Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Today’s economic crisis has brought European morale down to a historical low. With jobs hard to find and recovery nothing but a mirage, where are people to turn for some stability, solace and maybe a bit of optimism?
A few things are taken as essentials. Eat, pray and love, we have been told, is all we need. Given this logic, all industries related to such noble pursuits, by definition, will never die. If you work in one of these areas (or in Hollywood), just relax, your job is safe. Even if the crisis lasts another couple of decades, there is still no way that restaurants will be empty, that the wine market will crash and that the real estate business of the Vatican will implode. Rich people will always buy fancy, expensive bottles. Poor people will always get drunk with cheap ones. And, together, they will happily gather in front of the church on God’s day (hopefully not with bottles in hand).
And love? Come on! Life without wine and religion is already almost impossible to conceive. You cannot, in any way, conceive life without love (pun intended). After all, when your brilliant career and your money are gone, your wife, husband or your fiancée will still be there. If not, there is always the most cost-efficient, trouble-free solution: self-love. And if all else fails, no matter how bad the crisis gets, at least the sex product industry will always flourish.
But maybe not…
As a matter of fact, sex toys are produced from the same raw materials many other labour intensive goods are made. Thus, suffering from the same “social dumping” effect other low-cost products have faced for decades. On top of that, the tariffs levied at the European borders for the import of these kinds of products are close to zero. This is not the case the other way around. On top of this the more elaborate and - apparently - efficient devices need the support of electric equipment. Electric appliances are often produced by making use of the so called rare earths (a.k.a. scarce raw materials) which are found - and jealously kept - almost exclusively in countries whose low cost imports are already threatening our sex-related manufacturing jobs.
The opening of international markets, coupled with the economic crisis, seem then to be threatening our most representative manufacturing industries. The ones that do survive are, for different reasons, operating in a non-competitive market. To be honest, what is saving the European wine industry from external competition are the legal constructs of geographical indications and appellations of origin. What is shielding the Vatican real estate business from competition is a particularly favourable treatment and the lack, and this is perfectly coherent, of an anti-trust discipline. But in the absence of protectionist tricks applicable to the love industry, will pure market forces eventually lead our glorious sex toys manufacturers to an inevitable end?
As grim as the future looks like, there might still be one hope for the future of the industry and the jobs of European workers and businessmen operating in this field. Competition, it is well known, is fiercer when companies in low labour cost countries can also take advantage of economies of scale. In this case, however, a geographically diversified demand might render this specific economic theory inapplicable.
Size matters, after all.
A few things are taken as essentials. Eat, pray and love, we have been told, is all we need. Given this logic, all industries related to such noble pursuits, by definition, will never die. If you work in one of these areas (or in Hollywood), just relax, your job is safe. Even if the crisis lasts another couple of decades, there is still no way that restaurants will be empty, that the wine market will crash and that the real estate business of the Vatican will implode. Rich people will always buy fancy, expensive bottles. Poor people will always get drunk with cheap ones. And, together, they will happily gather in front of the church on God’s day (hopefully not with bottles in hand).
And love? Come on! Life without wine and religion is already almost impossible to conceive. You cannot, in any way, conceive life without love (pun intended). After all, when your brilliant career and your money are gone, your wife, husband or your fiancée will still be there. If not, there is always the most cost-efficient, trouble-free solution: self-love. And if all else fails, no matter how bad the crisis gets, at least the sex product industry will always flourish.
But maybe not…
As a matter of fact, sex toys are produced from the same raw materials many other labour intensive goods are made. Thus, suffering from the same “social dumping” effect other low-cost products have faced for decades. On top of that, the tariffs levied at the European borders for the import of these kinds of products are close to zero. This is not the case the other way around. On top of this the more elaborate and - apparently - efficient devices need the support of electric equipment. Electric appliances are often produced by making use of the so called rare earths (a.k.a. scarce raw materials) which are found - and jealously kept - almost exclusively in countries whose low cost imports are already threatening our sex-related manufacturing jobs.
The opening of international markets, coupled with the economic crisis, seem then to be threatening our most representative manufacturing industries. The ones that do survive are, for different reasons, operating in a non-competitive market. To be honest, what is saving the European wine industry from external competition are the legal constructs of geographical indications and appellations of origin. What is shielding the Vatican real estate business from competition is a particularly favourable treatment and the lack, and this is perfectly coherent, of an anti-trust discipline. But in the absence of protectionist tricks applicable to the love industry, will pure market forces eventually lead our glorious sex toys manufacturers to an inevitable end?
As grim as the future looks like, there might still be one hope for the future of the industry and the jobs of European workers and businessmen operating in this field. Competition, it is well known, is fiercer when companies in low labour cost countries can also take advantage of economies of scale. In this case, however, a geographically diversified demand might render this specific economic theory inapplicable.Size matters, after all.
