I Tried to See Where My T-Shirt Was Made

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/india-garment-factories-sumangali

by denzil_correa • 13 years ago

121 136 13 years ago

csmuk6• 13 years ago

And this is typically the end game for capitalism and globalisation. Can't see it changing without everyone working together and by nature that isn't going to happen if capitalism is in place.

LeeHunter• 13 years ago

To misquote Churchill "Capitalism is the worst possible system, except for all the rest".

The problem here is more a lack of strong mechanisms to set and enforce standards along with a host of deeply rooted cultural norms (especially the dowry system) that are easily exploited.

moo3• 13 years ago

Because the fat imperialist says capitalism is the best we have to keep it for all time until our star goes supernova? Our rooted first world lifestyle is the strong mechanism enabling these sweat shops.

csmuk6• 13 years ago

Yes because more laws and control really help...

nzp10• 13 years ago

That (mis)quote of Churchill doesn't really mean anything, it's a shallow apology of capitalism, just a catchy formula that superficially seems to make sense if you don't care to think about the possibilities. If you suspend thinking it works on an emotional level because it suggests that yes, the people in power are aware of capitalism's shortcomings, they feel the pain but, alas, there's nothing they could do, so stop complaining you ungrateful somebody...

Churchill and the likes are not exactly neutral observers with no interest in preserving the status quo by any means possible, starting with intellectual dishonesty.

gordaco• 13 years ago

That misquote reminds me so much of Stroustrup's C++ (mis?)quote, and the cynical man inside me tells me that it's just that everything getting widespread use shows its dark side. Sometimes that dark side is more conspicuous and/or shows eariler, and sometimes it has more serious consequences, though. Btw, I am much more fond of C++ than capitalism, which, I guess, puts me inside a tiny minority here on HN :).

About your second line, I think that the biggest problem about capitalism and developing/underdeveloped countries is that capitalism doesn't break the existing power structures, and, worse, it may reinforce them. There, capitalism is (even) less of a sea of oportunities and more of a new source of oppression mechanisms. The vicious circle associated with poverty isn't any good for people from the lower strata.

walshemj• 13 years ago

And an acceptance of petty corruption and violence a coworker who's of Indian descent commented that his family had had had "several" properties expropriated by "gangsters"

swombat3• 13 years ago

The fairly standard solution that the West developed to these specific problems of capitalism is unions. Based on this article, what seems to be needed is unionisation. Of course, history shows that this is not an easy path. But history also shows that this path works, eventually.

realo• 13 years ago

The problem in India does not have its root cause in Capitalism.

It seems to me that what is required here is a deep change of Indian society. Women seem to compete for men with money, which is absurd. Moreover, there is this "caste" thing which, frankly, sounds like feudalism from 1000 years ago.

In most of the western world, adolescent males compete for women with their charm, looks, etc... and also the other way around. Flirting is cool. No caste system.

How do you change an ancient country's attitude towards women? I don't think you can.

Traditions can be much more powerful than laws.

Capitalism, in India, is simply one more tool used by the higher castes in order to give strength to some deeply rooted traditions which are totally disconnected from the 21st century Planet Earth.

scotty793• 13 years ago

It works by outsourcing manufacturing to places without unions and phasing out unionized factories on any available excuse. Did you notice how around 2008 lots of american workers got sacked and production plummeted? Funny thing is that production is back to pre-crisis levels already but noone invites the workers back. Companies are more efficient than ever. They probably bless recession for providing them the opportunity to shed off unnecessary unionized workers.

Theriac25• 13 years ago

this is typically the end game for capitalism and globalisation

Say what?

alcari• 13 years ago

just a quarter of the $105 a month she was promised, about $0.84 a day.

It really bugs me when reporters use inconsistent units to exaggerate a point. Yes, the pay difference is horrible, but it sounds almost as bad when you say $25.20 per month, and that is a less misleading way to describe it.

kmfrk3• 13 years ago

Numbers-based journalism still has a way to go, yes. I wonder why it isn't given more focus.

corin_2• 13 years ago

I read that differently to you - the words "a quarter of $105" instantly tells me $25.20 because it's such an easy calculation, whereas telling me an extra stat like what that is per day is something I hadn't already worked out myself.

ehamberg• 13 years ago

Well, not that easy. A quarter of 105 is 26.25.

qwerta• 13 years ago

Maybe she is payed daily, rather than by month. Monthly paid usually includes some free holiday, so she could loose money on this as well.

kmfrk3• 13 years ago

HN users should be wary of cheap clothing the same way they are of free online services.

