What People Want
Is globalization a bad thing?
Well, if you have been laid off from your factory job because the company you worked for is moving your former job to another country, or worse, they are taking economic hits because their competitors have already done it and now they can't compete, yes, you might think so. But you also have to weigh in the fact that the person getting your old job needed work so badly, they were willing (perhaps happy) to work at a much lower pay rate, put up with worse conditions, and work longer hours than you were willing to do. Doesn't that person also deserve a job? Doesn't that person also have kids to feed? You can't really blame them.
So who do you blame? The "greedy capitalists" who run the company? Well, they are under pressure too, and must do things they don't want to do, merely to survive. You see, there is a particular dynamic that most people don't think of when it comes to understanding economics.
A few years ago, the CEO of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs, attended a convention of educators to show them the latest from his company in a keynote speech. Then he did something he rarely does, which was to answer questions from the audience. Someone asked him about the role of computers in schools. To the audiences surprise, he stated that that he no longer believed that computers had the power to revolutionize teaching, but that, as an older, wiser man, he believed the key thing was good teachers who could use the technology. He also went on to say that there was a time in his youth in which he believed in a vast conspiracy to dumb us all down with mediocre media on TV, radio, and in the movie business. He later realized, when he became a successful movie mogul himself, that there was no conspiracy. There was something worse. The media businesses were only trying to give people what they wanted.
You and I are workers. You and I are also consumers. You do your job, I do mine. You go to the store and buy things, I go to the store and buy things. As workers, we want to minimize the amount of work we do, and earn as much money in that limited time as we can, so that we can buy more things that we want and have time to do whatever it is we want to do in our free time. When we go to the store, we want the things we buy to be as cheap as we can get it, we want it to be just as we would like it to be (red, not black, automatic not manual, chocolate not vanilla), we want it in stock, and we want to take it home immediately so we can get back to that leisure time I alluded to earlier. Little did we know, we who have never met, that something I bought at the store was, in some way, created by you, and something you bought was created by me. We traded goods, via the store, and we both put pressure on each other to have our work meet up with each other's expectations.
I have a good friend who is a regional sales manager for a large manufacturer of furniture. She once told me this: "What does everyone want? Whatever the thing is, they want it free, they want it perfect, and they want it now. Those that win in the marketplace are those that come closest, with a profit, to meeting those requirements.” This can be expressed into this equation:
Free+Perfect+Now=Business Survival
So, what does this have to do with globalization?
When you made the thing that I bought at the store, part of the requirements of the thing in question was that it had to have a total F+P+N factor that could make me want it more than the things being sold by your businesses' competitors. The thing had to be cost-competitive, be very close to what I envision it to be (maybe better, with features and quality higher than I expect), and it for damn sure better be there for me to take home now. Because of this, your wages are lower than you would like, the pressure for quality and innovation at your work is higher than you feel is sustainable, and you seem to live at work and never see your kids. It would seem that I am the bane of your existence, if it were not for the fact that you held the thing you bought from me to the same standards that I did, if not more. We are each the bane of each others existence, and at the same time, blameless for it.
Because of the pressure to feed consumers what they demand, businesses feel the need to manufacture their wares in places where people are willing to work longer and harder for less money. Yet by doing so, they are relieving their customers of the very means for buying the products they wish to sell to them. This puts further pressure on lowering costs, as the consumer/workers now work at jobs that pay less and work them harder. This begins to bring down the general costs of labor in the society, and will continue to do so until the whole world pretty much evens-out in terms of the price of labor, and how much work people are willing to do in a given amount of time. This evening-out will be a long time in coming, because the difference between the pay/conditions/benefits of the average worker in the West and those in the Third World are pretty vast, and there are way more people in the Third World.
So, think about it the next time you go to Wal-Mart and by something cheaper made in China, not to somewhere else to buy something made in your own country at a higher cost with less features. You are the driving force behind globalization. Just remember, people in China have families, too.
