July 31, 2020 • 64 mins
If you're like the vast majority of people, you wear clothes. Clothing is one of the oldest pieces of human technology, and these days it's also a multi-billion dollar industry. People across the planet use clothing and fashion as a means of expression, a way to make a living, and a way to communicate. But, like any other industry of the size, the fashion industry also has a dark side (several, in fact). Tune in as the guys explore the at-times disturbing origin story of so many clothes we wear -- and why the source of the hottest fashions can often be the Stuff They Don't Want You To Know.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is all they call
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
producer called Mission Control Decades. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. We're diving into a story that
(00:46):
that is going to be, in at least some respect,
familiar to all of us. Like most of our best suggestions,
this came from one of your fellow listeners from bridget
B who reached out to us via social media to
ask about the dark side of the fashion industry. Bridget
(01:08):
you specifically, we're asking us about one aspect of the
fashion industry that we're uh no spoilers, gonna gonna save
for a later episode because we believe that when it
comes to the occulted side of the story behind the
clothing we all wear, Uh, there's more than one episodes
(01:29):
worth of stuff they don't want you to know here,
and that's that's kind of because you know, Uh, clothing
is one of the fundamental needs of the human species.
It's it's the shelter that you wear and you walk
around in. Uh. You know, I think we can point
out the um the elephant or should I say, the
(01:50):
clothes source in the room here. Guys. Uh, people are
We're pretty smart. You know, we have our moments, but
we're very much a visually driven, appearance based creature, right, yeah,
you mean human beings, right, and then not not just
the three of us like that. I love the idea
of us, the three of us being a single creature,
(02:11):
like we form like vultron and we are appearance based creature. No,
it's true. We are just like like everyone else. I mean,
it's funny. Considering the times that we're living in, I
think people live may be gotten a little less concerned
with their appearances. You know, people are doing zoom calls
and like workout shorts and you know, uh kind of
must up hair and stuff. But yeah, in the before times,
(02:31):
absolutely appearances everything. You know, you want to look smart
and sharp when you go to a meeting or when
you go out on the town, and and that's what
fashion is. It becomes like almost an extension of who
we are as people. Um, the idea that you know,
the clothes make the man or whatever. Yeah, people really
lean hard into personal style and it really becomes kind
(02:54):
of intertwined with our identities. Yes, it certainly does. And
I would just say that now in times where we
aren't going out as much, the act of getting ready
for a day as though you were going to go
out and dressing up as though you are going to
an important meeting or something, or going to meet with friends,
(03:15):
and taking that extra step to look really good, it
has become this powerful thing that changes the way we
we feel about ourselves in these times and it um.
I was just speaking with my wife a little bit
about that and how you know, if you're not going
to be going out or doing anything, you generally don't
(03:36):
have to think about that stuff. But when you do,
it changes your entire outlook of for the day, the
way you feel about yourself, and the way you feel
others would interact with you. It's just fashion and caring
about appearance can be a powerful thing for oneself. Yeah, agreed.
I mean it's it gives lie to that old comfor
(04:00):
truble figure of speech where people would say, you know,
oh you can't judge a book by its cover. Well,
my response to that would be, why do books have
a cover? What's your beef with graphic designers? There? Uh? People,
we do judge people by the clothing they wear, by
their appearance, because we all participate in this uh social
(04:23):
assumption that that is a statement of person is making.
It's it's the first version of a business card we
see when we encounter someone, and it does you know,
it is an opportunity to voice one's personal aesthetic. But
at worst, it can also be a substitute for a personality.
It can be right, it can become a means of
(04:44):
confusing wealth with superiority, right, whenever the new hot product
comes out. Uh. It can even in some cases, uh,
such as UH cockades during the time leading to following
the Civil War, it can be a declaration of hate,
right like sympathies with the Confederacy or you know, in
(05:06):
maybe a fascist regime. Certain badge or arm band can
identify you. But you know, regardless of where it falls
on the spectrum, again, it's a fundamental need. We're a
smart species, but we're not especially durable. And and this
is I don't know, this is something that has always
been hilarious to me. Human beings are intelligent, right, uh,
(05:30):
but they're relatively few places in the world where a
human being can live naked all year round. Whether you're
a popper or whether you're bezos, you you probably have
to wear clothes at some point in your life. So fashion, clothing, apparel,
it's not going anywhere, but it has a dark side,
(05:51):
a very deep dark side. Here are the facts, So
why don't we start by let's kind of size up
the fashion industry here a little bit um in the US,
as some of the world's largest fashion companies are based
in the US. UH In two thousand and seventeen, the
United States alone generated a hundred and fifteen billion American
(06:12):
dollars in women's wear sales and about eighty six billion
dollars in men's wear on the US alone. The Bureau
of Labor estimates some one point eight million people are
employed in the fashion industry, with two hundred and two
thousand of those being in textiles UM manufacturing fabrics for
different peril and other fashion items, successories, et cetera. Um
(06:37):
Average annual wages and fashion range from twenty six thousand,
four and forty bucks beyond the super low end for
textile bleaching and more procedural kind of factory type operations,
dyeing machine operators uh to eighty four thousand, six hundred
bucks for folks in marketing and sales managing for sure.
In the Bureau of Labor also, you know notes in
(07:00):
year that there are a lot of discrepancies in how
much people are paid. You know, you're we're talking about
averages right, um about of all us employees and fashion
work for some kind of apparel retailer. So somebody who
is actually selling and distributing a bunch of clothing and
accessories and things, and the annual average wage at one
(07:24):
of those companies is just slightly higher, um around twenty
six thousand, six fifty dollars. However, where the real money is,
or well at least the higher wages are. That's in
sales managers. That's in the marketing side of this this industry,
(07:45):
people who are out there actually selling the stuff, people
who are running the show. They have an annual wage
of around eighty four thousand, six hundred dollars. But I
mean that that would still be on a relatively low
side of the high side, because I mean folks like
fashioned signers make like hundreds and hundreds of thousands, if
not millions of dollars. But that is that's almost like
(08:05):
if you're thinking about the fashion industry and those designers
that roll in the big bucks. It's kind of like
the NBA if you think about all all the basketball
players in the world and then the very few that
make those ridiculous amounts of money. Um, it's kind of
like that. Yeah, it's like being discovered. It's like being
a you know, a rock star. I mean it really is,
(08:28):
or or or a movie star or something. Yeah. The
to clarify, when we're talking about apparel retailers, we're talking
about everything from you know, a target where somebody might
buy back to school clothes to something more higher end
boutique you would see at a shopping district or a mall.
(08:49):
But but yes, even even with the um the rarefied
air of guru designers aside, there there's still marked market
discrepancies here. Accountants and auditors, for instance, receive an annual
average pay of just under seventy thousand dollars. Buyers and
purchasing agents get paid on average fifties six point five
(09:13):
thousand dollars a year or something like that. And and again,
you know, in any industry of this size, averages are
going to be a little bit misleading because that that
clearly means there are people who make north of a
hundred thousand dollars as purchasing agents. So if we dive
into the discrepancies here, we see that they only accelerate
(09:36):
as we look at the macro economic picture. There are big, big,
presumably well dressed fish in this global ponds. UH McKenzie,
which is a super powerful, super opaque probably kind of
evil consulting firm. UH that is a a former employer
(10:00):
of Pete Buddha j Edge. By the way, mckensey estimated
that nine seven percent of the economic profits for the
entire fashion industry are earned by a relatively small group
of companies. Just twenty companies in the fashion industry earned
of the profits, and most of those twenty companies, as
(10:22):
you might assume, are in what we call the luxury segment.
There also the majority of those twenty companies of that
pantheon of UH, of that pantheon of profitable fashion UH,
most of them have been in the game for a while.
Twelve of those top twenty have been in that that
upper echelon for the past uh ten years, and their
(10:45):
names are probably at least a few are very familiar
to you regardless of where you live. Yes, and a
lot of the you know, kind of longstanding leaders in
the space include, among many others, UM in, Indo TECs.
I don't know, Indo texts, I think that's I thinks
I would say Indo texts, l v M H and Nike,
(11:09):
which I know, Ben, you were a bit surprised by UM,
which have more than double their economic profits over the
past ten years. And each of those companies wracked up
more than two billion bucks in economic profit in UM
and you know you got we gotta remember too. The
close at the end of the day are a uh
one of those you know, life necessities. UM. They are
(11:31):
designed to help us survive UM and you know, be
warm and stay dry, but we also want to wear
things that we like and we want to look cool
while we're doing it. Let's, uh, let's go into some
more of these companies because we're talking about the ones
we mentioned. Their LVMH into texts and Nike at least
at least two billion dollars not too shabby, right, but
(11:55):
jump over to the gap, you know, the commercials you've
seen in the one near you wherever you live, because
there's probably one somewhere around you. Uh. It was the
top selling retailer. It had sales of around sixteen and
a half billion dollars. That's a United States currency, by
the way. Who pretty pretty great. Then if you look
(12:18):
at you know, the the lexus is and the infinities
of the clothing brands getting that luxury line over there,
you can check out the one we mentioned lvm H.
Um is it mo itt or mo A? I don't,
I honestly don't know. That's like, that's champagne, right, isn't
that a alcohol brand? It's such a it's such a
(12:40):
ridiculous story of consolidation of corporate acquisitions. It's uh, it's
also Hennessy, Louis Vatton, It's this, it's this gigantic luxury
goods conglomerate. It's let's just call it the good life corporate. Right.
(13:00):
That that's the LVMH. Correct, that's we're talking about Louis Vuitton, moa, Hennessy,
that's lv m H. It's crazy, and you know, like,
what else do they sell? Probably monocles. I mean, I
guess monocles. Uh, maybe like custom bath mats for mega yachts,
(13:20):
gilded Bidet's perhaps, Yes, interesting. I mean, that's that's great,
that's great for great for l v m H. That's awesome.
I want to really quickly, really quickly, will move right on,
just chime. And there's also we talk to the top
of the show about, like, you know, the idea of
like fashion being an economic indicator, a way to kind
(13:42):
of you know, flex and say, look at me, I
have money. There's a lot of people that spend a
lot of money on this stuff that don't have money,
and they just need to feel like they're keeping up
with the Joneses, and it maybe like you know, spending
irresponsibly on like Gucci stuff because they want to be
like quote unquote cool or like look like their favorite
celeb who wears these brands. But it's really not something
(14:03):
they can actually afford or they could probably be spending
their money in better ways. Just putting that out there, yeah, well,
I mean also brands at times reacted versely to that
if they become too closely associated with what they see
as the hoi polloi uh. In the United Kingdom. For instance,
when members of what is pejoratively described as the job
(14:26):
or chav demographic ch a V when they started, uh
sort of identifying themselves with certain clothing brands or certain
fashion brands, the brands took a hit to their reputation.