They cut those costs somewhere.

terhechte• 13 years ago

I always find it amusing if people claim (just an example) "I would never buy Apple/Nike/++, they employ child workers, it is awful" and then they go to the supermarket, buy the cheapest meat/vodka/sugar/coffee they can find, or they buy a cheap $99 tablet/smartphone/TV from india/china/malaysia, or they buy $3.99 t-shirts/pants/shoes from throwaway stores. As if somehow these products can be produced at such low prices without affecting quality and wages of the workers behind it.

iaskwhy2• 13 years ago

One thing to remember is that you must start somewhere. Overall, it's way better than not doing anything.

amirmc• 13 years ago

There are ways for those companies to reduce costs (and pass on savings) which still support low prices. Primark [1] is a case where they have no advertising spend and rely on low prices and word of mouth. Makes me wonder about the marketing budgets of other retailers.

[1] http://www.primark-ethicaltrading.co.uk/newsfaq/faqs

scotty793• 13 years ago

It's better to buy $4 t-shirts than $14 t-shirts. Workers get pretty much the same in both cases but their exploiters get rewarded whole $10 less. This might put some of them out of business which is a good thing.

McGuffin• 13 years ago

There is nothing that says the same isn't true of expensive clothing (and for that matter, online services). They may still cut the costs in the most unethical manner possible. They'll just have a higher profit margin at the same time.

route66• 13 years ago

That is what this article claims: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142412788732399860... (2013)

tinco2• 13 years ago

This is the most frustrating thing about society today. We seem to have absolutely no means to discern quality.

If a no name brand starts to make quality t-shirts, no one will know about it, and no shops will stock it, because the margins will be too low and the marketing will have too little budget.

If it takes $1 to make a shitty $15 shirt, and $15 to make a proper shirt, what will you charge for the proper quality shirt? How will you market it?

The end result is that they're marketed as super high quality only available for the sort of person that can afford to spend $100 on a basic shirt, just to compensate for the decreased margin and decreased demand.

The solution would have to be that these kinds of brands need to be ran by charities, with such low margins that no one gets rich of it. You need someone to splurge a couple million to buy a factory in India, and then increase wages and conditions until you make 0 profit.

Is it true that the only way to run capitalism humanely, is to have capitalists surrender their money?

kaivi2• 13 years ago

I wouldn't want to buy goods made by children, primarily because children lack an eye for quality. But I also imagine that refusing to buy such goods would do no good to said children.

camus22• 13 years ago

primarily because children lack an eye for quality Dont worry,it's likely they get beaten if they dont "deliver"
But I also imagine that refusing to buy such goods would do no good to said children. You are assuming children are getting paid. they are not most of the time.

Brakenshire• 13 years ago

I highly doubt the cost of clothing makes much difference, because labour is such a small percentage of the total price. For instance this report - http://www.ecouterre.com/infographic-how-much-does-that-14-t... - says that labour makes up 12c out of a $14 t-shirt, only 1% of the total. You could double wages, and only add 12c onto the final price. The difference between cheap and expensive clothes is branding, profit margin, and sometimes quality, it's not clear at all that there's any difference in labour practices.

swombat3• 13 years ago

Reducing costs is not necessarily linked to reducing quality of life for workers. In the early 20th century, Taylor deliberately attempted to increase both pay/quality of life and productivity, by encouraging systems where workers and managers worked together to make work more efficient, which was supposed to result in increased wages for workers as well. Of course, it was twisted out of recognition by endless consultants over the following decades. That said, the work culture that we have now in modern, enlightened companies, is a descendant of this movement - a movement that started in just as bad a place as the factory described in the article.

The fault lies not in reducing costs per se. Rather, it lies in reducing costs in an inhuman, inhumane, stupid and mean fashion: by abusing weaker people rather than by creating smarter solutions. In the long term, the latter will win. However, that does not help those poor souls caught in the former trap.

Lower costs are a noble objective. Lower costs through any means, however, are an abomination.

skylan_q5• 13 years ago

Lower costs are a noble objective. Lower costs through any means, however, are an abomination.

Agreed.

