For what it's worth

Gutenberg Bible: a complete first edition is worth
US $25-$35 million (from: Luxist)

What's a novel for? A short story? A poem? And what are they worth?
     In an age where stuff is cheap — in the 1976 Eaton's catalogue (like Sears in the U.S.)  the cheapest colour TV (14") was $399.99. That's $1,270.14 in today's dollars; on March 19, 1984 a Proctor-Silex toaster was on sale at K-Mart for $22.88; again, in todays money: $39.82). A toaster at Walmart now costs about $15.00.
     Life is cheap, too. We are all too familiar with the lot of factory workers throughout the developing world and here in North America (Bangladesh is in the news right now, finally); the resurgence of slavery and human trafficking.
     And then there's the factory in China, Foxconn, that makes iPhones and other high-end electronic goods banning their workers from committing suicide.
      In Honduras, "There is a violent death every 74 minutes... and the country has a murder rate more than four times higher than Mexico." according to an article on the BBC News Magazine website.
     In an age where everything has been devalued, except for the absolute essentials like food and fossil fuels, is it any wonder that authors of fiction can't make any money?
     Never mind poets, and writers of so-called "literature." Granted, some novelists strike it rich and become millionaires, billionaires; but these occurrences are as anomalous as winning the lottery or gazing upon the proverbial blue moon.
     So, to answer the question... questions: Entertainment, then — that's why we do it; we're like court jesters — distraction, that's what we're for: the slaking of humankind's craving for escape, to suffer along with some made-up character: catharsis.
     But, you say, TV shows, computer games, the Internet, music, the theatre and movies do all that. Look at shows like "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad," and movies like "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," and "The King's Speech," to name a few. That's where the money is — for people who want to tell stories in this day and age. We must all become screenwriters and cast out lot with hordes of taxi drivers and waiters and dog walkers in L.A. who live their lives waiting for the "ka-ching" of success.
     All things considered, especially in light of the heart-warming news in the first few paragraphs of this post, I guess we should count ourselves lucky even to have the opportunity to write.
     Now I'm really depressed; or at best, just lost for words.
— Michael Hale

Book. Jackets.

Bound book by Eric Cannon (Backdoor Books)

There is a problem with the way we think about consumables in the western world. Maybe it's because almost everything we need and want comes from somewhere else; and since these market transactions are rarely with the people who produce the merchandise we seldom consider that every purchase sets in motion a cascading series of consequences.
     Some of them are good, but a lot of them are irretrievably tragic.
     So think twice, maybe three times, before you download that "free" book, movie, TV show, or music selection; or buy electronic equipment made in China. 
     Never mind that article of clothing that seems like such a great bargain.

"Whenever impoverished garment workers die while making clothes for wealthier consumers in far-off lands, competing clothing brands manage to come together over a high-minded common cause: Better scrutiny of the overseas plants that produce their garments, to avoid putting vulnerable workers in harm's way.
     But in the wake of an epochal garment industry disaster inside his own country, Shahidullah Azim, vice president of the largest garment manufacturing trade group in Bangladesh, declared such talk self-serving and misguided. If the big clothing labels are truly committed to improving safety standards inside factories in Bangladesh, he argued, they should reconsider their own cutthroat buying practices and agree to pay higher prices to underwrite the safety improvements they say they want for workers.
     'The retailers only talk about ethical sourcing,' Azim, of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, bemoaned to HuffPost, speaking Bengali. 'I think this is the time we start talking about ethical buying.'"
— Emran Hossain and Dave Jamieson, Huffington Post
Read more…

See a related post here...

Why is the word for the person who makes our shirts spelled the same as where our shit goes?

"Case Study I —The Sri Lankan Sewer An A-class sewer in Sri Lanka is paid $2.00 per day. An assembly line will produce about 18 shirts per day per machine, incurring a sewing cost of $0.11 per unit. The other operations, such as cutting, buttonholemaking and pressing, add a further $0.06. Total direct labor cost will therefore be less than $0.20 per shirt. Unless the importer requires Tiffany cufflinks for buttons, the total trim including packing materials will probably be under $0.25. Total of labor and trim should, therefore, be $0.45.

     However, the average manufacturing or cut-make-trim (CMT) charge for a shirt in Sri Lanka is $2.10 or over four times the labor and trim cost, and about ten times the direct-labor cost. [...]
     Most garment professionals can work out that in the case of the Sri Lankan factory, direct labor counts for only 10% of CMT. These same professionals know that as in the case of the five-pocket jeans, total CMT in a Third World factory seldom exceeds 30% of the FOB [Free On Board] price. That means the total cost of direct labor in these factories is a negligible 3% to 4% of FOB, which in turn works out to 2% of the LDP price or about 0.75% of the retail price.
     Yet despite these ratios, I and almost every other garment professional around still looks at direct labor as the prime factor in determining total garment cost.
     Take, for example, a senior executive for one of the world’s largest manufacturers of active sportswear and footwear in April 1997 commenting on a 10.7% pay rise recently won by their Indonesian factory workers, who stated, 'Indonesia could be reaching a point where it is pricing itself out of the market.'”
— David Birnbaum's Blog
Read more...

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (New York City)
March 25, 1911 (Photo: Wkimedia Commons)

“In the wake of another deadly disaster at a major hub of garment manufacturing in Bangladesh -- this time, the collapse of a building that took the lives of more than 300 people -- the multinational brands that use the country to make their products once again find themselves having to explain what went wrong. […]

     After another horrific spectacle in a poor country that produces the garments worn by those with consumer power in far-wealthier lands, major brands are trying to limit their exposure to the tragedy. But amid the familiar public accounting, labor advocates assert that few can ever know, with absolute certainty, where their products are made and how factory workers are treated within those plants.[…]
     [But] Somehow, brands are able to control the quality of the products manufactured in their factories, and yet, they aren’t able to monitor the workers. If apparel retailers don’t know where the materials for their products are being sourced from, he said, it’s because they chose not to care."
— Kim Bhasin, Huffington Post
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Buy David Birnbaum's book here...