They didn't like it. And in the past, if we
wanna point out some of the systemic discrimination involved in
(14:48):
this industry, brands didn't like it all the time. When
hip hop artists, for instance, would say, you know, I
love this cologne or I love this blah blah blah. Ultimately,
money talks and takes the ascendant spot in any capitalist conversation. So,
for instance, the manufacturers of may Bok cars uh may
(15:09):
not have initially love the fact that they were getting
mentioned by Jadakis or Rick Ross, but uh, when they
saw the numbers and they saw the visibility, they said, okay, yeah, alright, cool.
Uh the cool people like us, and that helps us
sell cars. This certainly worked out for Hennessy excellent example, Matt,
(15:31):
and these are other there are other Um, Gucci is
the big one. Gucci is a big one. Uh, there
are other other things. These conversations happen with the most
the most valued brands in the world. And again, like
anyone who knows the strange history of the Coca Cola company. Uh,
the importance or the value of a brand is sometimes
(15:53):
very difficult to quantify, Like what's what's the actual valuation
or price you could put on Nike or Adidas. But
this conversation, we're saying it money is first, but it
also factors in more than money that the drives it.
So what this gets very interesting when we forecast the
(16:14):
future of fashion right now, we can categorize the world
in terms of the the biggest apparel markets. We've got
pretty solid information on that there in the following order. Um, first,
the European Union is number one. It's got the largest
apparel market, and that's some people might take that see
(16:37):
that as a little unfair because remember the European Union
is a organization composed of twenty eight different member states
that are all their own countries. So it's it's kind
of like it's kind of like comparing a team for
a team sport to a group of individual players. Because
(16:59):
second is the United States and then third is China.
Given the current economic pandemonium, that may very well change
in the coming years in ten, which is probably the
best like the most recent solid numbers we would have here.
Uh the fastest growing global market in apparel was sportswear.
(17:23):
It was growing at six percent, which doesn't sound that
huge until you hear the next statistic, the size of
the global apparel market. Uh in it was one point
three trillion dollars with a T in US dollars by
this year. And this number came before Mackenzie really understood
(17:47):
there was a you know, a global pandemic coming, which
we kind of predicted in our Superbug episode years ago. Anyway,
long story short, the market is supposed to likely eyes
to one point five trillion dollars. So while six point
eight percent may not sound like a huge number, six
point eight percent of one and a half trillion dollars
(18:10):
certainly is. And a lot of this is because, you know,
if you look at if you look at the planet overall,
we're seeing the emergence of an act of a true
middle class in a lot of the world that historically
had a an incredibly inequal domestic population, you know what
(18:30):
I mean. We're like one to five of people controlled
the majority of wealth, and most other people were consigned
to poverty. Now more and more families are saying like, Hey,
I want to get myself some or my loved ones,
uh some some more and luxurious high end clothing. You
know that ties in with diet. I want to eat
(18:51):
more meat, I want to go out to eat more. Um.
This this pattern is most apparent in the region of
the Asia cific. Uh, there's a four percent rise in
the apparel market there overall. So if you want to
if you want to make a lot of money and
you're a global fashion can colomberate start selling sportswear, sell
(19:14):
it in Asia, make it over priced, and uh just
watch the money roll in. You know, it's a really
great point that you made earlier. Been about that report
coming out showing the one point five trillion daughter the
increase to one point five trillion dollars um. It does
feel as though the disruption, the economic disruption from this
(19:37):
pandemic globally in the fashion industry may not be fully
felt for a little while, just because of if you
think about the way money flows in these from you know, designing,
to manufacturing to the actual selling of these products, right
and you know it's being affected in the fact in
(20:01):
the factories where these clothing. You know, we're clothing is
being created, it's being affected in people not being able
to go to a retail store, the retail stores closing themselves,
all of the online shopping that is occurring, but black
or less of a need for a lot of the
fashion items. So man, it's just it's gonna be pretty brutal,
(20:23):
I think, Um, but we just don't have those numbers
yet because we're not in the future yet. However, the
McKenzie State of Fashion made a report in twenty nineteen
that I don't know, seemed to be looking forward to
with some serious prescience. Uh, we've got some quotes here.
We predict that twenty nineteen will be a year shaped
(20:43):
by consumer shifts linked to technology, social causes, and trust
issues alongside. I love this idea of trust issues alongside
the potential disruption from geopolitical and macroeconomic events. Let's unpack
that that that that's a lot going on in that
trust issues, potential just eruption. Indeed, yeah, you know, that's
(21:03):
that's the thing. You You don't have to think McKenzie
is necessarily heroic to admit that there's some that's pretty
good research here. This report. You know is necessarily vague
because they're they're trying to uh prognosticate a little bit,
(21:24):
and they're you know, at this point they weren't able
to say this specific chain of events will occur, but
trust issues. They're clearly describing, you know what what is
occurring in the US and abroad today. I mean, look,
it's what. It's July as we record this. The Kingdom
(21:47):
of Iran is going into an internet blackout due to protests.
They're sweeping the country. You might have read about it
on Reddit, maybe maybe, but there's so much happening people
do trust their government's less because it's it's not because
there's uh, it's not entirely due to foreign dis info campaigns.
It's also because the average voter knows more about how
(22:11):
the sausage is made. And it's a gross disturbing story.
So so Mackenzie knew. That's so crazy. They knew in
twenty nineteen, what would happen. I can't wait to read
the report. Uh if we're all little light reading there
for yeah, it's just it's just emoji. It's just it's
(22:35):
just like an all bold caps were Yeah, and uh.
The report also it mentions it in that quotation there.
But the report also examines the role of technology in
a couple of ways that matter for this episode. First
that there will be um ever more sophisticated logistics programs
(22:59):
like a lot of the big companies you know, from
Walmart on down, Uh they prized themselves on their uh
supply chain logistics. And then of course data analytics, which
are part of every single modern business. Now it doesn't
matter what you're selling, you want to know everything about
the person buying it. And then waste reduction efforts. Waste
(23:21):
is a huge problem in the fashion industry, which will
explore a later episode properly. And then really jets stuff
that sounds very um utopian and jets and sci fi
level here, like drone delivery. Why go to a store,
We'll just we'll send you that, uh, we'll send you
that Louis Vuitton drone. But that's all good, right, All
(23:42):
this sounds like a step from the right direction. Yeah, yeah,
I mean yeah, hopefully it's it's definitely it's um, it's
definitely what we would want to happen. Uh not for
I hate this phrase, you guys, but it's definitely what
every stakeholder would want to see from the company's creating
the stuff to the people doing the actual work of
(24:04):
manufacturing it to the people buying it at the other
end of the chain. The report also lists the growing
demand for sustainability and this part greater interest in transparency
and supply chains, along with a growing desire for those
established brands, those Nikes, those Adidas, and so on to
(24:25):
participate in some way in political matters, which might be
surprising to some of our fellow listeners, because you know,
the factions of traditional media will sometimes give a or
in the past, they would give fashion brands some uh,
some heat, they would give them some smoke if they said,
(24:46):
you know, we support one movement or another. I'm not
gonna say, you know, I'm not saying it's going to
go as far as like we at Nike, Uh we
we at Nike support regime change in Iran or some
thing like that, because that that won't help them sell
shoes as soon as it helps them sell something they care.
(25:08):
Right When when, when when there was an opportunity uh
to affect you know, the second quarter profits by uh
performatively allying oneself with a cause to jour, then of
course they're all in that's money. You know what I mean,
just do it? Uh sorry, yeah, I mean when the
(25:31):
zite guys turns with a large enough majority of the
public opinion, right, that's when it happens. That's when you
can see every company coming out with some kind of
support for a movement. And we've seen it pretty recently happening.
Companies that you may not expect to see from see
(25:52):
that from mm hmm. And at the at the you know,
it's that old saying at the heart of every great
fortune lay some sort of crime. Now, honestly, that's that's
a little bit of a broad brush statement. You know. Uh,
some people in some institutions accumulate wealth because they do
(26:13):
a good job. It doesn't necessarily mean they broke the
law or social mooris or taboos. But that doesn't make
this statement entirely untrue. Unless you've been living some sort
of trick lugetic existence and you never watch the news
and you've only wear worn clothes that you made yourself,
(26:37):
you you have the odds are you have heard about
the ongoing concerns regarding the dark side of the fashion industry.
It's very true. Just to jump back really quickly to
that concept of a great fortune constituting at some point
probably some kind of crime or a crime at the
heart of something like that. We've talked about it length
(26:57):
before in the show, but just to read or the
concept here is that a great fortune generally is not
something that is built within a couple of years. It
takes time to build money up, and then that money
continues to accrue more money, and it grows and grows
and grows. Concept there is that if you go back
far enough with something that would be considered a great fortune,
(27:19):
there's probably some act or some process within you know,
creating a product or pulling something out of the ground,
like a natural resource, where there was something terrible that
happened to other people in order for that fortune to
be generated. That's all we're saying. Oh yeah, yeah, Like
the Kennedy dynasty of political dynasty here in the US,
(27:42):
pretty solid evidence that, uh, they got their starting bootlegging
and they later sort of diversified into politics. Yeah, and
and you know, that's not to say that bootlegging was
the absolute worst crime ever, but it was certainly illegal
at the time when it was being done. And real quick,
I think we buried the lead here trogladinic. Amazing word,
(28:06):
amazing word. Then finally, oh, you know, we didn't write it.
But yeah, it's just living like a trigo living. It
means cave dweller. It's just like the uh, it's the
fancy version of cave dweller. It's the overpriced, upmarket fashion
version of cave dweller. Love it. But you know, speaking
(28:28):
like of the fashion industry, of the idea of of crime,
the dark side of the fashion industry, we're we're not
talking about the stories where the sometimes sordid lives of
hot shot gurus of design or influencers, and we're not
talking about the cabals that meet to determine what quote
(28:48):
unquote hot color palettes and products will be for the
given year. But those caballs exist. It's crazy. There's a
there are groups of people who get together every year
and decide what will be in fashion or cool. And
when they do it, part of how they part of
their process, is to try to make it seem like
(29:10):
everyone just organically agreed, which is ridiculous. I wonder if
that happens in other industries. I hope it happens in
other industries. I hope there's like a caball for um
thinking what the silliest thing would be, I'm hoping the past. Yeah, yeah,
is there a caball for podcasts? How do we get
in that room? I think it's called I Heart Media?
(29:34):
Is it? Well, we we don't have the best track
record then no, you guys. I just something occurs to me.
Can we dub this episode the Dark Side of the Loom?
That's cool, that's pretty just just it's I mean, you know,
just submitted for your approval, and things are about to
get dark. These harrowing tales of the people actually making
(29:54):
the clothes, you know, the ones actually operating these looms,
these massive machine creating the fabric. The stories they get
kind of filed away in some back room, um, you know,
or some uh step along the way of this absurdly clandestine,
you know, meandering supply chain from the factory to the
(30:18):
fashion show, um, the runway, um to the retail rack.
Or you've got your high street boutiques in London. I
love I love the idea of the high Street. I've
never been, but I always think of it as being
like an elevation thing, Like the high Street is literally
like somehow higher than the other streets. But that's not true.
They just call it the high street because it's uh,
just like a main street in the United States. So
(30:41):
what's the secret story behind all of this stuff? And
we'll tell you right after a quick work from our sponsor.
