For all its little aggravations, bandstand can be a pretty nice place for a leisurely walk. Most of the year the weather is pretty nice, there are neighborhoods comprised of magnificent houses to gawk at, and if you’re in the right mood, there is a wealth of hilarity all around you.I was lucky enough to receive some free comedy while I was out for a stroll the other day. While navigating a winding street overlooking a babbling creek, I noticed a house set away from the sidewalk. In its driveway sat a car shaded by the limbs of dense trees that encircled the house. I walked past this scene without much thought, but a sudden realization forced me stop and backtrack to the foot of the driveway. I looked at the car’s bumper and saw the usual menagerie of trite neo-hippie bumper stickers urging peace, love, and Gore in 2000.(it belonged to a foreigner living in india i guess) Something special caught my eye, though: a bumper sticker that read “Buy locally, stop corporate globalization.”
It wasn’t the message that gave me pause for consideration: I’ve spent many an hour and many an academic course ruminating on the consequences of the global economy. What stopped me was a little piece of sublime hypocrisy: this bumper sticker was stuck on the back of a Honda Civic.
Without a doubt, the phenomenon of globalization is tricky subject, regardless of your personal feelings towards it. Some argue it is a means towards cheaper goods for everyone and economic development for industrializing countries. While it may create economic disparities, neo-liberal economic policy enthusiasts take the basic argument that a rising tide lifts all boats. On the other side, critics of globalization cite the gross human rights violations and the creation of exploitative economic practices that routinely occur as evidence it is a flawed system. They believe that such unbridled capitalism is immoral and that neo-mercantilism is the end result of such an ideology.
I believe both sides have their merits, and I do not want to make some grand judgement about the direction of the human race (in this post). I just want to write about why an anti-globalization bumper sticker on a Honda is hilarious.
As many of you know, Honda is Japanese company whose main focus is automobiles. Honda, along with other Japanese manufacturers like Toyota, have experienced great success in the car industry due to their vehicles’ fuel efficiency, reliability, and reasonable prices. They are the reason the American manufacturers like Ford are continually playing a defensive game while still losing money every year. I don’t think it would be controversial to say that a huge number of supposedly progressively minded, socially conscious folks love their Japanese cars. Guess who made the first hybrid? Honda. And all those Priuses on the roads? The ultimate eco-friendly status symbol comes from Toyota. After all, most people agree that Japanese cars are simply better products than their American counterparts (just check out the sales of the Toyota Camry, it’s amazing). But how are Americans able to buy products from a company based in Japan? That’s right kiddies: corporate globalization.
Since the early 1970s, Japanese cars have given Americans an attractive buying option in the car market. But the thing that’s really mind-blowing is that Honda has both manufacturing and R&D facilities in the in the good old US of A. Not only is America involved in consuming the products of foreign based company, it is actually manufacturing the product! What a brilliant and ironic way to encounter outsourcing: I doubt the folks working in Honda’s plants are cursing the global economy that provides them with jobs to support their families. In the Bay Area, kids are even taken to the NUMMI plant for school field trips. Surprisingly enough, it’s not to educate them about the horrors of the corporate globalization.
Globalization is taking place right here in our own backyard: foreign companies like Honda have exported manufacturing and engineering jobs to red-blooded American towns: Lincoln, Alabama, East Liberty, Ohio, and Torrance, California. If everyone began to heed the advice of the aforementioned bumper sticker, those folks would be out of a job, we’d be driving shitty cars from a monopolized market, and all the faux-hippies wouldn’t be able to feel smug. And we wouldn’t want that!
So what can we learn from all this? Some very useful things:
1. Don’t distill complex issues into bumper sticker slogans
2. Think for a second before putting crap on your car
3. The smallest (and stupidest) actions you take can provide endless amusement for a complete stranger
The world is really funny place if you can stop crying long enough to laugh at it.
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