05.03.11
And so why do you buy iKit?
The Global Assembly Line is a misnomer for a dystopian, complex jumble of production that uses any number of countries and its citizens. Environmentalists are already aware that the price tag on most mass global consumer products already fails to factor in the true ecological cost (“natural capital”) of the product.
From elements in mobile phones to leather in trainers, all are habitually “subsidised” by the environment. Furthermore, with electronics, ethical arguments have tended to focus on the end of the chain, where consumer behaviour conspires with Moore’s Law (the amount of computing power that can be bought for a certain amount of money doubles every 18 months) and planned obsolescence to create mountains of e-waste.
In the world of consumer electronics, the pressure to work overtime appears to have been caused by the sheer popularity of new products. Whipped into a frenzy by marketing and favourable product reviews, we consumers shriek for the latest gadgetry and the factories must oblige.
It’s worth reading the testimonies that tell us what life as a “techno-serf” is really like. A clue: it’s totally at odds with the liberating, blue-sky, wireless possibilities offered by the sleek phones and laptops. The words: “Twelve hours of work = standard” and: “One year and I’m dead” were recently found in the notebook of a young man who had been working for a famous electronics brand in South Chungcheong province before he took his own life. We are beginning to hear of intense worker despondency and depression. It’s really about time we listened. These stories help to blunt the usual retorts of: “It gives them jobs” or: “They are just having their industrial revolution now.”
Good news, lads! Good news! If you had a button you could push to blow up the iKit as it went into his mouth you’d use it.
While the popular music industry in this country worked hard at guaranteeing it had no friends as it came to an end, it really didn’t deserve Steve Jobs and Apple.
My friend, the drummer in the band, is an iPod addict.
Me, I’d hit a new one with a hammer for a copy of the daily newspaper or a taco at Rick’s.
In preparation for the May show I went to Guitar Center in Pasadena for a power adapter. Of course, all are made in China. There’s no choice in the matter.
While there I browsed distortion pedals.
Virtually all of them were Chinese-made things, all old American designs, some priced so ridiculously low it’s obvious people are literally dieing to make them and get them here. The company doing this most effectively is Deltalab. It markets guitar effects pedals for an average price of $39 at GC.
That’s human misery and rip off non-living wage condensed in a small painted metal box, inefficiently shipped across the Pacific in a huge container transport, for the sake of the bottom line and the outsourced economy.
It was impossible to stomach buying anything like it no matter how attractive to the over-leveraged purse.
So I wound up buying a used Fulltone OCD. It was made in America. SoCal, too.