The New Yorker illustrates how shoe-wearers are responsible for keeping workers in bondage.
The New Yorker‘s James Surowiecki (5/20/13) has figured out who’s to blame for unsafe working conditions for garment workers: people who wear clothing.
“The problem isn’t so much evil factory owners as a system that’s great at getting Western consumers what they want but leaves developing-world workers toiling in misery,” Surowiecki writes:
Most of us have a sense that low prices in Dubuque have something to do with low wages in Dhaka, but that’s just one aspect of the pressure that we as consumers exert on global supply chains. Our insatiable demand for variety and novelty has led to ever-shorter product life cycles.
Surowiecki is saying that it’s this “pressure,” the “insatiable demand” from consumers that leads to unsafe working conditions. To explain, he brings in MIT political scientist Richard Locke, who says, “Often, the only way factories can make the variety and quantity of goods that brands want at the price points they’re willing to pay is to squeeze the workers.”
Well, wait—”that brands want”? At the prices “they’re willing to pay”? What happened to the consumers and our demands being to blame?
OK, Surowiecki is willing to concede that giant multinational corporations share some of the blame:
Just as most Western consumers seem reluctant to pay more for T-shirts, most Western companies have been reluctant to take real responsibility for what happens on their suppliers’ factory floors…. As long as consumers and companies insist on the lowest price and endless variety, there’ll always be factories that are willing to cut corners to get the business.
The thing about equating “consumers and companies” in this way, though, is that when you say that consumers “insist” on something, it’s basically a metaphor. As a consumer, you go to the store and see what they’re selling, and you either buy it or you don’t; you don’t usually get to tell the sales clerks to change the price, and you certainly don’t get to tell them how to arrange their supply chains. Whereas global apparel companies really can and do insist that factories produce goods on specific schedules at particular prices—their “demand” is not metaphorical at all.
If consumers do have the ability to insist that clothing be sold at a particular price—which in some metaphorical sense we do, through the far-from-perfect mechanism of supply and demand—this insistence certainly doesn’t specify that garment workers should typically receive 1 to 3 percent of the retail price in wages, or that clothing stores be among the most profitable of retail industries. That division of revenues is the result of the non-metaphorical demands that corporations make.
Could consumer outrage over the way corporations treat workers result in changes in that treatment? Possibly—though news coverage that is framed in terms of shifting blame from “evil factory owners” to “our insatiable demand” seems calculated to dissipate outrage rather than mobilize it.
Surowiecke’s book, “The Wisdom Of Crowds” was really good, but I noticed on his book tour he had an older man seeming to tell him what to say so as not to go anywhere near the idea of socialism/communism, or at least that was my gut interpretation of the exchange that I saw of the words and looks between the two during the Q&A.
Now it seems he is following the status quo script completely in this idea of blaming the people for wanting what is offered to them in the consumer space, when the question of worker safety and pay is never discussed or offered as a remedy.
The idea is absurd and just rings hollow of the kind of nakedly moronic reasoning and explanations and that should have us all offending and up in arms that the corporate sector is trying to take over everything by mass manipulating, ie. mass producing Alice in Wonderland gobble-dee-gook nonsense that most of us can see is balderdash.
Well, assuming that is what James wrote or said anyway.
It’s not the labor anyway that makes prices low, prices are not low – at least compared to what workers get. Prices are low because whatever is happening is happening far away from our shores in a distant land where the industry is managed in a virtual monopoly or supply. What goes into a clothes, mostly labor, and the pay for that labor is so low that trying to tell me the prices are limited by the labor costs is indeed insulting to me.
Whatever the price or labor is the price of product will be whatever the market can bear – period. When they sent shirts offshore to be produced in Viet Nam, Cambodia, etc the prices when up, not down, but the selection did go up in my opinion l
Somehow I doubt Surowiecki would blame the “insatiable demand” for cotton goods for the existence of slavery.
Or that he’d be able to explain the difference.
