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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gijs van Ginkel" data-source="post: 3637777" data-attributes="member: 82596">We had this discussion before on Birdforum, so it seems that we are repeating ourselves over and over.In short: a binocular producer has to invest in people let us say 500 employees average earning 30.000-40.000 euros per year (Meopta has 2500 employees, but a number of them (quite a few actually) do not work in binocular production but for production of optical-electronic devices). The company has to buy some machinerie to do the metal and glass works, let us estimate 10 million euros altogether for the machinerie. Add the buildings to it, maintenance of buildings and machines, heating or cooling of the buildings, costs of materials for the instruments to be produced like different kinds of metals or plastics, high quality optical glass, coating materials,research facilities, sales organisation worldwide and alltogther one obtains a respectacle amount of money. And that money has to be earned before profits can occur. As customers we are very egocentric and we often do not care about working conditions (many examples can be found), low wages etc. the only thing that matters to us is: get a top quality instrument and we want to pay as little as possible. If you take all factors into account I have described: that seems difficult to reconcile with each other.Why do we go to China, Vietnam, The Philippines, Singapore for fabrication of optics, computers etc.? To save costs on wages of the people who are doing all the work. There are rumors, that repsctabel Japanes companies are moving production facilities to low-wage countries to avoid labor costs. Big names from all over the world are connected to this way of business, we all can know them from our news papers. So why complain about a few more euros to be paid if we can be sure of a life long pleasure of top quality instruments if we are certified of top quality, excellent service and long lasting pleasure of the instruments made?.Gijs van Ginkel</blockquote>

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