OT: En Attendant les Barbares (Long Rant from Paris)

  • Thread starter Elisa Francesca Roselli
  • Start date



Robert Uhl wrote:

>
> Would you have bought that Mac if it cost thrice as much? Would Apple
> have even sold it if the market were as small as it would be for a
> trebly-expensive computer?
>


Why should it cost three times as much? Given component costs,
automated assembly and so on the cost would probably have been less
than another hundred pounds and yes I would have been willing to pay
such a realistic premium. My last Mac was assembled in Ireland and it
certainly didn't cost 3x the price of my current one.

Unfortunately I think consumers have played into the hands of the
corporations by always looking to the price and not thinking about the
wider picture. The same can be said of the failure to look at other
ethical issues associated with manufacture such as the methods used in
factory farming, the impact production and use has on the environment
and so on. It seems that the selfish society is self-propagating and
people which is why people not only choose huge dangerous and polluting
4x4's they no longer really care if their purchasing decisions put
other out of work.

Yes, that work might be created elsewhere but the answer to that is for
companies to develop products aimed at the market the item was produced
in. I would think there are many electrical products that could be
produced in China that would be more accessible to Chinese buyers than
£1000 computers destined for the west.

For a good example of the folly of letting price drive the market
consider the UK bike manufacturing industry. This is all but dead now
due to manufacturers moving production overseas and the import of
products from India, Vietnam and so on. Those Indian companies could
have developed products ideally suited to the home market but instead
produce millions of these £60 'mountain bikes' for western companies
which you see everywhere. I totally fail to see how this reduction in
prices for bikes has benefited anyone other than the importers. The
bikes are bad beyond belief, unreliable, heavy and almost guaranteed to
convince them that cycling is both impractical and hard work. In fact I
would argue that the failure to develop a 'better bike' and to instead
concentrate solely on price has helped to ensure the decline of cycling
in the UK. The fixation on price has also led the man in the street to
see the bicycle as being a low-cost, low value item in every way.
(Tales abound in the bike trade of punters who go into shops and demand
to buy the cheapest bike in the shop, totally resisting any suggestions
that spending another £100 or even £50 would be a good investment.
The shop owner then helps the customer to take the bike outside only to
see them load the bike into a £30,000 Land Rover...).

What was needed was for the importers and manufacturers to focus more
on quality, practicality and so on. Ok this might have been a harder
sell than just selling on price but if they had done the Uk bike
industry would still be booming. Look at countries such as Germany
where quality has always being a selling point for bicycles and look
at the quality items they produce- and produce in Germany (Rolholff,
Schmidt, etc etc).

Even with a quality-orientated outlook is is still possible to
manufacture truly quality bikes at very realistic prices. OK so you
might have to spend 3 times the cost of some fully-suspended MTB
look-alike monstrosity from Vietnam but the customer would still be
getting better value for money. This hasn't happened because UK
manufacturers for the most part have been interested in one thing only,
profit. (And usually short term profit- hence the sort of failure to
invest which lead to the death of the British motorcycle industry).
What's more when profit is the only motive no real consideration is
given to how a company might be able to better serve the customer or
society as a whole.
 
Claire Petersky wrote:
> "Jeff Williams" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>
>
>>Do they lack education? So what? Bill Gates dropped out of university
>>and he did okay (I guess).

>
>
> Bill Gates' parents were wealthy and extremely well connected. If his mom
> hadn't known the right people at IBM, who knows if Microsoft would have
> become what it is. He dropped out of Harvard, after attending one of the
> most exclusive private schools in Seattle. It isn't like he was a poor boy
> who pulled himself up by his bootstraps.
>


Okay.

Woz and Jobs.

Onasis.

Kennedy (not a great example, I admit).

I could name a dozen personal friends who would be unknown to y'all but
who managed to scrabble their way out of poverty.

I do not know what France is like (I understand it's even more
socialistic than Canada). However, even in a socialist haven like
Canada, someone with the determination can succeed despite a poor start
to life. I've met and seen too many people who sit on their glutes
expecting to have success handed to them on a silver platter, and I'm
tired of paying taxes to support them.
 
Don't know about the UK - never lived there.

Personally, I tend to be of a libertarian bent. I dislike nosy nates of
any origin (government, business, labour) telling what to do. I neither
need nor want their help, nor am I interested in them helping themselves
to my wallet.
 
"Jeff Williams" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Claire Petersky wrote:
>> Bill Gates' parents were wealthy and extremely well connected.
>> ...

>
> Okay.
>
> Woz and Jobs.


Nope. They were Caucasian. Try again.
 
[email protected] wrote:


> Yes, that work might be created elsewhere but the answer to that is for
> companies to develop products aimed at the market the item was produced
> in. I would think there are many electrical products that could be
> produced in China that would be more accessible to Chinese buyers than
> £1000 computers destined for the west.