Ultra-low prices in Dubuque are also driven by the stagnant wages in Dubuque. Depressed prices on basic daily necessities (food, clothing, etc.) are a critical way to keep dissent from breaking out over stagnant real incomes in U.S. Wages rising in Dhaha, China or Vietnam with resulting rise in Walmart pricing, will eventually lead to greater pressure to raise wages in the U.S. It’s a whole system that needs to depress wages everywhere to maintain maximum profit
Surprising how a nation of people during hard times, has all the power to cause all the problems, while the rich corporations never have enough power to do anything seriously wrong.
It’s not about the consumer, it is about crushing the competition. Walmart sells that piece of shit shirt for 1.99 not so much that the consumer has a choice but more so that it undercuts the competition that sells that shit for 2.10. Don’t lay the guilt trip on the consumer, put it where it really lies the system.
This whole (Times) article is based on that fraudulent, fucking-phony old freemarket chesnut of “consumer choice” …you know how all of the “market forces” are goverend by the high and mighty “choices” and decisions of that caste of wizards and princes …the average Walmart Shopper. Choices and decisions made from some singular and remote point of absolute power and freedom…oh fall on your knees and despair Wal Streret and “Techoncrats” of the EU…..prostrate yourself Jimmy Dimon…Wal Mart shopper are about to decide your miserable fate again…it would be a laughably preposterous fairy tale if it weren’t so risble and offensive because of the true condition of and relationship to power of the average western consumer…..
I have to dissent here. Americans are way too blithe about their relationship to the people to grow their food, make their clothes and manufacture cheap goods. The Pakistan factory fire before Christmas generated a story about whether American consumers care about the conditions these folks work in: story found Americans are more focused on bargains. Until American consumers realize their consumption kills, these incidents will continue.
All the Trade Agreements starting with NAFTA have no provision
for the safety or fair pay of the workers. They took all the manufacturing jobs out of the USA to the point where American workers have to compete with Third World labor in an effort to bring those jobs back to the USA. Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fires and worse are all over the world. American corporations don’t own the factories so they can just move on.
I certainly don’t agree with Surowiecki, but James Wittebols has a point. When I have spoken with people about shopping at Walmart — something I have never done, no matter how poor I’ve been — they simply do not care about the conditions in which goods are manufactured OR Walmart’s treatment of its workers. American consumers have given up all their power to the corporations — consumers do have power, as was recognized by leftists in the 1930s — then they whine about the lack of jobs in their local economy. Rather than spending their money carefully and buying good-quality merchandise, many people just want to fill their houses with junk (then rent a storage unit to hold the overflow).
James & Tobysgirl – I agree that there is a remarkable and disturbing disconnect between consumers and producers (e.g., Walmart shoppers and Bangladeshi garment makers), but this isn’t the fault of consumers; it’s just a basic feature of market economies.
The only information we get about any given product has two aspects: 1) the price, and 2) whatever the producer chooses to tell consumers about it (i.e., marketing). We have no idea what quantities are available apart from what we can see on the shelves (there could be 10 widgets on the shelf but 10,000 in the warehouse being held back to drive the price up), we only know what’s in a product or how it’s produced to the extent that the producer reveals that information, and so on. Think of the ubiquitous “spices” or “natural flavors” listed as ingredients in processed foods and this becomes obvious in about half a second. This is especially true when it comes to working conditions; we can guess that working conditions are pretty awful when a shirt produced in Thailand is being sold for $2 at Walmart, for instance, but we’d have to do a hell of a lot of investigative research to even get the slightest notion of what the true conditions are like – that information is simply not part of what we’re given when we make a buying decision.
I would personally be very cautious in blaming people for not caring enough about what they buy when consumers are systemically denied the information they need to make ethical buying decisions. Additionally, people absolutely *do* care, and go to amazing lengths to discover working conditions, wages, manufacturing processes, food ingredients, etc., etc. There are plenty of groups, movements and individuals spending plenty of time and energy on figuring out stuff like that (e.g., organic food movement, vegans, child labor rights activists, consumer rights movements, anti-Walmart/Nike/whatever groups, etc.) – yet another indicator of the miraculous efficiency of market economies.
