit with corporations. I think we’ve got to reign in corporations and our government that does business with them. I think we’ve got to make a lot of noise about this, and not in the dumb-ass way that Adbusters does (I love culture jamming, but not a big fan of Adbusters for ).
mpowell, my “rant” wasn’t “misdirected.” It actually pointed out that you can’t just say that the answer is to shop less OR that we can just rely on personal purity and wash our hands of the whole thing. The issue is actually, you know, complicated. Complaining that pointing this out is somehow the same as criticizing Gore for using a lot of electricity is what’s misdirected. Unless people wake up and push for change, we aren’t going to see things get better. What has the status quo gotten us so far? Planned obsolescence and new necessities (see: my comment about computers) with some feel-good corporate pledges for fair labor when in reality, there’s actual anti-union repression going on overseas and here.
Things will not change until we let go of this sense of entitlement. Yes, the poor have few choices, and I’ve always been clear about that, as well as the need to organize. But the middle- and upper class DO have choices. Some of those choices are consumer driven, but many have to do with spreading the word, supporting unions, and holding our elected officials accountable for crap like NAFTA and CAFTA, for holding our government accountable for exploiting our neighbors, for holding companies accountable for intensifying civil conflicts in a quest to get resources. And it doesn’t help when people get terribly defensive when it’s pointed out that yes, our sense of entitlement fuels this.
If you’re still having trouble getting this, read Floyd’s comment, since he actually read and comprehended my post.
Do you understand China’s economic policy? They are buying US dollars so that we can continue to buy Chinese goods. This is driving their economic expansion which is going to benefit them in the long run.
So our running a trade deficit is actually to their benefit.
So it’s our responsibility to prop up China’s economic expansion so they can crush us someday? Frankly, when you put it like that, it seems incredibly irresponsible of our government to have let things go on for as long as they have. It’s not good to let one country — especially one that’s potentially hostile — to control that huge of a portion of our economy.
Bad Wolf - Love the moniker, for starters. Is it actually a Dr. Who reference?
As for Floydd having conflicted goals, not exactly. These are inter-related goals. The idea is that we here consume less (forget about Thailand for a moment, we’re just talking Canada. Or the US, whichever you prefer) and also work less. That means three day weekends every week, and probably giving up your car. That also means collective action is required to make sure public transit is such that most people can give up their cars. But we’re not just talking cars; also doing without that big plasma screen and other toys/status symbols.
Having more time, people then have more time for hobbies. Things that involve doing things, rather than consuming things (or sitting like a lump in front of that big plasma screen). So consumption overall is less, but people are consuming less. With less consumption, prices will likely go up. That’s the way of things, and it’s acceptable so long as people can afford to live. Luxuries are just that; luxuries. Middle class and up have too many of those as it is. The poor don’t have enough, and minimum wages would help. Ensuring that the minimum wage is a living one would go a long way. Might even have to be regional, as some areas are more expensive.
Which leaves us with Thailand or China or wherever. We can’t change them, but we can help them change. Pocketbook is the best place to hit people, apparently as it’s the most painful place to be hit. So that’s what we do. The exact method would be a tough one to determine; it would be expensive to make it illegal to import from an overseas factory unless it agrees to regular inspections (as we’d have to pay for those regular inspections). Also helping labour to organize would help. Lots of things we can do, and I’m sure somebody smarter than me can come up with some good ideas.
“With less consumption, prices will likely go up.” - Concerned Parent
When demand goes down and supply stays the same, prices go don’t go up, they go down! Even when manufacturing eventually decreases and the rate of supply drops, the price isn’t going to increase, it will stay at that lower price.
Finally, the CIA launching covert operations against any country not willing to trade with the US is nonsense. Make no doubt about it: I hate the CIA. They’ve had more controversies than I can count, and there are probably more that we’ll never know about. But except for trading drugs, CIA ops are not about trade. They’re about stupid political decisions.
Don’t be so naive.
Thanks to United Fruit,the US did, in fact, sponsor a covert war in Guatemala. It was a CIA-backed coup.
The CIA and British officials plotted the coup that overthrew democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in the 1950’s because he was making noise about nationalizing the oil wealth, and that just couldn’t be allowed. The Shah, a far more palatable leader, was installed. We saw how well that went over.