Pretty sure it's a high end fashion retailer. Here's where
it gets crazy. The secret story of the fashion industry,
(31:02):
or one of them, is slavery. Not being hyperbolic here,
not exaggerating, not embellishing, not chasing a sensational headline, slavery.
At this point, it's a stretch to even call it
a secret, although it is definitely something apparel industry giants
(31:24):
historically have not and in several cases still don't want
you to know. Uh there. There's a twenty eight team
report by the outfit Global Slavery Index dot org where
they found that the fashion industry has not just involvement
with the practice of modern slavery, but huge gigantic economic
(31:47):
impact on it. It's the fashion industry's existence and the
way it moves now is very very good for the
slave trade. Uh specifically a quote for UM. This report
finds that the fashion supply chain funnels more money towards
modern slavery than any other industry besides technology, and and
(32:11):
why is that important? Just to exacerbate this in absolute terms,
there are more slaves alive right now, enslaved than at
any other point in modern history. Yeah, And a lot
of this trouble arises when you've got, uh, let's say
(32:31):
a company based in country A. Let's just say the
United States for this example, and all of your manufacturing,
for the products that you're creating, that you've designed, it's
being done in company B, which is halfway across the
world somewhere where the rule of law is very different
(32:52):
in that country, and the laws in country A and
B do not apply to one another. So then when
you're trading and making deals and setting up contracts, it
just becomes a very different system, right, And it's there's
a lot of trouble in enforcing law in country B.
When you're in country A and you know there's a
(33:13):
crime being committed, or if you know you're in country
B and there's a crime being committed in country A,
it's just a it's a tough thing to deal with,
the big problem here is that many of the companies
who are operating in this way to get cheap labor
in a different country. Are aware that these problems exist,
or it can it can be assumed that they're aware.
(33:35):
And it's important to say, you know, we're talking in
absolute terms when we explore modern slavery, but it comes
from a couple of factors. You know. One we have
to we have to be objective and say part of
it is due to the overall rise of the human population. Right. Uh,
(33:55):
that turns out actually that's probably going to be a fad.
Global fertility rates are are crashing just because there are
more people enslaved and absolute numbers, that doesn't mean the
percentage of people enslaved is necessarily at an all time high.
For more information on this, please do check out our
(34:17):
earlier episode on modern slavery. But there's another part of this,
and I think it's what you're you're speaking to here, Matt,
the the interaction of of the fashion industry. It's it's
not a altruistic affair, right, It's not a nonprofit, it's
not a not for profit. It is it is clearly
(34:37):
a profit driven endeavor. This unending search for cost cutting
to streamline supply chains. These are the kind of things
that could be considered sort of the Star Trek like
continuing mission of these global enterprises doing a the Captain
Kirk of inappropriate jokes over here. And we don't know
(35:00):
how many slaves exist, right like, that's that's terrifying. We
don't really know, Yes, we we do not know the
exact numbers, but we do have some estimates that we
can point to here and it's harrowing stuff. It's estimated
there are probably somewhere around twenty seven to thirty million
people who are enslaved right now, and there are other
(35:23):
outfits that have estimated that number to be higher than
forty million. And that's across the entire globe that we're
talking about. A lot of the people who are enslaved
are thought to be in India. There are a couple
other countries that also have a large number of those
who are enslaved. We're looking at Russia, China, Nigeria, Pakistan, Ethiopia,
(35:46):
the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mayan, mar Burma, Bangladesh, and
Pakistan uh And you know, that's really unfortunate to hear that.
I mean, somewhere between twenty seven and forty something million
people that are enslaved right now. Um, it's crazy. I mean.
(36:08):
And and before the episode started we were talking a
little bit off Mike and I was like, Ben, so
when we say slavery, are we talking about just super
low wages? Are we talking about like some kind you know,
obviously there's prison labor, but I would consider slave labor
in its own weird way. Um, And it's it turns
out there's this weird gray area and it's sort of
(36:28):
like a combination of a lot of these things sort
of mashed up. It's really kind of hard to track.
But yeah, at the end of the day, you call
it what it is. It's modern slavery. Yes, it always UM,
no small way distress to learn that since the time
we recorded modern Slavery, and since the time to the
(36:49):
time that we're recording today's episode, the average cost of
quote unquote buying a human being is still very very cheap.
It's very low today. In according to UH nonprofit watch
groups sites like Modern Day Crimes dot org UH in
(37:10):
multiple sources UH, the agreed upon average cost again this
is to buy a living human being is nine that's
less than just for comparison, that's less than a lot
of people's monthly cable and Internet bills. That's much less
than say a a PlayStation or a game console of choice.
(37:37):
We are, as a society saying that what one PlayStation
is worth four, maybe the new one's worth five human
beings really disturbing. So yeah, we're we're consider us available
to ruin all your future casual get togethers in cocktail parties. Uh.
But but but to your point, no, Uh, we do
(38:00):
too acknowledge that there is there is a blurred line here.
There is a gray area, liminal space in the difference
between very highly exploited labor and out and out slavery.
There's a definition that the CNN Freedom Project used that
that we think is is a good lay of the
(38:22):
land definition for what we mean when we say slavery today.
That's correct. Uh. They define modern slavery as quote when
one person completely controls another person using violence or the
threat of violence to maintain that control uh and exploits
them economically, um, and they are not able to walk away.
(38:44):
That threat of violence could on this is this is
me uh, could also be a threat to their family
in anyway, holding them hostage uh and forcing them to
do work against their will. You know, we see a
lot of times that this kind of thing is enforced
by one or one person or one group holding onto
(39:07):
the traveling papers essentially of another or a family to
where they cannot leave, where they do not have any
money to leave UM, or to gain access to other
means of transportation or escape. UM. It's really rough stuff
mm hmm. And and it's it's all true. This is
(39:30):
not conspiratorial theory. Macy headline chasing reports that focus on
the many many people that are tragically forced into UH
sexual exploitation, but looking at the statistics for what we know,
many more people, the majority of people are forced into
(39:52):
manual labor of some sort, and of course it would
be naive to not acknowledge at the people forced into
manual labor are often also exploited sexually by UH those
impositions of power. This manual labor includes stuff like the
production of textiles fabrics UH in some cases the the
(40:16):
final step in manufacturing of clothing that consumers around the
world purchase. Like literally the people who take something that
was made in a generic factory and then so on
the name brand label UH, and then that goes to
someone in a store somewhere UH, and they might buy
this uh, these shirts, these pants, these socks, these shoes, etcetera.
(40:38):
And wear them on a regular basis for years without
ever knowing them. The disquieting genesis of of of that
of that piece of clothing. It's modern slavery. And it's
not you know, we're focusing on the fashion industry, but
long time listeners, you know, this has popped up in
(41:00):
other cases, right in in mining, it's everywhere. In certain
agricultural goods, it's everywhere. Lots of food production. Yeah yeah,
and uh, and people have even been you know, enslaved
in all but name here in the US to assist
with harvesting crops. Right, So, slavery is a link in
(41:23):
numerous supply chains. According to the U. S. State Department,
slavery just by itself is a thirty billion dollar industry,
and it's an industry fueled by lack of transparency in
unregulated production and illegal work practices. It can take several
forms in the world of fashion. Yeah, you gotta wonder too, Like,
(41:44):
I mean, the paper trail of all this. It's not like,
you know, it incriminates these companies as like, Okay, we
went out looking for slave labor. It's just kind of
part of a bigger system, right, I mean, you know
where it ends up. It's like a byproduct of us,
this hunger for cheap labor and cheap manufacturing, and we're
complicit as a country. It's not just fashion. I mean,
(42:07):
it's like we crave this, therefore there's a market for it,
right Yeah. And you never know who is going to
be doing what for that piece of clothing you're wearing
because you cannot see that supply chain when you go
pick something up and buy it. You can't see it.
There's no way to do it right now, because there
may be an enslaved person harvesting the cotton that became
that shirt you've got on or the pants that you're
(42:27):
rocking right now. A n enslaved person may have spun
up all of that fiber that cotton into yarn that
created that thing. There may have been an enslaved person
that actually did the final stitching on that shirt and
thousands of others that ended up in that retail store
that you usually go to. And it's gonna be really
tough for you to prove that that's happening, or to
(42:49):
look at a label in some way and figure out
if that was if that happened at some point along
the way. Ben, is this the same kind of stuff
that we used to hear refer to as sweat shops
back in the day. Yeah, yeah, sweatshops. Sweatshops can straddle
the line there. Typically the typical idea of a sweatshop
is very underpaid labor, if not outright slavery. But to
(43:14):
go back to that idea of the liminal space, you
could say that the fashion industry walks a fine line
between slavery and exploited labor. You could say they, I
guess you could say, if if you want to be
cute about it, that they thread the needle. The thing
here is, you know the problem of enforcement. What is
legal or accepted in one country, such as a very
(43:37):
low wage or very long working hours and unsafe conditions,
might be illegal in the country where the ultimate end
product is purchased. Right, So this means that you can
circumvent laws because remember, corporations nowadays are often more more
powerful than states or government. We're moving through that evolution
(44:02):
of ultimate ultimate social power here. Most of the interactions
between fashion industry and modern slavery come from, as we said,
global supply chains and slave labor sort of infiltrates that
fashion industry and myriad ways in the supply chain, like
the different ways, the different avenues you mentioned matt Um.
(44:27):
This also goes into it goes into underage labor, child slavery.
Imagine if you're a kid born in extremely disadvantaged circumstances,
you and your parents get an offer for a gig
that pays pretty well, and you think, well, higher education
is not a possibility for me. I have to find
(44:49):
a job to support my family. Uh Like, in in
very real terms, I have to be able to buy
food or medicine. So I'll take this job. I'll travel
to this factory. They say they're going to give me
an education as well. This will be a step up
in life for me. But then you're in coerced factory
labor and you are kept in debt bondage. Debt bondage
(45:13):
is something that's going to be familiar um too many
people because it takes many forms. This is an explicit
form of debt bondage. But you could also say, uh,
debt bondage is uh well, debt bondage is a way
of an employer um bilking an employee out of compensation
(45:35):
by adding a bunch of incurred costs. Right that they
quote unquote recoup before the person doing the actual work
sees a penny. This will be familiar to any musician
who has ever worked with a record label. Right that,
you could make a pretty strong argument that something similar
happens with a lot of especially historically a lot of
(45:56):
recording agreements. Right, you get the money deductive for studio?
What I me? How does that work meant? Oh? Oh, man,
I don't know. I've never actually worked with the label before.
But yeah, it's just anyone, anyone attempting to keep you
on the hook um for a debt that you owe
by adding more and more to that debt. It's a
(46:18):
story that we've heard more and more about over the
past ten years or so with regards to human trafficking.
When someone pays, or or needs to pay a group
several thousand dollars, let's say, to be moved from one
country to another country, and they have to do it secretly.
