The problem with Tom's Shoes and other "noble" enterprises

[mortalveneer]

Unless the resources being spent on these charitable efforts (coming from non-government sources) could compete with the existing lobbying dollars out there, I'm not sure throwing them into the lobbying machine would actually shift the behemoth in any meaningful way at all. It's one thing to critique the way money is being spent, but assuming it would have a hope of competing in the lobbying realm is another thing altogether.

[LelandJ]

Right, the "it's simply logistically impossible" argument that people who make your product can't be paid a non-demoralizing wage. The company only makes $300 M a year, how could they ever afford not to use Chinese slaves to make their shoes!?

He must be cut off from the past. . . because it is necessary for him to believe that he is better off than his ancestors and that the average level of material comfort is constantly rising.
--George Orwell, 1984

[mortalveneer]

I wasn't talking about paying a living wage. I was talking about the argument enunciated previously that money spent on charitable aims would be better spent lobbying governments to convince them to shift other nation's governments (or their own laws). No idea where you pulled "logistics" from that...

[LelandJ]

I wasn't talking to you but the general sentiment in this and the other thread. But I should know better than to gripe.

A society's system of money is inseparable from other aspects of its relationship to the world and the relationships among its members. Money as we know it today both reflects and propels the objectification of the world, the paradigm of competition, and the depersonalization and atomization of society. We should therefore expect that any authentic change in these conditions would necessarily also involve a change in our system of money.

As a matter of fact, there are money systems that encourage sharing not competition, conservation not consumption, and community, not anonymity. Pilot versions of such systems have been around for at least a hundred years now, but because they are inimical to the larger patterns of our culture, they have been marginalized or even actively suppressed. Meanwhile, many creative proposals for new modes of industry such as Paul Hawken's Ecology of Commerce, and many green design technologies, are uneconomic under the current money system. The alternative money systems I describe below will naturally induce the economies described by visionaries such as Hawken, E.F. Schumacher, Herman Daly, and others. They will also reverse the progressive nationalization and globalization of every economic sector, revitalize communities, and contribute to the elimination of the "externalities" that put economic growth at odds with human happiness and planetary health.

Given the determining role of interest, the first alternative currency system to consider is one that structurally eliminates it. As the history of the Catholic Church demonstrates, laws and admonitions against interest are ineffective if its structural necessity is still present in the nature of the currency. A structural solution is needed, such as the system proposed by Silvio Gesell in The Natural Economic Order. Gesell's "free-money" (as he called it) bears a form of negative interest called demurrage. Periodically, a stamp costing a tiny fraction of the currency's denomination must be affixed to it, in effect a "user fee" or a "maintenance cost"; another way to look at it is that the currency "goes bad"—depreciates in value—as it ages.[3]

If this sounds like a radical proposal that could never work, it may surprise you to learn that no less an authority than John Maynard Keynes praised the theoretical soundness of Gesell's ideas. What's more, the system has actually been tried out with great success.

Although demurrage was applied as long ago as Ancient Egypt in the form of a storage cost for commodity-backed currency,[4] the best-known example was instituted in the town of Worgl, Austria, in 1932 by its famous mayor Uttenguggenberger. To remain valid, each piece of this locally-issued currency required a monthly stamp costing 1% of its face value. Instead of generating interest and growing, accumulation of wealth became a burden—much like possessions are a burden to the nomadic hunter-gatherer. People therefore spent their income quickly, generating intense economic activity in the town. The unemployment rate plummeted even as the rest of the country slipped into a deepening depression; public works were completed, and prosperity continued until the Worgl currency was outlawed in 1933 at the behest of a threatened central bank.

