Post by andys on Jan 20, 2007 21:52:42 GMT
Dear All,
Growler, you make a pertinent point here. Our quest for price is having environmental and social consequences. Trouble is we all look at the price to ourselves first, and I'm just as guilty as anyone.
I am involved in politics in a small and local way, and one observation I have often spoken publicly about is that at present we now enjoy cheap goods, mainly courtesy of China. Even taking the guitar industry as a microcosm of the whole (and many other markets such as cars, call centres, electronic good follow the same globalisation trends), we used to get cheap imports first from Japan, then they put their costs/wages/standard of living up, so it went to Taiwan. Same thing happened so then Korea took over, then India and Bangladesh became the new cheap sources, with Indonesia and Mexico following. Now China is the new sweat-shop. Now then, where will we go for cheap goods when the Chinese start demanding higher wages, better working conditions, and a bigger slice of the economic pie? Theres really nowhere else, and maybe the price of our goods will start to rise. This current situation is not really sustainable, or is there another producer of cheap goods we can go to after China?
So maybe the days of cheap guitars( as well as other goods,) is numbered.
Maybe other forum members have a different take on the matter.
I'd love it to be different, but I have no alternative than buying budget instruments, most of which are infinately more playable than those of even 15 years ago. Also as I have said before, poor old bluesmen and people like Woody Guthrie etc, wouldnt have been playing Nationals and Martins, they would have been playing cheaper copies from the Sears catalogue. They still made music that shook the world.
Yours
Andy S
Growler, you make a pertinent point here. Our quest for price is having environmental and social consequences. Trouble is we all look at the price to ourselves first, and I'm just as guilty as anyone.
I am involved in politics in a small and local way, and one observation I have often spoken publicly about is that at present we now enjoy cheap goods, mainly courtesy of China. Even taking the guitar industry as a microcosm of the whole (and many other markets such as cars, call centres, electronic good follow the same globalisation trends), we used to get cheap imports first from Japan, then they put their costs/wages/standard of living up, so it went to Taiwan. Same thing happened so then Korea took over, then India and Bangladesh became the new cheap sources, with Indonesia and Mexico following. Now China is the new sweat-shop. Now then, where will we go for cheap goods when the Chinese start demanding higher wages, better working conditions, and a bigger slice of the economic pie? Theres really nowhere else, and maybe the price of our goods will start to rise. This current situation is not really sustainable, or is there another producer of cheap goods we can go to after China?
So maybe the days of cheap guitars( as well as other goods,) is numbered.
Maybe other forum members have a different take on the matter.
I'd love it to be different, but I have no alternative than buying budget instruments, most of which are infinately more playable than those of even 15 years ago. Also as I have said before, poor old bluesmen and people like Woody Guthrie etc, wouldnt have been playing Nationals and Martins, they would have been playing cheaper copies from the Sears catalogue. They still made music that shook the world.
Yours
Andy S
