warning, this somehow turned into an endless rant with a serious wall of text. I am curious. How exactly is Nike so evil? Between the part where they build a factory in Indonesia and pay their workers more than any other employer in the vicinity, and the part where the shoes reach the local Footlocker store some great evil is apparently being perpetrated and I am missing it completely.
the evil is that while the conditions and wages may be decent
for that area they are no where near what we consider adequate, or require of local manufacturers who compete with these products in our stores. nobody in Nike corporate would tolerate their children spending their lives at such a career under those conditions and for those wages. but it's hypothetical people on the other side of the world that actually enjoy those conditions.
those Americans that find themselves unemployed purely through their own fault, they need to accept workplace accidents as 'part of life' I mean what is the value of a finger, a hand, an eye, maybe a foot, when weighed against increased production and higher profit,, and the resulting value increase of a few cents a share for the share-holders. they should work for a lower, more competitive wage, they did this to themselves, priced themselves right out of a job, I mean as it was before we had a little healthy competition, they where probably making close to a 100th of a mid-level executives wage. what kind of worker is so arrogant as to presume to be worth 100th of the value of a yes-man, corporate potato, whose made the improvement of having his morals removed.
To expect others to live in such conditions, while profiting from their labor and doing little or nothing to make things better for those who's labor provides for their income, and using the products produced under these conditions, in an unfair trade competition with companies that are forced to follow rules and incur expenses that these less than ethical companies aren’t required to conform to.
also these foreign factories usually are not bound by our emission laws(some countries have equal or stronger emission laws but these aren’t the ones that are competing unfairly by not having to concern themselves with things like fair wages, working conditions, health of your workforce, or environmental damage. at it would only be fare if those countries with these stronger standards used the same attitude when dealing with products produced here)
because of the location of the mess and it's distance from those with who make such decisions, they can dump whatever they want, and produce their products under conditions that our society has decided (through our laws) is unacceptable. simply by contracting out production to countries they can let the local sleaze, handle these and other less than pleasant details. by actually hiring him instead of the workers directly you have good degree of deniability, and all it costs you is provide the funding and resources necessary to give him the opportunity to exploit his land and countrymen for some mutual profit.
it's a lie when they call this lack of regulation free or fair trade. it's not fair and it's damn sure not free. we pay the cost daily in our schools, prisons, and courts. how can we ever expect to do away with extreme poverty, and other serious social and environmental. when we reward companies (through lower taxes per unit and virtually anything goes employment practices) for closing down factories that have contributed to our economy and encourage and reward them to take the jobs over seas, where they won't be hampered by basic decency and consequences to treating people like an asset.
because of our lack of control over this situation we have set up a system that rewards Americans for exporting jobs away from their home. we complain about our economy when we let the corporations export jobs, money, and the taxes and support jobs they generate.
I don't advocate purely protectionist tariffs to slam all imports, but I do think adding a tariff equal to (or exceeding if necessary for punitive motivation, to companies who refuse to get the point), the money saved by manufacturing and employee management practices that would not be tolerated in the countries where the goods are sold or owned, including any projected cost of cleanup from environmental negligence (to be fair it would be reasonable to expect like tariffs imposed on imports from the US to countries that have higher standards for pollution, wages and working conditions)
it seems very inefficient to me to penalize people for manufacturing products at or near the areas where they are used. it would be a better use of resources if the competition was made fairer and the products could be manufactured competitively near the areas where people buy them.
to be fair these low wage, low value of human life areas can still sell their products at the cheaper rate since they are being sold in an area that finds these practices tolerable. I wonder how many pairs of air-Jordans (or whatever the 'too-damn-expensive-shoe-of-the-day' is) they would be able to sell to their employees making $.50 a day. How much do they pay a day for a worker? How many shoes does a worker make a day? And how much are these shoes sold for? Does the math really work out to prove that a paying a decent wage for the people who manufacture the product would have enough impact to make any difference in their ability to compete?
it seams fairly clear to me that if in the process of manufacturing your products can't generate enough wages in your employees to provide a significant portion of your customer base, then you are a pimple on the prettythang of the world economy.
the only Americans this type of "free-trade"(and I use the term very loosely) is the very wealthy. they still will get the dividends and profits form the exploitative companies, they will get more merchandise for their buck since they can buy products without taking any responsibility (through the cost being reflected in the price) for the pollution and the suffering of people working away their lives in dangerous jobs for slave wages. they also don't have to face the other costs like pollution or human rights violation because all that (along with our jobs) is done "over their" in a dirty, filthy sweatshop where "those kind of people" like living like that.
plus they get the added power and feeling of superiority because they can point to the poor these policies generate at home and shake their head at how the bums won't get a job, they can feel great about their wealth and life of excess while the unemployed here prove that the poor just won't work, or maybe show a bit of initiative like those hard working people over seas who our CEO tells us are happy to work for a few dollars a week and really love their life and the opportunity we provide them to produce products for our consumption at slave wages and often deadly and usually abusive conditions.
maybe if the rich are really lucky, poor can be deported to that 3rd world country so we can have the opertunity to compete directly for that spare-change wage.
then it would be just the rich here. without any lower class people to start complaining and make a scene. well except for the maid, we'll need her, and gardener, burger flipper and the sales girl at Nordstrom. (and probably a few others who's contribution I have and will continue to take for granted until I have to start doing fo rmyself) and maybe a couple extras just so those with a job don't get to comfortable and start demanding to be treated like people. you have to have a few desperate ones left, to serve as an example to the others of what could be if they make trouble. and to entertain us with them being so desperate that they will do anything for a buck. it would be paradise the
true americans, the wealthy, the only ones that matter could live like kings. they would have plenty of desparately poor people who would do anything no matter how dangerouse or degrading fo some spare change to get by.
that would be perfect, they could set aside our country for the wealthy and their servants while sending all the jobs- that would be distasteful to have to actually witness the conditions of -to the far ends of the earth where the people who matter wouldn't have to be confronted with the cost others who have few options are paying for their lifestyle..