Good piece.It flows logically doesn’t it?Same goes for drugs.The problem you could say is not the drug dealers,and producers.It is the consumer.Being a fiscal conservative i wish the fed would drop corporate tax rates.That would result in manufacturing coming home.I have a friend who opens businesses world wide.He is presently in China,where he tells me conditions for workers, and business are more desirable than here.We should be thee most hospitable place for business in this world.Strange that we are not.We will never get a handle on third world manufacturing conditions short of invasion and nation building.That said- we must throw unsafe conditions into the faces of corporations that use product from those places.Shame them.Of course all these moves may help our pocketbooks ,and our conscious.It could in the end cost whatever pitiful jobs these people have.But we are Americans.We don’t except the way things are.We change them to how they should be.WE are the innovators.
Andre you sound like a progressive nut case(no offense)Lets make it simple You have a lemonade stand business.You incorporate.You need a hundred bucks to survive.You make 110.Now while it is true you could just give profit away to what the government tells you are good causes(and boy do we trust them),it is also true that is not why you went into business.You went into it to generate profit and enjoy the rewards.That is business.Charity is a different thing.You are talking socialism,
I posit the unintended consequence of blaming consumers, rather than the industry, is that consumers will be guilted into boycotting such products, thus reducing industry profits. Kind of a catch-22.
This article raises a valid point–people should care about how the clothing is manufactured all the way up to the point of sales. Walmart clothing always feels and looks like prison garments. Now in some places these factories are a mixed blessing, but corporations by and large will “be whatever the market will bear” in the words of Brux, or Stanford. The aim is always to cut at the girth of the worker in order to outsell the competition. The largesse is used to lobby in various forms, scholarships, campuses, wherever it can use some expansion. So boycotting some of these businesses is what it really takes, and boycotting has often shown itself to be quite effective.
Jesus Andre brevity is needed here.What you meant to say was said better by the president… Who ran away from what he said throughout the campaign.So let me……THEY DIDNT BUILD THAT is what you meant to say.A progressive line if ever I heard one.Im glad to know some progressives still stand up for such…um..theories.If Obama would of done that he would now be private citizen Obama.So how do you feel about his duplicity?
We are partially to blame for everything bad going on here and abroad. We are being abused but most of us are oblivious to just how we suffer in this ‘1 percenter’s’ game while supporting it at the same time! Our corporations couldn’t reap outrageous profits from world slavery if we weren’t buying their products. Our government filled with crooked politicians couldn’t make those same corporate owners and exec richer with wars if we weren’t eager to believe their lies and allow our taxes and children to join into the expensive profit generating war machine. Our corporations are making the world sick and charging the world for the deadly medicines they throw together. Our corporations are owned and controlled by the richest sociopaths in the world and they use our tax wealth to throw together their choices for surrogate politicians and government officials, military leaders, and policing agency/judicial leaders to do their bidding. We are partly responsible for our own demise, but the real culprits have their knees on our necks and many of us don’t even realize it! They can be just as ruthless with us as they are with third world naions if need be! Those who are ‘world-aware’ and would like to end this madness will be in fear of having those powerful psychopaths single them out like ‘common criminals’ or whatever!
Finally these uber-wealthy sociopaths who secretly rule over our’s and other governments, are so mentally deranged that they will have their way at the expense of our lives! Many of us cannot think and/or see outside of this ‘box’ the elite 1% has brainwashed us into, so as long as the ‘masses’ stay ignorant and/or complacent, the tyrants are satisfied to just tear at the welfare, and wellbeing of our societies bit by bit, division by division, psychosocially, and agressively!
Even the drug epidemic Americans proliferate which creates death and destruction in many countries, and slave-like incarceration here is created by these 1% elite and they refuse to allow maijuana to be free here in order to profit from the harder drugs that are more difficult to manufacture. Many wealthy and working ‘American’ cocaine and heroin users do not realize how they contribute to drug-sales enfluenced mass murder and genocide! We are also partially to blame for the hellified condition of our world, but most of us are too self-absorbed and ignorant (among other things) to realize it.