When the people arrive in the destination country, the people
(46:42):
that brought them there say, well, yeah, you still owe
us this money. How are you gonna pay us back
that money? You have no money and then that uh,
that group would then force them to do things such
as labor and other terrible things in order to pay
off that debt. But of course it's an accruing interests,
so you never really are able to get out of
(47:03):
debt and you just are essentially stuck in bondage. Yeah,
and if we look at the report mentioned by Global
Slavery Index, one point to seven billion dollars worth of
garments were at least what they say, what they've phrased
is at risk of including modern slavery in their supply chain.
(47:25):
They're imported annually by the G twenty that's the group
of nations that accounts for eight of the world trade
UH in the in this industry. If we look at
their demographics from what we know of people who are
laboring in bondage or slavery, of the population are thought
to be women. So the question what are people doing
(47:46):
to try and stop this? The kind of good news
is they're trying to do some things. We'll tell you
more after a word from our sponsor. So we're back
once again. Legislation rears its head slowly and inefficiently and imperfectly,
(48:11):
but we're you know, we're getting out there. UH. Various
Western countries have attempted to address this crisis. Make no mistake,
it is a crisis. It is a conspiracy. Through legislation,
in California passed an act requiring large companies to publicly
disclose their efforts to address slavery and human trafficking in
their supply chains. The UK did the same thing or
(48:34):
a similar thing, and the Modern Slavery Act of that
said businesses past a certain size have to publicly disseminate
the actions they've taken to combat supply chain slave labor. Uh.
And and that met with some positive force, but we
can only really describe it as a good start because
(48:55):
that legislation had problems. We don't know how effective it was,
don't know to what degree it was enforced. And you know,
the California law only applies to California. There are forty
nine other states and they're really messed up. Stuff is
happening in the US controlled regions that aren't even considered states. UH.
(49:16):
And then there's the there's the big bank conundrum. Right like,
after a certain after a certain point of profit right
and economic heft than any kind of UH fight, A
lot of financial punishment is just gonna be folded into
the cost of business. Right, you're a bank, you do
something crooked, you get your Yeah, you pay the fine.
(49:36):
You just pay the fine. It's not gonna It's like
if you got a twenty dollar ticket for legally parking,
you could tell yourself, well, if I parked in a
parking deck, it would have been twenty five dollars, and
and and again and again. Like this cost of doing
business mentality is such an American like staple, like of capitalism,
like this idea of you know, deregulation, or of like
(50:00):
even the idea that we can you know, why would
I pay taxes? Why like, why would I'd be stupid
to pay taxes? You know, I should do whatever I
can to use these loopholes to best serve my interests
as as a business person. You know, the President says
that very unabashedly, because it's considered like a badge of
honor to be I'm smart. You know, if I wasn't smart,
(50:22):
I would be paying taxes. You know, it's the same
thing with this stuff. You know. Uh, these leaders are
like they're looking out for that bottom line. I mean,
I I don't want to you know, just it's obviously
beating a dead horse, but it's so clear, and yeah,
they just yeah, we'll pay the fine and we'll just
roll that into the cost of doing business. It's a
problem with loopholes, you know. Uh, there's there's a conflict
(50:42):
of interest all too often people who are making the laws.
And this is not just the US thing, this is
and every this is an everywhere thing. People who are
making the laws often have a vested financial interest in
carving out loopholes that take the teeth and claws from
those laws, that render them in some way ineffective, such
(51:03):
that they simultaneously appease the concerns of voters at least
for that news cycle, while also maintaining the economic status quo.
I mean, here's the story that the Jedi won't tell you.
If you live in the US, you've probably seen that
made in USA label on various products. The idea here
(51:25):
is that you see that you buy it because you're
supporting your domestic economy and you're also buying something that
conforms to the labor and employment laws of the US.
But we found an example from back in that shows
just how meaningless that phrase can be. Yeah, back in
(51:47):
which was, by the way, twenty seven years after that
old made in USA label started making the rounds on
pretty major brands. The New York Times ended up they
exposed a scam that have been for a long time.
So let's let's just talk about this um. There were
a ton of industry giants Ero, Liz claib Or in
(52:07):
the Gap, Montgomery Ward, Jeffrey Bean. There are a ton
of them. They were all using oh Levies, by the way,
also included they were all using the made in USA label.
But here's the thing. They were actually manufacturing clothing in
a place called the Northern Marians or the Northern Mariana Islands. Now,
(52:28):
this is a really interesting case and it's exactly that
kind of loophole we're describing here where the Northern Mariana
Islands are not a United States state. They're not a U.
S state, correct, They are a commonwealth technically that's where
they are. It's uh, you know, they're islands that are
out in the Northwest Pacific Ocean. And the problem here
(52:49):
is that in this commonwealth, the same rules don't necessarily
apply that if you're a citizen of the United States,
it's it's a weird again, a loophole situation where there
are some similarities but it's not the same thing. The
workers there in the Northern Mariana Islands, UH, they were
often migrant laborers from other countries, specifically from the Philippines
(53:12):
and China and other Asian region countries. They would live
on site at these factories where manufacturing was occurring. They
were living in dormitories that were just terrible. They were
working ridiculously long days, and they were making two dollars
in fifteen cents an hour, which was almost exactly half
of the guaranteed federal wage that the United States would
(53:35):
uh would give to anyone working at that time. In
it's uh, it's really crazy. The worst part is that
if those factory workers like spoke up, guess what would happen? Yeah,
Unfortunately we don't have to guess because we have stories
from the people who survived this experience. They were booted
(53:56):
off the project, they were shipped back to their country
of origin, and additionally, the wages they were due we're confiscated.
So that's I think that's an example of the liminal
space between exploitation of labor and slavery. Because you had
someone who was able to hold that over you. If
(54:19):
you complain, we're just not going to pay you. And
in at the time of that expose eight, clothing from
the Northern Marianas only made up about one per cent
of the twenty nine billion dollars in clothing imported into
the US, but it accounted for up to twenty percent
(54:39):
of the clothing sold worldwide by some large American companies.
And and now you have to think, like, if you're
the average US customer in how in the hell are
you going to be aware of that? How are you
going to know? How are you going to know? Uh?
And and while we're being fair in many cases, especially
(55:01):
in the past, it's not as if these companies all
got together and pulled some sort of monty burdens things
steepling their fingers and like, yes, suppose this slave trade. No,
because the complex supply chains here make it possible, plausible
in some cases even probable, that many companies genuinely were
(55:23):
unaware of their complicit participation in slavery. They see that
they get a great price on cotton, right and sign
a several year contract for that, and then that goes
to a different company that has a factory where the
cottonist process they signed a contract for that, and then
that goes to a different company and so on and
so on and so on until it gets to a
(55:45):
store they didn't do due diligence, and performing due diligence
on every aspect of a supply chain has to be
If we're considering financial punishment for breaking the law a
cost of doing business, then due diligence should logically also
be a cost of business going forward. Will that make
(56:05):
clothing more expensive? I mean, yeah, probably, I would imagine. Yeah,
Like I felt like maybe I was miss using this
term when I've when I've used in the past, but
I just looked it up and I think it applies
the idea of the banality of evil. Um. You know,
there's a philosopher named Aren't who Um referred to the
Nazi war criminal aikman Um as being an example of
(56:27):
the manality of evil, that he wasn't inherently evil, but
just shallow and clueless. And that's kind of what this
this all is. You know, these corporations that maybe they're
not inherently evil, but they just don't care enough to
like know what's going on, and it's just a byproduct
of like the whole capitalist system that yeah, you know,
just a couple of bad apples, right, this is there's yes, sure,
(56:49):
there might be a little slavery in there, but it's
mainly fine. So who cares, right, people like problems that
are removed, I mean too. On the other hand, that
point right, yes, this, this will probably make clothing more expensive.
You can buy, uh, you can buy sourced clothing that
(57:10):
is described as sustainable in terms of impact on the environment,
in terms of their wage and employment practices, and yeah,
it tends to be more expensive. But on the other
side of the coin, since we're talking about money, on
the other side of the figurative coin here, do you
want to live in a world where you, in some
way are supporting the enslavement of human beings because you
(57:33):
say five to fifteen or whatever bucks at the register?
Do you want like are we have to ask ourselves
are we comfortable with this arrangement because it's happening in
a way that we cannot immediately see if you had
to go to the people who are enslaved and you
had to buy that stuff directly from them and look
(57:54):
them in the eye, and you know, acknowledge like life
sucks and people are terrible, but I am I am
agreeing that it's better for me because this is eight
bucks instead of twelve. I think a lot more people
would be a lot more uncomfortable with the idea or
food processing. That's a good example, right, people will eat
(58:16):
something because they don't have to watch the cow get slaughtered.
They don't have to watch the bolt gun shoot into
its brain, you know, So you're at a remove. Therefore
it's easy for you to just kind of absolve yourself
of any responsibility. You know. I'm not saying that killing
cattle is bad or is in any way equivalent to
slave labor, but it's a similar, you know, kind of
(58:39):
that that remove is very similar. Then you've painted a
picture in my head where I'm imagining a small booth
where there is let's it's let's say it's in India
because that's where a lot of the modern slavery is occurring,
or you know any other country where it's agree there's
a small booth where there's one person sitting behind that
booth and there's a big rack of designer fashion clothes
(59:01):
behind them, and uh, when a customer comes up, picks
out picks out a piece of clothing, hands the person
behind that booth, let's say a hundred and twenty dollars
US for this piece of clothing, and that person behind
the booth takes that money, gives you that piece of
clothing that they made by their hands, hands that money
(59:23):
to their employer which is standing right next to them,
and the employer gives them back half of a penny
or you know, one cent in order for all of
the labor the actual human being that created that thing gets,
you know, whatever miniscule fraction if anything, for creating that
(59:43):
piece of clothing for you, the end user, it is
just man, Yeah, you know, the thing is I I
know this can come off as sanctimonious, so we also
have to admit it is very difficult to It is
very difficult for us when we're buying stuff to be
(01:00:03):
aware of just how many horrible uh injustices or shenanigans,
if you want to be glib, go into this right
like how the demand for attention and the demand for
research is so unending nowadays. We like, even even in
the course of this show, there are at least three
(01:00:26):
other hidden sides of fashion that we have not covered
in this episode. One, we didn't cover the rampant sexual
exploitation in the modeling industry, which is very closely related
to the fashion industry. Two, we didn't cover the um
to me hilarious story of the deciders, those real life
(01:00:48):
committees that get together every so often and decide what
is or isn't going to be hot in the in
the subjective shifting world of taste. And we didn't come
were the pollution and the waste, which was you know,
what set us off on this path to begin with.
So we have more to We have more to dive
(01:01:08):
into in future episodes. I think certainly we we haven't
even talked about the psychological damage globally, globally that the
fashion industry has done for the you know self image
of women and men across the world. Um, yeah, so
whole there are there's lots to go over here. So
what do you think about all of this that we've
(01:01:30):
discussed at a the ugly side of this giant industry
of the things that are on your body right now?
