@ Clandestino....Thanks for post #14
A masterpiece in satire.
Re- exploitation....Many upright and moral citizens wrestle with their concience when buying Big Brand trainers and the like. The quality of the £150+jobbies is little different to the £9..99 budget ones, save the carefully massaged and nurtured "prestige" of the coveted logo........Indeed, there is the tale of the new Chinese factory,set-up and monitored by the Brand-Owner,who couldn't understand how the marketplace was awash with "his" products ,retailing at less than his cost.....eventually it was realised that the OTHER new factory , directly opposite, was producing identical counterfeits!
Where is this heading?
If you refuse to buy this product of exploited, sweatshop labour, you're condemning the workers to a subsistance-lifestyle, back in the Paddy-Fields(NO! I don't mean rural Ireland
)
They have a choice, just like the Miners,Cotton-mill workers and Canal-Navvies who fuelled the Industrial Revolution.
The bosses got mansions, the workers,-slums.
Easy to say"Boycott xxx. - they're screwing their employees"....fact is, if you did that, the next-up level of employer in that trade, would NOT take all that extra business....the market would shrink because the bottom-end would not pay more.
This happens at every level, wether it be the local pub going under charging £2-a pint , when the "offie" sells it for 80p.
Or the builder of luxury-yachts, who finds the market has shrunk.
Vote with your feet, but remember, the lower-ranks will feel the pain first and harder than the management.