Made in Germany means something!

[ChiILX1]

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Here seems to be a final answer I saw in a definitive X1 review. I knew some of you would want to see this:

 

"The legal basis for the application of the label is not exactly defined, but broadly a product with the label “Made in Germany” must fulfill the following requirements:

Those services and components which are crucial to the quality and valuation of the goods must have been performed or manufactured in Germany. The description “Made in Germany” is not justified by simply assembling parts that have been prefabricated abroad, carrying out a final inspection or labeling the goods in Germany. On the other hand, some parts or components of an industrial product may certainly be supplied from abroad, but the essential parts of the final product must always originate in Germany. A significant refinement may justify the description “Made in Germany”, but here too the above statement still applies: the refinement must be crucial to the quality and valuation of the product."

 

From X1

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[bill]

It doesn't matter.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

[Dan States]

It doesn't matter.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

 

A man of few words and even fewer thoughts. What a marvelous place this forum would be if we all treated each other like this! Thanks for that...whatever it was.

[Michael Geschlecht]

Hello Everybody,

 

I have been married a # of times. Among my wives are included a number of reasonably good lawyers any one of whom could easily drive a very large truck thru the loopholes I just read.

 

Best Regards,

 

Michael

[Ecaton]

Hello Everybody,

 

I have been married a # of times. Among my wives are included a number of reasonably good lawyers any one of whom could easily drive a very large truck thru the loopholes I just read.

 

Best Regards,

 

Michael

 

You set things into the right perspective. And considering the build quality of the X1, it might even be beneficial to Leica and the "made in Germany" label if it was confirmed that the baby Leica or its components are largely made in……... Unless it would represent the new "Made in Germany" standard. (and for the record as there are so many over-sensitive or insecure X1 owners, yes I still have a X1, and yes its IQ is excellent, its one sleek and good looking camera…. and I have no intention of bashing it)

[bill]

LoL! Not enough coffee this morning, Dan? or are you saying it does matter who assembles a piece of electronics - surely not?

 

Regards,

 

Bill

[earleygallery]

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I'd say that the sensor in a digicam is pretty essential. The sensor isn't made in Germany, so how does that square with those rules?

 

My guess it that the firmware - also essential - is written in Germany and loaded in Germany, therefore qualifying for the Made in tag.

[lykaman]

Yes, at one time M-in-G did mean something, but now as so many different parts are made in so many different corners of the world and then sub assembled & finally assembled somewhere else, I really doubt the actual M-in-G means much..

More to do with the Manufacturers:-

prestigé, warranty, customer service & finally their design specifications//QC..

I was told my R6.2 was put together in a Praktica factory! So, is it a Leica?

[robert blu]

Hmmm, at the end globalisation makes today's world smaller...maybe we just have to get used to a different way to see things...where I live (Italy) since years is going on a debate about what made in Italy means...many items are made of different parts made in different places and assembled in a different one as well...

robert

PS I know it is a little confusing but so has become today's life...

[bill]

Quite. That's why, in the vast majority of cases, it doesn't matter - particuarly when talking about electronic equipment.

 

I'm old enough to remember when many things in the UK market were marked "Empire Made" - in the 1960s that was a way of concealing that items had been manufactured in places like Hong Kong. I'd like to think that we are all a little more mature 40 years later.

 

Back in the 1980s I used to work for Siemens, described at the time as "a bank with electronics interests" Even then their production was largely globalised. There were some exceptions, but they were mostly historical rather than geo-political; Osram bulbs were still made in Germany, because that was where the factory was. Ditto SHIL (Siemens Hearing Instruments Ltd). Siemens Medical equipment was mostly made in the UK because the core of that business was a UK company that had been acquired at the end of the 1970s.

 

The people in Siemens ECG (semiconductors, surface-mount, etc) were always amused that they supplied components to Zanussi to go in their washing machines. The chips they supplied had a warranty twice that of the washing machine itself.

