The Place of Labor Intensive Production in the Global Economy
As you know, as Endemigo, we are in favor of circular economy. If you ask why; We can count on many reasons from global warming to social inequalities, from lack of water to wasteful resource consumption. However, the main reason for our advocacy of the circular economy is that craze of consumption has reached the highest level with the industrializing world societies. Yes, we can access any product we want. Even less income segment of the population can also buy smartphones. Everyone can have anything they want thanks to industrial products. So is such an approach correct for the economy and the development cycle of the world? Of course not. Because resources are running out. The lifetime of a very large amount of goods produced is getting shorter and shorter day by day. Today's linear economy aspect, which brings many problems such as dozens of new clothes every season that we do not wear, cabinets fully filled with the food than we will always consume, unfair access to basic food and necessity products. This is an incomprehensibly bad system in our opinion.
All countries aroud the world are also aware of how bad is the existing system. It is evident from the Paris Climate Agreement, which we have signed together as all countries of the world, that we are now approaching the messages. Since the signing of this agreement in 2015, we all see the progress towards a circular economy all over the world. Wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles and the importance given to recycling are increasing day by day. Is it enough, for sure not. There is a long way to go as a humanity.
So what is the place of labor intensive production in the circular economy? Here it should be noted that; The labor-intensive production we are talking about has not much to do with political views. Labor-intensive production is actually a completely human-oriented production that we call art or craftsmanship today.
Endemigo is not against technology and mechanization only in favor of organizing these with a Circular Economy approach. To put it more clearly, it is not against products produced with technology or produce by less labor force. But, in favor of people gaining more in less time, recognizing how intensive the work is done to increase the labor intensity, skill intensity or quality of the work. Think about it, you work 4 or 3 days a week, but you still get a full monthly salary. In this way, as technology develops, wouldn't it be ensured that its use for the benefit of human beings increased? Isn't it possible to make a monthly livelihood comfortably without loosing their jobs and having more people to work less intensely?
Yes, we are also a technology company and our goal is to move forward in this path. Instead of trying to employ less people, focusing on making more people earn more with less overtime with technology advances. Well, if you ask how this can be done, of course by protecting the world and labor-intensive producers. We do not think that people will get unemployed as technology advances. On the contrary, we say that as technology advances, unemployment should decrease, labor-intensive production should increase, and shifts in today's normal business life should decrease.
We believe that the number of people working in labor-intensive jobs will increase and this form of production will contribute greatly to human development. While doing this, we think that the products produced by labor-intensive employees should be more valuable. In this way, quality of life and the rate of contribution of labor-intensive workers to the economy will increase.
Unfortunately, hand made products are not seen always more valuable. Although it may seem like a more perfect production technology, we all know that the products produced by human hands are aesthetic. By the way, we would like to add; aesthetics is not being one hundred percent correct. Aesthetics are often made by mistake. The Japanese are the first to notice this in art. They realized this in their first electronic musical instruments. They saw that instruments that print a hundred percent notes have no emotion, and therefore mastery is actually in the human touch that seems like that mistake. For this reason, we think that production with labor-intensive human hand touch is much more aesthetic and important.
Technology is standard but human labor is beyond standard. The standard shows the absolute accuracy of a certain lower level, the handwork must be perfect! I guess it will be like this until robots learn how to make an art. Even tough, artificial intelligence computers with artistic works have begun to be tested, but still this will not eliminate the importance of human production. We know that the most important element that develops people is to transform their talents into skills, in other words, mastery and art. Therefore, in order to develop, people should pay attention to their manual labor, intelligence and abilities and try to develop them. In order to do this socially, we need to value and encourage labor-intensive production. This is inevitable for us if we want to develop humanity.
Now let's talk about labor-intensive production in terms of geographically indicated products. At this point, we can easily say that almost all of the geographically indicated products are labor-intensive, quality products beyond standards. The majority of those who produce these products are our women producers and micro-scale enterprises. They continue to produce with skills, traditions, preserving and developing them in old ways without industrialization. We are working for them to win, to stand on their feet and to share these humanity gifts with future generations. We can say that we are working to make the world a better place.
Think about it; Every product you buy does not pollute or destroy the world, it is produced in limited numbers, and it is tried to be protected as human values. On top of that, we can say that geographically marked products are the most important products that enable women of the world to be independent by standing on their own feet. And if our consumers pay attention to importance of these issues, continue using the products that they buy for a longer period, do not waste and demand more than they cannot consume, then we will be achieving our goals. Our advice to you is love our world, use geographically indicated products for a sustainable world and a life. In this way, you will be a part of our happiness culture and we will be very happy about it. We know this a long text. Believe me, there are many things left to get mentioned about. Now we call our next blog / journal post. If you have any questions, ask us. We try to answer as much as we can.