The CIA worked to strengthen Salvador Allende’s opponents in Chile and to weaken the nation’s economy in response to his support for nationalizing industries that had significant US business interest. This led to a bloody coup in 1973.
Those might have been “stupid political decisions” but they were made in defense of business.
“And once they got used to the price of the doll and realized it was never going to be as cheap again, they’d start buying dolls at the cost of 30 bucks.”
this is actually a pretty good point.
anytime you start talking about this sort of thing, it’s presented as axiomatic that everything must get cheaper all the time, and if a price ever rises, well shit, that would like basically implode the entire economy because Everybody Knows that Nobody wants to spend More Money than they used to.
um, yeah. so that explains why people stopped buying gas when prices rose. and that must be why nobody’s bought real estate for the last decade. not to mention why nobody goes to college anymore.
prices rise all the time. and yet, if people want whatever it is badly enough, they are willing to pay for it. even if companies had to raise prices in order to offer a living wage, obey labor laws, etc. yes, actually, people would probably still pay for the item in question. it happens all the time. i remember a couple years ago it cost $10 to go to a movie. now it’s $11. i still go. those price rises are basically to subsidize a bloated and failing film industry — that’s how much you have to pay for the movies to be profitable under the way they’re currently made.
Me at home: “Wow, I have an awful lot of stuff here. I need bigger closets.” Yeah right. What I really need is a trip to the Goodwill. And a scizzors for my VISA.
Maybe we could just stop buying stuff, PERIOD. Just snap the wallets shut. Unless we just rented our first apartments, our houses just burned down or we lost everything in the divorce, what do we really “need?”
(I’m one to talk: I’m a recovering shopaholic/hoarder who used to think that just one more X would make my life happy and complete. Now I get to be servant to all this SHIT. Oh goodie.)
I strut my progressive politics in my purchasing decisions (hybrid car, boycott Walmart, get my clothes from EBay and thrift stores, buy local/organic/generic/on clearance, yadayada), but isn’t this just another way to make so-called “lifestyle” decisions with MORE CONSUMERISM??? What am I trying to accomplish? HEL-LO? Did any of this spending increase my “status” in the eyes of my neighbors and colleagues? Not a whit; there was simply no point to any of it. I had enough stuff fifteen years ago to broadcast my middle class status to the world, as if the world even CARED.
Bottom line: There is no social mobility in the US anymore except downward, and buying too much crap puts us at risk for spiraling downward, so what are we aspiring to? What are we trying to prove? Where we are socially today is where we’ll most likely be tomorrow, and that’s only if we’re lucky.
Sometimes I tell myself THATS IT, I’M NEVER BUYING ANYTHING AGAIN EVER. So my neighbor has a flat screen TV. My new attitude: BFD; I’ll watch my old TV until it dies.
Then I run out of vodka and think, allright I’ll make an exception for vodka.
Yeah, the opopanax, it’s pretty obvious but try getting people to see it. I’ve beaten my head against a wall more than once trying to get people to see that it’s the market - available supply and whatever the demand for it is - that drives prices, same as it always has. But the Korporate Koolaid flows freely from our media outlets and people drink it. They are oblivious to what you pointed out about gas and real estate and parrot the line that raising the minimum wage and enforcing ethical treatment of workers will DRIVE THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING UP!!1!! ZOMG!1! A very similar bogus argument is used against raising corporate taxes.
BTW, the actual cost to build a home has gone DOWN in the past 10 years due to automating construction processes and illegal labor. So home prices decreased during that time too, right, trolls?
Where do we start?
You do what you can, with what you have, and keep your eyes open for a chance to do more. You don’t kill yourself on the battles you can’t win, and remind yourself that despair is a soul-killer, and won’t help *anyone*.
Maybe you can only help a little… but maybe your example will help someone else decide they can help a little, too. If enough people care enough, things will change.
It’d be nice to be able to go out and do one big thing, and make the world better, but life isn’t like that.
It’s the eternal paradox, really. Lots of people are willing to die for their beliefs, but few people are willing to *live* for them, day in and day out, doing the necessary work. Well, that’s the harder, and more valuable, job.
So, do that. But don’t bite off more than you can chew, either… that leads to despair (or at least burnout).
(All of this is MHO, and worth at least half of what you paid for it, assuming you didn’t actually pay anything for it.)