Unless you're listening to this, you know, commando or naked
or however you how do you like to listen to
the show. I mean, we don't judge. Whatever you want
to do. What steps can be taken? Do you think
to actually stop some of this? Not to you know,
(01:01:51):
have some kind of loophole legislation out there, but what
can actually be done to change this whole thing. We
want you to write to us if possible. Uh, find
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(01:02:14):
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(01:02:34):
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(01:03:52):
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is all they call
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
producer called Mission Control Decades. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. We're diving into a story that
(00:46):
that is going to be, in at least some respect,
familiar to all of us. Like most of our best suggestions,
this came from one of your fellow listeners from bridget
B who reached out to us via social media to
ask about the dark side of the fashion industry. Bridget
(01:08):
you specifically, we're asking us about one aspect of the
fashion industry that we're uh no spoilers, gonna gonna save
for a later episode because we believe that when it
comes to the occulted side of the story behind the
clothing we all wear, Uh, there's more than one episodes
(01:29):
worth of stuff they don't want you to know here,
and that's that's kind of because you know, Uh, clothing
is one of the fundamental needs of the human species.
It's it's the shelter that you wear and you walk
around in. Uh. You know, I think we can point
out the um the elephant or should I say, the
(01:50):
clothes source in the room here. Guys. Uh, people are
We're pretty smart. You know, we have our moments, but
we're very much a visually driven, appearance based creature, right, yeah,
you mean human beings, right, and then not not just
the three of us like that. I love the idea
of us, the three of us being a single creature,
(02:11):
like we form like vultron and we are appearance based creature. No,
it's true. We are just like like everyone else. I mean,
it's funny. Considering the times that we're living in, I
think people live may be gotten a little less concerned
with their appearances. You know, people are doing zoom calls
and like workout shorts and you know, uh kind of
must up hair and stuff. But yeah, in the before times,
(02:31):
absolutely appearances everything. You know, you want to look smart
and sharp when you go to a meeting or when
you go out on the town, and and that's what
fashion is. It becomes like almost an extension of who
we are as people. Um, the idea that you know,
the clothes make the man or whatever. Yeah, people really
lean hard into personal style and it really becomes kind
(02:54):
of intertwined with our identities. Yes, it certainly does. And
I would just say that now in times where we
aren't going out as much, the act of getting ready
for a day as though you were going to go
out and dressing up as though you are going to
an important meeting or something, or going to meet with friends,
(03:15):
and taking that extra step to look really good, it
has become this powerful thing that changes the way we
we feel about ourselves in these times and it um.
I was just speaking with my wife a little bit
about that and how you know, if you're not going
to be going out or doing anything, you generally don't
(03:36):
have to think about that stuff. But when you do,
it changes your entire outlook of for the day, the
way you feel about yourself, and the way you feel
others would interact with you. It's just fashion and caring
about appearance can be a powerful thing for oneself. Yeah, agreed.
I mean it's it gives lie to that old comfor
(04:00):
truble figure of speech where people would say, you know,
oh you can't judge a book by its cover. Well,
my response to that would be, why do books have
a cover? What's your beef with graphic designers? There? Uh? People,
we do judge people by the clothing they wear, by
their appearance, because we all participate in this uh social
(04:23):
assumption that that is a statement of person is making.
It's it's the first version of a business card we
see when we encounter someone, and it does you know,
it is an opportunity to voice one's personal aesthetic. But
at worst, it can also be a substitute for a personality.
It can be right, it can become a means of
(04:44):
confusing wealth with superiority, right, whenever the new hot product
comes out. Uh. It can even in some cases, uh,
such as UH cockades during the time leading to following
the Civil War, it can be a declaration of hate,
right like sympathies with the Confederacy or you know, in
(05:06):
maybe a fascist regime. Certain badge or arm band can
identify you. But you know, regardless of where it falls
on the spectrum, again, it's a fundamental need. We're a
smart species, but we're not especially durable. And and this
is I don't know, this is something that has always
been hilarious to me. Human beings are intelligent, right, uh,
(05:30):
but they're relatively few places in the world where a
human being can live naked all year round. Whether you're
a popper or whether you're bezos, you you probably have
to wear clothes at some point in your life. So fashion, clothing, apparel,
it's not going anywhere, but it has a dark side,
(05:51):
a very deep dark side. Here are the facts, So
why don't we start by let's kind of size up
the fashion industry here a little bit um in the US,
as some of the world's largest fashion companies are based
in the US. UH In two thousand and seventeen, the
United States alone generated a hundred and fifteen billion American
(06:12):
dollars in women's wear sales and about eighty six billion
dollars in men's wear on the US alone. The Bureau
of Labor estimates some one point eight million people are
employed in the fashion industry, with two hundred and two
thousand of those being in textiles UM manufacturing fabrics for
different peril and other fashion items, successories, et cetera. Um
(06:37):
Average annual wages and fashion range from twenty six thousand,
four and forty bucks beyond the super low end for
textile bleaching and more procedural kind of factory type operations,
dyeing machine operators uh to eighty four thousand, six hundred
bucks for folks in marketing and sales managing for sure.
In the Bureau of Labor also, you know notes in
(07:00):
year that there are a lot of discrepancies in how
much people are paid. You know, you're we're talking about
averages right, um about of all us employees and fashion
work for some kind of apparel retailer. So somebody who
is actually selling and distributing a bunch of clothing and
accessories and things, and the annual average wage at one
(07:24):
of those companies is just slightly higher, um around twenty
six thousand, six fifty dollars. However, where the real money is,
or well at least the higher wages are. That's in
sales managers. That's in the marketing side of this this industry,
(07:45):
people who are out there actually selling the stuff, people
who are running the show. They have an annual wage
of around eighty four thousand, six hundred dollars. But I
mean that that would still be on a relatively low
side of the high side, because I mean folks like
fashioned signers make like hundreds and hundreds of thousands, if
not millions of dollars. But that is that's almost like
(08:05):
if you're thinking about the fashion industry and those designers
that roll in the big bucks. It's kind of like
the NBA if you think about all all the basketball
players in the world and then the very few that
make those ridiculous amounts of money. Um, it's kind of
like that. Yeah, it's like being discovered. It's like being
a you know, a rock star. I mean it really is,
(08:28):
or or or a movie star or something. Yeah. The
to clarify, when we're talking about apparel retailers, we're talking
about everything from you know, a target where somebody might
buy back to school clothes to something more higher end
boutique you would see at a shopping district or a mall.
(08:49):
But but yes, even even with the um the rarefied
air of guru designers aside, there there's still marked market
discrepancies here. Accountants and auditors, for instance, receive an annual
average pay of just under seventy thousand dollars. Buyers and
purchasing agents get paid on average fifties six point five
(09:13):
thousand dollars a year or something like that. And and again,
you know, in any industry of this size, averages are
going to be a little bit misleading because that that
clearly means there are people who make north of a
hundred thousand dollars as purchasing agents. So if we dive
into the discrepancies here, we see that they only accelerate
(09:36):
as we look at the macro economic picture. There are big, big,
presumably well dressed fish in this global ponds. UH McKenzie,
which is a super powerful, super opaque probably kind of
evil consulting firm. UH that is a a former employer
(10:00):
of Pete Buddha j Edge. By the way, mckensey estimated
that nine seven percent of the economic profits for the
entire fashion industry are earned by a relatively small group
of companies. Just twenty companies in the fashion industry earned
of the profits, and most of those twenty companies, as
(10:22):
you might assume, are in what we call the luxury segment.
There also the majority of those twenty companies of that
pantheon of UH, of that pantheon of profitable fashion UH,
most of them have been in the game for a while.
Twelve of those top twenty have been in that that
upper echelon for the past uh ten years, and their
(10:45):
names are probably at least a few are very familiar
to you regardless of where you live. Yes, and a
lot of the you know, kind of longstanding leaders in
the space include, among many others, UM in, Indo TECs.
I don't know, Indo texts, I think that's I thinks
I would say Indo texts, l v M H and Nike,
(11:09):
which I know, Ben, you were a bit surprised by UM,
which have more than double their economic profits over the
past ten years. And each of those companies wracked up
more than two billion bucks in economic profit in UM
and you know you got we gotta remember too. The
close at the end of the day are a uh
one of those you know, life necessities. UM. They are
(11:31):
designed to help us survive UM and you know, be
warm and stay dry, but we also want to wear
things that we like and we want to look cool
while we're doing it. Let's, uh, let's go into some
more of these companies because we're talking about the ones
we mentioned. Their LVMH into texts and Nike at least
at least two billion dollars not too shabby, right, but
(11:55):
jump over to the gap, you know, the commercials you've
seen in the one near you wherever you live, because
there's probably one somewhere around you. Uh. It was the
top selling retailer. It had sales of around sixteen and
a half billion dollars. That's a United States currency, by
the way. Who pretty pretty great. Then if you look
(12:18):
at you know, the the lexus is and the infinities
of the clothing brands getting that luxury line over there,
you can check out the one we mentioned lvm H.
Um is it mo itt or mo A? I don't,
I honestly don't know. That's like, that's champagne, right, isn't
that a alcohol brand? It's such a it's such a
(12:40):
ridiculous story of consolidation of corporate acquisitions. It's uh, it's
also Hennessy, Louis Vatton, It's this, it's this gigantic luxury
goods conglomerate. It's let's just call it the good life corporate. Right.
(13:00):
That that's the LVMH. Correct, that's we're talking about Louis Vuitton, moa, Hennessy,
that's lv m H. It's crazy, and you know, like,
what else do they sell? Probably monocles. I mean, I
guess monocles. Uh, maybe like custom bath mats for mega yachts,
(13:20):
gilded Bidet's perhaps, Yes, interesting. I mean, that's that's great,
that's great for great for l v m H. That's awesome.
I want to really quickly, really quickly, will move right on,
just chime. And there's also we talk to the top
of the show about, like, you know, the idea of
like fashion being an economic indicator, a way to kind
(13:42):
of you know, flex and say, look at me, I
have money. There's a lot of people that spend a
lot of money on this stuff that don't have money,
and they just need to feel like they're keeping up
with the Joneses, and it maybe like you know, spending
irresponsibly on like Gucci stuff because they want to be
like quote unquote cool or like look like their favorite
celeb who wears these brands. But it's really not something
(14:03):
they can actually afford or they could probably be spending
their money in better ways. Just putting that out there, yeah, well,
I mean also brands at times reacted versely to that
if they become too closely associated with what they see
as the hoi polloi uh. In the United Kingdom. For instance,
when members of what is pejoratively described as the job
(14:26):
or chav demographic ch a V when they started, uh
sort of identifying themselves with certain clothing brands or certain
fashion brands, the brands took a hit to their reputation.
They didn't like it. And in the past, if we
wanna point out some of the systemic discrimination involved in
(14:48):
this industry, brands didn't like it all the time. When
hip hop artists, for instance, would say, you know, I
love this cologne or I love this blah blah blah. Ultimately,
money talks and takes the ascendant spot in any capitalist conversation. So,
for instance, the manufacturers of may Bok cars uh may
(15:09):
not have initially love the fact that they were getting
mentioned by Jadakis or Rick Ross, but uh, when they
saw the numbers and they saw the visibility, they said, okay, yeah, alright, cool.