Demurrage produces a number of profound economic, social, and psychological effects. Conceptually, demurrage works by freeing material goods, which are subject to natural cyclic processes of renewal and decay, from their linkage with a money that only grows, exponentially, over time. As established in Chapter Four, this dynamic is what is driving us toward ruin in the utter exhaustion of all social, cultural, natural, and spiritual wealth. Demurrage currency merely subjects money to the same laws as natural commodities, whose continuing value requires maintenance. Gesell writes:

Gold does not harmonise with the character of our goods. Gold and straw, gold and petrol, gold and guano, gold and bricks, gold and iron, gold and hides! Only a wild fancy, a monstrous hallucination, only the doctrine of "value" can bridge the gulf. Commodities in general, straw, petrol, guano and the rest can be safely exchanged only when everyone is indifferent as to whether he possesses money or goods, and that is possible only if money is afflicted with all the defects inherent in our products. That is obvious. Our goods rot, decay, break, rust, so only if money has equally disagreeable, loss-involving properties can it effect exchange rapidly, securely and cheaply. For such money can never, on any account, be preferred by anyone to goods.

Only money that goes out of date like a newspaper, rots like potatoes, rusts like iron, evaporates like ether, is capable of standing the test as an instrument for the exchange of potatoes, newspapers, iron and ether. For such money is not preferred to goods either by the purchaser or the seller. We then part with our goods for money only because we need the money as a means of exchange, not because we expect an advantage from possession of the money.

In other words, money as a medium of exchange is decoupled from money as a store of value. No longer is money an exception to the universal tendency in nature toward rust, mold, rot and decay—that is, toward the recycling of resources. No longer does money perpetuate a human realm separate from nature.

Gesell's phrase, "... a monstrous hallucination, the doctrine of 'value'..." hints at an even more subtle and more potent effect of demurrage. What is he talking about? Value is the doctrine that assigns to each object in the world a number. It associates an abstraction, changeless and independent, with that which always changes and that exists in relationship to all else. Demurrage reverses this thinking and thus removes an important boundary between the human realm and the natural realm. When money is no longer preferred to goods, we will lose the habit of thinking in terms of how much something is "worth".

Whereas interest promotes the discounting of future cash flows, demurrage encourages long-term thinking. In present-day accounting, a rain forest generating one million dollars a year sustainably forever is more valuable if clearcut for an immediate profit of 50 million dollars. (In fact, the net present value of the sustainable forest calculated at a discount rate of a mere 5% is only $20 million.) This discounting of the future results in the infamously short-sighted behavior of corporations that sacrifice (even their own) long-term well-being for the short-term results of the fiscal quarter. Such behavior is perfectly rational in an interest-based economy, but in a demurrage system, pure self-interest would dictate that the forest be preserved. No longer would greed motivate the robbing of the future for the benefit of the present. As the exponential discounting of future cash flows implies the "cashing in" of the entire earth, as illustrated in Chapter Four, this feature of demurrage is highly attractive.

Whereas interest tends to concentrate wealth, demurrage promotes its distribution. In any economy with a specialization of labor beyond the family level, human beings need to perform exchanges in order to survive. Both interest and demurrage represent a fee for the use of money, but the key difference is that in the former system, the fee accrues to those who already have money, while in the latter system it is levied upon those who have money. Wealth comes with a high maintenance cost, thereby recreating the dynamics that governed hunter-gatherer attitudes toward accumulations of possessions.

Whereas security in an interest-based system comes from accumulating money, in a demurrage system it comes from having productive channels through which to direct it—that is, to become a nexus of the flow of wealth and not a point for its accumulation. In other words, it puts the focus on relationships, not on "having". Metaphorically, then, and perhaps more than metaphorically, the demurrage system accords with a different sense of self, affirmed not by defining more and more of the world within the confines of me and mine, but by developing and deepening relationships with others. In other words, it encourages reciprocation, sharing, and the rapid circulation of wealth. It is conceivable that wealth in a demurrage system would evolve into something akin to the model of the Pacific Northwest or Melanesia, in which a leader "acts as a shunting station for goods flowing reciprocally between his own and other like groups of society."[5] These "big man" societies were not fully egalitarian and bore some degree of centricity, as perhaps is necessary in any economy with more than a very basic division of labor; the key point is that leadership was not associated with the accumulation of money or possessions, but rather with a huge responsibility for generosity. Can you imagine a society where the greatest prestige, power, and leadership accorded to those with the greatest inclination and capacity for generosity?

