It is in part a consumer issue. Consumers want things as cheaply as possible, and companies that produce as cheaply as possible sell more product. We’ve seen the same issue with apparel; America wants cheap clothing, and so the mills in the US have largely closed, and most production has been moved overseas in order to make the final products cheap enough.
And while it’s partly a consumer issue, the fact that wages haven’t kept up with productivity–that is, more and more money is being skimmed out of the system by investors and executives rather than going to the workers–has been the driver towards making consumer goods more and more cheaply, simply because people have less purchasing power.
Look, no one decides that they want to work in the mines because it’s good for society as a whole to have consumer goods made from what they mine. Everyone expects to be paid in some way.
If I’m making jeans as an independent designer–which I tried doing, briefly–and I decide that my time is worth $20/hr, then I’m going to have to charge around $500 for a single pair of jeans after you figure in all the time needed to make a single pair that’s been customized to fit a single, specific person. (Maybe more; I haven’t done the math in a decade or so.) Almost no one is going to want to, or be able to afford to pay that. Am I skimming off the top? No, I’m charging a fair–and actually very low–rate for custom work. But just like when I tried to do that a decade ago, no one can or will pay for that.
Even if we capped profits of investors, and capped salaries of executives, and had most of the profits going to the workers, people would tend to prefer less expensive goods over more expensive goods. That’s how competition in the market works. In a sufficiently competitive environment, without legal constraints, prices have to drop. (Monopolies raise prices by reducing competition; a sufficiently competitive environment assumes that there is no single company dominating the market.)
i agree with everything you’ve said including your links between causation etc
except the final link you make that its the consumer, i note you said ‘partly’ a consumer issue, so its not a full attribution - perhaps i’m misinterpreting what % you’re attributing.
tbh my take is alot of people would like an option between paying $2 for a garment they know involved exploitation/slavery vs an accessible1 independent option that doesn’t cost $500/garment.
i don’t think people are still choosing the $2 option because they’re ok with slavery. but (tragically?) they’re more ok with someone else being the slave vs them being the slave - which is what they’d basically be if every piece of clothing cost them $500.
and i think we know the reason there’s very little accessible options in between is because the game is rigged, you (HelixDab2) can’t realistically enter the game without serious capital behind you (ie. wealth/connections) to reach the volume prices which might give us an option in between - the market isn’t fair, its been stitched up long ago, by the same people who don’t produce anything and greedily skim off the top.
the venn diagram of independent designers fairly charging $500 for their labor and the greedy skimmers getting fat without producing anything themselves is two separate circles - they’re worlds apart
1 Quick note on accessibility, there are ofc some scant options between $2-500, but what isn’t clear (ie. readily accessible) to the consumer is which of those options isn’t just some greedy bastard buying a $2 option and selling it on for $15.
tbh my take is alot of people would like an option between paying $2 for a garment they know involved exploitation/slavery vs an accessible1 independent option that doesn’t cost $500/garment.
I would have wanted to believe that too, but then you see things like Temu that promise clothing and consumer goods at impossibly low prices, prices that simply aren’t possibly without forced labor somewhere, and people eat that shit up. I think that most people have an out of sight, out of mind approach to it, and as long as they can’t directly see the exploitation, they’ll accept it.
1 Quick note on accessibility, there are ofc some scant options between $2-500, but what isn’t clear (ie. readily accessible) to the consumer is which of those options isn’t just some greedy bastard buying a $2 option and selling it on for $15.
I strongly suspect that this obscurity is by intent.
And, taking this whole thing a bit farther, as a designer that was paying myself $20/hr, I still can’t guarantee anything about being free of forced labor, because I have no way of realistically tracking everything in my supply chain. This is why there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism, so the best you can do is pick your battles.
It is in part a consumer issue. Consumers want things as cheaply as possible, and companies that produce as cheaply as possible sell more product. We’ve seen the same issue with apparel; America wants cheap clothing, and so the mills in the US have largely closed, and most production has been moved overseas in order to make the final products cheap enough.
And while it’s partly a consumer issue, the fact that wages haven’t kept up with productivity–that is, more and more money is being skimmed out of the system by investors and executives rather than going to the workers–has been the driver towards making consumer goods more and more cheaply, simply because people have less purchasing power.
In other words its not because of the consumers, but because of the greedy skimming off the top.
Look, no one decides that they want to work in the mines because it’s good for society as a whole to have consumer goods made from what they mine. Everyone expects to be paid in some way.
If I’m making jeans as an independent designer–which I tried doing, briefly–and I decide that my time is worth $20/hr, then I’m going to have to charge around $500 for a single pair of jeans after you figure in all the time needed to make a single pair that’s been customized to fit a single, specific person. (Maybe more; I haven’t done the math in a decade or so.) Almost no one is going to want to, or be able to afford to pay that. Am I skimming off the top? No, I’m charging a fair–and actually very low–rate for custom work. But just like when I tried to do that a decade ago, no one can or will pay for that.
Even if we capped profits of investors, and capped salaries of executives, and had most of the profits going to the workers, people would tend to prefer less expensive goods over more expensive goods. That’s how competition in the market works. In a sufficiently competitive environment, without legal constraints, prices have to drop. (Monopolies raise prices by reducing competition; a sufficiently competitive environment assumes that there is no single company dominating the market.)
i agree with everything you’ve said including your links between causation etc
except the final link you make that its the consumer, i note you said ‘partly’ a consumer issue, so its not a full attribution - perhaps i’m misinterpreting what % you’re attributing.
tbh my take is alot of people would like an option between paying $2 for a garment they know involved exploitation/slavery vs an accessible1 independent option that doesn’t cost $500/garment.
i don’t think people are still choosing the $2 option because they’re ok with slavery. but (tragically?) they’re more ok with someone else being the slave vs them being the slave - which is what they’d basically be if every piece of clothing cost them $500.
and i think we know the reason there’s very little accessible options in between is because the game is rigged, you (HelixDab2) can’t realistically enter the game without serious capital behind you (ie. wealth/connections) to reach the volume prices which might give us an option in between - the market isn’t fair, its been stitched up long ago, by the same people who don’t produce anything and greedily skim off the top.
the venn diagram of independent designers fairly charging $500 for their labor and the greedy skimmers getting fat without producing anything themselves is two separate circles - they’re worlds apart
1 Quick note on accessibility, there are ofc some scant options between $2-500, but what isn’t clear (ie. readily accessible) to the consumer is which of those options isn’t just some greedy bastard buying a $2 option and selling it on for $15.
I would have wanted to believe that too, but then you see things like Temu that promise clothing and consumer goods at impossibly low prices, prices that simply aren’t possibly without forced labor somewhere, and people eat that shit up. I think that most people have an out of sight, out of mind approach to it, and as long as they can’t directly see the exploitation, they’ll accept it.
I strongly suspect that this obscurity is by intent.
And, taking this whole thing a bit farther, as a designer that was paying myself $20/hr, I still can’t guarantee anything about being free of forced labor, because I have no way of realistically tracking everything in my supply chain. This is why there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism, so the best you can do is pick your battles.