People have the causation backwards. Lower prices stem from lower costs which come from use of less resources (natural or productive) which means that there is more produced stuff out there. Increasing costs is the best way to increase prices and induce smaller supplies of produced goods.

ilaksh• 13 years ago

The thing that people don't realize is that exploitation is the foundational structure of capitalism, and 'civilized' wage work is only removed from the examples in this story by a matter of degrees. The current capitalistic structure is only a moderate change from the old-fashioned slavery it came from directly.

We clearly need to apply science and technology directly to human needs rather than relying entirely on outdated systems like money that primarily enforce hierarchies. In previous eras where the only means to an end was raw human labor, perhaps this type of system made sense. In our contemporary society with our technological capability it is absurd. Too bad that people can only see that when it involves the most extreme cases.

_s• 13 years ago

Same "capitalist" problem with using technology too; for example, a textile weaving machine requires an upfront cost and then it has maintenance, depreciation, repairs, higher electricity bills and so forth - some one somewhere somehow worked out it's still cheaper to just employ more people and still generate a better return short and long term vs implementing modern tech.

VMG4• 13 years ago

Capitalism is the only system that has a proven track record of bringing people out of poverty. Many industrial nations had a garment industry phase and graduated from it.

We have had experiments with other systems than Capitalsm, and some of them are still running. Korea is split in North and South, the southern part is capitalist, was in garment manufacturing and now has an exceptional level of wealth, while the northern part is communist and has become one big concentration camp.

I hope you won't bother pulling a No True Scotsman here, because the list goes on.

csmuk6• 13 years ago

Capitalism is the only system that has a proven track record of bringing people out of poverty.

Citation please.

It's become apparent to me that it does that until the workforce hits equilibrium at which point it divides people slowly into two classes, the lower of which is purely exploited by the upper.

NK just skipped the first bit.

markdown• 13 years ago

I hope you won't bother pulling a No True Scotsman here, because the list goes on.

Then use another example from your list. North Korea is a totalitarian dictatorship. It's not exactly clear whether its woes are the result of its economic system or its form of governance.

moocowduckquack5• 13 years ago

Capitalism is the only system that has a proven track record of bringing people out of poverty.

At one time you could say that about agrarian feudalism.

nzp10• 13 years ago

If the list goes on, you could have then easily picked better examples, couldn't you? When North Korean society still had any meaningful relationship to socialism (not communism) it actually had a higher GDP than South Korea. It only turned around in the 70s and 80s when NK leadership structures went completely insane.

So, what other systems? State socialism? It can only be viewed as an alternative system to liberal capitalism, not to capitalism in general sense because it still leaves the same economic relations basically intact. It's an incompetent, extremely monopolistic form of capitalism, which is why it failed so miserably.

moo3• 13 years ago

North Korea is not communist. Read the book The Cleanest Race to see how U.S. analysts really see North Korea. There are no communist countries today. It's fun to talk about capitalism in the abstract like it doesn't keep monarchism in the closet, underdevelops Africa, props up lackey dictators in the Third World, depends on colonialism/imperialism to get rich, and turns to fascism when in crisis. I'm sure mafias have made life better too for people but that doesn't look at the whole picture. Where would your bought off Scotsmen be if he wasn't capitalism's shock troops who invaded South Africa,Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or the Americas and kept police order in India, the Middle East, and Asia?

pessimizer2• 13 years ago

I hope you won't bother pulling a No True Scotsman here, because the list goes on.

By cherry-picking North Korea as your only example as a non-capitalist experiment, and pre-disqualifying anyone who says that it isn't a representative example for all possible non-capitalist systems as someone employing a logical fallacy, you haven't really left any room for discussion.

Why not pick China, or the USSR?

Or the entire modern West, which pretty much exists as explicitly mixed socialist/capitalist economies - filled with welfare, national health services, unemployment benefits, industrial subsidies, public education, and progressive taxation?

I hope you won't bother pulling a No True Scotsman here, because the list goes on.

JayNYC• 13 years ago

"Capitalism is the only system that has a proven track record of bringing people out of poverty."

Not sure about that. Stalin may have achieved economic growth of 500% over 13 years - more than China.

The problem with socialism/communism is that you don't have a market. Besides lacking of incentives, feedback loops etc., you basically don't have a way to price goods. Not market, no prices. All these systems will fail in the long run.

