As you can see from the photo above, Captain America approves of this shirt. Or should he?Since I'm a sucker for cheap, cheesy t-shirts and I'm also a fan of Rural King, there was little doubt I would purchase this for $3 from the clearance rack.
Even though I got this shirt and a couple of others at bargain basement prices last week, there's some dark humor going on here. This shirt, with the flag blazoned across it, was made in Haiti, easily one of the poorest countries in the world.
It's a simple example of globalization, of course, but by "serving our customers," who also is being "served"? A simple anecdote of affluenza or capitalism as it should be?
5 comments:
So what would you prefer? That the person in Haiti doesn't have their crappy 50 cents a day job and be unemployed?
Or would you rather have it be made by Americans at minimum wage and never be bought because it is too expensive and they eventually lose their job?
Globalization is beautiful. It helps people in both countries at the same time. We get cheaper stuff and they get a job.
After I wrote this, I worried that I posed a false either-or dilemma, which I did. And so did you. It's not a quick "which is better?" situation in my mind, which is why I posed the questions for discussion.
I certainly wouldn't describe globalization as "beautiful." My friend, June Johnson, in her textbook _Global Issues, Local Arguments_ paints a more broad and diverse picture of the causes, effects, benefits, tradeoffs, and nasty hangovers of globalization via varied and balanced readings.
Globalization is certainly helpful in many ways, but I think there should be strong safeguards for protecting and giving fair wages for all workers whatever countries they live in. Fair wages, of course, are relative, but part of my reference to "affluenza" stems from how I think consumer decisions should have a ethical frame of reference to them, something Adam Smith plays with in his Theory of Moral Sentiments and what economists call "externalities," as you know. And affluenza also connects to how people might buy stuff they might not need.
Hence the guilt pervading the post...
Post continued...
But an externality within the "science" of economics can be quite important to many folks.
A related problem I bristle at is that people equate cheap goods and the ability to buy stuff with "freedom." What crap.
Kenneth Burke relates this tendency in A Grammar of Motives: "And when we have arrived at a stage where the sheer symbols of exchange are treated as the basic motives of human relations, when we have gone from 'God's law' to 'natural law,' and thence to the 'market law' that become a 'second nature' with those raised in a fully developed capitalist ethic, we find many pious apologists of the status quo who would deduce human freedom itself from the free market, as the only scene from which a free social act could be drawn" (92).
If we're going to act as consumers, shouldn't we also act as citizens with our buying power?
To lift a phrase from Freud, maybe a t-shirt is just a t-shirt. But my purchase can be read on a number of levels.
Fair wages, of course, are relative...
But who enforces this idea of a "fair wage"? The fact that the worker accepted the job speaks rather loudly on the worker's opinion of the fairness of the wage.
This reminds me of people bitching and moaning about how Wal-Mart doesn't pay their employees enough and then 1000 people show up to apply for 100 jobs.
People always act in what they perceive to be their best interest. Absent mental illness, who are we to say they are wrong?
This is the very heart of a free market economy. People making decisions in their own self-interest is the key to the greatest wealth-creating system humankind has ever known.
If we're going to act as consumers, shouldn't we also act as citizens with our buying power?
Absolutely. As long as you don't dictate to me what "acting as a citizen" means. I purchase stuff all the time that is not the absolute cheapest because of other factors. I value the cleanliness and ambience of the store where I shop, that is why I go to Target much more often that Wal-Mart. I value quality, or at least what I perceive as quality, that's why I don't buy food from Aldi's.
I also value American-produced goods higher than imports. Not very much, mind you, but I do, and my purchase decisions reflect that.
This differentiation between consumer tastes is what drives markets. The market creating as much wealth as possible is the single best way to improve the lot in life of everyone on the planet. Yes, some or even most of the wealth will be concentrated in the hands of the greedy capitalists, but a rising tide really does lift all boats.
The best way to improve the lot of the average Haitian is to buy products made in Haiti. Happily, this also improves the lot of the American making the purchase at the same time.
Hence the guilt pervading the post...
You should feel no guilt. You clearly valued the shirt more than you did the three dollars in your wallet, so you came out ahead in the transaction.
This discussion we have comes around about every year, travolta.
I suspect, however, that Wal-Mart has a high turnover rate, and if so many people are presumably showing up for their jobs, that might be a indictment of what our "service" economy is.
That anecdote reminds of a good political cartoon during the Clinton administration that satirized how that administration touted job creation: the guy is telling his friend how he's working but they are three different jobs with no health insurance.
You thoughts mostly cohere to a recent article in Ode magazine that profiles Iqbal Quadir: http://www.odemagazine.com/doc/70/Capitalism-to-the-rescue/
Quadir, like me and Teddy Roosevelt, is concerned about the concentration of power.
Here's another article that you and others might find interesting. "Profit with a Purpose" by Adam Smith: http://www.odemagazine.com/doc/70/Profit-with-a-purpose/
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