I’m probably not supposed to say this, and will probably not be saying it when our mortgage triples or we all lose our jobs, but I’m actually kind of glad we’re having to think a bit more about our money and lifestyles in these “troubled economic times”.
For a long while now, I – like many people – have felt an increasing sense of unease at the obscene cheapness of some of the things us Westerners can get our hands on. From Asda jeans for £3 to Argos kettles for just under £5, to DVD players (yes, players) for £16; less than the DVD’s that go in them.
Cheapness is compelling. I’d be lying if I said my wife and I didn’t have some of these clothes for our two boys. They grow their way through jeans at about one pair a month. We try not to do it, but sometimes we crack in the sheer face of price. Spend £20 on jeans or get 7 pairs for the same money? Not an easy place to do the right thing.
But – do we, here in our comfortable houses, being paid at least a minimum wage, with a whole range of different clothes in our wardrobes to choose from – need many of the things that we buy? Do we need clothes at £3 when – really – we could afford (and in the past, have afforded) a spend of £10 or £20?
These things are so cheap they have to involve a terrifying level of exploitation somewhere in the chain. The economics of scale only answer part of the question. This exploitation might be of people or exploitation of oil, or both. It might, actually, be exploitation of our incredible greed in wanting to JUST BUY STUFF all the time.
There’s an Ellis family story which is slowly edging its way into legend about my lovely (if slightly cantankerous) gran and how – shortly after the war – she dropped a cabbage by mistake onto her local train line. Rather than just leave it, she went to the effort to go to the signal box, found out that the train wasn’t due and then got staff to retrieve the cabbage for her.
Whether this is true or not, the point is that our current understanding of value in the Western world is skewed in a badly unrealistic, exploitative and damaging way. Tim O’Reilly quotes from the now-famous Fake Steve Jobs post about the suicide of a Chinese worker. Both posts are well worth a read:
We all know that there’s no fucking way in the world we should have microwave ovens and refrigerators and TV sets and everything else at the prices we’re paying for them. There’s no way we get all this stuff and everything is done fair and square and everyone gets treated right. No way. And don’t be confused — what we’re talking about here is our way of life. Our standard of living. You want to “fix things in China,” well, it’s gonna cost you. Because everything you own, it’s all done on the backs of millions of poor people whose lives are so awful you can’t even begin to imagine them, people who will do anything to get a life that is a tiny bit better than the shitty one they were born into, people who get exploited and treated like shit and, in the worst of all cases, pay with their lives
Maybe a good old recession might help even the balance a little bit. It probably won’t have us hunting on train lines for cabbages, and some might argue it’ll mean we look for even cheaper jeans, but maybe we’ll also start looking closer at the reality of the value chain and begin to re-use rather than re-buy.
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Great post Mike.
Did you see the toaster project? An interesting take on the £3.99 toaster I thought.
It strikes me that our western society is made up of millions of intelligent, considerate and clued-up people that should simply know better. The facts are there, the way we live is unsustainable and things need to change.
The elephant in the room is there look it in the eye, it’s going nowhere and the longer it’s left there the pile of shit it’s leaving is getting bigger.
/crap metaphor
db
Cheers for the comment..
Actually I really like the elephant in the room / big pile of shit metaphor
Don’t buy any of them and use Ebay or other clothes recycling options…
[...] July 25, 2009 Mike Ellis wrote a blog post yesterday entitled Too Cheap which relates to mass consumption that is largely driven by goods being produced at a cost that is [...]
@Adam – this is one answer.. but I also think it is about a wider mindset which starts to question the availability of these goods a bit more. As Darren says, we’re not entirely stupid, and something clearly doesn’t come from nothing.
Hi Mike
I’ve clothed our kiddos 100% from charidy shops for the last 3 years and probably about 75% before that. I buy my clothes from charity shops only too (but not undies). It is officially WAY easier not to shop when there are no shops near to you so I do feel for you city peeps as the marketing men are paid a lot to help persuade people from window displays that you need their things.
When we lived in E. London the local Primark store was a regular haunt for me and although I felt sick and ashamed I would still queue up to buy ridiculously cheap offerings.
I now know so much more about how much of an impact our buying habits can have on others than I did 3 years ago so now actively baulk when people tell me ‘I’m kitting out a nursery with brand new stuff for our new babe’ or that they got yet another handbag for no real reason & try to promote the campaign to buy 2nd hand kids clothing, clothes swapping etc. If just one person stops buying new because of me then that’s fab!
Having just got back from a trip to canada I was interested to read this blog as Canada currently has a drive to encourage the purchasing of goods made in Canada. Incidents involving goods made in china’ (such as lead being found in the paint of a childs toy) have driven canadians to question not only the quality of goods imported but also their quantity. On the way to the airport yesterday evening I read a car sticker which said bluntly: ‘MADE IN CANADA IS BETTER’.
@Ackers – yeah, couldn’t agree more. The city/country “hard marketing” angle is a really interesting one which I hadn’t focused on before
@NoMoneyLeftBoy – the “buy local” thing is a good driver to raise awareness, definitely. Interesting to hear about the Canadian angle.
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