The meaning of things

Mike Redwood

Columnist

International Leather Maker

If you have read a few of my articles this year when I have written about craft, local communities and stewardship, you might be thinking that I am starting to oppose globalisation, industry, technology, meritocracy and perhaps even capitalism itself. I want to dispel those thoughts.

I am big fan of Adam Smith, but I think his ideas of specialisation and exchange make most sense when taken together with his thoughts on “moral consequences”. Also, when the Chicago School put the priority on shareholders in 1970, they were looking at traditional economies where manufacturing was locally based and had a duty to be socially responsible – funding schools, hospitals, libraries and the like.

It appears that around the 1980s, some companies decided they should walk away from their communities and chase the cheap labour in emerging markets. It had been trending for a decade, but the acceleration was ruthless and soon challenged as frequently exploitative. Everything was about the bottom line and shareholder rewards. It marked a moment when shareholder capitalism turned towards irresponsible greed. After 20 years as a non-executive director of a U.S. engineering business, I watched it in action when the business was taken over: lawyers advised board meeting discussions to be limited and recorded. Comments about safeguarding employees, suppliers and the local community had to be made informally outside the formal meeting as we had to demonstrate no interference with the rights of shareholders. In my view, if this sort of capitalism is not abated, it will undermine democracy.

So, I think we should all be loudly promoting capitalism but only a form of capitalism that accepts its role in society with proper willingness to pay taxes and contribute fully to community wellbeing.

Working with your hands

It is similar when meritocracy is to be considered. It is very much better than many other “…ocracies” these days, such as autocracy, gerontocracy or even the often badly taxed “inheritocracy”. It went spectacularly wrong when we started to think that a paper certificate that entitled the holder to sit at a large desk and boss people around was better than skills that involve using hands and eyes. I first came across this “entitlement” superiority in the 1970s working in El Salvador, but it raced away in the 1990s and 2000s when many countries started pushing their youths into university. Did they not realise that for a wide variety of reasons, many people actually need to work with their hands, and that the jobs they do are valid and useful?

Nor is it right to oppose technological advancement. We should actively pursue a future which is digital, green and inclusive. And the leather industry from craft to high volume producers should have AI adoption among its strategic priorities, just as it should be thinking of decarbonisation and scaling up smaller firms. Applied AI should be an explicit goal. There is no reason it cannot transform all sectors of leather and leather product-making, including cultural and creative areas where crafts sit. However, if we do not manage it ourselves then instead of helping, it looks likely to create uncontrollable harms.

We should prioritise AI‑assisted design, smart production planning, digital twins of tanning processes or heritage techniques (as already suggested by Geoff Holmes of IULTCS), and better market intelligence, rather than replacing handwork at the bench. The emerging orthodoxy must become to protect the integrity of the craft practice, but let AI and other technologies handle design exploration, operations, sales, forecasting, documentation and even certain repetitive production tasks, where that helps keep the craft economically viable.

This applies equally to both big tanning organisations as well as the most traditional vegetable micro- tannery. But the list of what is sacrosanct and to be kept for the pure artisan must be carefully designed and protected in all cases. What makes leather special and differentiated from competitive materials of all sorts cannot be sacrificed.

Concerns over GDP as a measurement

Finally, in this somewhat repetitive column, I continue to express concern about the determination to grow GDP as it is currently measured. Did falsely suppressing interest rates so American, and other consumers, could borrow to keep retail spending up at the start of the century create benefit in the long term? Did the huge building boom in China that has left entire cities of empty houses and uncountable numbers of consumers who bought homes now left abandoned, half completed by bankrupt builders, really help China? And why does GDP award the total felling of a forest more highly than cutting down sections each year to allow sustainable regeneration?

I accept the arguments that show big GDP growth numbers will be increasingly hard to achieve as demographics, urban growth and resource limitations put a brake on growth, with climate change also pulling it down. At the moment, AI makes immense promises, but as I watch it develop, I see it creating more problems than benefits, and is not the best route to achieve massive GDP growth. So far, it seems to be doing more damage to the fundamental quality of jobs than it is to their numbers.

This is, in reality, a huge macro-environmental picture out if which leather and the community of industries and crafts that surround it can help to succeed and grow. I think the moment has come to fight harder for the communities and the civilisation that leather has allowed us to build.

mike@internationalleathermaker.com

You can find Dr Mike Redwood across social media at @michaelredwood.

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