Alright, let’s talk about t shirts. We’ve talked about fifty dollar t shirts, hundred dollar t shirts but let’s talk about normal fifteen dollar t shirts and specifically how did fifteen dollars become the new standard? So t shirts starts with cotton. A cotton plant takes about nine months to grow and cotton is a very thirsty plant. When you’re buying enough cotton for a T-shirt you’re also buying the amount of water. It takes one T-shirt, 17 liters, about 450 gallons. On top of that is pesticides, fungicides, seeds. A farmer has to pay for all of that and when you think about the work and the resources, cotton, raw cotton becomes a very precious resource and that’s just raw cotton. They have to be spun and turned into yarn at a spinning mill and that spinning isn’t a completely automated process. These cotton fibers need to be fed into a machine by hand. If you’re working in a spinning mill in India, one of the largest producers, they have specific programs. So you would typically be a teenage girl saving up for your dowry. That yarn gets knitted, woven into fabric. Now that fabric can be machine cut but it is sewn by a human being, a pair of hands and for cheap labour, you commonly think of China, India, Vietnam, the three biggest garment industries in the world but cheap labour can be found anywhere, even in developed countries, even in America. The hack or the loophole Is that workers are paid not by hour, but by garment. When you’re being paid by the seam or the piece that encourages very fast but less than meticulous work. You’re really paid to pump out t shirts. So from plant to finished product, you have at least four human hands that touch that garment. Four pairs of hands as well as a bunch of international shipping results in a 15 dollar retail price, which means that it was made for much, much less. And that’s what we consider as normal. In an ideal situation, these four people are paid fairly, are paid a living wage. But we also have to satisfy this 15 dollar price. So we consistently have to rely on the most desperate, most hard working people on the planet. We don’t really consider that. We don’t think of that because on the other side, as consumers, we have this very established idea that a T-shirt shouldn’t cost more than 15 dollars. But really the idea is a reflection of how you feel about clothes. You wear it for a year, throw it away, you print a funny joke or a picture for a bachelor party. That 15 dollar idea is a reflection of how you live your life, right? How this T-shirt fits into your world. It doesn’t recognise the 4, 5 pairs of hands that touch that garment. So nowadays we hear about this $50 hundred dollar T-shirt and we think what the hell is Going on with the world, right? The world is crazy. But really, the true examination should be what we have now taken for granted, what we have considered normal. Like we should be thinking about what we have become accustomed to.