Nike Mayfly
Aug. 21st, 2003 01:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davywavyReading the paper the other day, I was struck by some correspondence about the Nike ‘Mayfly’ running shoe; a shoe which is so light and sleek that it will disintegrate after about 60 miles of running but reduces the weight carried by marathon runners by that vital extra pound. The correspondence wasn’t about this being a waste of resources (Nike actually will take them from you & recycle them when the shoes give it up), but rather about the perceived iniquity between the shoes costing about $100 a pair and the fact that Vietnamese workers for Nike get about $1 to actually make a pair.* Not for the first time (and no way will it be the last) I was struck by the astounding ignorance of my fellow man. Several things struck me about this.
1) If people perceive an injustice being done within the international world of Nike training shoes, the easiest way to tackle that is simply not to buy their goods. Manufacturers are in the business of making money and if they don’t make money from one product then they’ll either go out of business of make a different one.
2) More notably, whilst it is easy for happy, comfortable, plump westerners like you & I to rail about the evils of global capitalism, the thin, unhappy, third world recipients of it are only too delighted. It’s quite rare that Nike is held up as a shining example of capitalism with a conscience and so I expect that it’ll come as a surprise to most that quite recently it was just that, and the organisation doing the praising was the Vietnamese Communist Party. For all that $1 might seem a nugatory amount to you & I, in Vietnam it is three times the average daily wage and the people who work in Nikes factories are loaded in comparative standards. This influx of relative wealth has brought schools, sanitation, wealth, and health to a town which formerly had none of those.
Now I know that my various socialist friends will claim for some tortuous reason or other that the Vietnamese Commies aren’t proper commies (except when they’re talking about the Vietnam war, when suddenly that perception changes), but I tend to discount such claims as spurious at best and actively disingenuous at worst.
So it seems to me that a net result of global capitalism is that a bunch of people stupid enough to buy shoes designed to fall to bits after a week are bringing happiness, education, and health to people on the other side of the world whose lives, until only recently, had been blighted by the malignant curse of Socialist government.
I find it remarkably ironic that the anti-capitalism protestors who travel the world smashing the windows in Gap could make a much more significant impact on improving the lives of Vietnamese peasants by buying a pair of shoes that will have dropped to bits by the middle of next week, but just try pointing that out to them and see how much fun you have.
* EDIT: This figure is incorrect and I'm quoting the fool who wrote to the paper, not accurate pay figures or costs.
1) If people perceive an injustice being done within the international world of Nike training shoes, the easiest way to tackle that is simply not to buy their goods. Manufacturers are in the business of making money and if they don’t make money from one product then they’ll either go out of business of make a different one.
2) More notably, whilst it is easy for happy, comfortable, plump westerners like you & I to rail about the evils of global capitalism, the thin, unhappy, third world recipients of it are only too delighted. It’s quite rare that Nike is held up as a shining example of capitalism with a conscience and so I expect that it’ll come as a surprise to most that quite recently it was just that, and the organisation doing the praising was the Vietnamese Communist Party. For all that $1 might seem a nugatory amount to you & I, in Vietnam it is three times the average daily wage and the people who work in Nikes factories are loaded in comparative standards. This influx of relative wealth has brought schools, sanitation, wealth, and health to a town which formerly had none of those.
Now I know that my various socialist friends will claim for some tortuous reason or other that the Vietnamese Commies aren’t proper commies (except when they’re talking about the Vietnam war, when suddenly that perception changes), but I tend to discount such claims as spurious at best and actively disingenuous at worst.
So it seems to me that a net result of global capitalism is that a bunch of people stupid enough to buy shoes designed to fall to bits after a week are bringing happiness, education, and health to people on the other side of the world whose lives, until only recently, had been blighted by the malignant curse of Socialist government.
I find it remarkably ironic that the anti-capitalism protestors who travel the world smashing the windows in Gap could make a much more significant impact on improving the lives of Vietnamese peasants by buying a pair of shoes that will have dropped to bits by the middle of next week, but just try pointing that out to them and see how much fun you have.
* EDIT: This figure is incorrect and I'm quoting the fool who wrote to the paper, not accurate pay figures or costs.
Self defeating point.
Date: 2003-08-21 06:22 pm (UTC)G
Re: Self defeating point.
Date: 2003-08-22 01:12 am (UTC)Read the mail before commenting next time, whuh?
Re: Self defeating point.
Date: 2003-08-22 03:56 pm (UTC)They're paid a pittance in our terms for the work and it will still only get them a very basic standard of living.
How much better if they were paid what we consider a reasonable wage?
See?
G
Re: Self defeating point.
Date: 2003-08-23 12:17 pm (UTC)There are considerable costs involved in relocating any manufacturing industry from a high-product-demand area to a low-product-demand area. These costs entail things like setup, essential staff transfer, logistical operations in shifting components to factory and comlete product back to market and so on, and these costs are offset by the savings in labour costs.
So, Nike, as the current example, loses out by shipping its product from point of production in Vietnam to the markets in the USA and the EU, but maintains economies in labour costs in relative terms.
Now, if they were required to pay US minimum wage, there would be no benefit to relocation; there's plenty of willing wetback labour in Southern California and Texas, and so it would become cheaper to retain monufacture close to market as the saving in this case would be in logistics and shipping and not in staffing.
Like it or not, they're businesses, and their business is making money. If you insist on them paying US wages in the third world, then there is no reason for them to set up shop there as this would result in it becoming more profitable to retain the manufacturing base in the EU and US.
This would be a bad thing; it would contribute to the continued economic isolation of the West from the devloping world. As has been demonstrated in the past in places like Taiwan & South Korea, an influx of foreign investment capital has lead to a richer, better educated, freer society within two generations of the investment starting to arrive. This process is now shifting, as investment capital is moving to ASEAN and India (e.g. British call centres).
Making it uneconomic to move to places of lowered production costs would stop this process and result in investment being focussed inward rather than outward.
I dunno about you, but were I a Vietnamese peasant, I'd rather the fancy foreigners paid me five times the annual average national wage and improved my children's education and prospects as a result than your proposed alternative, which is the fancy foreigners kept all that money to themselves as politically correct posturing prevented them from aiding in the long-term economic development of my country.
Of course, on top of all of this, there is a strong argument that paying disproportionately weighted wages results in rapid inflation; this in turn leads to misery (see Argentina, Zimbabwe as current examples). However, I don't think that your grasp of relevant economics is sufficiently developed to make it worth my while explaining that one to you.
There's a strong historical precedent for external investment in cheap labour resulting in rapid economic growth, developments in education and more progressive government (look at what is currently going on in Shanghai). I look forward to the Vietnamese communists progressively loosening their grasp over the coming two decades as their people realise the benefits of economic freedom.
That is; if they're allowed to, and investment isn't cut off at source to satisfy some plump, well-fed western consciences.