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Voting for the lesser of two evils
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Merrick
Merrick
2148 posts

Re: who exploits who?
Sep 05, 2002, 21:31
Before I start, I'd just like to say that I've been aeway a lot in recent months, so my time on HH has been sporadic. It's fuckin great to be around for a few days in a row, I'd forgotten what an excellent exchange of ideas and angles goes on here. Every - literally EVERY - other board I see is solely for chest beating and name calling. I love the way HH has respect but doesn't let that stray into being too polite to roll up our sleeves and wrestle with ideas. Thankyou folks.

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Right then. A consumer is directly responsible for the production of the products they buy.

In what way do we have "little real choice in what kind of product to buy"? Have you seen how many types of shoe/crisps/book/radio there are ??

I do indeed argue that in many cases the consumer gets a product cheaper than if the worker got a fair wage.

You're dead right that just because people are paid less doesn't mean the goods cost less, (as every Indonesian made £100 pair of Nike will show), but it *does* mean that everything that's ridiculously cheap is cheap for a simple reason. How can it be that I see, say, T shirts made in China retailing for £1, except that they are made by people in appalling conditions?

It's not a matter of having moral purity untainted by exploitation, it's the consumer dimension to the fundamental problem of our culture: We are so divorced from our environment, we see things appear as if from nowhere, and when we put things in a bin or out of an exhaust pipe they magically disappear.

If we are to find a solution to all this is has to be by realising that there are sources and consequences for all our consumption, and that we - all of us - have been duped into depending on the stuff that ruins us.

This applies to so many things on so many levels. And one of them is that the person who buys sweatshop goods is the demand for those goods, they are a partner with the sweatshop owner in the exploitation of the sweatshop workers. And that applies to absolutely all of us.
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