Article 37693 of rec.running: Path: newsfeed.ed.ac.uk!reaxp01.roe.ac.uk!ajc From: ajc@reaxp01.roe.ac.uk (Andrew Cooke) Newsgroups: rec.running Subject: Re: Do not buy Nike! (Re: "You don't win silver..." -- UG!!) Date: 2 Sep 1996 11:03:07 GMT Organization: Institute for Astronomy, Royal Observatory Edinburgh Lines: 97 Message-ID: <50eetb$g1o@scotsman.ed.ac.uk> References: <msg46524.thr-5f3e3dc4.cfa87108@learnlink.emory.edu> Reply-To: A.Cooke@roe.ac.uk NNTP-Posting-Host: reaxp01.roe.ac.uk In article <msg46524.thr-5f3e3dc4.cfa87108@learnlink.emory.edu>, Adam B. Epling <Adam_B._Epling@learnlink.emory.edu> wrote: > You all are so ignorant. Nike is doing NOTHING wrong in Indonesia. >They are paying their workers ABOVE the average salaries in those >countries. Nike employees are taken care of both here, AND there. I >know, I worked for Niketown Atlanta over the summer. If Nike had to >pay the minimum wage here, their products would suffer because money >would be taken out of their technology center and to people. If you >owned Nike or had ANY knowledge of economics or business, you would >realize that Nike is doing no wrong.
I'm gettiong a bit tired of all these `it's economics 101' and `you know nothing' posts.
I do know enough economics to know that economics 101 is not sufficent. The stuff posted here about supply and demand and free markets was first generally accepted in about 1776. It was the philosophy used by the British to strip their Empire of its wealth.
Not surprisingly, our understanding of how the world works has changed since then. The recurrence of this theme in the last ten years doesn't reflect any breakthrough in economic thought - it is simply that the Right have realised that this simplistic approach seems to satisfy a surprisingly large fraction of people who are looking for a pseudo-scientific justification of greed.
If you don't want to do economics 102 then I'll try and explain some of the problems with what Nike is doing below:
Let's compare countries with athletes. And investment with what kind of carbohydrates they eat. Now complex carbohydrates - as we all know - are much better than simple sugars. Similarly, a more complex investment is more beneficial than a simple one.
Take, for example, mining. One way a developing country can make some quick cash is by digging up its mineral reserves and selling them to the `west'. That's the simple sugar. Alternatively, they can try processing those minerals and selling a finished product - possibly even selling stuff like tractors locally, so that they can help the farmers. Now that's a more complex system, and you might need to protect the economy, while it develops, from western sales of `cheap' tractors. You might even nationalise the mines so that the (foreign) owners couldn't ship out the ore for a quick profit.
Of course, all the above is unpopular in the west because it reduces our share of the markets, and restricts the raw material we want to make money with. So it's nasty, evil (even, in some cases, communist...) and must be stopped.
Similarly, take human labour. That's another resource. And Nike are taking that resource in Indonesia and using it. The product they make is not helping the economy there. The country is not going to improve itself by stitching together trainers, although, of course, some workers will be paid a living.
It's difficult to see what else they can do, unfortunately. Nike trainers are not a particularly useful item. They are a luxury. So how on earth do Nike change that simple sugar into a complex carb? They can't.
But that's not an argument for keeping the status quo. Because for Nike to work there they need to be able to ship stuff in and out with minimal `intervention' from the government. They want a nice `free market' so that they can continue to use the labour that remains in a poor country. That means that the West supports a regime that allows this to happen. Suharto and his military dictatorship have no interest in developing the country. They can get rich by letting Nike make trainers. They can keep power by killing people. They can pass the time by invading neighbouring countries. Who is going to stop them when western multinationals could lose access to cheap labour?
That sounds like stupid rhetoric. It's not. When Indonesia invaded East Timor there was a UN vote on a resolution strongly deploring the action (not much use, I know). Who voted against it? The largest benefactor of cheap labour - Japan. Who abstained? The next largest beneficiaries - USA, UK, Australia, Germany and France.
That's the way the world works. If you want to change it you have to do something. Selecting where your shoes are made isn't much, but it's a start.
andrew
P.S. I'm sorry - I've tried to keep overt political postings out of rec.running, but if we are going to have naive comments about how wonderful the world is, then I think an answer is appropriate.
another site with similar info is here
(this has been copied from my old home pages - it is no longer being updated and some links may not work) andrew