Benjamin Irvine

@econbecon.bsky.social

46 Followers 75 Following

Researcher of the economy, ecology, work and housing 📈 Connoisseur of concrete 🛹 https://benjaminirvineresearch.wordpress.com/

the port itself was but one node in an even more gargantuan grid running from the miserable cobalt mines of Kolwezi to refineries in Zhejiang and from there to component plants in the sweltering factory districts of Bắc Giang, the newly-mechanized production lines in Shenzhen, and at last, as “finished products” through the Port of Hong Kong across the Pacific to the Port of Tacoma and into trucks unloaded at warehouses much like my own, from whence the myriad objects will spill out into similar grids designed by industrial engineers in Germany, managed by software composed further north in Seattle, and run by hardware designed in Silicon Valley and San Diego on chips printed in Hsinchu or Kaohsiung, Taiwan, scanned by cameras designed in Tokyo using components supplied by Seoul. And, in each instance, the commodities are shaped and reshaped in the hands of workers passing along their own grids from overpriced apartment to underpaid job where they are monitored by similar camera systems and similar supervisors who are all assholes in similar ways