You know that song “Think About It” by Flight Of The Conchords? “They’re turning kids into slaves just to make cheaper sneakers, but what’s the real cause? 'Cause the sneakers don’t seem that much cheaper. Why are we still paying so much for sneakers when you got 'em made by little slave kids? What are your overheads?”

Funnily enough, I used to work in a running shoe store, and Jemaine is actually 100% right. Nike, Asics, Brooks, Adidas, most of them mostly manufacture in southeast Asia, or at least did at the time and probably still do. Nike has famously had their name attached to the word “sweatshop” on multiple occasions. Meanwhile, New Balance manufactures in the US. Prices are similar, quality is basically the same, personally I don’t get on with either of them as well as I get on with Altra but that’s beside the point. Nike’s CEO makes like 100x what NB’s does, which means NB manages to match Nike on price and quality with a much more equitable pay structure and manufacturing in the US.

If your metric for the economy is anything other than how much money the CEO makes, then New Balance is the clear winner. And I just want to note how fucked it is that I’m looking at a CEO making almost 300k a year, who also happens to be kind of a right wing dipshit, and saying “yeah, he seems equitable” just because I have to compare him to one making 32 mil.

Another example is that Orbea bicycles, which are literally made by a worker-owned co-op in Mondragon in Spain, with a lot (though admittedly not all) of their manufacturing either in house or just over the border in Portugal, compete and win in top-level racing, so the quality is obviously there, with prices that match or beat ones set by giants like Trek, Specialized, Cannondale, or, well, Giant, all of whom do most of their manufacturing in Taiwan (to be fair, Giant is a Taiwanese company, but Trek, Spesh, and 'Dale are all American and, weirdly, Giant handles a lot of their manufacturing).

If you can’t show me that I’m wrong, then sure, pivot to something else again. But the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting something to change. Vaas from Far Cry 3 taught me that.