Leaving aside the impossibility of your "solution" (hint- the
manufacturing of anything but the simplest of items hasn't been
restricted to one location in decades), you can't have thought this
through because even if you could somehow wave a magic wand and
accomplish this impossibility one inevitable result would be freezing
the relative positions of the haves and have nots.
You've chosen to use China as an example of a country and people better
served by "develop(ing) products aimed at the market the item was
produced in". I can't think of a worse example for your argument-
except maybe India- than China. China's economic power in the world is
growing rapidly and the Chinese people's standard of living is
improving precisely because they are looking outward not inward.

Regards,
Bob Hunt
 
Roger Houston wrote:
> "Jeff Williams" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>
>>Claire Petersky wrote:
>>
>>>Bill Gates' parents were wealthy and extremely well connected.
>>>...

>>
>>Okay.
>>
>>Woz and Jobs.

>
>
> Nope. They were Caucasian. Try again.
>
>


So you can't be poor and caucasian? I've known plenty of poor
caucasians, and I know well off non-caucasians. Your point being?

W
 
ho managed to scrabble their way out of poverty.
>
> I do not know what France is like (I understand it's even more
> socialistic than Canada). However, even in a socialist haven like
> Canada, someone with the determination can succeed despite a poor start
> to life. I've met and seen too many people who sit on their glutes
> expecting to have success handed to them on a silver platter, and I'm
> tired of paying taxes to support them.


Such as our own dear Royal Family? And that huge lazy Maggies army of
early retired teachers! The hordes who live off inherited wealth - we
pay for them too via rents, profits on shareholdings etc for which they
do FA. And there is a disturbing new parasitic tendency in Britain
called "buy to let" whereby the well off can extort their pensions from
the worse off - encouraged by the gov and reducing the state pension
burden.

cheers
Jacob
 
Roger Houston wrote:
> "Jeff Williams" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>
>>Claire Petersky wrote:
>>
>>>Bill Gates' parents were wealthy and extremely well connected.
>>>...

>>
>>Okay.
>>
>>Woz and Jobs.

>
>
> Nope. They were Caucasian. Try again.
>
>


Hopefully that was tongue-in-cheek. I'm Caucasion. My parents are
neither well-connected nor wealthy.

If it was not tongue-in-cheek, please let me know so that I can add an
appropriate browser rule for your posts.
 
[email protected] writes:
>
> Unfortunately I think consumers have played into the hands of the
> corporations by always looking to the price and not thinking about the
> wider picture.


Certainly there are more concerns than just price. Quality, for
example. And yes, there is a moral/ethical component as well, although
I daresay we'd disagree quite vigorously on where to draw our lines.

The key to a market, though, is that each of us is free to make his own
choice regarding those trade-offs, and that our cumulative choices act
as a massive voting system.

> Yes, that work might be created elsewhere but the answer to that is
> for companies to develop products aimed at the market the item was
> produced in.


Why? Can't a factory in Leeds produce goods for London? Can't a
manufacturer in Detroit design for Denver?

> I would think there are many electrical products that could be
> produced in China that would be more accessible to Chinese buyers than
> £1000 computers destined for the west.


They won't be accessible to the Chinese if they haven't the disposable
income.

You really need to learn some basic economics. It's not a hard science,
and indeed much of economics is still up for debate, but one of the
least debatable aspects--indeed, the most agreed-to aspect--is Ricardo's
Law of Comparative Advantage. If China is more efficient at producing
computers than wheat, and if the US is more efficient at producing wheat
than computers, it actually turns out that there are more computers and
wheat for everyone if the US focuses on producing wheat and the Chinese
computers, even if (and this is the counterintuitive bit) the US is
better at producing computers than the Chinese.

> For a good example of the folly of letting price drive the market
> consider the UK bike manufacturing industry. This is all but dead now
> due to manufacturers moving production overseas and the import of
> products from India, Vietnam and so on.


Who cares? Bikes are now less expensive, meaning that people can do
other things with their money--e.g. donating to the poor, or buying
food, or an extra Jaguar in the garage. Economic efficiency means more
goods for everyone. This is generally considered a Good Thing.

> I totally fail to see how this reduction in prices for bikes has
> benefited anyone other than the importers. The bikes are bad beyond
> belief, unreliable, heavy and almost guaranteed to convince them that
> cycling is both impractical and hard work.


They benefit those people willing to trade quality for money. Not
everyone has the disposable income to purchase a $1,200 bike; many more
people can afford a $100 bike today, and another in a year or two, and
yet another in yet another year or two.

I myself would almost certainly have never started riding if my only
option had been $600 bikes. My first adult bike was $180 IIRC, and at
the time that seemed almost absurdly high. My next bike was $500, and
my next will probably be in the $1,000-$2,000 range. That's just an
anecdote, and of course the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data,' but it's
still of interest.

> What was needed was for the importers and manufacturers to focus more
> on quality, practicality and so on.


Those come with a price. Obviously people were not willing to make that
trade-off--because if they had been, they would have. Those options
still exist, but honestly that's not where the market is right now.

