No Where to Turn

This is a little off topic as it relates to design and conservation, but I have no other good place to put it, so here goes.

The current state of being with the extreme right of the Republican party has gone beyond sensible social and/or fiscal conservatism, into puratanical idiocrity. In a recent discussion on NPR on the topic of abortion (yes they are still harping on this topic) Republicans are now holding all of Planned Parenthood, Health Care reform, and Family Planning services up by threat of de-funding, unless all possible use of any funds for abortion are completely eradicated. They take this to some of the most extremely convoluted logic possible, to include indirect connections between the existence of clinics themselves making profits, and using those profits (not Fed funds) to pay doctors, who might provide an abortion.

The premise is simple minded enough: They do not agree that abortions should be provided to women, thus, any tax funds they contribute cannot be used to fund activities that might in some way fund or cause to occur an abortion.  This is a ridiculous premise of course, assuming that we must all agree to every line item of every federal expense in order to allow it to be spent, or program funded. I offer some of my own:

I absolutely disagree with our military presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Japan, and Korea – thus I call for all military spending be stopped and de-funded, including the closure of all suppliers to the military, and all supliers to those suppliers.

I have no kids, never have, nor ever will. For the most part, I don;t even like kids. Therefore, I demand the elimination of property taxes on my home and business that are used for the education of children, as I derive no benefit from it.

I absolutely disagree with all farm and food subsidies, and subsidies of crops grown to create fuel. This is market interference that distorts the economy. Thus, I demand that all subsidies by shut down immediately, including food programs that assist the poor and needy – this is just the price they must pay until we can sort all this out.

I absolutely disagree with any public funding of any religion, in any way. Thus, I demand that all tax breaks for church activities, and tax deductions for donations be eliminated immediately, as they are indirect subsidies to church activities, which is unconstitutional.

I do not support forced expansion of our political ideology, in any way. Therefore I insist that all spending on foreign aide that directly or indirectly funds the expansion, promotion, or education of democracy in any way, cease immediately.

I do not believe in globalization of the market, and feel that corporations who export our jobs overseas are destroying our working class and middle class, and eroding the growth of individual pursuit of well being, growth of income, and pusuit of happiness for profits earned on the back of communist exploited labor. Thus, I demand that all corporate tax breaks on earnings, directly or indirectly derived from importing products rather than manufacturing them here, be rescinded, and that all assets of corporate leaders who close factories here to open them in exploitive markets be siezed and sold off to pay for all unemployment caused by their profit greed behavior.

I completely disagree than corporations are individuals, thus demand that all supreme court justices who voted to give corporations this status, and the freedom to contribute unlimited funds to political candidates, be removed from the court immediately, and that the entire judicial system be shuttered until every decision is approved by me.

I disagree that Marijuana should be controlled differently than alchohol, thus demand the closure of the DEA until it is made legal.

I do not support the intrusion of the DOE in controlling enegry use behavior. The prices of energy and its availability should be the only market controls of activity. If I want to drive a 5mpg car and pay $25 a gallon, then that should be my right, thus I demand the DOE be de-funded immediately.

I disagree with the inclusion of the word “God” on our money, as this is a direct violation of the constitutional separation of religion and state, so demand it all be burned and replaced immediately.

You get the picture… Governments are collectives that must operate in turbulent waters often including issues that are not always widely accepted and or popular. The founding fathers did not want mob rule, as we have it today, which is suggested by the silly notion that one issue can be used to hold an entire program hostage. We don’t vote on every single issue, nor do we have a right to veto line items within the total work fo the government. We do, however, have the power to put in office representatives who, within the framework of the constitution, represent our views and make decisions to suit the collective population as a whole.

If the puritanical freaks want to destroy productive programs to support singular line item issues, then so be it. In two years we will all have our shot at dumping them in the ditch. The victories of the Tea party and puritans in 2010 are going to be very short lived if events continue to move as they are today. From Republican governers attacking labor unions, to the attack on Health services over abortion, the insanity of the ultra right could not be more glaring and obvious. This small cadre of noisy, moronic, simple minded, religious zealots  must eventually be flushed from our public governance, or we risk failure as a nation. There are serious issues in front of us, from the decline in personal income, the escalating cost of energy, the soon to be catastrophic collapse of our social contract with the elderly, and our loss of strength as a leading nation in technology and wealth – while we are being robbed blind by Republican supported corporate thieves. Abortion is a moot point when the country is tanked by ignorance and failure to act on truly important and critical issues before us.

At some point, the degradation of our personal well being by the actions of the few loud radicals amongst us will need to end. Hopefully we can stem the tide before it’s simply unrecoverable. At some point the divisiveness and entrenchment we have in play now will become so strong, and the country so divided in unsupported rhetoric, that recovery will be impossible.  So, head off to that picket line demanding some singularity be focused upon at the cost of larger issues if you will. When you have a moment, give a thought to those you are damaging in the process, and what you might do one day if your own financial position or way of life is found to be the target of another equally loud and obnoxious group.