This being said, a capitalistic system relies on expansion of credit (actually one point, in which good old Mises was wrong). Credit is always a ponzi scheme. If credit expansion stops, the whole system will collapse. What we currently see is the prevention of system collapse by the western government. People are maxed out and the gov, as a lender of last resort, goes into debt. This will not end good. I doubt that significant growth can be achieved anymore in western countries. So communism has failed but capitalism does not look very good either, at least in the west.

oskarth3• 13 years ago

exploitation is the foundational structure of capitalism

No it isn't. Trade is. That's like saying rape is the foundational structure of sex.

We clearly need to apply science and technology directly to human needs

Who are we? Why? Do you mean something like communism, "for the benefit of the people"? This is a classical is-ought fallacy.

relying entirely on outdated systems like money

Outdated system? How so? What is a better system in your opinion?

that primarily enforce hierarchies.

How exactly does money enforce hierarchies? What is one system that doesn't "enforce hierarchies"?

Too bad that people can only see that when it involves the most extreme cases.

Well, I am glad that you are one of the Enlightened People.

Apologizes if this post came across as hostile, but there are just too many things that irks me with this post.

nzp10• 13 years ago

No it isn't. Trade is. [snip meaningless analogy]

Trade? No, trade is the foundation of any kind of economy, of any kind of organized social life. Exploitation is one of the foundational concepts of capitalism, but the same is true for all past dominant economic systems, so it's true that it's not terribly useful to define capitalism as something that is just about exploitation. The way exploitation is structured, whom and how is exploited, in capitalism is the key point.

Jach• 13 years ago

"The only thing worse than being exploited by capitalism is not being exploited by capitalism."

-- Joan Violet Robinson

More substantially, I disagree that our technological capability is currently sufficient. Maybe once we have universal molecular assemblers. Of course on the grand scale there will be competition over black hole orbiting real estate, because the energy for work has to come from somewhere.

ibsathish• 13 years ago

Almost 90% of the sports jerseys are produced from Southern part of India where the situations and characters mentioned in the article are still alive.

Multinational garment companies like Adidas, Nike, Puma etc. should have stricter vigilance towards exploitation of employees. Young girls are prone towards exploitation and they are willing to undergo this as they are desperate for money.

And, blame parents too!

blumkvist2• 13 years ago

If you think Addidas, Nike, Puma etc. don't already know exactly what is happening in this factories, and even further - outsorce their production to EXACTLY those unethical factories, you my friend, are just deceiving yourself.

ghshephard2• 13 years ago

I can't help but read this and wonder whether "Aruna" actually exists, and, if she does, whether all the details about her are as described. That's the legacy that Mike Daisey has left us with.

moocowduckquack5• 13 years ago

I get the parallel, but that problem has always existed in reporting long before Mike Daisey and him writing his thing doesn't say anything about the ethics of this particular writer.

pessimizer2• 13 years ago

With a distrust of stories about labor exploitation? That's the wrong message to take from someone lying to you. Be less credulous about people's stories in general maybe, but restricting it to stories about labor is as reasonable as being racist because a black person bullied you in high school.

ghshephard2• 13 years ago

Not really the same thing - It's not that I don't trust monologuests (sp?) as a class of people, and, indeed, the writer of this article, Dana Liebelson is a reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau.

It's more along the lines of living your entire life without locking your doors, and then, one day getting burgled, and thereafter making a point to lock your doors when you leave.

Or getting mugged at night, and not walking down that dark street anymore.

Perhaps it's a good thing that I don't just automatically take things at face value; I'll admit to having listened with rapt attention to Mike Daisey's performance on NPR - he's really quite talented - maybe there was a positive takeway, Mike Daisey was like a vaccine, I'm now more resistant to false reporting.

joezydeco• 13 years ago

NPR's "Planet Money" podcast team decided to sell t-shirts and did a similar project where they researched and followed the production process from start to finish. Some of the interviews have been pretty interesting:

http://www.npr.org/templates/archives/archive.php?thingId=19...

The NPR staff wound up working with Jockey to have the shirt made and that obviously opened up a lot of doors to the production facilities and interviews with factory workers, etc.

The Mother Jones article reminded me, I guess, that Jockey's hand in the NPR access had a non-trvial amount of P/R influence in the project.

nano_o• 13 years ago

How would you find clothes that have not been manufactured by slaves ? In Switzerland I can buy from Switcher (switcher.ch), which markets clothes "made with respect", and I just found out about the Fair Wear Foundation, which has a short list of member brands (www.fairwear.org). As pointed out in this thread, just buying more expensive clothes may not make a difference.

