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 06:59 am (UTC)My belief in socialism/communism/anarchism isn't about me thinking I know better than everyone else; it's about my belief that a way can be found that benefits the majority of people -- maybe all the people -- and that the army isn't needed either. If you need force to convince someone else of your ideas then I think your ideas need reworking.
You seem to keep making the mistake of viewing me as if I'm some cliché 70s student anarchist, like Rich from the Young Ones or something. I don't believe property is theft. I don't believe that might makes right.
I also think that a decent electoral system, one as free from spin and bias as humanly possible, would be a good tool for ensuring social justice. I don't believe we have such a thing anywhere in the world at this time. FPP systems, as shown most clearly by the Bush-election fiasco and the incorrect removal of over 90,000 names from the electoral register in Florida for felonies that did not exist show how much FPP-style systems exaggerate flaws and mistakes.