 

It's a global economy - it doesn't matter whether the hands that drive the machine that makes the part are black, white, brown, yellow or purple with blue spots; what matters is that they are appropriately trained and skilled to do the job. Get used to it.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

[ChiILX1]

 

It's a global economy - it doesn't matter whether the hands that drive the machine that makes the part are black, white, brown, yellow or purple with blue spots; what matters is that they are appropriately trained and skilled to do the job. Get used to it.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

 

DISGUSTING. That is indeed not all that matters and I would hope that we all REFUSE to get used to it!

 

I'm fine with things being made anywhere by anyone, but I'm not ok with what it means. For the sake of those exploited Chinese, and for the sake of now insecure Westerners, we should all refuse to "get used" to a global economy of debt slavery and labor exploitation. The gains made in the last 100 years on worker's rights have all but evaporated. Pensions are now reserved for the MBA's who engineer the evaporation of other's pensions. The days of working 40 years for one company and retiring comfortably are OVER and they are not coming back! Banks scheme an evaporation of capital globally through currency, as a result management squeezes labor until labor's enslaved like is beginning now, and that's that.

 

To see what I'm talking about just watch this and think of it's implications:

100th Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

100 Years After Triangle Fire, Tragedy in Bangladesh and Anti-Union Bill in Wisconsin Highlight Workers' Enduring Struggles

 

"CHARLES KERNAGHAN: On December 14th, 2010, just three months shy of the hundredth anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York, a fire broke out at the Hameem factory in Bangladesh on the outskirts of Dhaka. It was an 11-story building. It was lunchtime. There were workers in the cafeteria on the 11th floor, and they started to smell smoke. They didn’t panic. They did just what the workers did at Triangle: they started to go towards the exit. The workers tried to get out the exit, and the flames were so great and the smoke was so dense that they had to retreat. They ran through the cafeteria to the other side of the building, the west side, and they tried to go out the fire exits, and the exit doors were locked. They were trapped.

 

Those workers jumped off the top of the building from the 11th floor. They leapt off the building for the same reason, so that their parents could have their bodies and they could be mourned correctly and they could be buried correctly. Workers on the ground thought these were bales of clothing that were being thrown out the windows.

 

It’s word for word the exact same thing. At the Triangle factory, the exit door was locked. The exit door was locked at Hameem, a hundred years later at the factory fire at Hameem in Bangladesh. And do you know what the workers told us? They said that, often, management locks the exit gates during a fire so that the garments can’t be stolen. Twenty-nine workers were killed. Over a hundred workers were injured, 36 of them seriously and were hospitalized. The management paid the families of the deceased workers $2,080 as compensation. That’s what a life is worth in the developing world now.

 

This is going on, still, in the global economy today. Not one change. In fact, it gets worse. In Triangle they made 14 cents an hour. But when you adjust that for inflation, that 14 cents an hour in 1911 is worth $3.18 today. The workers at the Hameem factory in Bangladesh on the outskirts of Dhaka, they’re making, at the top wage, 28 cents an hour. That means that their earning, their wages in Bangladesh today, are one-tenth of what wages were in the United States 100 years ago. We are racing to the bottom."

 

That Bangladesh factory is run by an American company- the GAP. This is what outsourcing is about, the exploitation of labor. Not able to do it in your home country? Find somewhere where it is legal.

 

I am proud to buy any product made in Germany or USA not because of some strange fetish of the hand-made object, nor for some misplaced patriotism, and not because of any racism towards foreign workers, but because it means that at least some significant part of that object was made by someone who legally is entitled to be fairly compensated for what they have done and earn a living from it. I would feel the same way about Chinese goods or any others if it meant the same (and only rarely it does). I insist on fair trade goods or goods produced in countries where this kind of exploitation is illegal. So part of the X1 was made in Portugal? Fine. Canada? Fine. Germany? Fine. Great even. I just want to vomit when I think of what goes on in these workplaces in areas where our multinational companies own the governments, management class, and sometimes in the cases of these islands which have vague legal and national jurisdictions, the entire island (otherwise why do you think they are kept in such limbo?)