Uh the cool people like us, and that helps us
sell cars. This certainly worked out for Hennessy excellent example, Matt,
(15:31):
and these are other there are other Um, Gucci is
the big one. Gucci is a big one. Uh, there
are other other things. These conversations happen with the most
the most valued brands in the world. And again, like
anyone who knows the strange history of the Coca Cola company. Uh,
the importance or the value of a brand is sometimes
(15:53):
very difficult to quantify, Like what's what's the actual valuation
or price you could put on Nike or Adidas. But
this conversation, we're saying it money is first, but it
also factors in more than money that the drives it.
So what this gets very interesting when we forecast the
(16:14):
future of fashion right now, we can categorize the world
in terms of the the biggest apparel markets. We've got
pretty solid information on that there in the following order. Um, first,
the European Union is number one. It's got the largest
apparel market, and that's some people might take that see
(16:37):
that as a little unfair because remember the European Union
is a organization composed of twenty eight different member states
that are all their own countries. So it's it's kind
of like it's kind of like comparing a team for
a team sport to a group of individual players. Because
(16:59):
second is the United States and then third is China.
Given the current economic pandemonium, that may very well change
in the coming years in ten, which is probably the
best like the most recent solid numbers we would have here.
Uh the fastest growing global market in apparel was sportswear.
(17:23):
It was growing at six percent, which doesn't sound that
huge until you hear the next statistic, the size of
the global apparel market. Uh in it was one point
three trillion dollars with a T in US dollars by
this year. And this number came before Mackenzie really understood
(17:47):
there was a you know, a global pandemic coming, which
we kind of predicted in our Superbug episode years ago. Anyway,
long story short, the market is supposed to likely eyes
to one point five trillion dollars. So while six point
eight percent may not sound like a huge number, six
point eight percent of one and a half trillion dollars
(18:10):
certainly is. And a lot of this is because, you know,
if you look at if you look at the planet overall,
we're seeing the emergence of an act of a true
middle class in a lot of the world that historically
had a an incredibly inequal domestic population, you know what
(18:30):
I mean. We're like one to five of people controlled
the majority of wealth, and most other people were consigned
to poverty. Now more and more families are saying like, Hey,
I want to get myself some or my loved ones,
uh some some more and luxurious high end clothing. You
know that ties in with diet. I want to eat
(18:51):
more meat, I want to go out to eat more. Um.
This this pattern is most apparent in the region of
the Asia cific. Uh, there's a four percent rise in
the apparel market there overall. So if you want to
if you want to make a lot of money and
you're a global fashion can colomberate start selling sportswear, sell
(19:14):
it in Asia, make it over priced, and uh just
watch the money roll in. You know, it's a really
great point that you made earlier. Been about that report
coming out showing the one point five trillion daughter the
increase to one point five trillion dollars um. It does
feel as though the disruption, the economic disruption from this
(19:37):
pandemic globally in the fashion industry may not be fully
felt for a little while, just because of if you
think about the way money flows in these from you know, designing,
to manufacturing to the actual selling of these products, right
and you know it's being affected in the fact in
(20:01):
the factories where these clothing. You know, we're clothing is
being created, it's being affected in people not being able
to go to a retail store, the retail stores closing themselves,
all of the online shopping that is occurring, but black
or less of a need for a lot of the
fashion items. So man, it's just it's gonna be pretty brutal,
(20:23):
I think, Um, but we just don't have those numbers
yet because we're not in the future yet. However, the
McKenzie State of Fashion made a report in twenty nineteen
that I don't know, seemed to be looking forward to
with some serious prescience. Uh, we've got some quotes here.
We predict that twenty nineteen will be a year shaped
(20:43):
by consumer shifts linked to technology, social causes, and trust
issues alongside. I love this idea of trust issues alongside
the potential disruption from geopolitical and macroeconomic events. Let's unpack
that that that that's a lot going on in that
trust issues, potential just eruption. Indeed, yeah, you know, that's
(21:03):
that's the thing. You You don't have to think McKenzie
is necessarily heroic to admit that there's some that's pretty
good research here. This report. You know is necessarily vague
because they're they're trying to uh prognosticate a little bit,
(21:24):
and they're you know, at this point they weren't able
to say this specific chain of events will occur, but
trust issues. They're clearly describing, you know what what is
occurring in the US and abroad today. I mean, look,
it's what. It's July as we record this. The Kingdom
(21:47):
of Iran is going into an internet blackout due to protests.
They're sweeping the country. You might have read about it
on Reddit, maybe maybe, but there's so much happening people
do trust their government's less because it's it's not because
there's uh, it's not entirely due to foreign dis info campaigns.
It's also because the average voter knows more about how
(22:11):
the sausage is made. And it's a gross disturbing story.
So so Mackenzie knew. That's so crazy. They knew in
twenty nineteen, what would happen. I can't wait to read
the report. Uh if we're all little light reading there
for yeah, it's just it's just emoji. It's just it's
(22:35):
just like an all bold caps were Yeah, and uh.
The report also it mentions it in that quotation there.
But the report also examines the role of technology in
a couple of ways that matter for this episode. First
that there will be um ever more sophisticated logistics programs
(22:59):
like a lot of the big companies you know, from
Walmart on down, Uh they prized themselves on their uh
supply chain logistics. And then of course data analytics, which
are part of every single modern business. Now it doesn't
matter what you're selling, you want to know everything about
the person buying it. And then waste reduction efforts. Waste
(23:21):
is a huge problem in the fashion industry, which will
explore a later episode properly. And then really jets stuff
that sounds very um utopian and jets and sci fi
level here, like drone delivery. Why go to a store,
We'll just we'll send you that, uh, we'll send you
that Louis Vuitton drone. But that's all good, right, All
(23:42):
this sounds like a step from the right direction. Yeah, yeah,
I mean yeah, hopefully it's it's definitely it's um, it's
definitely what we would want to happen. Uh not for
I hate this phrase, you guys, but it's definitely what
every stakeholder would want to see from the company's creating
the stuff to the people doing the actual work of
(24:04):
manufacturing it to the people buying it at the other
end of the chain. The report also lists the growing
demand for sustainability and this part greater interest in transparency
and supply chains, along with a growing desire for those
established brands, those Nikes, those Adidas, and so on to
(24:25):
participate in some way in political matters, which might be
surprising to some of our fellow listeners, because you know,
the factions of traditional media will sometimes give a or
in the past, they would give fashion brands some uh,
some heat, they would give them some smoke if they said,
(24:46):
you know, we support one movement or another. I'm not
gonna say, you know, I'm not saying it's going to
go as far as like we at Nike, Uh we
we at Nike support regime change in Iran or some
thing like that, because that that won't help them sell
shoes as soon as it helps them sell something they care.
(25:08):
Right When when, when when there was an opportunity uh
to affect you know, the second quarter profits by uh
performatively allying oneself with a cause to jour, then of
course they're all in that's money. You know what I mean,
just do it? Uh sorry, yeah, I mean when the
(25:31):
zite guys turns with a large enough majority of the
public opinion, right, that's when it happens. That's when you
can see every company coming out with some kind of
support for a movement. And we've seen it pretty recently happening.
Companies that you may not expect to see from see
(25:52):
that from mm hmm. And at the at the you know,
it's that old saying at the heart of every great
fortune lay some sort of crime. Now, honestly, that's that's
a little bit of a broad brush statement. You know. Uh,
some people in some institutions accumulate wealth because they do
(26:13):
a good job. It doesn't necessarily mean they broke the
law or social mooris or taboos. But that doesn't make
this statement entirely untrue. Unless you've been living some sort
of trick lugetic existence and you never watch the news
and you've only wear worn clothes that you made yourself,
(26:37):
you you have the odds are you have heard about
the ongoing concerns regarding the dark side of the fashion industry.
It's very true. Just to jump back really quickly to
that concept of a great fortune constituting at some point
probably some kind of crime or a crime at the
heart of something like that. We've talked about it length
(26:57):
before in the show, but just to read or the
concept here is that a great fortune generally is not
something that is built within a couple of years. It
takes time to build money up, and then that money
continues to accrue more money, and it grows and grows
and grows. Concept there is that if you go back
far enough with something that would be considered a great fortune,
(27:19):
there's probably some act or some process within you know,
creating a product or pulling something out of the ground,
like a natural resource, where there was something terrible that
happened to other people in order for that fortune to
be generated. That's all we're saying. Oh yeah, yeah, Like
the Kennedy dynasty of political dynasty here in the US,
(27:42):
pretty solid evidence that, uh, they got their starting bootlegging
and they later sort of diversified into politics. Yeah, and
and you know, that's not to say that bootlegging was
the absolute worst crime ever, but it was certainly illegal
at the time when it was being done. And real quick,
I think we buried the lead here trogladinic. Amazing word,
(28:06):
amazing word. Then finally, oh, you know, we didn't write it.
But yeah, it's just living like a trigo living. It
means cave dweller. It's just like the uh, it's the
fancy version of cave dweller. It's the overpriced, upmarket fashion
version of cave dweller. Love it. But you know, speaking
(28:28):
like of the fashion industry, of the idea of of crime,
the dark side of the fashion industry, we're we're not
talking about the stories where the sometimes sordid lives of
hot shot gurus of design or influencers, and we're not
talking about the cabals that meet to determine what quote
(28:48):
unquote hot color palettes and products will be for the
given year. But those caballs exist. It's crazy. There's a
there are groups of people who get together every year
and decide what will be in fashion or cool. And
when they do it, part of how they part of
their process, is to try to make it seem like
(29:10):
everyone just organically agreed, which is ridiculous. I wonder if
that happens in other industries. I hope it happens in
other industries. I hope there's like a caball for um
thinking what the silliest thing would be, I'm hoping the past. Yeah, yeah,
is there a caball for podcasts? How do we get
in that room? I think it's called I Heart Media?
(29:34):
Is it? Well, we we don't have the best track
record then no, you guys. I just something occurs to me.
Can we dub this episode the Dark Side of the Loom?
That's cool, that's pretty just just it's I mean, you know,
just submitted for your approval, and things are about to
get dark. These harrowing tales of the people actually making
(29:54):
the clothes, you know, the ones actually operating these looms,
these massive machine creating the fabric. The stories they get
kind of filed away in some back room, um, you know,
or some uh step along the way of this absurdly clandestine,
you know, meandering supply chain from the factory to the
(30:18):
fashion show, um, the runway, um to the retail rack.
Or you've got your high street boutiques in London. I
love I love the idea of the high Street. I've
never been, but I always think of it as being
like an elevation thing, Like the high Street is literally
like somehow higher than the other streets. But that's not true.
They just call it the high street because it's uh,
just like a main street in the United States. So
(30:41):
what's the secret story behind all of this stuff? And
we'll tell you right after a quick work from our sponsor.
Pretty sure it's a high end fashion retailer. Here's where
it gets crazy. The secret story of the fashion industry,
(31:02):
or one of them, is slavery. Not being hyperbolic here,
not exaggerating, not embellishing, not chasing a sensational headline, slavery.