Great piece, Sheelz…
The name of this system’s emergent phenomenon will be…
‘Blowback’.
Marcy–exactly. The thing is, the shirts that sell for $15 and the shirts that sell for $150 are often made by the same workers in the same EPZ for pennies a day. This “cost savings” at the expense of a worker isn’t done for the good of the consumer, it’s done to increase executive pay and company profits.
…and then, when things start to go bad, the company begins to lose money or look as if it might lose money, where do the companies go to try to cut costs? Do they look to cut the bloated upper admin salaries? No, they fire the CEO with a very nice golden parachute, hire in a new CEO at an even higher rate of pay, who then says the same thing every time in every industry, “Labor costs are too high! We must lay off workers” b/c the problem, as we all know, isn’t the multi-million dollar salaries and benefit packages given to the CEOs, or gross mismanagement, it’s the $15/hr given to the guy on the front line and his HMO package.
gee: Yeah, you’re right. If supply remains constant and demand decreases, then price decreases. But do you think supply will remain constant? I’m not so sure.
Certainly it won’t when labour in developing nations has sufficient power to refuse to work in sweatshops and actually get humane working conditions. It’ll be a while before that happens. Hopefully it will within my lifetime.
We need to set an international labor standards board. Same standards adjusted for cost of living (but using the same rule of thumb for what is a proper basic standard of living).
Forcing employers to pay a living wage and adhere to fair labor practices everywhere would stop much of the shuffling of where companies are located or passing the responsibility to contractors to do the dirty work for them.
It would take a monumental shift to make it happen globally.
Bad Wolf:
Good point; the reason that companies opened factories wasn’t to exploit workers, it was because they were *generous* and wanted to provide jobs that were better than the poor folks used to have! Really, every capitalist is just a big happy person with a heart full of love for all of humanity, and it’s just unlucky coincidences that cause worker suffering.
Sigh.
The reason that those factories are put where they are is because the workers *don’t* have the power to demand a living wage or decent working conditions. It’s not a voluntary contract when one person has all the power and the other has none.
Sheelzebub, I just love your posts. Keep up the good work.
I’ve been writing about related issues lately and have gotten some of the same kinds of responses some of your commenter are making: just let the free market work.
John Palmer (above) has it right I think: “Lots of people are willing to die for their beliefs, but few people are willing to *live* for them, day in and day out, doing the necessary work.”
Telling the poor in the U.S. to stop shopping at WalMart reminds me of something I once read (by norbizness) — crabs in a barrel, man, crabs in a barrel.
Instead of asking one poor person to be “nice” to a poorer person, wouldn’t it work better to invite the poor people to band together and use their combined strength to raise the economic level for all concerned by fighting back against the (much fewer) wealthy? (maybe this can’t work on a macro scale, but can it be less productive?)
Also, I truly believe we are in another era of robber barons. What did the U.S. do to “escape” (to the extent it did) the iron grip of the robber barons in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? Can history be a guide?
“What did the U.S. do to “escapeâ€? (to the extent it did) the iron grip of the robber barons in the late 19th and early 20th centuries?”
We escaped them? Or did they reduce their profiles just enough to avoid being explicit targets…?
[…] Mar 20th, 2007 by Trinifar Sheelzebub at Pandagon has another great post. I don’t know anything about her (not even certain about the gender) except what’s in her bio: The truth, the honest and unvarnished truth — I’m an unapologetic feminist. I’m a pinko, and I’ve been called a hellcat. (Well, okay, I haven’t been, but I like the word.) […]
The feeling that I get from this post is that no matter what I do, the mere fact that I participate in a moneyed economy is in of itself an unmigitated evil. That my having chosen not to buy a television (and the cable that goes with it), chosen to clamp down on my buy-the-latest-clothing habit, and buy clothes from a local thrift store rather than Macy’s, doesn’t do any good and doesn’t reduce the evil.
It seems that the only way I can exculpate the guilt is to drop out of the economy completely and go live on a commune that is completely, totally, self-sufficient - grow all of our food, make all of our clothing, provide all of our own medical care - without ever spending a penny on outside goods. And accept the 35-year lifespans that go with that, as children die of preventable diseases, as women die in childbirth, as people die of diseases that are easily treatable in a moneyed economy.
Yes, the evil that American companies do around the world is very great, and Iraq is just one example of that evil.