On the Japan v. China v. Domestic Manufacturing Base

In a recent “discussion” on the topic of the issue of Chinese manufacturing and product quality (and its general impact on domestic manufacturing), I commented that the frequency of bad quality, poor performing, short lived junk I have experienced from the Chinese manufacturing base was becoming intolerable. This includes a recent purchase of a small hobby knife set, whose blades are so poorly heat treated they break like glass at the slightest stress. I have also recently had to replace an expensive set of lathe tools, because the Chinese sourced originals came with a bit size that is unavailable anywhere in the world – pretty idiotic since the reason you use this particular tool system is to avoid replacing the entire tool when the cutting surface becomes dull. This experience is consistent from machine shop items to house goods, to a laptop computer that fails to charge half the time from a poor fitting power plug… I cringe every time I see that little “Made in China” on the UPC code, or little gold sticker. I cringe even more when I get the speech about the inevitability of China taking over manufacturing in my home lighting market…

The contention in the conversation was that my complaints of Chinese quality were unfounded. First, it was proposed, the Japanese supposedly went through a similar phase, and look at them now! That my concerns over the impact on US manufacturing and product quality overall, not to mention our economy, are like the paranoid concerns over Japanese intrusion in the 1980′s, which turned out to be over-stated.

I could not disagree more… now that I have had a few nights to let this sink in. Her’es why:

In 1974, a pack of buddies and I had the opportunity to take  apart a Gen 1, 1972 Honda Civic. The car had been crashed, and the idea was to extract the motor and front drive gear out of it to put into another silly project (which faded). There was the typical American boy comments and jokes about tin can quality and how the Japanese product was inferior to American iron… until we tore the car down. The jokes fades as we discovered the clever lightweight engineering the car employed. The motor was far more sophisticated, with overhead cam and cast header, and electronic ignition, compared to the iron block pus-hrod antiques our own cars had on board (still mostly remaining in production today by GM and Ford).  We found the little Civic not as much tin can as very smartly designed, using as little as possible, with obvious precision, to make a tight little car that was more like a Timex watch than it was the massive tractor based hardware we were driving – except for one of us, who was driving a 1970 Datsun 240Z – which we all coveted.

That same year was the year my grandfather clocked his 100,000th mile on his 1966 Datsun 520, a quirky little pickup that was a gas to drive, and never failed him once. He was always as small car guy, so was my dad. Grandad was a retailer of Crossley cars back in the day, my dad owned VW Beetles. The reputation for Japanese car quality here, is based on the perception that cars need be large and heavy to be of quality. Japanese cars then and now, are neither – thus are considered by some to be of poor quality – little tin cans, and all that. Same noise surrounds the motorcycle industry, where Jap bikes simply kick the snot out of US and Euro bikes. While the chatter is that Japanese bikes are like Bic lighters, a lot of heat but short lived – this is unfounded as well. Yes, they are made from lighter, thinner, less thick metals and more plastic than a Harley. That is meaningless. Well maintained Hondas, Kawasaki, Yamaha, and Suzuki motorcycles have proven to be just as durable as any other. You just need to keep in mind that a lightweight 1000CC 4 cylinder twin overhead cam engine, running at 13,000RPM, making 200HP, will require more attention and care than a 60HP, 1,400CC 2 cylinder push-rod engine with a 5,000RPM rev limit. This is the theory applied to trucks and tractors vs. F1 cars. A tractor will last decades without major overhaul, while an F1 car demands more care and will need complete replacement each season. This is not a quality issue – it is a purposing issue. In the motorcycle business, where we buy and ride for fun, Japanese bikes simply dominate the market. They are fast, light, fun, and amazingly tough. I know this from riding my first Yamaha 80 in the 1960′s, through Yamahas, Hondas, and my favorite Kawasaki’s, including a 79 Kwacker 650 in my garage now being converted to cafe racer. In fact, a 1972 Kawasaki z1 900 today has a resale value greater than a 1972 Harley Davidson… and can kick the stuffing out of a brand new V-rod today.

