Today's newsletter is perhaps appropriate for Thanksgiving week here in the U.S. – at least, appropriate for the traditional Black Friday that follows what is otherwise a relatively non-materialistic holiday. This video was introduced to me by a colleague as an insightful commentary on the fast fashion business model:
The video tells the story of a campaign to educate German consumers about the implications of their fast fashion purchases (#WhoMadeMyClothes). Specifically, the organization (which subsequently seems to have stopped operating) set up a vending machine advertising €2 t-shirts. When someone inserts their money, however, they are presented with a video profiling the people who work in fast fashion sweatshops and emphasizing the amount they need to be paid in order to generate the low prices western consumers pay/demand. At the end of the video, the consumer is then presented with the question, "Do you still want to purchase the €2 t-shirt?" and are given the option of donating the €2 instead.
The ploy is very effective – so much so that the organization reports that over 80% of the people who insert money into the vending machine end up donating the money instead of purchasing the t-shirt (see here).
It is a good story, but lots of reasons to question the donation stats that are reported (e.g., it is only 2 euros in a highly developed economy, moral shaming, etc., etc.). Most important, however, the video doesn't grapple with the most important question – what happens to these workers' livelihoods if people do not buy the t-shirts? In other words, what options do they have as alternatives to their current condition, however bad when judged from a western perspective?
The key issue for me in attempting to understand the conditions under which people accept employment elsewhere and then judging their choice is whether there was coercion involved. If so, that is a separate situation/discussion. But, assuming free choice, then it is most likely that the person who elected to work at the factory felt that this job was their best option, given their economic reality. In other words, that this job is adding more value for that individual than any other alternative option.
The other macro-level consideration in this discussion is the idea that all economies progress through phases and that the sweatshop phase is a necessary step along the road to greater prosperity. In other words, every economy that we think of as developed today, at one point went through a sweatshop phase. Think of the original outsourcing economies – Japan, Korea, etc. And, before that, think of the first countries to industrialize – the UK and U.S./Canada. How are all of those economies doing today?
The benefit that developing economies have over the first economies to industrialize is that they know what is on the other side of their sweatshop phase. In other words, they are likely to be in their sweatshop phase for less time than the earlier industrializing economies because they see what better looks like. None of this is to say that a sweatshop phase is good in an objective sense (in fact, I generally struggle with the idea of what good means in an objective sense), but it does suggest that we should think of such things as relative. Even, perhaps, that the sweatshop phase is a good thing in that it suggests the economy is developing and will someday leave that phase to move on to something more developed.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
David
David Chandler
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