Nursie• 13 years ago

A friend of mine has a (very small so far) ethical underwear company called Who Made Your Pants (http://www.whomadeyourpants.co.uk/)

She started it because she realised that in the UK marketplace it was very hard to buy underwear that didn't come from sweat-shops, even if you were prepared to spend a bit (or a lot) more. So these are made here in the UK, by disadvantaged women who get to learn a skill and take home some pay.

tokenadult• 13 years ago

Come on, ladies and gentlemen, the fine submitted article is about stark conditions in India, where "Western capitalism" was specifically rejected, and socialism embraced, as an economic model after independence in 1947. The comparison with Taiwan (where I have lived, twice) is instructive. Taiwan too, under the China Nationalist Party (KMT) dictatorship, had a period of governance that accepted Sun Yat-sen thought and dabbled with a lot of socialism. (That the field of Taiwan's flag, formally the flag of the Republic of China, is red is no accident. The KMT was very much part of a worldwide socialist movement when it was founded.) Meanwhile, as the mainland fell to the Commmunist Party of China and then Stalin's invasion of South Korea from the north began, the United States felt constrained to prop up Taiwan, and one way it did so was by promoting land reform in Taiwan and local free and fair elections. Gradually, Taiwan became more "capitalist," and it went from stark poverty (being poorer in my wife's birth year than some newly independent countries in Africa) to prosperity. Taiwan hasn't had a garment industry like that described in the submitted article for a long, long time. Essentially everyone who gets online to discuss issues on Hacker News probably uses an Internet device with multiple components made in Taiwan and traded in international trade.

Trade is the foundation of capitalism, not exploitation. (The references for this, of course, are the writings of Adam Smith and David Ricardo.) India (and also much of South America) specifically rejected this wisdom during much of my lifetime, and now those countries have to play catch-up. They still have time. They won't have stark poverty forever if they learn from the examples of other countries, just as Taiwan did.

oskarth3• 13 years ago

Thank you for being a voice of reason and empiricism in this thread. Seems like too many people took a class in marxist sociology and all of a sudden see the whole world in terms of The Capitalists and The Exploited Class.

EDIT: Taking a class in economics and thinking everything has a monetary value attached to it, or that homo economicus actually exists would obviously be just as bad.

moocowduckquack5• 13 years ago

Personally I don't agree with Marx a lot (I'm more of a Groucho Marxist and am therefore not allowed to join any club that would have me as a member), but I do have Marxist family members and know a fair amount of what it is and what it is not. India is definitely not an example of a Marxist state.

edit - Folk keep framing stuff in the economic dogma-battles of the superpowers in the 19th and 20th century, but to me the problem is 14th century economics combined with 21st century logistics. Retaining a caste system in a world of global networks can give you a fucking big pyramid and systemise abuse on an unprecedented scale with the money that flows in from those outside the structure.

nzp10• 13 years ago

What's wrong in taking a class in anything including Marxist sociology? Are there some domains of knowledge which should be intentionally left unexplored, lest we corrupt all our precious bodily fluids? What is this--Texas Board of Education?

Seems to me too few people take classes in anything these days, let alone Marxist sociology.

moocowduckquack5• 13 years ago

"Western capitalism" was specifically rejected, and socialism embraced

That must be why it has such strong labour laws and enormous social safety net supported by a tax and spend government then. Or possibly the economy ditched socialism in 1991 when it carried out a series of free market reforms at the behest of global trade organisations. Who can possibly say.

skylan_q5• 13 years ago

That must be why it has such strong labour laws and enormous social safety net supported by a tax and spend government then.

We can't have good labor conditions without the capital and productive capacity in place to offer good labor conditions.

skylan_q5• 13 years ago

I agree with this.

But you have to realize that most people on hacker news who want socialism never had first-hand experience with it. People have to learn their lessons the hard way. :(

foobarian2• 13 years ago

Just an added thought re: ROC, when I was in Taiwan some local coworkers were concerned about manufacturing getting outsourced to mainland China, because Taiwan's prosperity and standard of living started to make it less competitive. Imagine that!

amerika_blog• 13 years ago

Oh. Mother Jones. Well, that's about on the level of the National Enquirer for me, so I'll pass.

notdrunkatall6• 13 years ago

Ugh, motherjones, that perpetual bastion of leftist bullshit!

Why is this tripe being upvoted here on HN? You might as well have posted something directly from Rush Limbaugh's blog (or website, or whatever he has). It's crap.

I Tried to See Where My T-Shirt Was Made

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