4 ms·

Shipping western clothing to poor countries tends to destroy local industry. I prefer to be able to make my own choices, not have people lie to be and then do

Shipping western clothing to poor countries tends to destroy local industry. I prefer to be able to make my own choices, not have people lie to be and then do whatever they feel is cheaper. They have to pay to properly recycle, but can just sell the old shoes. This is fraud, pure and simple. They asked for the donations of shoes under false pretenses. (There's a chance it was whatever firm they paid - but then they're just willfully incompetent.)

nradov 4y ago
It's never going to be economically viable for most poor countries to develop local clothing industries. Even without imports of used clothing the economies of scale in that industry are just brutal. Poor countries that want to protect local industry can impose import tariffs, but in most cases they would be better off with unrestricted free trade.
- LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
  They already had local clothing industries - people in poor countries weren't walking around naked until the mid 80s when container-shipping meant offshoring trash became cheap. If this issue was isolated to shoes, and those were technically unavailable for local manufacture, then you'd probably be right. But these practices destroy all industry, leaving the people without any manufacturing base or value creation outside of cultural artifacts, and tends to keep the poor countries poor.
  - nradov 4y ago
    Most of those countries had craft clothing production, hardly anything that could be legitimately called an industry. You haven't proposed a viable alternative. Should developed countries voluntarily stop exporting used clothing? Would that actually make people in poor countries better off?
    - Ekaros 4y ago
      Why don't developed countries reuse the clothing there? Save the shipping. Maybe force the stores also to sell second-hand clothes with new clothes.
      - nradov 4y ago
        Government can't reasonably force stores to sell particular products. Most don't even have space for that. And outside of a few fashion items, used clothes have almost no value in developed countries anymore. They can barely be given away. Many are simply shredded for use as rags.
    - LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
      > You haven't proposed a viable alternative. I was explaining the problem and now not solving it is my fault. > Should developed countries voluntarily stop exporting used clothing? Would that actually make people in poor countries better off? Yeah, that's what the developing country said in this instance. They passed their own laws to prevent import. And the charity promised to use the shoes for an experiment in recycling which would have brought knowledge benefits at least even if not producing a superior product. They clearly defrauded their donors regardless of Indonesian trade policies.
Freak_NL 4y ago
That's also exactly what the article mentions. The Indonesian government banned imports of second hand clothing to protect the local textile industry. While the exporter isn't doing anything illegal in Indonesia, the Indonesian importer certainly is (according to the explanation in the article). Abetting criminal activities in a neighbouring friendly country is rarely desirable.
faeriechangling 4y ago
In the same sense that secondhand book stores hurt authors? Sounds like a bunch of BS to me, somebody still has to make the shoes to begin with.
7speter 4y ago
Huh? Western clothing is normally what poor country industry is made of, or at least a significant part is.
- joshuaissac 4y ago
  > Western clothing is normally what poor country industry is made of, or at least a significant part is. While the used clothing sector provides employment to hundreds of thousands of people in less developed countries, it also damages their local textile manufacturing industry. Prices for locally produced clothes have to include both manufacturing and logistics costs, whereas the imported used clothes from Western countries are donated and can be profitably sold at much lower prices, covering only logistics. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-44951670 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-44951670
  - maximus-decimus 4y ago
    But if they literally have free clothing, doesn't it make that local industry useless? Literally provides no value at that point. This only seems like a problem to me if people literally can't provide value in any other way. To which the solution would seem to create a new type of industry, not create an artificial need by creating a clothes penury on purpose.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      If you put a shoemaker out of a job and give them free shoes, they now can’t afford anything other than shoes. Economies grow prosperous when there are more opportunities for economic exchange.
      - paulmd 4y ago
        the terrible thing about economics is that it's very complex - "the parable of the broken window" is only a parable. the entire field of keynesian economics says that yes, you can break a window and then pay someone to fix it and increase net economic activity, as long as it's not crowding out actual economic activity that would otherwise have occurred. the "burying jars of money in the desert and paying people to dig them up" is precisely a broken window, economically speaking, and that's just a parable too. in the real world domestic workers don't all go on to become farmers (oops that's dumped onto by subsidized western businesses too) or some other business... some degree of protectionism has consistently worked well to the extent it's arguably necessary*. And don't take this as me defending sweatshops either ;) but a moderate degree of protectionism and public investment has very consistently allowed countries to move beyond the absolute basic "we have sweatshots and scrap out old electronics and recycle garbage" stage of development. Neoliberalism and free trade will suck away any public investment you give it the opportunity to, and engineer around any comparative advantage you can find.

nradov 4y ago

It's never going to be economically viable for most poor countries to develop local clothing industries. Even without imports of used clothing the economies of scale in that industry are just brutal. Poor countries that want to protect local industry can impose import tariffs, but in most cases they would be better off with unrestricted free trade.

LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
They already had local clothing industries - people in poor countries weren't walking around naked until the mid 80s when container-shipping meant offshoring trash became cheap. If this issue was isolated to shoes, and those were technically unavailable for local manufacture, then you'd probably be right. But these practices destroy all industry, leaving the people without any manufacturing base or value creation outside of cultural artifacts, and tends to keep the poor countries poor.
- nradov 4y ago
  Most of those countries had craft clothing production, hardly anything that could be legitimately called an industry. You haven't proposed a viable alternative. Should developed countries voluntarily stop exporting used clothing? Would that actually make people in poor countries better off?
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    Why don't developed countries reuse the clothing there? Save the shipping. Maybe force the stores also to sell second-hand clothes with new clothes.
    - nradov 4y ago
      Government can't reasonably force stores to sell particular products. Most don't even have space for that. And outside of a few fashion items, used clothes have almost no value in developed countries anymore. They can barely be given away. Many are simply shredded for use as rags.
  - LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
    > You haven't proposed a viable alternative. I was explaining the problem and now not solving it is my fault. > Should developed countries voluntarily stop exporting used clothing? Would that actually make people in poor countries better off? Yeah, that's what the developing country said in this instance. They passed their own laws to prevent import. And the charity promised to use the shoes for an experiment in recycling which would have brought knowledge benefits at least even if not producing a superior product. They clearly defrauded their donors regardless of Indonesian trade policies.

Freak_NL 4y ago

That's also exactly what the article mentions. The Indonesian government banned imports of second hand clothing to protect the local textile industry. While the exporter isn't doing anything illegal in Indonesia, the Indonesian importer certainly is (according to the explanation in the article). Abetting criminal activities in a neighbouring friendly country is rarely desirable.

faeriechangling 4y ago

In the same sense that secondhand book stores hurt authors? Sounds like a bunch of BS to me, somebody still has to make the shoes to begin with.

7speter 4y ago

Huh? Western clothing is normally what poor country industry is made of, or at least a significant part is.

joshuaissac 4y ago
> Western clothing is normally what poor country industry is made of, or at least a significant part is. While the used clothing sector provides employment to hundreds of thousands of people in less developed countries, it also damages their local textile manufacturing industry. Prices for locally produced clothes have to include both manufacturing and logistics costs, whereas the imported used clothes from Western countries are donated and can be profitably sold at much lower prices, covering only logistics. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-44951670 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-44951670
- maximus-decimus 4y ago
  But if they literally have free clothing, doesn't it make that local industry useless? Literally provides no value at that point. This only seems like a problem to me if people literally can't provide value in any other way. To which the solution would seem to create a new type of industry, not create an artificial need by creating a clothes penury on purpose.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    If you put a shoemaker out of a job and give them free shoes, they now can’t afford anything other than shoes. Economies grow prosperous when there are more opportunities for economic exchange.
    - paulmd 4y ago
      the terrible thing about economics is that it's very complex - "the parable of the broken window" is only a parable. the entire field of keynesian economics says that yes, you can break a window and then pay someone to fix it and increase net economic activity, as long as it's not crowding out actual economic activity that would otherwise have occurred. the "burying jars of money in the desert and paying people to dig them up" is precisely a broken window, economically speaking, and that's just a parable too. in the real world domestic workers don't all go on to become farmers (oops that's dumped onto by subsidized western businesses too) or some other business... some degree of protectionism has consistently worked well to the extent it's arguably necessary*. And don't take this as me defending sweatshops either ;) but a moderate degree of protectionism and public investment has very consistently allowed countries to move beyond the absolute basic "we have sweatshots and scrap out old electronics and recycle garbage" stage of development. Neoliberalism and free trade will suck away any public investment you give it the opportunity to, and engineer around any comparative advantage you can find.