Somewhat comforting to know there were alternatives while we burn the earth (ourselves) to the ground.

[DudleyGray]

I don't see a problem with Tom's, except the shoes are ugly. I doubt Tom's is critical to Chinese manufacturing and that the local economies are hinging on childrens' footwear. Some kids might as well get some shoes out of it.

[casem]

Wow, when you first mentioned a currency that loses value I thought it sounded crazy, but I read through the article you posted and it makes COMPLETE sense. Really interesting stuff. Too bad it seems too radical to ever gain traction unless there's a major collapse and rebuild.

There's a common (mis)conception at least in America that the poor are poor because they are lazy and spend unwisely (ie. don't save enough) and this really highlights the fact it's actually the rich hoarding money/resources that stagnates the economy far more than the relatively small burden of the government assisting the poor.

I wasn't talking to you but the general sentiment in this and the other thread. But I should know better than to gripe.



Somewhat comforting to know there were alternatives while we burn the earth (ourselves) to the ground.

[LelandJ]

I'm starting to think/read about the consequences of (fast) fashion and now I'm questioning how much of my capsule wardrobe could be considered ethical. I would hope all of it, it's all made in Japan or Italy, but then I read that Italy has funny wage requirements, not to mention how many places just finalize in Italy and slap on the Italy label.

So I was wondering, can anyone tell me if the following labels are ethical in their production? If they are, I'd like to continue to support them when my pieces need replacement:

Rick Owens (the MII stuff)
Julius
Undercover
Diet Butcher Slim Skin

And just others I've just wondered about:
The Viridi-Anne
Raf
Yohji
Ann D
Helmut Lang (OG and current)

Any insight would be appreciated here.

I don't see a problem with Tom's, except the shoes are ugly. I doubt Tom's is critical to Chinese manufacturing and that the local economies are hinging on childrens' footwear. Some kids might as well get some shoes out of it.

So you only care the clothes and shoes you wear are made ethically?



Quick math on the one-to-one advertisement campaign. If they've given around 10 million shoes away since 2006 and assume each pair costed them $6 to make that's $60M spent over the past eight years or on average about $7.5M a year for their advertising manufacturing (charity in newspeak) which is roughly 3% of their current annual profits. Investing in building or buying their own factories and paying an ethical wage would probably cost the company 20-30%.

The ugliness has no limits.

[BlacknWhite]

This is pretty much all they listed on their site about manufacturing practices:



So long as they pay Chinese minimum wage then it's not slavery by legal definition. Perhaps sweatshop workers are happier to know half the shoes they make are going to others in poverty? (horrible rhetorical question, sadly some posters here would actually consider it a "positive")

Like Albert, and Zam said, there is some good to it. It's better than nothing, and because of that, I question the part bolded.

I don't understand how you, and many people I constantly read comments from online, throw around the word slavery so easily, especially when the attack is primarily at a country like China where infrastructure, and the cost of labor has been rising, it's not even the cheapest country to manufacture in, but it sure has a large work force. I am by no means supporting terrible pay, and work conditions around the world, fyi.
People willingly choose to take the job; they know what they're in for. Yeah lots of people around the world work for very little in the garment industry, and other industries as well. That happens in developed nations too. So at what point would you stop throwing that word, slavery around? because if people do their job willingly, and are in fact making enough to put food on the table, and feed their family(surprise surprise), when is it not your so called "slave" labor." No matter what, there will always be certain countries where the pay, and infrastructure of the country as a whole is not on par with more "developed" nations, and when they are, it's time to find a cheaper alternative.

[DudleyGray]

So you only care the clothes and shoes you wear are made ethically?

