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.
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no subject
Date: 2003-08-26 06:20 am (UTC)As it happens, I am a consumerist monomaniac, but that’s quite all right.
Anyway:
1. We aren't going to agree on this. There is no historical evidence that socialism or communism by the book wouldn't work, because it's never been tried. And I also happen to be more of an anarchist (in the "don't need laws because everyone has a healthy measure of mutual respect and people stop being cockjockeys as a result" style, rather than "fuck it all") than a communist. Any form of rule mediated by violence is weak and doomed to failure.
I disagree; it has been tried, and it’s failed in such short order that I reckon is demonstrable that it’s so unstable as to be unworkable. You might say that Communism has a half-life of about 30 minutes.
2. You and I are quite similar, in that we both seem to have quite high estimations of our own abilities. I think a state made up of talented and motivated individuals could well administer money better than any individual, especially if the aggregate desires of the nation were explicitly served.
Ha! No, no, and thrice no. That’s the curse of socialism, and the thing I hate most passionately about it. Who decides who is talented and motivated? What talents and motivations? It is the refuge of bien-pensant intellectuals that they think they know better than the little people who things should be done and how their money should be spent. Who cares if the little people disagree, we’ve got the army on our side, right? Naturally I’m flattered that you include me in your grouping of clever motivated people who would help run society. That’s good of y’all. However, I’d rather opt out and keep my property, thanks. Presumably this wouldn’t be allowed under your free and open society, however.
Give me an electoral system so the little people can decide. If that doesn’t return a socialist government, then I say that means the people don’t want one, and darn right they are too.
Does that mean, if you want the aggregate desires of the nation served, you advocate a return to the death penalty as polls consistently show 75%+ in favour? Or is that aggregate desires so long as they match your personal beliefs?
3. I don't believe that people don't want to work, but I also don't believe that all work is meaningful and challenging. Take my job, for example. Modern life is crammed full of examples of tertiary and quaternary jobs that mean nothing and it is these roles that lead to alienation, despair and insanity.
Work is very much the attitude you bring to it. By the sounds of it you’re saying that if someone doesn’t really feel like working to the net good of society then they won’t have to. That’s all dandy and so on, but who, precisely, is going to do the work to support the people who just don’t feel that their job is rewarding enough?
Can I stop working now? Can I? Huh? Will you pay for my food, Joe? Go on, it’s the socialist thing to do?