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  #11  
Old 12-22-2016, 07:28 AM
cliffrod cliffrod is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by leoitch View Post
dear Cliffrod,
i am glad you appreciated the skill and ingenuity of those crazy smiths.
when i was traveling as a journeyman/apprentice blacksmith in the US, i was impressed with the can-do, "let's try it" attitude of the many individual craftsmen i met. i am certain this attitude is the cornerstone of invention and improvements.
Inventing and developing new technologies is what allowed Western people to dominate the new worlds they discovered.

as i begin to see this same attitude being displayed more and more in my neck of the woods, i am optimistically hopeful that we all can be equals one day.
but we, the newcomers, are now just learning. as the Westerners had their learning time, the newcomers should have their opportunity, too.

as for "buying USA" as a way to impose on the newcomers your standards, please know that their own domestic market is now adequate to sustain their manufacturing.


fyi, my ear protection is a wad of cotton ball jammed into my ear. not as fancy as a USD20 ear-muff but just as efficient.
One of the larger challenge I find is balancing the individual craftsmen -for whom I generally have great respect, regardless of location- with the deliberate profiteering of non-craftsmen- including politicians and business "experts"- who play one market against another for their own profit and benefit at the expense of the craftsmen. When these efforts include deliberate market manipulation, including fully untrue claims about what is/is not available or can/cannot be done anymore, it cannot be tolerated.

Cotton in your ears may be fine where you are, but it is no longer legal for employees here in the USA because of past abuse and exploitation of people such as my family (poor, relatively uneducated new immigrants). The resulting safety regulations and related insurance mean we are better protected but must afford far greater costs to operate. When I advocate for fair trade, it is as much to protect peers abroad like you so that none of us are exploited. The same costs are ultimately incurred by everyone.

we won't solve this matter in a couple of Internet posts and I regularly say that it will not matter until you lose your job. Over the past 15 yrs, there's been notable shift of manufacturing centers between different areas of Asia. Now that some of those people are losing their jobs, what I say probably makes more sense to them.

Be careful and take care.

Edit- since this forum is an international audience, Buy Local may be a better statement than Buy USA. The imbalance occurs when inequitable standards or operational requirements between different regions or countries are treated as equivalent. Claiming the resulting products to be inferior isn't the basis of my argument.

The fact that a worker in one area or country can safely produce 1,000 or even 10,000 items vs someone else being severely injured or killed before they produce 100 of the same items in another area should be part of the marketplace, not simply a way to make a quick profit by injuring that worker. When those jobs & income start disappearing as the graveyards start filling up in your own community it's easy to see.

Arbitrarily imposing USA standards upon your market is just as unacceptable as imposing yours upon mine. Doing what each wants in their own closed system is more appropriate, as long as it stays there completely. If we are going to cross over into each other's market for whatever reason, then everything needs to be equivalent.

If you have not been to my website, you might consider visiting this page- http://carolinasculpturestudio.com/k...-mlk-memorial/ to better understand my perspective and experience. This is a very complicated argument.

I am fighting for craftsmen everywhere, so we can all continue to do what we love without illegitimate competition. Such competition is not about providing a superior product or even trying to produce superior work. It is specifically meant to eliminate competitors and the work/product they offer to better control profits while restricting those profits from the workers. When you find yourself in the same position as I am, it sounds like your arguments will also be the same.
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Last edited by cliffrod; 12-22-2016 at 08:59 AM. Reason: Addition- see edit
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  #12  
Old 12-22-2016, 11:06 AM
leoitch leoitch is offline
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first off,
apologies to Kerry for hijacking this thread...but ,then, the topic is "this isn't metalshaping..."

dear Cliffrod,
when i started out my studio 15 years ago i had the grand dream of making wonderful metal objects for sale. but my cost structure is high due to my expensive training and quality of work i insist on. everywhere i pitched my product i got the same response..."but we can get something similar for half the price from XX or YY country".

i stuck at it for about 4 years hoping to win them over. but the almighty dollar won.

so i switched to making commissioned metal objects. because of my better training i was able to make objects others didn't bother with.
let me assure you this is tough going...living from one commission to the next. but i cannot see myself doing any other type of work.


my point is, you cannot stop progress. you either try to get ahead of it or work around it.


and, yes, i agree that new labour markets are opening up that are making the Chinese not competitive. 15 years ago the Chinese made mostly cheap plastic trinkets or sew clothes. new cheaper labour markets have since come online and the Chinese are losing those lower skill jobs to them.
but as we can see from the video, they have improved themselves and have gone into higher echelons of manufacturing.
THEY HAVE PROGRESSED and adapted to the new environment.

isolationist demands and practices are short-sighted but is a popular fallback. you can easily find many past occurrences but each one has failed along the way.


thanks much for caring about our well-being but we are doing ok.
yes, we will live better in future but we'll get there on our own terms...as you did.
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Last edited by leoitch; 12-22-2016 at 11:29 AM. Reason: grammar
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  #13  
Old 12-22-2016, 02:58 PM
cliffrod cliffrod is offline
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Adaptation is the only way to survive. I fully agree. What I do has changed drastically since my apprenticeship and changing has allowed me to persevere where others have failed. First India, then China and the Internet were just becoming relevant in my industry beginning around 2000. It's dramatically different now. It's also beginning to change as import companies will not pursue certain work outside the USA because of quality issues.

Getting to this point has been very difficult. What I do cannot survive as a heritage and way of life in a hobby environment. that may not matter to most people. It matters greatly to me.

In many ways, this forum is example of the contradiction between adaptation and preservation. The "new" ideas are more often recycled old ways. Metal is a different media for me, allowing manipulation of the actual surface plane alone vs approaching it via additive (sculpting or modeling) or reductive (carving) methods. Very cool.

Equity for equity. If we compete head to head, we should be held to the same standard. If not, one of us has an unrealistic advantage that has little or nothing to do with their actual work. Isolationism goes both ways.

We may have to agree to disagree. You will never convince me that it is ok to allow my competitor to purposely endanger or injure workers or environment so they can offer a lower priced product.
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  #14  
Old 12-30-2016, 09:14 PM
leoitch leoitch is offline
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here's another video to keep the conversation going....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrcJ8JagNHw

i am guessing this is in India, they are working aluminium, and the workers are around late teens to early twenties.
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