I don’t know
whether you know about this, or have heard the story – well, it isn’t a story, it’s the truth. Somewhere in the world – in fact in a fairly
famous place, where there are very well-known clothing retailers – not so long
ago some people came in from out of town, bought a bunch of industrial-scale,
if small and old-fashioned , fabric manufacturing businesses and the machinery
that came with the businesses... And busted up the machines, and of course
closed the manufacturing plants too.
'Repeat' - a German cashmere boutique;
very high quality.
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By standard
economic theory, there is the view that this type of thing is always part of a
larger chain of events, and that the vulnerability of the old manufacturers was
due to their own failure to either manage their revenues or to make sufficient
profits – and that furthermore, at some point product output and quality is
eventually improved, not lessened just because in the erstwhile it seems that
some China-made substitute has replaced the better quality but more expensive
and unaffordable and usually fictionally ‘ideal’ standard item.
In the
specific case to which I was referring in the first paragraph here, the brand
names themselves continued on for a while albeit using China-made products of a
similar kind to what they had previously been labelling and selling.
London Town
is the actual place where the items were being sold and marketed from, and you
shouldn’t jump to a quick conclusion about what the products were, or are.
Now I don’t
personally believe that in the long run the highest quality of items in
question will not return to the
shopfronts from which they had been made famous in the first place. And it is
the case that right now, the Chinese manufacturing standard at the high end has
improved beyond recognition from the bad old days of say the Sixties and Seventies
and even the Eighties too.
My own critical
thoughts would lean more to the very great and very negative impact - basically
around the whole world - of the leeringly too high costs of being a business
established inside of any modern city... It is my suspicion that indeed cities
themselves, as dynamic architectural and socio-economic/social-cultural
entities, have been broken catastrophically by city councillors and various influential
interests and city managers. I don’t believe you will see cities as they have
been over the last hundred years. They are going to change in ways that will
make them categorically quite different from what they were previously. I don’t
mean superficial change; I mean categorical alteration of their very nature and
meaning.
Cities are
viewed by government, at every level of government, as tax centres and revenue
sources; but they are not that any longer. They once were that, and the golden goose has been killed.
Under Christmas tree, is staying under the Christmas tree. No tolls for thee! |
If you stuck
all the toll road imposts, whether timed or so-called ‘congestion period’
levies, that you wanted, and increased parking fees, and increased rates and
offered more and the most complex and
‘creative’ leases that you possibly could come up with, all that you’d end up
doing is go broke yourself like Detroit did – as basic volume of economic
activity dried up.
But then no
politician or corrupt builder and developer ever sees this or cares that such
things can or even will happen. We
are long past Corbusier but they refuse to acknowledge it. There is no call for
more tall buildings, more buildings, or complicated ‘developments.’ It is not
in keeping with the era or the economics. But the standard practices go on. All these developments will continue on until
a literal Doomsday.
A friend
asked me whether I thought that corrupt money and money made by cheating
and/immoral and unethical ideologies still did not reward those people who do
these things with a stack of immediate gratification and many material
comforts.
But of
course it certainly does reward people in such ways.
That is why
Doomsday, when it approaches, is not ever accounted for beforehand.
The ‘whole
person,’ must have both sides of the
equation: the animal dynamic (or atavistic) materialist side, and the unbiased
objective idea forms in their connected logic structures apprehensible to the
intellect alone and to the inner visions. You must comprehend the meaning of the Italian designer, or else
you are in possession of only the metals and the materials, but not the actual
intended point of the construction. The best English brand cars are today made
by Germans. And the great (of which there were originally four of...) ‘Lord of
Cashmere’ – Berk – is today
exclusively a net citizen.
Design - in counterpoint...
Not necessarily in the wrong place but
definitely in counterpoint.
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So be it. It
is a good thing. Doomsday is only a game on the internet. But it is a real
consequence in real cities.
So be it, though.
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