> Even with a quality-orientated outlook is is still possible to
> manufacture truly quality bikes at very realistic prices. OK so you
> might have to spend 3 times the cost of some fully-suspended MTB
> look-alike monstrosity from Vietnam but the customer would still be
> getting better value for money.


Value for money is, in some ways, a rich man's concern; the poor man
worries about his money (cue the Pratchett story about the rich man who
buys $100 boots which last 5 years vs. the poor man who buys $25 boots
every year). The nice thing is that as we all get wealthier, we become
more and more willing to accept higher prices in return for higher
value. E.g. seat belts, air bags, food safety regulations, workplace
safety regulations, environmental protections and so on. These things
aren't free, but we have become sufficiently wealthy that we are willing
to pay that price.

> This hasn't happened because UK manufacturers for the most part have
> been interested in one thing only, profit.


Why _wouldn't_ they be? Aren't the German manufacturers interested in
profit? Remember, being interested in profit means being willing to
meet the market's desires--in other words, to satisfy the most people
with the least resources possible: in still other words, to increase
happiness and decrease waste. That's a Good Thing.

> (And usually short term profit- hence the sort of failure to invest
> which lead to the death of the British motorcycle industry).


I'll agree with you there. Our markets--and hence our corporations--do
tend to be more focused on the short-term than I would consider ideal.

> What's more when profit is the only motive no real consideration is
> given to how a company might be able to better serve the customer or
> society as a whole.


You maximise profits by serving the customer (well, by striking the
balance between cost and customer service--that is, you provide as much
service as the customer is willing to pay for, no more and no less).

--
Robert Uhl <http://public.xdi.org/=ruhl>
Apu: Today, I am no longer an Indian living in America. I am an
Indian-American.
Lisa: You know, in a way, all Americans are immigrants. Except, of
course Native Americans.
Homer: Yeah, Native Americans like us.
Lisa: No, I mean American Indians.
Apu: Like me.
 
"The Wogster" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:AE%[email protected]...
>>>Woz and Jobs.

>>
>> Nope. They were Caucasian. Try again.

>
> So you can't be poor and caucasian? I've known plenty of poor caucasians,
> and I know well off non-caucasians. Your point being?


You just made my point. I was being sarcastic.
 
I sympathize with Ms. Roselli's distress, but before she hardens her
heart against the swarthy interlopers who disrupt her pleasant and
gracious lifestyle, she might do well to take a more penetrating look
at the social and historical context of the unpleasant situation in
which she, and France, find themselves.

Doug Ireland's article "Why Is France Burning?" appears in the 28
November 2005 issue of The Nation.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051128/ireland

Here is an excerpt:

The tsunami of vandalism, arson and riot by young people of color that
began in the suburban ghettos of Paris [...] should have surprised no
one, for it is the result of thirty years of government neglect [...]
and of the deep-seated, searing, soul-destroying racism that the
unemployed and profoundly alienated young of the ghettos face every day
of their lives, both from the police and when trying to find a job.

The ghettos where festering resentment has now burst into flames were
created as a matter of industrial policy by the French state [...] to
recruit from France's colonies laborers and factory and menial workers.
These immigrant workers, primarily from North Africa, were desperately
needed to allow the French economy to expand [...] Moreover, these
immigrant workers were favored by industrial employers as passive and
unlikely to join unions and strike.

This government-and-industry-sponsored influx of Arab workers was
reinforced following Algerian independence by the arrival of the
Harkis, native Algerians who fought for and worked with France during
the anticolonial struggle for independence--and were horribly treated
by France. Some 100,000 Harkis were killed [...] after the French
shamelessly abandoned them to a lethal fate [...] those Harki families
who were saved [...] were parked in filthy, crowded concentration camps
in France for many long years [...] a nice reward for their sacrifices
for France, of which they were, after all, legally citizens. Their
ghettoized children and grandchildren, naturally, harbor certain
resentments.

France's other immigrant workers were warehoused in huge high-rise,
low-income ghettos [...] deliberately placed out of sight in the
suburbs [...] Now forty and fifty years old, these high-rise human
warehouses are run-down, dilapidated, sinister places [...]

[T]he current rebellion is the anguished scream of a lost generation in
search of an identity. When US cities burned in the 1960s, King said,
"A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard." In France it's the
language of adolescents, kids caught between two cultures and belonging
to neither; of kids who, born in France and often speaking little
Arabic, don't know the country where their parents were born but feel
excluded, marginalized and invisible in the country where they live
[...]

"The rebellion is spreading spontaneously [...] It's driven especially
by incredibly racist police conduct that is the daily lot of these
children. They're arrested or controlled by the police, shaken down,
pushed around and have their papers checked simply because they have
dark skin [...] The police bark, 'Lower your eyes! Lower your eyes!' as
if they had no right even to look a policeman in the face. It's utterly
dehumanizing. No wonder these kids feel so divorced from authority."
 

Similar threads