But must we throw away everything? Can we not make incremental changes? Or shall I just go whip myself because I don’t want to live on the self-sufficient commune? You tell us that the changes that individuals make don’t mean anything, because the system still exists. But how do we change the system without making individual changes? Because without that, there’s no hope, and I can’t live that way.
“What did the U.S. do to “escape� (to the extent it did) the iron grip of the robber barons in the late 19th and early 20th centuries?�
We instituted an income tax and taxed those fuckers to 90%.
Of course, it only stuck for about 30 years until Kennedy started lowering the top tax rate. Funny how those 1950s years with extremely high tax rates on the very rich were also our economic boom years. Must’ve been a total co-inkidink, I guess.
“What did the U.S. do to “escape� (to the extent it did) the iron grip of the robber barons in the late 19th and early 20th centuries?�
We also (since Teddy Roosevelt) actually took monopolies seriously. For example, Microsoft would have been dismembered many years ago under any decent American Administration, and possibly WalMart as well…
It’s not as simple as declaring yourself more aware, or better, or above the system because you don’t participate in it.
No, but to some people that’s more satisfying than actually doing something useful. See, for instance, some of the militant, holier-than-thou vegetarians commenting on the “can you eat meat and be a good progressive?” post.
Well now this is interesting. Some folks are only reading half of my post, and they can be split evenly into which parts they’re getting.
It’s not about guilt tripping, or whipping ourselves. It’s about being aware that our hands aren’t clean so that we don’t feel smug and superior in some dumbshit battle of personal purity. Read the comments–there is plenty you can do. And no, joining a commune isn’t the way to do it. Getting politically active and involved is. And yes, becoming more aware of where your stuff comes from and being mindful of its true cost is helpful.
It’s not either/or. It’s both/and.
so, guilt is beside the point? but what about when it isn’t? we’re clearly all guilty, which I think was part of the point (the other part being that therefore blogbattles over purity are silly). I got told to go away and that I was a Hummer apologist when I said the same thing here.
I still want to know, though, since there’s pretty much no way we can ever do enough to make it all right (on a personal level, that is), what does that say about us, and how should we deal with it?
[I don’t know about you normal people, but here in Crazyland, the guilt of existence, the knowing that I can never make it OK, that I can never be good enough, left me narrowly avoiding the suicide watch. (Thank god for ADD in situations like these, seriously - off the meds, the scary thoughts come, but if I’m lucky, I can get distracted until they pass. Not being snarky - I love the fact that the underlying mental problem that makes me ’sick’ in the first place has also saved my life.)]
So, ‘do what you can - guilt is beside the point’, but that sounds ominously close to the accusations being made of ‘oh, you write a check to assuage your guilt and think that makes you OK’. Guilt shouldn’t be part of the emotional equation, but you’re not ‘allowed’ to not have it.
I can’t seem to find the right question here, so, um, help?
“since there’s pretty much no way we can ever do enough to make it all right (on a personal level, that is), what does that say about us, and how should we deal with it?”
i think this is the key to the whole vicious cycle.
the personal is political. in other words, making a change personally is not going to do a whole lot to fix the problem. none of us can, by ourselves, personally make change by voting with our feet and our pocketbooks. especially because in this case that just invites creation of niche markets which deceive many of us into thinking we’ve opted out, when really we’re still funding that same machine.
we have to work systematically, collectively. i agree that “write your congressperson” seems a bit dull and unlikely to really produce change. but if we all come together and start working, there will eventually be a breakthrough.
in my opinion, if we want to change this stuff within the system, we need to sit down and come up with an outline of specific policy changes we want to see. you can’t write your representatives and ask them to “stop sweatshop labor” or whatever. you can, however, ask them to support certain legislation that would stifle corporate control, especially overseas. maybe there is already such an outline or plan of action somewhere that has done this — if so, what is it and how can we distribute it to more people so as to start making that laundry list happen?
Hedonistic~
That was an excellent post. I think too many Americans feel “entitled” to more and more stuff. “Good credit, bad credit, we’ll still finance!” It’s insane. Advertisers know they can manipulate peoples’ needs, and do so every minute of every day.
200 years ago, the average person in this country was pretty lucky to own a couple of pairs of pants, a couple of shirts, and one decent pair of shoes or boots. Why on earth do we think we need so much more than that now?