Yeah, pretty much. My money is the only money I control, after all. What am I going to do, launch a campaign against Tom's and be the crazy guy handing out flyers on the corner? No, some bad stuff is happening, but bad stuff happens anyways and some kids are getting shoes out of this bad stuff, it's ok by me.

But that I have someone quoting me from a different thread, I feel flattered, thank you.

[mortalveneer]

Funny how quickly discussions surrounding this topic can descend into incivility and sarcasm...

[zamb]

^
You just threw so much explicit and implicit ignorance at me, you've left me speechless.

let me throw some more ignorance at you and i will do it in layman's terms because at this age and stage of my life I have no time for all the ridiculous numbers and calculations that sophistry has to use to make its points seem valid

I used work for a company here in the US who made military products. We could not use any material or supplies that were not made in the US, and all the products had to be made on us soil.
Big Surprize! In the production department, EVERY SINGLE EMPLOYEE was a CHINESE worker working for the US minimum wage.

One of the Most iconic US based designers whose work was touted as RTW using couture techniques, once had his factory in LA making his fabulous gowns for the Hollywood elite. he had about 75 employees and over 60 of them were Chinese employees

I know of a much lauded designer based in Italy, with a powerful production company behind him............label on the clothing says: Made in Italy, but who do you think works in this factory??
I dont think i need to say.

So as far as i am concerned, no one has a problem with Chinese workers as long as they are not in CHINA?

Listen man, there are problems to solve, of workers getting better wages, having better working conditions and a more humane way of dealing with improving the plight of the poor, but i think we need a better grasp of these things before we throw labels and words like "Sweatshop" and slavery around

[LelandJ]

let me throw some more ignorance at you and i will do it in layman's terms because at this age and stage of my life I have no time for all the ridiculous numbers and calculations that sophistry has to use to make its points seem valid

i used work for a company here in the US who made military products. we could not use any material or supplies that were not made in the US, and all the products had to be made on us soil..........but guess what. in the production department, EVERY SINGLE EMPLOYEE was a CHINESE worker working for the US minimum wage.

One of the Most iconic US based designers whose work was touted as RTW using couture techniques, once had his factory in LA making his fabulous gowns for the Hollywood elite. he had about 75 employees and over 60 of them were Chinese employees

I know of a much lauded designer based in Italy, with a powerful production company behind him............label on the clothing says: Made in Italy, but who do you think works in this factory??
I dont think i need to say.

So as far as i am concerned, no one has a problem with Chinese workers as long as they are not in CHINA?

Listen man, there are problems to solve, of workers getting better wages, having better working conditions and a more humane way of dealing with improving the plight of the poor, but i think we need a better grasp of these things before we throw labels and words like "Sweatshop" and slavery around

I don't think we should discriminate against Chinese Americans in getting demoralizing minimum wage jobs here in the states.

:grabbing my sweatshop coat / gallows humor gone too far:

[Faust]

Wow, when you first mentioned a currency that loses value I thought it sounded crazy, but I read through the article you posted and it makes COMPLETE sense. Really interesting stuff. Too bad it seems too radical to ever gain traction unless there's a major collapse and rebuild.

There's a common (mis)conception at least in America that the poor are poor because they are lazy and spend unwisely (ie. don't save enough) and this really highlights the fact it's actually the rich hoarding money/resources that stagnates the economy far more than the relatively small burden of the government assisting the poor.

Actually, there is some truth to the spending unwisely part. (Even that capitalist rag the Economist has written that Americans don't save enough.) But that's a whole other discussion.

Well, this thread has been taken over by our village idiot contingent - LelandJ, DudleyGrey, Dorje, and apathy! Bravo.

[DudleyGray]

Well, better to be a village idiot than a town bicycle, I always say.

[LelandJ]

Damn, somehow I missed the last paragraph in Zam's post, I even quoted it too. The whole meaning just changed.

I agree focusing on words like slavery, sweatshop, poverty are meaningless compared to understanding the varying degrees of deprivations everyone suffers, and the history and ailing consciousness that brought us here.