10 December, 2007 
Why is that so many apparently well-intentioned people, as well as the huge bulk of the Western population who simply can’t be bothered to use their brains, think it’s acceptable to buy vast amounts of “cheap” consumer goods produced in the less developed world?
Whenever I suggest that perhaps it’s inappropriate to import cheap flowers from Kenya, cheap peas from Guatemala, cheap asparagus from Peru, cheap beef from Argentina, cheap chicken from Thailand, cheap clothes from Indonesia, cheap electronics from China and so on, people start lecturing me about how people in those countries need jobs to support their families.
I’m told it’s good that people in the less developed world now have “proper” jobs that bring them in the cash to improve their lifestyles.
I’m told that by opposing cheap imports, I’m actually trying to keep people poor, impoverished and starving.
What a load of rubbish, to put it politely.
The simple fact of the matter is that modern consumer capitalism is a linear system that progressively strips huge numbers of people and the environment of resources to create perks and luxuries for progressively smaller layers of people to consume,
The system starts by ripping minerals from beneath the ground, clearing trees to make way for intensive livestock and arable farming, stripping the seas of fish, and siphoning off water to maintain the industrial and agricultural processes.
When the wealthiest nations and corporations run out of cheap resources in their backyards, they simply take it from someone else. It used to be called colonialism or imperialism; today, it’s just business.
Actually, it’s theft. Theft from other people and theft from the environment.
Governmental and intergovernmental agencies happily acquiesce and connive with corporations in their rapacious plundering of resources because corporations are effectively governments.
Half the world’s biggest 100 economic entities are corporations, half are governments. The people who run the corporations are the same people who run the governments.
As far as they’re concerned, the resources are theirs. They have the money and power to exploit them, so therefore they own them.
The people who lived among, over and amidst those resources for centuries without over-exploiting them are almost meaningless. They don’t consume consumer goods, they have no real money, they have no real power.
All they have is resources that aren’t really theirs. Just ask any international trade agency or body.
Next, the system has to take the ill-gotten resources and turn them into goods, and that means having access to vast amounts of cheap, easily exploited labour close to the resources.
Surprise, surprise. By booting the people off the land that has supported them for generations and packing them off to the cities, the corporations have now found themselves a cheap, expendable workforce that’s easy to exploit and manipulate.
What else do the corporations need?
They need cheap energy in vast amounts, so it’s back to the environment to extract even more minerals that can be burned to produce the power to convert resources into goods.
They need ways of achieving greater and greater efficiencies, they need to make less into more to improve yields and they need to find shortcuts. That means pouring vast amounts of synthetic chemicals into the production processes to create new materials, “improve” existing ones and generally smooth the wheels of “progress”.
As the goods are pushed out the back of the factories, they had to be distributed to the consumers and again that means the corporations need a cheap workforce to package the goods, move them to market and then sell them to consumers.
But there’s a problem. Consumers have to be persuaded to keep buying more products, so the corporations have to keep pushing the apparent price down by passing the real costs to the people at the bottom and to the environment.
The corporations also have to persuade consumers that they really do need the latest products and not last year’s model, which is where fashion, planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence. It’s all deliberately designed to make the consumer buy, buy and buy again.
It’s the fundamental underpinning of the entire system – consumption that grows year in, year out regardless of the consequences.
It means people no longer see themselves as fathers, mothers, brothers or sisters. They no longer see themselves as producers or makers, as custodians or guardians, as members of communities or societies.
Instead, people are now defined by their potential and actual consumption of goods. The more people consume and the more they could consume, the more valuable they are.
Even charity is now reduced to the financial gains it can generate for the giver, making a gift into an investment that will enable the giver to consume more.
And the more conspicuous the consumption, the better as it encourages consumers further down the line to aspire to consume more, too.
A flash new car is not enough, it has to changed for a better one every year. A big house is not enough, it has to be swapped for a bigger one every few years.
Consumerism is now a prerequisite for social recognition and the primary mode of self-definition in the west, and increasingly the rest of the world, too.
Even those dispossessed people at the very bottom are forced to become consumers. They have no choice but to try to relieve their misery by buying goods that offer a brief respite from their grinding reality.
It’s win, win, win for the corporations.
What really underscores the pointless futility of the whole squalid exercise is what happens at the end of the system.
All those non-durable consumer goods break, fail, wear out, lose their lustre or are replaced by the latest model. Then they’re dumped, discarded and thrown away.
The ultimate irony is that those non-durable goods are made of materials that last for generations of human lives, materials that include vast amounts of synthetic chemicals that eventually find their way into the foodchain and into people.
We pollute the air, land and water while changing the climate in ways that we can barely grasp, much less understand. The world is falling apart around us.
But the governments and corporations tell us it’s okay.
It’s okay to use plastic bags as they are cheaper, lighter and more efficient. It’s okay to buy flowers from Kenya because it keeps poor people in jobs. It’s okay to buy electronic goods made from minerals mined by children as they have a wage to support their family. It’s okay to send rubbish to China as the Chinese will recycle it for us.
And best of all, it’s okay because we can have whatever we want whenever we want it and at rock-bottom prices. Someone else, far, far away is bearing the brunt of the cost.
As people keep telling me, that’s all right then.
Stoney, I could not agree more with your well written comments. I know I experience the same attitude; when I wish to buy something I always prefer Aussie made goods, if I can get them.
