[Patrick Turner]

On May 10, 8:59*am, flipper wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 06:06:04 -0700 (PDT), Pt wrote:
On May 9, 3:34*am, Patrick Turner wrote:

People here and everywhere just don't give a **** about Chinese slave
labour; oh yeah, nobody has trouble with social inequities all around
the world. Yet all thse ****wit know-alls try to tell us the Chinese
are giving us a mighty raw deal yet they are doing what we refuse to
do. Just imagine if the Chinese quit exporting cheap underpants and
gadgets. Your standard of living would plummet.

Patrick Turner

What did we do when underware and gadgets were made in the USA?

You had less of it.

It's a simple matter of how much things cost vs how much you have to
spend.

Somehow I was able to afford a pair of Haines boxer shorts.

And you could 'afford' them at twice the current price too. But would
you 'like' paying twice as much?

Price "mechanisms" are accepted without us big rich fat cats feeling
the slightest guilt about what we pay because it is assumed the seller
is happy with the price he's offering you.

Of course there are happy slaves around the world and the USA was full
of them until they abolished slavery around the time they had a civil
war where a million men perished. Here in Oz, we probably had some
happy convicts who'd been transported under duress from Brittain by
the King of England and used as cheap labour everywhere. Our native
blacks here were shot, poisoned, and treated like scum and no doubt
some may have been happy to work as cowboys rounding up the cattle,
but at wages far below "white fella pay". But we didn't have a civil
war, maybe the worst that happened were a few pub brawls, and maybe
two Labour Party meetings where a few chairs were broken after a rowdy
night deciding what workers should do to give unified opposition to
the Association Of Fat Arsed Bosses who always tried to keep Mr Little
poor.

I am not a rabid socialist who wants the lazy unproductive anarchy of
East Germany or Russia or Cambodia etc where people get trambled down
by others who think they are "more equal than anyone else". But all
men are just blokes, and all women are just sheilas and once somebody
is born anywhere in the world they should have equal rights,
oppportunity, freedoms and equal duties of care to others, which means
they are prepared to work not bludge, and not try un-ethical means to
derive income without raising a sweat. Those who are rich should see
to it that those who are poor may pull themselves up to us; If an
african breaks a leg, he should be able to get to a doctor in a clean
hospital and not have to bribe anyone, or pay $1,200 a month for
medical insurance.

Unfortunately, while everyone in the West likes to think how ****in
marvellous they are there isn't much chance that Western human nature
will ever insist on paying the Chinese the same price for something
made in the West. The West is in a mad greedy scramble where the rich
get richer yey they never have enough and they like to see others NOT
doing so well as themselves because that boosts their cherished
picture of their own grandness. Of course rich countries can go
astray and become obsessed by all sorts of things such as maintaining
influence and control over foreign countries. The more they do it, the
more it costs, and it can send a rich country broke. Nobody wants to
know. All sorts of crap reasons are trotted out. Its a long turgid
story. Empires come, empires go.

I should be able to open a factory to make tube amps here just as
easily as I could anywhere else, but it is not so. A bloke here runs a
small business selling music amps, electric guitars, all sorts of
stuff to the "music industry." He found bigger shops who established
themselves 50 years ago ganged up to prevent him getting supplies of
Fenders and Marshalls from importers. Oh how people hate fair
competition! Anyway, this new local fella's response was to go
straight over to China and have tube amps and guitars made there by Mr
Sixty Four Cents An Hour. The guys in China were happy to see him, and
they produce a pile of generic crap that feeds out to the world all
over.
And our fella here gets his own name put on the Chinese stuff he
imports. Once here in Oz, its sold at many times the Chinese ex
factory price. There is NO established repair agent or product
support. The young kids here trying to learn how to be rock stars buy
all this stuff on their apprentice or junior worker wages. Are these
kids mindful of their Chinese brothers whose apprentice wage was maybe
10c an hour and whose prospects of being a pop star are zip. What on
earth is going through the minds of kids who want to be rock stars?
Whoever thinks of the Mexicans making Fenders?

Anyway, its very easy to see why a questioned existance poses far more
questions than answers, and hence the need for a stable supply of
container fulls of anti-depressant pills. Unrest among young minds is
well known, and hence a proportion of them find solace in far stronger
meds whose origin are the poppy fields of Afghanistan, where you
guessed it, the West is at war with some locals.

But I like to question everything I can and its net effect prevents
depression. It sure prevented me leading an entirely pointless
existance while trying to become richer than most other people on the
Planet. One could argue that by agreeing to pay a smiling Chinese
person 64c an hour, we are denying him his part of the Planet to which
he is entitled. We sure are supporting a huge network of middle men. I
always feel slightly guilty when I buy underpants. But nobody on Oz
makes any. I'm too lazy to make my own, even though I have a sewing
machine. And if I tried, the cloth itself would be from China, and
maybe cost more than if already made into underpants by a Chinese
Shiela working 10hrs a day at 40c an hour.

But a couple of weeks ago I walked around the City to look in all the
mensware stores for a black skivy. I wanted long arms, polo neck, all
cotton, plain black. At K-mart, you could get a red one for $10. ( 60c
ex China ), but no black. The up-market menswear stores with
pretentious decor thought I may have been a bank robber looking for
clobber, especially after I derided them for trying to flog me a "Made
In Italy" brand of skivy at a knock down discount price of only $330.
But cheap black skivies are not sold much because blokes buy them
rather than buy a couple of shirts and a tie and a new suit which
would make me look like Mr Pretentious. Maybe an online store will
have WHAT I WANT, which isn't much, really. At least by shopping
online I don't make quite so many middle men rich, but I can't arrange
for the worker in China to get an extra dollar for their child's
education - too many grasping hands are in the way.

Patrick Turner.