Small Watch, Big Issue

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Look, Haute Horologie it ain't, but you can't argue the value-point of the above: a Chinese smart-ish watch purchased via Amazon UK, via Düsseldorf, Germany. At £19.99; when it does most of what you want from a fitness tracker (don't laugh) with the added functionality - albeit somewhat truncated - of a smartwatch, what's not to like. Also, the fit and finish of the thing are none too shabby, either: not quite Apple, but as this thing comes in at something like forty-something-times less than the real deal can retail for, it does raise some questions; not least about the profit-margins involved. But the main issue would seem to me to be: why does the West appear to diss modern, mixed communist/capitalist economies so much, whilst relying so heavily on their manufacturing and distribution expertise? The Apple Watch™ has pretty much been made in China, with distribution - and soon more of its manufacture - recently shifting to Vietnam. Surely the irony - and hypocrisy, on all sides - can't be lost on us?

Wolfgang Münchau, in this week's New Statesman, encapsulates the situation succinctly, highlighting the idiocy of the kind of small-nation nationalistic mindset that currently pervades right wing thinking in the West. The title of his piece is "Rebuilding industry is a mistake. The West should be constructing alliances instead." Globalism is, as are both Capitalism and Socialism, far more nuanced than the Neo-Lib and Neo-Con chancers and con-men would have you believe: if co-operation sounds bad to you, then you probably are really beyond the pale. Society has to evolve beyond the outdated and naive - eighteenth-century - politics that we still cleave to. To adapt is to survive, and by God, we need so badly to come to terms with the collective idiocy currently gripping our politics, and do something about it...

Comments

  1. Anonymous30 May 2023 at 06:41

    What happened to distributed manufacture Kel?
    ATB
    Joe

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous30 May 2023 at 07:50

      I agree, but no bugger seems interested in tackling the socio-economic corollaries that go with it; such as the scaling back on personal wealth accumulation, the need for true stakeholder sharing, higher and more equitable wages, higher prices and less waste; to name but some of it. An economic revolution, in short. What I'm saying is that the Neo-Cons are happy to profit madly from Far-Eastern-driven manufacture - supporting it economically - whilst criticizing the whole deal in public to score points politically. Most Western-designed stuff is made in China, and the crass economics that operate the markets push us further and further back to the future...

      Delete

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