They Outsourced What?

here's the deal--the production system that's dominant these days is a variant of just-in-time. it's managed by supply pool technologies so movements of components can be tracked in real time. the question of what is and is not a us-made good is, at this point, largely meaningless because of the way in which free-trade zone legislation defines what is and is not the united states. value-add calculations are often determinate and the assumption appears to be that because, say, a sub-component is priced higher than its components then country of origin is determined by that. but, again, country of origin is no longer a geographical term. from a supply-pool management viewpoint---as for a viewpoint of ownership, assuming that such a thing really exists apart from annual shareholder meetings, in an trans-national context---it doesn't matter where a component is made so long is it is delivered to the next stop in the production chain on time and quality checked. so all social correlates of production, from geographical location to wages to working conditions, are excluded---all that matters is price, regularity of deliveries and consistency of quality. that's it. so there's no sense, at all, in which contemporary forms of production can or do give a fuck about the social dimensions of their production. all this is, in a nutshell, a basic transformation of how capitalism operates at the level of relations of production. nation-state boundaries broke down as the natural horizon for capitalist organization across the 70s. what more or less obliged firms to pay attention to things like social stability, and accept other things like livable wages and decent working conditions---not to mention environmental regulation and other such things that make the world capitalism would otherwise destroy more livable---was that firms operated within nation-states is if they had to, even though, retrospectively, it seems that nothing more than cultural norms accounted for it. like it never occurred to anyone to break that rule which wasn't quite a rule.

so 1. it is simple-minded to blame free-trade agreements for the whole of this longer-term process.
2. it is simple-minded to think in nationalist terms about a production system within which country is not longer exclusively a geographical designation
3. blaming high wages or some vague generational malaise for the situation of american workers is a lazy way to not really think about anything. except maybe the prejudices of whomever is making that shit up. one of the characteristics of neo-liberal land is a pathological hatred of unions. you really can't buy into that horseshit. but people do. go figure.

but the 10 dollar day, extended into a system of relatively high wages for working people through collective bargaining, was the condition of possibility for almost all the material aspects of american life connected to the suburban model that people take for granted today. because, in part, they enabled the revolution in consumer banking after world war 2 that gave regular people access to debt and by doing that let them buy houses and so forth. it's myopic in that special history-blind way that conservatives seem to specialize in making up to see high wages and decent working conditions as a Problem.

you accept the logic of the contemporary anything-goes regime and you reap what you sow.

it seems to me that the way to address the existing system is to make it too expensive to maintain a relation to geography that it totally abstract---force tncs to reduce distances and/or create redundant production systems. jack up fuel prices on marine fuel for example. political pressure would do the trick too---the only reason these tncs indulge in csr reporting is because of political pressure. national government have to power to force tncs to adapt in socially responsible ways---the problem is that typically they share the class interests of shareholders and, like them, view the rest of us as a managment problem.

there's obviously more to the history of post-1945 capitalism---and to outsourcing/offshoring---than this---but i don't see how you can start to think coherently about these questions without knowing at least something of the transitions. perot, paul---all are producing decontextualized memes that give the appearance of coherence without the coherence part---because both share--seemingly---a political interest in not talking too much about capitalism itself as a problem, about its history as the source of problems.

but i digress.

btw: apologies for the little lecture mode. i taught this stuff for a long time. it's kind of switch in my brain that gets thrown when this get discussed without at least some reference to the history that enabled it (and that its an expression of)....

 

So teach me why dollars make sense.

If "the logic of the contemporary anything" goes does, they make fewer cents. I'm only guessing that they're fucking themselves. As power's inherent in money & the faith in it, I'm guessing that my social responsibility will never count. I still exist & object to the idea that $s are worth more than I. Resources are global, they belong to the world. As a part of that world, I expect to share in it based upon what I contribute. I expect to be valued less than I witness & to cuddle my fellows more than they want.

I am no more a pervert than you are, roachboy.

 

ocm--not sure i understand the question. i mean, sure, we all expect to earn what we take our skills to be worth. but this is capitalism. it doesnt work like that. never has. there were some matters of principle that marx was right about. one of them is that capitalism is based on exploitation. that hasn't changed. the technological frameworks have. the geography has. but that the entire logic of the system is geared around getting people who sell their labor power for a wage to produce as much as possible for as little as possible is constant. the 10 dollar day was instituted by henry ford in the 20s to reduce turnover in his workforce. period. later---and after a considerable war--unions worked themselves into the position of being able to take enough power from capital to force something like collective bargaining, so that the determination of wage levels was no left simply to the self-interest of the holders of capital. apparently, people on the right took this to be some socialist usurpation of their feudal prerogatives to fuck people over for their own ends. whence the neo-liberal hatred of unions (thanks hoover institution, you assholes) now things have reverted to form--and we've in the main been persuaded that it ok. well it really isn't ok. the question is how to force capital to respect that. and force is the word. but that's another matter.

resources are global in a sense, but the capacity to extract them is still highly concentrated. if you're talking about the raw materials of industrial production. closest there is to a combine that's gotten in the way of that is opec. most of these resources are global in the sense they're globally distributed and in a more equitable world there would be far greater diversity of control over (and stewardship of) those resources--but that'd require thinking about how to split up much of what is contemporary capitalism. personally, i think that could open up a far more sustainable and equitable world---but at the moment we are subjected to a massive failure of imagination in this regard. you know, that idiotic fukuyama idea of the end of history and we are it. such an unbelievably stupid and arrogant position dressed up with footnotes from hegel...

nation-states are finished in most respects, but we've not caught up with it. if things go in the direction they're headed, barring a system collapse (which isn't out of the question by any means) there's likely to be even more disempowerment of regular people than there is now. but it's not inevitable. the political framework people use to imagine the future is all fucked up, still mired in this neo-liberal cesspool of enlightened self-interest exercised by our feudal betters pissing down benefits for all of us. it doesn't work, it wont work, it never has worked. all that's about is the attempts of an intellectual bankrupt and ethically degenerate faction of an intellectually bankrupt and ethically degenerate plutocracy holding onto power, and that in a way that's also aimed at evacuating the public and dissolving the idea that popular sovereignty means anything other than plutocracy.

but maybe i really didn't understand your question.

 

I didn't really ask a question. Please tell me how dollars make sense. With additional thoughts on how the concept of money profits anyone other than tose who think it's real, I hope to figure out an alternative which is less divisive.

 

i have no idea what you've been getting at the last few posts ourcrazy, please do explain

 

I'm a little lost too. Glad it isn't just me.