 

As long as laws are written at home to simultaneously protect our populations while allowing and even encouraging the exploitation of others (NAFTA CAFTA and so on), because of intense big-money legislative influences and a financial squeeze created by our economic system, the things we believe our countries stand for are ABSOLUTE hypocrisies. "Wow it's so wonderful the our western countries stand for freedom and democracy as we wear slave labor clothing use and consume near-slave labor produced products and live lives in absolute indebtedness, as tenants of this earth to those others who own it through their engineering of a system of absolute exploitation."

 

I'm happy the X1 did whatever was necessary to earn that Made in Germany stamp and regardless of the parts inside that were made elsewhere I think we can all agree there exists no better electronic camera option in the world today, in regards to supporting the people who make the product, then the M9 and X1.

 

Sorry for the long response but some statements just have to be challenged if anything is ever going to change.

[bill]

I assume therefore from your high moral stance that you have entirely satisfied yourself that the computer via which you are accessing the forum is sourced from an ethically responsible manufacturer, was sold to you by an ethically responsible vendor and is connected to the internet via an ethically responsible broadband service provider...?

 

Regards,

 

Bill

[ChiILX1]

I had no idea that I was taking such a high moral stance by objecting to a call to get used to slavery? High only in relation to someone as jaded as you perhaps.

 

What a weak response. Deny global warming because Al Gore has a continental. It is I who is chuckling at someone as resigned as you, who must completely dodge the point through obvious impossibilities: of course, there exists no computer made without labor exploitation at least in the last 20 years, including my macbook pro. If you are prodding for an idealistic and naive adolescent you will find none here.

 

However, there exists some cameras made today with partial assembly or manufacturing in socially responsible factories. One of my friends's brothers was the former director of Leica's digital division. I can assure you, they care and they try. Many Leica workers are happy workers. That's better than probably all 100% Chinese manufactured and assembled cameras undisputedly.

[andybarton]

If you think that an X1 is entirely made in Germany, entirely of German parts, I would put money on you being very disappointed.

[bill]

Chuckle away, old chap. I'm simply being realistic, and not fooling myself. You are entirely free to make your own choices as your conscience dictates.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

[ChiILX1]

If you think that an X1 is entirely made in Germany, entirely of German parts, I would put money on you being very disappointed.

 

So now you can't read? That's an unnecessary "IF"

[pop]

It doesn't matter.

 

Sorry for butting in, but I do not find this an acceptable reply.

 

I think we can safely assume that the question or rather the answer to the original question does matter to the person posing the question.

 

While it is perfectly acceptable to say that you're not interested in the question, I find it less than polite to declare the question in absolute terms as irrelevant.

 

The question is highly relevant to some people. If it's not to you, that tells more about you than about anyone else.

 

... entirely satisfied yourself that the computer via which you are accessing the forum is sourced from an ethically responsible manufacturer, was sold to you by an ethically responsible vendor and is connected to the internet via an ethically responsible broadband service provider...?

 

I buy fair trade stuff. I prefer computer manufacturers who give a credible account about their business practices over those who do not, and I avoid the notorious ones whenever I possibly can. Since I buy computers by the gross, I take the trouble and ask for credentials.

 

I care for the M.O. of my business partners. I shun those who are not up to expectations. I am fallible and I can be cheated. But still, I care and I act accordingly.

[djsteb]

WOW

 

Condesending Ivy League socialistic clap trap is even invading photography forums now. You would think that with the list of Socialist Countries which have failed growing by the day these "gifted" people with highly tuned minds and IQs might just begin to question whether the whole stupid theory is fatally flawed. Or maybe that's just me.

 

Have a wonderful day - courtesy of the Capaitalist System !

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Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[pop]

tuned minds and IQs

 

A bit of advice, all free of charge:

 

(1) Thank your maker daily on your knees for sparing you from that affliction.

(2) Avoid long words.

[Ronan]

LOL!

 

So who forgot to take their meds today!?