The True Cost Summary

Neoliberalism is an ideology and policy that promotes free market capitalism. This translates to promotion of competition of profit, minimal states, and privatization. The effect of neoliberal policies was shown in the documentary, The True Cost. The True Cost shows that the garment industry is greed and exploitation base to achieve the best sourcing efficiency. The owners would pressurize the worker to work for low wages and unsafe working condition due to greed and competition. The video showed that they are rich getting richer and the poor remained poor. This idea of rich getting richer was enhanced by reading because it explains how capitalism has changed everything to a profit base intention. The documentary displayed the effect of neoliberal

Due to the lack of resources and supplies in every country, the countries depends on each other for those resources. Correspondingly, I use to believe that interdependency is a great way to benefit both parties because one party will receive the resource and the other party would receive money for that given resource. However, the reading challenged my idea because it talked about the effect of neoliberal policies on interdependency. It talked about how develop countries exploited developing countries to receive the most benefit because everything is a competition to gain wealth upon wealth. A win lose concept is shown in the documentary, as the US relies on the third world countries to produce garments that are sold in the US. However, the US capitalistic industry exploited the third world countries owners by saying that they need to produce at a lower cost and if they are not able to produce at the given cost demanded by the US, the US will take its business elsewhere for cheaper. The developing countries’ factory owners would get scared that they will lose that little of profit, if they do not satisfy the demand. Hence the workers are put into dangerous conditions and wages are lowered to meet the develop countries

As well as, I was very careless on spending money on clothing for each event or buying clothes and never actually wearing them because of the sale prices that were marketed in the stores. After, understanding the commodity chain, I am more cautious about my selection of clothes and other items because the cheap clothes that we buy are not cheap, it is actually costing others’ lives. As well as, knowing the terms independency and commodities, I was able to relate those to idea to understand the effect of independency on the producers in the third world countries. The documentary showed that US relies on Bangladesh for clothing, but people in Bangladesh are paying large cost to make the clothes. The population in the environment showed that the kids there have developed many illness and cancers because the water, air, and food are polluted with the chemical, chromium