At this point, it's a stretch to even call it
a secret, although it is definitely something apparel industry giants
(31:24):
historically have not and in several cases still don't want
you to know. Uh there. There's a twenty eight team
report by the outfit Global Slavery Index dot org where
they found that the fashion industry has not just involvement
with the practice of modern slavery, but huge gigantic economic
(31:47):
impact on it. It's the fashion industry's existence and the
way it moves now is very very good for the
slave trade. Uh specifically a quote for UM. This report
finds that the fashion supply chain funnels more money towards
modern slavery than any other industry besides technology, and and
(32:11):
why is that important? Just to exacerbate this in absolute terms,
there are more slaves alive right now, enslaved than at
any other point in modern history. Yeah, And a lot
of this trouble arises when you've got, uh, let's say
(32:31):
a company based in country A. Let's just say the
United States for this example, and all of your manufacturing,
for the products that you're creating, that you've designed, it's
being done in company B, which is halfway across the
world somewhere where the rule of law is very different
(32:52):
in that country, and the laws in country A and
B do not apply to one another. So then when
you're trading and making deals and setting up contracts, it
just becomes a very different system, right, And it's there's
a lot of trouble in enforcing law in country B.
When you're in country A and you know there's a
(33:13):
crime being committed, or if you know you're in country
B and there's a crime being committed in country A,
it's just a it's a tough thing to deal with,
the big problem here is that many of the companies
who are operating in this way to get cheap labor
in a different country. Are aware that these problems exist,
or it can it can be assumed that they're aware.
(33:35):
And it's important to say, you know, we're talking in
absolute terms when we explore modern slavery, but it comes
from a couple of factors. You know. One we have
to we have to be objective and say part of
it is due to the overall rise of the human population. Right. Uh,
(33:55):
that turns out actually that's probably going to be a fad.
Global fertility rates are are crashing just because there are
more people enslaved and absolute numbers, that doesn't mean the
percentage of people enslaved is necessarily at an all time high.
For more information on this, please do check out our
(34:17):
earlier episode on modern slavery. But there's another part of this,
and I think it's what you're you're speaking to here, Matt,
the the interaction of of the fashion industry. It's it's
not a altruistic affair, right, It's not a nonprofit, it's
not a not for profit. It is it is clearly
(34:37):
a profit driven endeavor. This unending search for cost cutting
to streamline supply chains. These are the kind of things
that could be considered sort of the Star Trek like
continuing mission of these global enterprises doing a the Captain
Kirk of inappropriate jokes over here. And we don't know
(35:00):
how many slaves exist, right like, that's that's terrifying. We
don't really know, Yes, we we do not know the
exact numbers, but we do have some estimates that we
can point to here and it's harrowing stuff. It's estimated
there are probably somewhere around twenty seven to thirty million
people who are enslaved right now, and there are other
(35:23):
outfits that have estimated that number to be higher than
forty million. And that's across the entire globe that we're
talking about. A lot of the people who are enslaved
are thought to be in India. There are a couple
other countries that also have a large number of those
who are enslaved. We're looking at Russia, China, Nigeria, Pakistan, Ethiopia,
(35:46):
the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mayan, mar Burma, Bangladesh, and
Pakistan uh And you know, that's really unfortunate to hear that.
I mean, somewhere between twenty seven and forty something million
people that are enslaved right now. Um, it's crazy. I mean.
(36:08):
And and before the episode started we were talking a
little bit off Mike and I was like, Ben, so
when we say slavery, are we talking about just super
low wages? Are we talking about like some kind you know,
obviously there's prison labor, but I would consider slave labor
in its own weird way. Um, And it's it turns
out there's this weird gray area and it's sort of
(36:28):
like a combination of a lot of these things sort
of mashed up. It's really kind of hard to track.
But yeah, at the end of the day, you call
it what it is. It's modern slavery. Yes, it always UM,
no small way distress to learn that since the time
we recorded modern Slavery, and since the time to the
(36:49):
time that we're recording today's episode, the average cost of
quote unquote buying a human being is still very very cheap.
It's very low today. In according to UH nonprofit watch
groups sites like Modern Day Crimes dot org UH in
(37:10):
multiple sources UH, the agreed upon average cost again this
is to buy a living human being is nine that's
less than just for comparison, that's less than a lot
of people's monthly cable and Internet bills. That's much less
than say a a PlayStation or a game console of choice.
(37:37):
We are, as a society saying that what one PlayStation
is worth four, maybe the new one's worth five human
beings really disturbing. So yeah, we're we're consider us available
to ruin all your future casual get togethers in cocktail parties. Uh.
But but but to your point, no, Uh, we do
(38:00):
too acknowledge that there is there is a blurred line here.
There is a gray area, liminal space in the difference
between very highly exploited labor and out and out slavery.
There's a definition that the CNN Freedom Project used that
that we think is is a good lay of the
(38:22):
land definition for what we mean when we say slavery today.
That's correct. Uh. They define modern slavery as quote when
one person completely controls another person using violence or the
threat of violence to maintain that control uh and exploits
them economically, um, and they are not able to walk away.
(38:44):
That threat of violence could on this is this is
me uh, could also be a threat to their family
in anyway, holding them hostage uh and forcing them to
do work against their will. You know, we see a
lot of times that this kind of thing is enforced
by one or one person or one group holding onto
(39:07):
the traveling papers essentially of another or a family to
where they cannot leave, where they do not have any
money to leave UM, or to gain access to other
means of transportation or escape. UM. It's really rough stuff
mm hmm. And and it's it's all true. This is
(39:30):
not conspiratorial theory. Macy headline chasing reports that focus on
the many many people that are tragically forced into UH
sexual exploitation, but looking at the statistics for what we know,
many more people, the majority of people are forced into
(39:52):
manual labor of some sort, and of course it would
be naive to not acknowledge at the people forced into
manual labor are often also exploited sexually by UH those
impositions of power. This manual labor includes stuff like the
production of textiles fabrics UH in some cases the the
(40:16):
final step in manufacturing of clothing that consumers around the
world purchase. Like literally the people who take something that
was made in a generic factory and then so on
the name brand label UH, and then that goes to
someone in a store somewhere UH, and they might buy
this uh, these shirts, these pants, these socks, these shoes, etcetera.
(40:38):
And wear them on a regular basis for years without
ever knowing them. The disquieting genesis of of of that
of that piece of clothing. It's modern slavery. And it's
not you know, we're focusing on the fashion industry, but
long time listeners, you know, this has popped up in
(41:00):
other cases, right in in mining, it's everywhere. In certain
agricultural goods, it's everywhere. Lots of food production. Yeah yeah,
and uh, and people have even been you know, enslaved
in all but name here in the US to assist
with harvesting crops. Right, So, slavery is a link in
(41:23):
numerous supply chains. According to the U. S. State Department,
slavery just by itself is a thirty billion dollar industry,
and it's an industry fueled by lack of transparency in
unregulated production and illegal work practices. It can take several
forms in the world of fashion. Yeah, you gotta wonder too, Like,
(41:44):
I mean, the paper trail of all this. It's not like,
you know, it incriminates these companies as like, Okay, we
went out looking for slave labor. It's just kind of
part of a bigger system, right, I mean, you know
where it ends up. It's like a byproduct of us,
this hunger for cheap labor and cheap manufacturing, and we're
complicit as a country. It's not just fashion. I mean,
(42:07):
it's like we crave this, therefore there's a market for it,
right Yeah. And you never know who is going to
be doing what for that piece of clothing you're wearing
because you cannot see that supply chain when you go
pick something up and buy it. You can't see it.
There's no way to do it right now, because there
may be an enslaved person harvesting the cotton that became
that shirt you've got on or the pants that you're
(42:27):
rocking right now. A n enslaved person may have spun
up all of that fiber that cotton into yarn that
created that thing. There may have been an enslaved person
that actually did the final stitching on that shirt and
thousands of others that ended up in that retail store
that you usually go to. And it's gonna be really
tough for you to prove that that's happening, or to
(42:49):
look at a label in some way and figure out
if that was if that happened at some point along
the way. Ben, is this the same kind of stuff
that we used to hear refer to as sweat shops
back in the day. Yeah, yeah, sweatshops. Sweatshops can straddle
the line there. Typically the typical idea of a sweatshop
is very underpaid labor, if not outright slavery. But to
(43:14):
go back to that idea of the liminal space, you
could say that the fashion industry walks a fine line
between slavery and exploited labor. You could say they, I
guess you could say, if if you want to be
cute about it, that they thread the needle. The thing
here is, you know the problem of enforcement. What is
legal or accepted in one country, such as a very
(43:37):
low wage or very long working hours and unsafe conditions,
might be illegal in the country where the ultimate end
product is purchased. Right, So this means that you can
circumvent laws because remember, corporations nowadays are often more more
powerful than states or government. We're moving through that evolution
(44:02):
of ultimate ultimate social power here. Most of the interactions
between fashion industry and modern slavery come from, as we said,
global supply chains and slave labor sort of infiltrates that
fashion industry and myriad ways in the supply chain, like
the different ways, the different avenues you mentioned matt Um.
(44:27):
This also goes into it goes into underage labor, child slavery.
Imagine if you're a kid born in extremely disadvantaged circumstances,
you and your parents get an offer for a gig
that pays pretty well, and you think, well, higher education
is not a possibility for me. I have to find
(44:49):
a job to support my family. Uh Like, in in
very real terms, I have to be able to buy
food or medicine. So I'll take this job. I'll travel
to this factory. They say they're going to give me
an education as well. This will be a step up
in life for me. But then you're in coerced factory
labor and you are kept in debt bondage. Debt bondage
(45:13):
is something that's going to be familiar um too many
people because it takes many forms. This is an explicit
form of debt bondage. But you could also say, uh,
debt bondage is uh well, debt bondage is a way
of an employer um bilking an employee out of compensation
(45:35):
by adding a bunch of incurred costs. Right that they
quote unquote recoup before the person doing the actual work
sees a penny. This will be familiar to any musician
who has ever worked with a record label. Right that,
you could make a pretty strong argument that something similar
happens with a lot of especially historically a lot of
(45:56):
recording agreements. Right, you get the money deductive for studio?
What I me? How does that work meant? Oh? Oh, man,
I don't know. I've never actually worked with the label before.
But yeah, it's just anyone, anyone attempting to keep you
on the hook um for a debt that you owe
by adding more and more to that debt. It's a
(46:18):
story that we've heard more and more about over the
past ten years or so with regards to human trafficking.
When someone pays, or or needs to pay a group
several thousand dollars, let's say, to be moved from one
country to another country, and they have to do it secretly.
When the people arrive in the destination country, the people
(46:42):
that brought them there say, well, yeah, you still owe
us this money. How are you gonna pay us back
that money? You have no money and then that uh,
that group would then force them to do things such
as labor and other terrible things in order to pay
off that debt. But of course it's an accruing interests,
so you never really are able to get out of
(47:03):
debt and you just are essentially stuck in bondage. Yeah,
and if we look at the report mentioned by Global
Slavery Index, one point to seven billion dollars worth of
garments were at least what they say, what they've phrased
is at risk of including modern slavery in their supply chain.
