Suppy & (Nude) Demand

Recently, there’s been a lot of heat about the work conditions in Factories overseas, and including corporations cutting corners to save money. This has included appropriate building measures and terrible work conditions for under paid workers. But according to the New Yorker’s James Surowiecki thinks we, the consumers are to blame. To summarize his argument that we know about the low wages but we like the brand names at the low prices and do nothing about it. According to Surowiecki because we wear clothing at a good discounted price we are causing the Corporations to cut these corners and hence are responsible for buildings to collapse on themselves, killing factory workers and the awful conditions at which they work. Blaming people that wear clothes for the state of the factory conditions is like blaming people who read for the obliteration of the rainforest.

“Damn you readers, fact finders and lovers of bibliographies! If you would all just use Wikipedia like the rest of us, we’d have the cure for all known diseases and the rainforest would still be here!”

Basically if we listened to all the hippies of 60s and burned our clothes and embraced the full idea of Free Love, those factory workers would be better off. We would be in the age of safety by now, where everything would be rounded and padded, as to not mangle our genitals. So to take this even further, it’s the opposers of Free Love’s fault that these factory workers are in poor condition! Even better a solution to this would be make clothing out of the same material as the Black Box of the plane and then they’d never break down or go out of style and we’d save tons of money and lives.

Absurd. Like Surowiecki’s statement. The question to be asked is how much are the corporations really taking home at the end of their cozy 8-hour work day? Is it a lot more than the factory workers’ 15-hour work day? Certain is. Let’s start there. If we want the brand names with low price, we need some of the mass producing corporations, and if corporations want their products to keep selling, they need the factory workers to be alive and well, and if they are alive and well, that means more products and that means more consumers buying stuff, and more money. The corporations take some of this money and maybe invest into making better factories instead of buying a new house in Bali or just buying Bali. What the hell are you going to do with a whole island to yourself? Oh right, build several factories…