Well, if you have been laid off from your factory job because the company you worked for is moving your former job to another country, or worse, they are taking economic hits because their competitors have already done it and now they can't compete, yes, you might think so. But you also have to weigh in the fact that the person getting your old job needed work so badly, they were willing (perhaps happy) to work at a much lower pay rate, put up with worse conditions, and work longer hours than you were willing to do. Doesn't that person also deserve a job? Doesn't that person also have kids to feed? You can't really blame them.
So who do you blame? The "greedy capitalists" who run the company? Well, they are under pressure too, and must do things they don't want to do, merely to survive. You see, there is a particular dynamic that most people don't think of when it comes to understanding economics.
A few years ago, the CEO of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs, attended a convention of educators to show them the latest from his company in a keynote speech. Then he did something he rarely does, which was to answer questions from the audience. Someone asked him about the role of computers in schools. To the audiences surprise, he stated that that he no longer believed that computers had the power to revolutionize teaching, but that, as an older, wiser man, he believed the key thing was good teachers who could use the technology. He also went on to say that there was a time in his youth in which he believed in a vast conspiracy to dumb us all down with mediocre media on TV, radio, and in the movie business. He later realized, when he became a successful movie mogul himself, that there was no conspiracy. There was something worse. The media businesses were only trying to give people what they wanted.
You and I are workers. You and I are also consumers. You do your job, I do mine. You go to the store and buy things, I go to the store and buy things. As workers, we want to minimize the amount of work we do, and earn as much money in that limited time as we can, so that we can buy more things that we want and have time to do whatever it is we want to do in our free time. When we go to the store, we want the things we buy to be as cheap as we can get it, we want it to be just as we would like it to be (red, not black, automatic not manual, chocolate not vanilla), we want it in stock, and we want to take it home immediately so we can get back to that leisure time I alluded to earlier. Little did we know, we who have never met, that something I bought at the store was, in some way, created by you, and something you bought was created by me. We traded goods, via the store, and we both put pressure on each other to have our work meet up with each other's expectations.
I have a good friend who is a regional sales manager for a large manufacturer of furniture. She once told me this: "What does everyone want? Whatever the thing is, they want it free, they want it perfect, and they want it now. Those that win in the marketplace are those that come closest, with a profit, to meeting those requirements.” This can be expressed into this equation:
Free+Perfect+Now=Business Survival
So, what does this have to do with globalization?
When you made the thing that I bought at the store, part of the requirements of the thing in question was that it had to have a total F+P+N factor that could make me want it more than the things being sold by your businesses' competitors. The thing had to be cost-competitive, be very close to what I envision it to be (maybe better, with features and quality higher than I expect), and it for damn sure better be there for me to take home now. Because of this, your wages are lower than you would like, the pressure for quality and innovation at your work is higher than you feel is sustainable, and you seem to live at work and never see your kids. It would seem that I am the bane of your existence, if it were not for the fact that you held the thing you bought from me to the same standards that I did, if not more. We are each the bane of each others existence, and at the same time, blameless for it.
Because of the pressure to feed consumers what they demand, businesses feel the need to manufacture their wares in places where people are willing to work longer and harder for less money. Yet by doing so, they are relieving their customers of the very means for buying the products they wish to sell to them. This puts further pressure on lowering costs, as the consumer/workers now work at jobs that pay less and work them harder. This begins to bring down the general costs of labor in the society, and will continue to do so until the whole world pretty much evens-out in terms of the price of labor, and how much work people are willing to do in a given amount of time. This evening-out will be a long time in coming, because the difference between the pay/conditions/benefits of the average worker in the West and those in the Third World are pretty vast, and there are way more people in the Third World.
So, think about it the next time you go to Wal-Mart and by something cheaper made in China, not to somewhere else to buy something made in your own country at a higher cost with less features. You are the driving force behind globalization. Just remember, people in China have families, too.
posted by gemillam at
12:51 AM
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