In my faith, I believe Jesus when he said, “you cannot serve both God and money.” That needs to be plastered across the front door of every Wal Mart in America.
The U.S. government also instituted child-labor laws, the 40-hour workweek, minimum wage, workplace safety rules (OSHA), etc. Unions also had a good bit to do with improving the lot of the American laborer. Notice how “union” has became something of a dirty word in America in the past 1/2 generation or so? Sort of like “liberal” or “feminists”? Someone (cough-conservatives-cough) has been intentionally meddling with American semantics.*
I, too, question whether we actually escaped the clutches of the old American robber barons, or whether they better concealed themselves. But I don’t think it’s disputed that in various ways, America created a new, large middle class in the middle of the 20th century. Also at this time, America enjoyed great growth and prosperity. Coincidence? Causal relationship?
I don’t know what global controls similar to the foregoing could be undertaken, but what if a large global middle class could arise? Could the planet’s resources even sustain it? Or would human ingenuity rise to the occasion?
*Somebody even has written a book/article? about this successful conservative manipulation of words, but I can’t recall it at the moment.
blondie, i think it depends what we mean by “middle class”. if we mean that we want to create a large global class of people who live in the way that we think of the american middle class as living, then no. the earth cannot sustain that many McMansions, SUV’s, etc. but i don’t see why we couldn’t simply have the goal of narrowing the gap between rich and poor, which is all that you really need to create a basic middle class in the classic sense of the term.
“When demand goes down and supply stays the same, prices go don’t go up, they go down! Even when manufacturing eventually decreases and the rate of supply drops, the price isn’t going to increase, it will stay at that lower price.”
No, even that commonplace cliche of neoclassical economics (it’s from Alfred Marshall) is actually wrong: in reality, companies price goods by a combination of “manufacturing costs + overhead+ profit margin + fudge factor” and looking at competitor’s prices. No one ever has successfully charted the intersection between supply and demand curves (the demand curve is entirely theoretical by the way, there’s no practical way to empirically get one)in a real-life situation.
“the mere fact that I participate in a moneyed economy is in of itself an unmigitated evil. That my having chosen not to buy a television (and the cable that goes with it), chosen to clamp down on my buy-the-latest-clothing habit, and buy clothes from a local thrift store rather than Macy’s, doesn’t do any good and doesn’t reduce the evil.”
That’s because you’ve been trained by capitalism to view your choices as solely composed of choice versus exit. IE, take your pick of goods delivered to you by the market, or exit the market entirely.
Classic text on this is Albert Hirschman’s Exit, Voice and Loyalty. It’s a true masterwork, but in summary, we also have the option of voice as an economic choice. In practical terms, voice is political activism in changing the terms of the market to our liking.
What do you mean, burritoboy? Economists estimate supply and demand curves all the time. It’s not the easiest thing in the world, but it’s certainly possible.
It’s not about guilt tripping, or whipping ourselves. It’s about being aware that our hands aren’t clean so that we don’t feel smug and superior in some dumbshit battle of personal purity.
Certainly, I agree. My only question is, is it wrong for us to pick our battles? There’s only so much time in the day, and only so many things we can fight for.
I think it’s important to prioritize. And not beat each other up over which priorities we choose for activism. So long as we don’t actually get in the way of each other, and don’t actively oppose a progressive cause that another person espouses, there shouldn’t be any need for rancor.
(I’ll still call progressive men out on saying sexist shit, though. That IS active opposition to feminism.)
By “middle class,” I’m willing to include people who don’t have to survive (or not) at subsistence levels, not necessarily American/European standards of “middle class.”
Every year, every American should attend a hunger banquet, at which 100 “diners” are served food (or not), by lot, according to what the various percentages of the world’s population are eating (or not) that day. I wish more Americans would wake up to what treasure has fallen into their laps by the mere accident of their birth.
Outsourcing our manufacturing to countries with cheap (exploited) labor and no pollution controls is a lot like being the rich guy who doesn’t want to pay the baker $6 for his pie, so instead he pays the urchin in the street $2 to go and steal the pie for him. The rich guy is happy, because he paid $2 for a $6 pie. The urchin is delighted, because $2 is more money than he usually sees in a week. Who’s not happy? The baker (aka American workers), who can’t make a living when urchins are being paid to steal his pies!