Police on the lookout for three suspects in Biketown vandalism case

In other words, it’s about ideology rather than things that affect people directly.

High blood pressure is the least of their worries.

“The Girl Effect was born amid an urgent PR crisis two decades ago, when Vietnamese Nike workers spoke to labor advocates and journalists about being routinely beaten by their managers; dozens of other news stories exposed negative working conditions in overseas factories making products for Nike. Under public pressure to take responsibility for its supply chain, then-CEO Phil Knight admitted that the company had become “synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime, and arbitrary abuse.” He promised to not only transform Nike’s supply chain but to lead the entire apparel industry into a new era of corporate social responsibility.”

“Workers routinely collapsing unconscious at their work stations from overwork and excessive heat, then being forced to return to work minutes after waking up; managers hurling epithets, often vulgar, at the mainly female workforce; absurd work rules, like a ban on yawning; the routine firing of pregnant workers; harassing workers for using the bathroom, including photographing them when they enter and exit; illegal overtime requirements that were not waived even for a worker who needed to attend a family funeral.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_grind/2016/08/nike_s_supply_chain_doesn_t_live_up_to_the_ideals_of_its_girl_effect_campaign.html

“Is there something wrong with Nike? Sure, they probably use low-wage foreigners to make their stuff, but those low wages and steady jobs are no-doubt welcomed by those workers.”

No doubt.

“Just about anyone could make stuff that’s equally good for less money; go out and do it – become a rich guy!”

Right. Why didn’t I think of that!

“I still feel zero compulsion to buy a Nike product.”

Me too. But this is not really or solely about that, as I’ve tried to suggest here.

“To be sure, the strategies of enticement appear to shape tastes in certain new immigrant communities, in many sectors of the youth and children’s market, in communities of impoverished and uneducated consumers, and even in those more upscale markets of educated consumers who boast that they are unaffected by seductions. But in all those markets, as Schudson has shown, there are people who are indifferent to and contemptuous of advertising and who depend largely on their families, friends, and consumer groups for information about goods. Growing investment in advertising in not (and has not been) grounded solely on its immediate or obvious impact on consumer choice; rather, it is based on the need of business to have unopposed cultural influence.”
(Michael Schudson as quoted in William Leach, Land of Desire, p. 384)

I’m going to wager that you know exactly nothing about the relative luxuries experienced by those who currently get by without a car in the zip codes and census tracts I’ve found them to be in. So I would ask that until you understand that you keep the self-centered quip to yourself.

Even if there were slightly more carfree households where proximity was excellent, focusing on that statistical relationship does not help us—in fact distracts us from noticing much less—understanding how those who are carfree but do not enjoy those benefits make it work.