My dream is not paying 100-200 EUR for clothing which cost 1-10 EUR to produce. Don't care about your lifestyle, philosophy, trends, influencers, brand and logo. I want it vulgar - cash for good quality clothes.
An average wage for a factory worker in Bangladesh seems about $0.33 USD; in Cambodia it's $0.85 USD; other countries are somewhere in between.
I don't know how many clothes a single worker can make, but let's be extremely conservative and say it's two pieces of clothing per 10-hour workday. So that's between $1.65 an $4.25 in wages for a single piece of clothing. I suspect it's actually much much less (but can't find any resources on this at a moment's notice). Even this amount is ... not that much. A 50% or even 100% increase would make a huge difference in people's lives, while having a fairly minor impact on this end.
I grew up fairly poor and for the first 25 years or so I basically never had enough money for anything, so I understand that "a few € more or less, who even notices?-attitude that someone more well-off/middle-class might say is actually not so easy. I know from experience that those "few euro" actually can be quite significant. This is one reason Primark is so popular in the first place.
But still: the difference is stark, and there is little doubt in my mind what is clearly The Right Thing™ to do is here.
I understand that companies want to keep costs down, and that's perfectly reasonably, but this is just ridiculous and extreme. In many cases workers barely have enough money to buy food. And for what? So it's €1 or €2 cheaper? I find it so hard to believe that, as I said in the first line, I must not understand the economics of this somehow. Or maybe I do and people involved in this are just ... ugh...
You’re just observing how capitalism works. It’s why some of us would prefer rationally and democratically planned production motivated by needs.
Actually, recently I've been thinking that our legalistic attitude towards a lot of these problems is actually the core issue. "It's legal so therefore we can do it". Well, okay, but that doesn't mean it's ethical. On the other hand we also don't want a government that can make arbitrary decisions on what is or isn't "ethical", but I do think a lot of problems could be solved if we would just focus more on what "the right thing" would be rather on that what is legal by the letter of the law. This is a thought I only had the other day and haven't fully fleshed out my thoughts on this yet though.
What you're describing sounds like "democratic communism", and that didn't really work out especially well in the past. A lot of communist countries started out with democratic aspirations; "any country with the word democratic in the name isn't democratic" is an old joke, but it's also true.
Even if we manage to avoid the "tyrant problem" we're still left with a central planning that may not necessarily make the best decisions, and I'm not so confident that any democratic controls we put in place would correct for that. A significant amount of China's problems in the 50s-70s for example weren't out of sheer tyrannical malice like in Stalinist Russia, but just gross incompetence of the leadership. Not a "democratically planned" economy, granted, but still an important lesson to heed IMHO: when a centrally planned economy screw up the effects can be disastrous.
A lot of what is commonly believed about socialist countries is in fact propaganda by capitalists. Most of the actual problems were and are caused by being under constant siege by capitalist countries.
Socialism is the process of the working class gaining state power and overthrowing the capitalist class. There will still be contradictions and problems, but with planning we at least have a chance to solve them. Leaving it up to markets or the dictatorship of a few capitalists is admitting defeat from the start.
That’s...true, but not in the way you seem to intend it. The focus on regimes espousing Leninism and its descendants to typify “socialist countries” as opposed to those following what Marx described (and objected to, but Marx doesn't encompass socialism any more than Lenin does) as “bourgeois socialism” and “democratic socialism” is a pretty big problem, especially when dismissing Western socialist movements, which are mostly in those categories, not Leninism or its derivatives.
Lenin expanded on Marx, but did not reject his work.
The way I'm reading this is that the problems in Stalin Russia, Maoist China, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, North-Korea, etc. was/is caused by capitalist countries. And while these were "the worst of it", the practical implementations in many other countries wasn't exactly great either. I don't know of a single example where it worked well, and that's not for lack of trying.
I'm not sure if this is what you meant. It would help being a bit more concrete.
The USSR was actually very successful, especially during Stalin’s time. It went from a semi-feudal country to defeating the Nazis and into space. Eventually it lost the Cold War to the capitalist countries, through infiltration and direct aggression.
All of Eastern Europe was similarly quite successful compared to the conditions from which each country started. Merely ending the periodic environmental famines through industrialisation and collectivisation was a remarkable achievement. My grandparents and parents describe astonishing change in very few years and better conditions overall than today.
China started from an even less developed stage and industrialised very quickly. The material condition of most workers improved greatly, despite the limits imposed by capitalist countries. Later on, other concessions were made so capitalists would no longer block trade and development. And yet the working class is still in control of the state, as we’ve seen during COVID when the state took more direct control of the economy to save lives at the expense of profits.
The DPRK was bombed to an incredible degree by the US, which is still officially at war with it. Despite an almost complete blockade and even losing its socialist trading partners, it persists and to a small extent prospers. Cuba is in a similar position, doing remarkably well despite capitalist aggression.
Vietnam also developed remarkably quickly, despite occupation and a devastating war. Like China, it made concessions to capitalists in order to develop, while workers retain state power as a class.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet...
Curious definition of "success".
Guess that must all be "propaganda" too.
You could also talk to older people in Eastern Europe like I have, their experience doesn’t match such exaggerations.
Those do typically have shit quality at bargain prices, but as soon as you pay more than, let's say 10 EUR for a simple shirt, the quality is quite good (certainly better than C&A or most branded merch).
That might be an avenue worth investigating for you as well!
Please mind what I said above though - I've trialed some <10 CHF shirts that completely warped and fell apart after a few washes, so don't expect too much for too little.
I can recommend the "B&C Mens V-Neck T-Shirt TRIBLEND" for V-neck shirts and the "Fruit of the Loom Mens Poloshirt PREMIUM" for polos.
Obviously, YMMV.
There's plenty of the latter out there if you're looking for it[0].
Clothes should be like many other things: cost more, have better quality, longer lifespans and have less negative impact on those who produce them and the environment where they are produced & recycled.
But there's two separate approaches for people who hate that markup: lowering the markup or increasing the production cost. Given current industry standards, I think the second approach is reasonable. It's also very easy to do, if you can afford to.
Maybe that's... not the usual type of negotiation, but making them laugh also seems to work. Problem being I got the giggles myself.
Having said that, I'm sure everyone has a story of how a cheaply priced item of clothing turned out to be of better quality and durability than a equalivent expensive item.
(Aside: In the UK, I'd place clothing retailers like John Lewis and Marks & Spencer in the mid-price to high-price category.)