craftsmanship, consumerism, virtue, privilege, and quality

I do agree though that if china could get into a time machine and go back to mid-qing dynasty living, everybody would probably be better off

right but where are you going to make that time machine, shenzen?

bespoke time machine handcrafted in brooklyn by artisans

dayo I'm not sure who you're arguing w/. I'd be in favor of heavy enough tariffs to stop China from ruining itself to provide worthless consumer goods to the west, but can you really put that ruin on the west?

heavy-tariffs to stop china from letting american businesses make things and sell things to americans is patronizing 'stop-hitting-yourself'-esque logic btw. otoh you can argue that china's currency manipulation is *bad for people in china*.

there isn't an easy answer for 'how do you lift a billion people out of poverty without fucking up the world'. you can blame the west for having fucked up consumption patterns and being way behind the curve when it comes to dealing w/ its own environmental issues and you can blame the chinese government for being very short-sighted when it comes to the real costs of pollution. but tariff wars aren't gonna help anybody in any sense, esp. since any long-term solutions require a lot of international coordination.

man dayo knows his dynasties, qing dynasty even tried to stop footbinding

the qing dynasty was doing pretty well til the british showed up

the qing dynasty world was doing pretty well til the british showed up

heavy-tariffs to stop china from letting american businesses make things and sell things to americans is patronizing 'stop-hitting-yourself'-esque logic btw.

in re: this, what if somebody is actually hitting himself

as long as america is around countries are going to have lots of help w/r/t hitting themselves

isn't there already legislation re: pollutant-heavy manufacturing/processes and disposal of waste etc in the US?- ie the very type of attempt to force companies to pay environmental costs up-front that lamp suggests?

Cos I mean, presumably that's one of the major factors that makes it cheaper to manufacture abroad.

and if you accept that the globalised economy makes it inevitable that developing economies will tend to take on the tasks that become problematic in eg US, are we going to start seeing fair-trade flatscreens?

selling for 4x the price of the regular flatscreen but made out of papaya or something

Or what's the suggestion?

there is more legislation here than china obv, tho generally not anywhere near the realm of 'factory x pays for all its environmental externalities'.

china actually has pretty strict safety laws, its just that nobody follows them and the courts dont enforce anything

strict environmental laws

refreshing and healthy benzene

yeah tbf i hadn't ever assumed 'sufficient' legislation but that underlines the point, really- even with light regulation, the problem just goes elsewhere without solving anything in terms of global impact.

benzene rings, the lord of them all

when they fix things in china they'll just move all the factories to SE asia, when SE asia outlaws they'll just move the factories to the parts of africa that aren't war-torn

right, which means even if china one day got 100% on board, you still have other places willing to step up. xp

xp yup

but hopefully the reptilians will reveal themselves by then and show us the path to salvation and to Betelgeuse V

exactly. Where to next, this place isn't shitty enough to be a viable cost centre anymore

Globalisation works

we basically need a world government willing to impose and enforce environmental taxes

a rising tide will hopefully cover all plutonium dumps, kiu icecaps

xp lol

maybe after we get a world govt able to stop i dunno genocide, famine and the simon cowell, but cmon now

simon cowell is actually our best hope for creating and running a world government iirc

cowell/michael o'leary/abramovich hot ticket in 2015

not badly priced, but the corncob pipe fits right into the "how much authenticity is too much?" discussion

http://absoluteclassicmasterpieces.us/shop

you don't usually see the words "leisure accessories" and "philadelphia, pennsylvania" in the same sentence.

it's nice that they are Felt fans though.

IIRC, the original corncob pipes were designed to be disposable.

And it's the concrete ashtray that really gets me.

Ditto.

Those just, um, don't even look that well-crafted? Or at least not well-designed.

a concrete ashtray doesn't seem very useful, it's heavy and hard to flip and you can't shake it without threat of getting carpal tunnel

Concrete's actually a bit lighter than glass. But $150 for an ashtray is rough.

there was a nyt article about 20-somethings all becoming portland food truck vendors and the 'sell stuff' economy, but I can't find it now

ah here

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/opinion/sunday/the-entrepreneurial-generation.html?pagewanted=all

this is the guy who wrote "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" which iirc was about how going to princeton (or whatever) made it too hard to talk to his plumber

"But hipsters, who’ve been around for 15 years or so, appear to have become a durable part of our cultural configuration. " = line of the week imo

haha hasn't that exact article been written every three months since 2002?

lol that guy was my professor :/ he fights the good fight in general

yeah at least w/r/t academia in general he seems to. do you know why he left yale?

t/f when he was writing this article he was thinking about dayo

he got disillusioned by the politics of the ivory tower, he actually believed all the stuff the pr office puts out about yale

being a force of good in the world &c

it seems like a place where the old guard is firmly in charge

otm:

Tara

Japan

November 13th, 2011

11:22 am

You're seeing all of the symptoms but misdiagnosing the cause. "Affability is a commercial virtue, but it is also the affect of people who feel themselves to be living in a fundamentally agreeable society." No. Affability, and the commercially-acceptable facade we Millennials put on, is an act of desperation. We must be perpetual salesmen because there is no such thing as job security, because there is so much competition in finding new employment; in short, because we know that any boon we get is bound to be temporary, and liable to be ripped away at any moment.

It's the same reason why so many Millennials develop "small businesses" outside of their main jobs, too - because they know they can't rely on an employer. We have no sense of security. Anything could happen and tomorrow we'll be out of a job, with no health care, and maybe if the Republicans get their way, no support to help us through tough times.

I have to agree with grovewest, #9 - our affability IS largely disingenuous. It's a survival trait, not our true selves. I love the term Generation Sell, though - that sums it up pretty well. We (and everyone else these days) must constantly sell ourselves.

t/f when he was writing this article he was thinking about dayo

― iatee, Monday, November 14, 2011 10:42 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

lol I have undergone a lot of change since then