(47:25):
They're imported annually by the G twenty that's the group
of nations that accounts for eight of the world trade
UH in the in this industry. If we look at
their demographics from what we know of people who are
laboring in bondage or slavery, of the population are thought
to be women. So the question what are people doing
(47:46):
to try and stop this? The kind of good news
is they're trying to do some things. We'll tell you
more after a word from our sponsor. So we're back
once again. Legislation rears its head slowly and inefficiently and imperfectly,
(48:11):
but we're you know, we're getting out there. UH. Various
Western countries have attempted to address this crisis. Make no mistake,
it is a crisis. It is a conspiracy. Through legislation,
in California passed an act requiring large companies to publicly
disclose their efforts to address slavery and human trafficking in
their supply chains. The UK did the same thing or
(48:34):
a similar thing, and the Modern Slavery Act of that
said businesses past a certain size have to publicly disseminate
the actions they've taken to combat supply chain slave labor. Uh.
And and that met with some positive force, but we
can only really describe it as a good start because
(48:55):
that legislation had problems. We don't know how effective it was,
don't know to what degree it was enforced. And you know,
the California law only applies to California. There are forty
nine other states and they're really messed up. Stuff is
happening in the US controlled regions that aren't even considered states. UH.
(49:16):
And then there's the there's the big bank conundrum. Right like,
after a certain after a certain point of profit right
and economic heft than any kind of UH fight, A
lot of financial punishment is just gonna be folded into
the cost of business. Right, you're a bank, you do
something crooked, you get your Yeah, you pay the fine.
(49:36):
You just pay the fine. It's not gonna It's like
if you got a twenty dollar ticket for legally parking,
you could tell yourself, well, if I parked in a
parking deck, it would have been twenty five dollars, and
and and again and again. Like this cost of doing
business mentality is such an American like staple, like of capitalism,
like this idea of you know, deregulation, or of like
(50:00):
even the idea that we can you know, why would
I pay taxes? Why like, why would I'd be stupid
to pay taxes? You know, I should do whatever I
can to use these loopholes to best serve my interests
as as a business person. You know, the President says
that very unabashedly, because it's considered like a badge of
honor to be I'm smart. You know, if I wasn't smart,
(50:22):
I would be paying taxes. You know, it's the same
thing with this stuff. You know. Uh, these leaders are
like they're looking out for that bottom line. I mean,
I I don't want to you know, just it's obviously
beating a dead horse, but it's so clear, and yeah,
they just yeah, we'll pay the fine and we'll just
roll that into the cost of doing business. It's a
problem with loopholes, you know. Uh, there's there's a conflict
(50:42):
of interest all too often people who are making the laws.
And this is not just the US thing, this is
and every this is an everywhere thing. People who are
making the laws often have a vested financial interest in
carving out loopholes that take the teeth and claws from
those laws, that render them in some way ineffective, such
(51:03):
that they simultaneously appease the concerns of voters at least
for that news cycle, while also maintaining the economic status quo.
I mean, here's the story that the Jedi won't tell you.
If you live in the US, you've probably seen that
made in USA label on various products. The idea here
(51:25):
is that you see that you buy it because you're
supporting your domestic economy and you're also buying something that
conforms to the labor and employment laws of the US.
But we found an example from back in that shows
just how meaningless that phrase can be. Yeah, back in
(51:47):
which was, by the way, twenty seven years after that
old made in USA label started making the rounds on
pretty major brands. The New York Times ended up they
exposed a scam that have been for a long time.
So let's let's just talk about this um. There were
a ton of industry giants Ero, Liz claib Or in
(52:07):
the Gap, Montgomery Ward, Jeffrey Bean. There are a ton
of them. They were all using oh Levies, by the way,
also included they were all using the made in USA label.
But here's the thing. They were actually manufacturing clothing in
a place called the Northern Marians or the Northern Mariana Islands. Now,
(52:28):
this is a really interesting case and it's exactly that
kind of loophole we're describing here where the Northern Mariana
Islands are not a United States state. They're not a U.
S state, correct, They are a commonwealth technically that's where
they are. It's uh, you know, they're islands that are
out in the Northwest Pacific Ocean. And the problem here
(52:49):
is that in this commonwealth, the same rules don't necessarily
apply that if you're a citizen of the United States,
it's it's a weird again, a loophole situation where there
are some similarities but it's not the same thing. The
workers there in the Northern Mariana Islands, UH, they were
often migrant laborers from other countries, specifically from the Philippines
(53:12):
and China and other Asian region countries. They would live
on site at these factories where manufacturing was occurring. They
were living in dormitories that were just terrible. They were
working ridiculously long days, and they were making two dollars
in fifteen cents an hour, which was almost exactly half
of the guaranteed federal wage that the United States would
(53:35):
uh would give to anyone working at that time. In
it's uh, it's really crazy. The worst part is that
if those factory workers like spoke up, guess what would happen? Yeah,
Unfortunately we don't have to guess because we have stories
from the people who survived this experience. They were booted
(53:56):
off the project, they were shipped back to their country
of origin, and additionally, the wages they were due we're confiscated.
So that's I think that's an example of the liminal
space between exploitation of labor and slavery. Because you had
someone who was able to hold that over you. If
(54:19):
you complain, we're just not going to pay you. And
in at the time of that expose eight, clothing from
the Northern Marianas only made up about one per cent
of the twenty nine billion dollars in clothing imported into
the US, but it accounted for up to twenty percent
(54:39):
of the clothing sold worldwide by some large American companies.
And and now you have to think, like, if you're
the average US customer in how in the hell are
you going to be aware of that? How are you
going to know? How are you going to know? Uh?
And and while we're being fair in many cases, especially
(55:01):
in the past, it's not as if these companies all
got together and pulled some sort of monty burdens things
steepling their fingers and like, yes, suppose this slave trade. No,
because the complex supply chains here make it possible, plausible
in some cases even probable, that many companies genuinely were
(55:23):
unaware of their complicit participation in slavery. They see that
they get a great price on cotton, right and sign
a several year contract for that, and then that goes
to a different company that has a factory where the
cottonist process they signed a contract for that, and then
that goes to a different company and so on and
so on and so on until it gets to a
(55:45):
store they didn't do due diligence, and performing due diligence
on every aspect of a supply chain has to be
If we're considering financial punishment for breaking the law a
cost of doing business, then due diligence should logically also
be a cost of business going forward. Will that make
(56:05):
clothing more expensive? I mean, yeah, probably, I would imagine. Yeah,
Like I felt like maybe I was miss using this
term when I've when I've used in the past, but
I just looked it up and I think it applies
the idea of the banality of evil. Um. You know,
there's a philosopher named Aren't who Um referred to the
Nazi war criminal aikman Um as being an example of
(56:27):
the manality of evil, that he wasn't inherently evil, but
just shallow and clueless. And that's kind of what this
this all is. You know, these corporations that maybe they're
not inherently evil, but they just don't care enough to
like know what's going on, and it's just a byproduct
of like the whole capitalist system that yeah, you know,
just a couple of bad apples, right, this is there's yes, sure,
(56:49):
there might be a little slavery in there, but it's
mainly fine. So who cares, right, people like problems that
are removed, I mean too. On the other hand, that
point right, yes, this, this will probably make clothing more expensive.
You can buy, uh, you can buy sourced clothing that
(57:10):
is described as sustainable in terms of impact on the environment,
in terms of their wage and employment practices, and yeah,
it tends to be more expensive. But on the other
side of the coin, since we're talking about money, on
the other side of the figurative coin here, do you
want to live in a world where you, in some
way are supporting the enslavement of human beings because you
(57:33):
say five to fifteen or whatever bucks at the register?
Do you want like are we have to ask ourselves
are we comfortable with this arrangement because it's happening in
a way that we cannot immediately see if you had
to go to the people who are enslaved and you
had to buy that stuff directly from them and look
(57:54):
them in the eye, and you know, acknowledge like life
sucks and people are terrible, but I am I am
agreeing that it's better for me because this is eight
bucks instead of twelve. I think a lot more people
would be a lot more uncomfortable with the idea or
food processing. That's a good example, right, people will eat
(58:16):
something because they don't have to watch the cow get slaughtered.
They don't have to watch the bolt gun shoot into
its brain, you know, So you're at a remove. Therefore
it's easy for you to just kind of absolve yourself
of any responsibility. You know. I'm not saying that killing
cattle is bad or is in any way equivalent to
slave labor, but it's a similar, you know, kind of
(58:39):
that that remove is very similar. Then you've painted a
picture in my head where I'm imagining a small booth
where there is let's it's let's say it's in India
because that's where a lot of the modern slavery is occurring,
or you know any other country where it's agree there's
a small booth where there's one person sitting behind that
booth and there's a big rack of designer fashion clothes
(59:01):
behind them, and uh, when a customer comes up, picks
out picks out a piece of clothing, hands the person
behind that booth, let's say a hundred and twenty dollars
US for this piece of clothing, and that person behind
the booth takes that money, gives you that piece of
clothing that they made by their hands, hands that money
(59:23):
to their employer which is standing right next to them,
and the employer gives them back half of a penny
or you know, one cent in order for all of
the labor the actual human being that created that thing gets,
you know, whatever miniscule fraction if anything, for creating that
(59:43):
piece of clothing for you, the end user, it is
just man, Yeah, you know, the thing is I I
know this can come off as sanctimonious, so we also
have to admit it is very difficult to It is
very difficult for us when we're buying stuff to be
(01:00:03):
aware of just how many horrible uh injustices or shenanigans,
if you want to be glib, go into this right
like how the demand for attention and the demand for
research is so unending nowadays. We like, even even in
the course of this show, there are at least three
(01:00:26):
other hidden sides of fashion that we have not covered
in this episode. One, we didn't cover the rampant sexual
exploitation in the modeling industry, which is very closely related
to the fashion industry. Two, we didn't cover the um
to me hilarious story of the deciders, those real life
(01:00:48):
committees that get together every so often and decide what
is or isn't going to be hot in the in
the subjective shifting world of taste. And we didn't come
were the pollution and the waste, which was you know,
what set us off on this path to begin with.
So we have more to We have more to dive
(01:01:08):
into in future episodes. I think certainly we we haven't
even talked about the psychological damage globally, globally that the
fashion industry has done for the you know self image
of women and men across the world. Um, yeah, so
whole there are there's lots to go over here. So
what do you think about all of this that we've
(01:01:30):
discussed at a the ugly side of this giant industry
of the things that are on your body right now?
Unless you're listening to this, you know, commando or naked
or however you how do you like to listen to
the show. I mean, we don't judge. Whatever you want
to do. What steps can be taken? Do you think
to actually stop some of this? Not to you know,
(01:01:51):
have some kind of loophole legislation out there, but what
can actually be done to change this whole thing. We
want you to write to us if possible. Uh, find
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(01:02:14):
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