Review: Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door-Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy

Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door-Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy by Christopher Mims
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What does it take for something to show up on our door when we order it online?  Mims uses this premise as his starting point to dive into the deep and complex infrastructure creation, transportation, and delivery that fuels modern consumer capitalism.  It's a challenging picture to consider because on the one hand, it is filled with massive feats of humankind in terms of how we are able to make things, move things, and consume things (then create waste-removal systems that are equally complex) and yet, at every point in this process, sits (or stands or moves) a precarious class of workers who are often exploited in numerous ways and are often forgoing their health for often unliveable wages in order to deliver goods at an unnecessary speed (e.g. 1-2 day delivery).  Mims balances this picture for the most part. He shows the amazing power of modern technology and international trade with a bird's eye view as he follows one product from factory to home delivery to understand this system.  As he explores each system, he takes time to talk with and research the lives of workers in these areas and while he does try to balance the two angles, it's hard not to get lost, overwhelmed, and concerned about the worker-exploitation that he finds time and again.  While it may not be "blood diamonds", his exploration of the ways people are controlled, overworked, and made to forgo human needs at times feels like it's still born out of similar structures of extraction.  So while readers will be enlightened to understand the technical and human effort involved in what can feel like "one-click" shopping, they are also likely to feel uncomfortable about their role in it.

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