It is in part a consumer issue. Consumers want things as cheaply as possible, and companies that produce as cheaply as possible sell more product. We’ve seen the same issue with apparel; America wants cheap clothing, and so the mills in the US have largely closed, and most production has been moved overseas in order to make the final products cheap enough.
And while it’s partly a consumer issue, the fact that wages haven’t kept up with productivity–that is, more and more money is being skimmed out of the system by investors and executives rather than going to the workers–has been the driver towards making consumer goods more and more cheaply, simply because people have less purchasing power.
Just because something is expensive doesn’t always mean that the standard of living of those making the product is any better. Nike sweat shops for example.
Consumers dont have a lot of transparent choices here. Governments have roles in regulating and making the true cost of products more transparent. I’d say businesses have that responsibility, but clearly that doesn’t work, otherwise we wouldn’t be here etc. Businesses dont want people feeling guilty when they buy their product, so why would they tell people.
For a business to be competitive in a harm free supply chain, then the playing field needs to be levelled. Transparent supply chains everywhere, make everyone feel guilty all the time, maybe something would change.
These problems are not all the fault of either the producers or consumers, we’re both part of a fucked up cycle within an exploitative economic system and influence each other.
It doesn’t make any more sense for the consumer to wash their hands of all blame and consume without concern and push all the blame on the producer than it does to say it’s all about our “carbon footprint”.
I thoroughly agree. Which is why we need governments and regulation IMO. Consumers are working in a vacuum of knowledge, businesses are not incentivised to give said knowledge.
Every time I comment in a thread with a topic like this suggesting people simply opt out of animal agriculture by changing what they buy at the store, I’m typically downvoted more than I’m upvoted.
Even the people who know we’re at higher risk of zoonotic diseases due to animal ag don’t care - they like the taste of meat, milk, and cheese and another pandemic just isn’t enough to get them to stop buying it.
Consumers have limited visibility into the conditions under which their products are made, and consumer behavior does not always result in the most desirable outcome for the public. Which makes it a regulation problem. That’s why regulation exists.
Look, no one decides that they want to work in the mines because it’s good for society as a whole to have consumer goods made from what they mine. Everyone expects to be paid in some way.
If I’m making jeans as an independent designer–which I tried doing, briefly–and I decide that my time is worth $20/hr, then I’m going to have to charge around $500 for a single pair of jeans after you figure in all the time needed to make a single pair that’s been customized to fit a single, specific person. (Maybe more; I haven’t done the math in a decade or so.) Almost no one is going to want to, or be able to afford to pay that. Am I skimming off the top? No, I’m charging a fair–and actually very low–rate for custom work. But just like when I tried to do that a decade ago, no one can or will pay for that.
Even if we capped profits of investors, and capped salaries of executives, and had most of the profits going to the workers, people would tend to prefer less expensive goods over more expensive goods. That’s how competition in the market works. In a sufficiently competitive environment, without legal constraints, prices have to drop. (Monopolies raise prices by reducing competition; a sufficiently competitive environment assumes that there is no single company dominating the market.)
i agree with everything you’ve said including your links between causation etc
except the final link you make that its the consumer, i note you said ‘partly’ a consumer issue, so its not a full attribution - perhaps i’m misinterpreting what % you’re attributing.
tbh my take is alot of people would like an option between paying $2 for a garment they know involved exploitation/slavery vs an accessible^1^ independent option that doesn’t cost $500/garment.
i don’t think people are still choosing the $2 option because they’re ok with slavery. but (tragically?) they’re more ok with someone else being the slave vs them being the slave - which is what they’d basically be if every piece of clothing cost them $500.
and i think we know the reason there’s very little accessible options in between is because the game is rigged, you (HelixDab2) can’t realistically enter the game without serious capital behind you (ie. wealth/connections) to reach the volume prices which might give us an option in between - the market isn’t fair, its been stitched up long ago, by the same people who don’t produce anything and greedily skim off the top.
the venn diagram of independent designers fairly charging $500 for their labor and the greedy skimmers getting fat without producing anything themselves is two separate circles - they’re worlds apart
^1^ Quick note on accessibility, there are ofc some scant options between $2-500, but what isn’t clear (ie. readily accessible) to the consumer is which of those options isn’t just some greedy bastard buying a $2 option and selling it on for $15.
tbh my take is alot of people would like an option between paying $2 for a garment they know involved exploitation/slavery vs an accessible1 independent option that doesn’t cost $500/garment.
I would have wanted to believe that too, but then you see things like Temu that promise clothing and consumer goods at impossibly low prices, prices that simply aren’t possibly without forced labor somewhere, and people eat that shit up. I think that most people have an out of sight, out of mind approach to it, and as long as they can’t directly see the exploitation, they’ll accept it.
1 Quick note on accessibility, there are ofc some scant options between $2-500, but what isn’t clear (ie. readily accessible) to the consumer is which of those options isn’t just some greedy bastard buying a $2 option and selling it on for $15.
I strongly suspect that this obscurity is by intent.
And, taking this whole thing a bit farther, as a designer that was paying myself $20/hr, I still can’t guarantee anything about being free of forced labor, because I have no way of realistically tracking everything in my supply chain. This is why there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism, so the best you can do is pick your battles.
The professor that taught my algorithms & data structures course said if we were going to keep one book it should be the one for that course. I followed that advice and it’s the one textbook I still have. It’s been 8 years since graduation and I haven’t opened it once. I tend to just read Wikipedia if I need to understand a particular algorithm or data structure.
The best investment I made in textbooks was the class that wanted a Schaum’s Outline book, $15 brand new and still a book I use for occasional linear algebra reference.
Don’t you have university library? I did most of the recommend readings through my studies and found them all there (excepted for one). Ended up being a two reference books which prove themselves to be worth it.
In one of my uni courses, I found a free copy of the required textbook and posted a link to it on the forum in the LMS saying “Hey prof, is this the correct textbook?” By the time the prof responded and politely took my message down a week later, everyone had helped themselves to a copy.
(furious scribbling in the scifi worldbuilding notes) “In 2050, the names of the months got inadvertently legally changed when a megacorporation released a new version of their office suite and silently corrupted thousands of government document drafts.”
When I was taking my introductory courses in computer science over 20 years ago, they told me to not use Excel if you can avoid it, because it’s not very, you know, precise. So I’m well aware that this is an ancient joke. Excel will fuck your data up - AI is just another way to do it.
But it is a potential scifi plot point.
However, I will concede that it’s probably not a scifi plot point for too long. Worse things have already happened.
For data gathering? Pretty much anything that doesn’t fiddle with the values. Usually, bespoke apps or applications specifically designed for survey data. People actually use spreadsheet programs a lot, but those who do spend a lot of time on ensuring data gets entered correctly.
It looks like it given the symbols used. P for pressure, rho for density etc. u-arrow is definitely a vector field, so it could be fluid flow. Otherwise it could be equally anything described by a vector field, like electromagnetism or gravity but they usually have a lot more E and G involved I think. I used to solve these but then I got a certificate so now I don’t have to.
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