I like to buy quality Australian items, e.g. tools, especially hand tools, a nice Australian made leather belt or hat. Nowadays the rubbish that arrives from overseas is just that, cheap and nasty. Good shirts, which I like, are extremely difficult to buy and the once best brands are now Chinese made. Fruit etc is imported and I could continue in that vein.
The comment, helping other nations people to have jobs is specious in my view.
Live and let live and stop using other nations as a form of cheap (maybe slave type) labour.
Yes, the big corporations are the power in the world and their massive profits underline that fact. Governments dance to their tune, just look at the donations to election funding, regardless of political persuasion of the recipient.
Raised a lot of interesting points. The basic enemy seems to be international Corporations who will go to the lowest cost producers no matter what the cost to the country they are part of in terms of jobs, wages levels, quality of life for working people(I mean that in the broadest sense). Sounds quite close to a definition of treason crossed with piracy, individuals who are willing to damage their own country and others for the sake of greed. Of course they are ardent disciples of trickle-down economics, garbage promoted by the grotesquely wealthy to ensure they get wealthier at the expense of other people.
I feel the voters should vote for a party that would help small businesses (I do not care which one as long as they help), by making them sustainable thro’ reductions in income tax for the businesses and removal of red-tape for small businesses. I saw a description of cr ofts that said ” a croft is an area of land surrounded by red tape”, amusing but sad.
At no point should a flat rate tax be instituted, this is just theft from the poor to give to the grotesquely rich.
At the end of the day, it is best to buy local, but people won;t if it is too expensive, and only the government can make small businesses more viable against the likes of the large supermarkets who cut everyones throats ultimately.
Adam Smith actually promoted the consumers as driving the system not rapacious corporations and associated individuals. I feel that they ought to take courses in Ethics before they are allowed to practice their darkest art. But if they had to take ethics and pass it before practising, I suppose they would never be allowed to work.
Piece of Info – constraints that fling people into reality sometimes happen. Atlanta a city of approximately 5 million people, will run out of water in 2 months, roughly, if it does not rain. This is bunch of people who have wasted water like there was no tomorrow, expanding expanding, houses, industry and iirrigated farming. Yet tomrrow is coming and no water may be coming out the taps. Worse they have no plan except prayer for rain!!!!
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/print/174863/Tomgram%253A%2520%2520As%2520the%2520World%2520Burns
the article asks the ultimate question for the place, “What happens when the taps run dry?”. 5 million people, no water and lots of guns – Damn Scary
So true. Have you read round this site http://eartheasy.com/homepage.htm? there are some very interesting articles that also look at the wider impact of our choices.
Our purchasing of cheap goods enslaves third world people rather than liberates them.
I enjoy the blog by the way.
Hi Stoney,
Long time mate, hope your feeling better.
Excellent polemic wholeheatedly agree with every word almost. Which is a first for me! Just been re-reading Bring Me My Bow by John Seymour, very similar arguments being made almost 30yrs ago to the day. Worrying times but regardless of corporate greed I still have faith in human spirit to finally come to our senses. Mind you Alex Salmond calling in Trumps failing application made me think twice the other day!!
Our biggest failing is that we are inherently lazy and that plays into the laps of the corporations.
Andrew
Too true!
I totally agree with you. (Have you just been watching ‘The Story of Stuff’, by the way?!)
When I was in Kenya, I stayed near Lake Naivasha. Ten years ago, the campsite was right by the side of the lake. Now, it’s a good fifteen minute walk away. I think El Nino is partly responsible, but also there is a massive flower farm whose irrigation system runs off water from the lake and the rivers that feed it. This has a detrimental impact on subsistence farmers in the area and the wildlife in the lake.
So while some people now have a wage from working on the farm, the means for independence and self-sufficiency has been taken away from the people in the surrounding area.
Why does ‘development’ have to mean ‘Westernisation’?
What’s the Story of Stuff? DVD or TV programme? I know, I should Google, but…
It’s an internet film of about 20 mins that seems to have been doing the rounds on the forums lately!
http://www.storyofstuff.com/
Thanks. I’ll have a look later. BTW, 20 minutes is fairly long for an internet film. I didn’t think many people had the attention span to cope with that…
A blogger after my own heart. You’ve said it well. Thanks.
Anthony, thanks for the feedback. I popped over for a look at your blog, and will add it to my blogroll later, but I have to admit to chuckling when I read your post Total Thoughts.
To understand why I chuckled, have a look at my post A time of inadequatarianism.
We seem to be of similar mind, my friend
OK Stonehead. I was one who, although I don’t buy to excess, have said in the past that at least these people have a job and can provide for their families. I can see that, as you explain, their means of living has been taken away by big business, but I can’t see what the solution is. You don’t seem to present one.
In the Industrial Revolution here in the UK the little man was dispossessed of his land and went to work for big business. It seems to me that what is happening in the Third World is just the modern version of that. Our umpty-great-grandparents were exploited, but we today have a choice…they made it possible for us to have the standard of living we have now. (I don’t explain things very well…sorry!)
Anyway, I’m sure you have a fuller explanation of this….please give it. Thanks!
You want solutions, too?
I’m very wary of proposing solutions to other people. Simply making observations is enough to make many people lose their rag, but that’s nothing compared to the vitriol and threats I get for daring to vaguely suggest other there might be other ways of doing things.
This blog contains a lot of detail about what we do in a personal sense to tackle what we see as major issues and concerns, hopefully without saying we have the one true way or the only alternative to the status quo. I’m wary about going further than that, although I do have some ideas.
I’ll think about it.