While studying last night (and by “studying” I actually mean watching “South Park”), I realized that, underneath all the profanity and bolo tie jokes, the episode “Cash for Gold” was actually pretty relevant. In case you happen to not know every episode of “South Park” by heart, here’s a brief summary of the episode: One of the main characters, Stan, is upset that his ailing grandfather and other senile elderly people are being taken advantage of by a TV jewelry shopping network. The network preys on the elderly by using bad marketing to sell them cheap jewelry at a huge markup. When one caller is asked for her name, she says she can’t remember it. The host then assures her that it’s okay if she can still remember her credit card number.
Stan decides he must do something to rectify the situation and stop seniors from being exploited. He starts by calling into the TV show, suggesting the host kill himself. When this doesn’t work, Stan and his friends travel to the smelting plant where gold from cash-for-gold stores is melted down to be resold at a huge markup. However, the plant owner tells the boys that he isn’t doing anything wrong, because he’s simply melting down what the stores send to him. The boys then go back to their town, where they berate a rundown, ragtag group of sign-holding cash for gold advertisers: “You are the scums of the earth! Old people are victimized by shopping networks and you kick back in your fat cat mansions making billions!” The advertisers suggest that, since they aren’t actually making billions, the boys should go to India, where most of the jewelry sold to the elderly is actually made. In the final scene, the boys end up scolding sweatshop workers for exploiting Americans. Realizing the absurdity of the situation, Stan exclaims, “Somebody is at the head of all this, and somebody needs to pay!”
This statement, coming after the boys have stopped at every point of the supply chain, is clearly ridiculous. Each time they think they’ve found the guilty party, they realize someone else is at fault. The cash-for-gold stores are just buying what people want to sell, the smelters are just getting paid to melt down whatever they’re sent, the sweatshop workers are just trying to make a living wage and the shopping network is only selling what people want to buy. Somehow it appears both that everybody is at fault and that nobody is at fault.
“Somebody is at the head of this, and somebody needs to pay,” is also a fair summary of what many of those who are calling for the University of Wisconsin to cut ties with Adidas seem to be saying. However, as South Park demonstrated, the issue is not so simple. Who’s really to blame for the labor situation in Adidas factories? Is it Adidas? Partly. But if they treated their workers better, they’d lose their business to someone who treated theirs worse. Anyway, if people didn’t want to buy what they made, they wouldn’t be selling it. Then is it the workers’ fault for agreeing to work under those conditions? Of course not, they’re just trying to survive. Is it our fault for buying the stuff? Again, partly, but we’re only buying it because someone’s selling it to us. So who’s at the head of this, and who needs to pay? Everybody? Nobody? Issues as complex as labor conditions and disputes in developing countries can’t be resolved by just pointing a finger at one party and telling them, “Fix it!”
This isn’t to say that no one should be held accountable. Clearly all workers should be treated fairly and paid a living wage. However, knee-jerk reactions, like cutting Adidas’ contract with UW, will not help. What’s needed is, much like interim Chancellor David Ward has suggested, a period of mediation, where a solution that benefits everybody can be worked out. There’s no such thing as a silver bullet solution for issues as complex as this. If there were, the issue would have been figured out long ago. But, as is often the case, the better solution is generally a slow-moving and well thought-out one rather than a rash and reactionary one. Who knew that a handful of vulgar boys from Colorado could be so insightful?
Joe Timmerman ([email protected]) is a freshman majoring in math and economics.
