Cheap labor is the key in that scaling, though? Human labor is still far more flexible than anything else that we have. And a big part of that flexibility is how cheaply you can turn it off. There is a reason seasonal employment is a thing.
And that's why I don't really foresee that kind of manufacturing coming back here. In order to survive the race-to-the-bottom pricing that the majority of Americans crave, you need a large labor force that will accept some form of sub-par living conditions. But if you can't earn a living wage, you can't afford to participate in the economy in a way that supports the manufacturing, and then you're back to those mid-century slums.
I'm dramatically oversimplifying things, my main point here is, I didn't really put together how much of early 20th century American manufacturing relied on chronically drunk homeless men.
From 1930 through 1970, it was less common but just as tolerated.
MADD did what Prohibition could not.
These weren’t what you picture when someone says “perpetually drunk and homeless”, but I think a lot of Mercedes were assembled by workers with a perpetual low-level of alcohol on-board.
I do wonder if this is an inherent "craving" or just tied to the reality that Americans cannot really afford things anymore
The middle class being eaten means that most people have much less discretionary spending, so every single purchase must be a bargain
They are never actually equivalent goods though
They are cheaper goods
Yes, there is "cheap" clothing. No, the more expensive clothing isn't necessarily better. A bog standard t-shirt is a bog standard t-shirt. With a minimum of quality control, and anything on top of that is not adding to the utility of it.
The machining revolution really hurts a lot of the idea that labor in is indicative of quality.
I can say that if you wash cottons with synthetics, that will shorten the life of the cottons. If you use any "stretch" or "no iron" clothing, you almost certainly have a synthetic mix. It isn't that they are lower quality. Nor are they designed to not last as long. They are designed for that stretch and to look flat as their main goal.
The primary reason for the tendency of clothing to wear out faster is the textile manufacturing processes allow for the production of thinner fabrics at a cheaper cost per yard. As anyone who sews or knits can tell you, thinner fabric wears out faster. It allows companies like Zara, H&M, Walmart, Rack, et al to sell their product at marginal cost increase for higher YoY profits with a faster replacement cycle.
Furthermore, it's a plainly stated business strategy of fast fashion that fungibility and the production of disposable consumables is core to their business. As that type of fashion cannibalized market share from more traditional brands that banked on quality more than affordability in the 90s, those same brands responded by creating separate imprints ( Off Fifth, Rack, et al ) or just wholesale adoption of the approach ( e.g. H&M ).
Fast forward to 2025 and we're having a conversation about whether or not the quality delta in clothing is real or a Mandela Effect. The reality is unfortunately the more banal "number go up by any means necessary" explanation.
https://slate.com/business/2024/12/white-t-shirt-quality-dec... https://www.thecooldown.com/green-business/sustainable-cloth...
And clothing has always been a consumable. Always.
"Cotton fiber quality is shaped by a mix of genetics, growing conditions, and field management techniques. High-grade cotton relies on precise measurements of fiber length, strength, and micronaire, along with maintaining proper color and cleanliness throughout its growth. These elements play a key role in determining processing efficiency and market value across the supply chain."
At the most basic, if one farmer harvests his cotton with no consideration of the above issues, whereas another farmer carefully studies, prepares, tests, etc based on the above considerations, wouldn't there be added value and added cost of production?
I personally believe that in a past era, farmers intuitively learned these factors and competed with each other to make their best harvests, and the bog standard t-shirt got a quality buff as a fringe benefit.
Whereas nowadays, the farmer has to drop quality for quantity to compete with digitally-connected markets.
https://cottongins.org/blog/ultimate-guide-to-cotton-fiber-q...
And, indeed, if you look into high quality cotton supply, you find there are relatively few names.
Unfortunately the inverse is not true at all
Higher cost on a good is not at all a reliable indicator of whether or not the good is high quality
There is a pretty big incentive for producers and sellers to produce low quality goods and convince consumers they are high quality, so they can sell them for a high margin
This is unfortunately very common in clothing
A lot of dumb "just so" tales in economics are willful miscategorization of desperation as choice.
This is a great way of describing it, I like it
Incidentally, I'm starting a new business model to capture this market opportunity, I call it "DAAS", desperation as a service
It's where people pay me their excess money and get nothing in return, increasing their desperation
Wait, isn't that called 'campaign finance'?
The problem with competing with entrenched market interests is they can use their economic advantages to make the market impossible for newcomers to enter leading to de facto monopolies.
Selling your labor? You want high wages, unions, worker protection laws, etc.
Buying something? Now you want to cut wages and bust unions, at least if you tend to choose the cheaper item.
They do care what the wage per unit produced is, which is why we see a lot of US manufacturing moving towards higher levels of automation to let the embodied labor per finished unit be lower and thus competitive in the market.