>>2780111Current market
1. craftsman wants to make wool jacket
2. it’s far easier and cheaper to get shitty fabrics made from polyester despite the process to make it being very complex because there’s an economy of scale and the market demands more of it because at that scale it’s cheaper than decent fabrics
3. This situation exists because there is shit tons of demand for polyester clothing so the firms need tons of polyester. There is not as much demand for say linen, so it’s not produced in large quantities that allow for an economy of scale and an extreme bidding down of prices via competition like what you get with polyester
4. As a result a metre x one and half metre section (this is the approximate length fabric is sold by in EU+Britain) of polyester will cost £1 at full price whereas linen will £6 when it’s on sale and deadstock (it’s more like £13 when you buy it new).
5. So when the artisan goes to make his wool jacket he pays way more than he would have if the average consumer bought wool jackets.
It’s not as bad with cotton as it is for wool. This may have something to do with the fact the British state forced the creation of a centralised board that auctions (not sells) most of the nation’s wool with almost no competition in order to bump up the price as much as possible. They did this because there was a wool surplus after ww2 because the state was no longer buying material for uniforms and the public had been conditioned to minimise wool use to save material for the army (anything made from non-blend wool cost more ration stamps than an equivalent product made of a different material). Instead of admitting they’d fucked the wool markets the socialists in charge of planning the war economy and later the recovery blamed the free market and “discriminatory” prices dependent on location (shocker: people want different things in different quantities in different places meaning things have different prices at different places).
