by Scott Cressman
We live in a world where cheap is good and free is best. Profits never seem big enough. People are consumers first and human beings second. But what is the story behind the things we consumers pay so little for? I’ve found myself wondering this more often in recent weeks.
Once upon a time, I’d compliment your bargain sense if you snagged some $10 shoes or a $5 t-shirt. But after seeing “The Story of Stuff” (check it out in our video section on the right), I might be less enthused. How can the design, material, labour, and transportation to me cost so little? There are people and resources consumed in every link of that chain. Divide my $5 between them and it hardly seems enough to feed the production machine. So, who pays? Could be a poor nation, stripped of its resources. Could be workers paid far less than their work’s value. Maybe I should forget saving my few dollars (which are not very hard to replace), and instead work to ensure fair value is paid to every step that enables my lavish lifestyle. In a world of international free trade, are we making the wrong people pay the prices for us?
There’s another way capitalism may cost more than we bargained for, too. Naomi Klein’s book, “The Shock Doctrine,” says governments and big business interests use disasters, wars, and other disruptions to screen their agendas. She calls this “disaster economics” (see her video on the right side of the blog). Laws and trade policies are shaped to promote profits while the public is distracted by an in-your-face issue, like Hurricane Katrina, war in Iraq, or the financial crises. But when one group profits, is another group paying?
We all know the immediate cost of wars and disasters: lives ended and homes destroyed. Maybe there’s also an aftershock, harms that occur behind the scenes of conflict. In difficult times, safety nets, regulations, and even morals might be the easiest thing to brush aside. We’ve seen the United States accept torture in a “war on terror.” After the Asian tsunami disaster, Klein says that corporations swooped in to buy coastal property. It’s human nature to make things easier on ourselves, but it’s not right to make life harder for others.
Everything has a price, even if we don’t pay it or know we’re paying it.
Check out the debate here for a deeper look at disaster economics.
Scott Cressman is from small-town New Hamburg, Ontario. He has wrestled a journalism degree from Carleton University, planted forests in B.C., and served in a Mennonite summer camp. Now, he teaches English to South Korean children.
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