As someone who grew up poor, I was made to feel like badly about myself in a direct and less by people who could afford ethical brands of clothing, food, etc. I think we really need to change the conversation from how to shop better (which if you are poor isn’t an option) to how to work collectively towards systematic change. I am not saying it isn’t worth it to take action against behringer, not buy their stuff, whatever. I don’t think that using purchases as a way to feel good about yourself morally is okay. It’s strikes me as a bit like buying indulgences from the church or whatever. If you are upper middle class, or rich and can afford lots of fancy analog synth gear, you get to both have high quality stuff and look down on the people that bought the knock offs for being unethical, all while not questioning your own culpability in this system.
I’m happy to just take a moment to be a gadfly here and annoy people slightly by calling them smug and pointing this out them if helps forces a discussion about this in our scene. In the coming years building solidarity is going to be increasingly important, and in this elite circle of people helping to shape the tools, aesthetics and cultural practices of electronic music, it’s actually even more important to reflect seriously on the tactics we are using to deal with problems in capitalism.
On the other hand, I get where folks here are coming from, and I’m not trying to end this conversation. I just think it needs to go deeper and we don’t confuse everything and have our opinions about the tackiness of behringer ripping off and existing product cloud our judgments about the other aspects of what they do. I feel like the aesthetic and the moral are getting twisted up here. I think by kicking the hornet’s nest here, that was my goal. What happens when the fancy things that give you aesthetic pleasure also have origins that make you queasy, do you just ignore it because it makes you feel good. If so, can you really consider yourself ethical.
I am also someone who feels pretty strongly about labor ethics, and have been subjected to violence from an employer that was supposedly ethical and “liberal” (the University of California, Santa Cruz… happy to name names in this isntance).
