Thought experiment: seeing externalities
Holding a pair of jeans you love, remember what you paid for them. Remember where you bought them, if you got a sweet deal on them, how that place smelled, felt. Remember any comments you got on those jeans, and how those felt.
And then imagine that they cost 10x that price. So your Lucky Jeans, $99 on sale because of their clever, manipulative retail strategy, becomes $990 on sale. Your Cowboys ball cap, $39, becomes $390.
In truth, we can't really because all the costs the jeans manufacturer externalizes are accounted for. Sweat shop labor in Bangladesh, Ghana, Nicaragua? Imagine that the workers who made your pants were paid not a minimum wage(1), but a living wage (2). And then imagine that the corporations who paid those workers didn't just pay a wage, but also paid for healthcare; contributed to the infrastructure of their workers' communities; allowed unions to operate in their manufacturing facilities; provided daycare for their working moms; and provided useful information to the whole world via the marketing they deploy on the various platforms in the world; in general turned the power of their economic work towards Justice, for realsies-Justice.
And then imagine how that price will change your behavior around that item.
When relatively well made, if imperfectly-fitting, jeans are $990, how many pairs will you own? When one gets an oil stain, what will you do? And, if a local artisan can make you a bespoke pair of jeans that are as much like them Luckies as you’d like, but fit WAY better, AND cost $300–would you go local? If not—why? And if that local artisan could make you bespoke jeans, might you not want to have a hand in their DESIGN, as well?
Our clothing expresses our particular version of Sexy; our version of gender; our version of value. Why pay LVMH, a European luxury conglomerate, for the privilege of repping someone else's idea of those things?
So... what is that again?
Defining Externalities
Deforestation as an Externality_02_04, 02/04/24, gathered 02/24/25
a video describing an "externality" in economic language. Includes a hot graph. Video produced and published not by a crank with a camera, but by the Brown University School of Professional Studies (3)
[More to come here.]
Internalizing externalities: a rationale
If you shop at mall stores, you’re wearing clothes that don’t fit. And if you’re like me, and you’ve worn mall clothes your whole life, you have no idea what a good fit feels like. The reasons for these (literally) uncomfortable truths are economic, cultural, and global—big stuff. Stuff that’s beyond our immediate control.
But climate change is eroding the economic logic of '90s globalization. And while climate change sucks, change is sometimes good. And in the case of clothing ourselves, there’s a real opportunity for good change. It’s good because sometime soon, clothes made in seriously evil sweatshops in Bangladesh, where our mall-clothes are assembled, will be expensive to ship. And when that happens, everything to do with clothing our unique, beautiful bodies will start happening locally. Eventually, it’ll happen hyper-locally... just like it was 100 years ago. And awesomely, you won’t have to wear century-old styles—unless you like those particular eddies in the vintage river.
Footnotes
(1) what is the minimum wage? First off--while "business leaders" have been arguing against the concept for literally Welp, it turns out that is dependent on what state you live in. In Georgia, as of 2021, the wage was $5.15/hour. WTF GOP OMG. In Washington DC circa 1/1/25 it was $17.10, the highest in the land.
https://www.paycom.com/resources/blog/minimum-wage-rate-by-state/, gathered 02/22/25
From the report of this unknown group of writers, and assuming they haven't distorted things, and pretending for a second that you are a straightforward capitalist employer:
"Minimum wages can change every year. In fact, 21 states will experience wage increases in 2025. While many states still follow the federal requirement of $7.25, it’s key to understand the exact wage requirements of the state(s) where you operate. Read what you need to know about every state’s minimum hourly wage policy."
(2) https://drexel.edu/hunger-free-center/research/briefs-and-reports/minimum-wage-is-not-enough/, gathered 02/22/25:
From the study:
"The federal minimum wage has remained stagnant at $7.25* per hour for the past 12 years. While the U.S. minimum wage was never truly a living wage, over time it has done less to reflect the true value of workers and no longer supports families in a way that promotes health and keeps them out of poverty. Employees working full-time at minimum wage cannot afford basic necessities, such as food, housing, transportation, childcare, and healthcare in any location across the country.
Recent calls to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour are necessary and well-intentioned. However, even that amount is inadequate to truly support working families. A true living wage that supports a basic standard of living without food and housing insecurity would be between $20 and $26 or more per hour depending on the state [emphasis added]. Additionally, it would need to adjust regularly to keep pace with inflation and cost of living increases. With the COVID-19 pandemic laying bare the dire economic situation for many of America’s essential, low-wage workers, now is the time to increase the federal minimum wage to meet the true cost of living."
(3) (if you'd like to do your own research and verify that this content was produced by actual research and academic argument rather than the rank rants of a MAGA moron).
Doing your own research is now a vital part of adulting.
“To have strength to be a free person, you must be brave.
Only the brave find happiness, and it is better to die running than to live rotting.
Be worthy of the deeds of our heroes. Don’t be sad; be brave”.
Iryna "Cheka" Tsybukh, Ukrainian combat medic, was killed in the line of duty last year, at the age of 26.
Learn more @https://www.instagram.com/cheka_tsybukh/, despite Meta being dead evil.
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