In reality, most Japanese product has generally been of very high quality. In 1974, the Honda Civic was awarded Car of the Year by Road Test Magazine, and in 1980 again by Motor Trend, for their quality, and overall value. The concern I, and others, had in the 1980′s was not that the Japanese were going to take US manufacturing out with low low exploitive labor rate product.. it was that due to their more efficient use of materials, and a small advantage on labor rate, coupled with their ability to produce superior quality – was a very real threat. Books were written about how they were doing this. Today, legacy quality systems like Kaizan, and Lean Design, remain at the core of quality systems. The GE innovated 6th Sigma system (rating accomplishment in “belts”) is founded on this 1980′s evaluation of Japanese quality. At a time the US was making the Chevy Vega, and Ford Pinto, when American Motors were hiring LSD victims to design their junk (Pacer anyone) – coupled with the escalation of fuel costs making 10mpg lead sled gas hogs obsolete, Japan was sending us fuel efficient cars that were affordable, and proving very reliable. While US manufacturing was distracted by the Viet Nam war and social chaos from a corrupt political system, Japan was sending us better cameras, faster motorcycles, low cost high quality watches, and our heads on a platter. The concern was not that we were facing a country bent on exploiting us as a consuming nation, but that we as a nation who prided itself on quality and product innovation – were being put in our place by the Japanese. Even Germany was struggling at the time. Even the coveted BMWs and Mercedes of that time (1907′s through 1980′s) suffered from poor quality and rust. The British chose that period to take themselves out by attempting to continue to export lightweight cars, with none of the quality of the Japanese at the time. A 1970′s VW too was a ptrry ratty mess, using an engine platform that was literally antiquated, in cars of questionable build quality.

What stopped the Japanese from completely decimating US, German and English production was not quality failure… it was capacity, labor, raw materials, and economics at home. They simply built a market that they could not continue to expand and support – so prices had to go up, and their focus became more fine. Today, this continues, with the dominance in many markets, supporting trillions in US consumption. It also includes miving manufacturing to the US and elsewhere, putting displaced US workers back on the job. Further, underlying all of this is a Japanese culture that supports quality, honor, and pride in workmanship. They also employ consultive communicative design processes, which means when customers offer criticism, they respond with improvements.

The concern with Chinese imports is a consistent, seemingly irreparable commitment to cranking out volumes of low grade, low cost commodities, with minimal quality control – to flood markets into submission. This, coupled with a massive population to exploit by its communist government… and the character of the Chinese threat is an order of magnitude different than that posed by the Japanese. Chinese products have been imported here since the 1930′s, and in some sectors, was founded on quality – like porcelain wear. However in the time it took the Japanese to move from obscurity to dominant quality player (roughly 20 years), the Chinese have only expanded exploitive low cost manufacturing as their core value add. Quality has remained consistently a lower priority across the board.  The flooding of low grade commodities into every sector of the US market has created a decline in expectations of customers, a devaluation of quality as a core value, and a depreciation of manufacturing asset value of every country in the world.  What the Japanese and Germans have brought us in escalating quality, durability, and engineering expertise, and the US has brought with productivity and consistency… the Chinese are slowly but certainly eroding into a market filled with cheaply made, short lived, poor performing product, shipped like tidal waves into every market. With this, complete market segments have been removed from the US landscape, with no hope of recovery. Clothing, shoes, small appliances, house-wears, school supplies, small electronics, watches, jewelry, books, printed materials, drywall, power tools, machinery… with each year we ignore this erosion of value of our own productive population, they are lost to permanent unemployment.

You can correct quality and productivity problems, as long as there remains a market one can derive profitable sales from. This was how we responded to the intrusion of German and Japanese imports, and attracted them here to manufacture good to be exported. Combating an intrusion of low-low priced goods that demands use of labor rates that cannot be met here, with masses of products sold to retail channels so cheaply that replacing returns can be absorbed.. leaves us defenseless and vulnerable. If the countries exploiting this situation do so with a philosophy that places greater emphasis on domination at all cost, over delivery of product value, there is little we can hope for.  China has made it clear they intend to sell here everything they can, while maintaining high defensive walls against our selling back to them.

The exploitation of cheap labor is as old as the industrial age. It is an inevitable process of commerce that one will seek the lowest cost avenue to reach highest investment return. For this reason, any impact on the home market, it’s people, and general economy are only important as a need for a buying market to support sales. Out current economic condition is the result of this exploitive cycle. We have been exploited as consumers willing to dig deep debt holes to buy more junk than we need to keep corporations earing at the highest levels of profitability. We have been exploited as sheep who will support our own destruction to protect an open market that is designed to deliver to us less, to move out money into profiteer pockets. We are being exploited by a government who maintains a warring stance to support corporations who profit from such acts, to protect countries and raw materials that will be used against us in future exploitation. We are being sold a bill of goods that any effort we make to protect our own productive population is an  act of protectionist treason against the constitution and free market system of capitalism that feed us all.

Bottom line is simple. Each year, we have fewer choices as to where the products we pay for come from, while fewer of us each year are employed to add value through conversion of raw materials to product. Each year we are seeing our tech jobs move to Asia, our engineering jobs to India, and our working class experiencing a lower standard of living than prior generations. The idea that we should ignore all of this in support of a free market system – is preposterous. This market is not free at all, it is a fixed game supporting the free-for-all profit taking of massive corporations, who now see us as a secondary market. We’ve been down this road before, when manufacturers were so draconian in their treatment of labor here that labor unions were spawned, and labor laws created to stem the tide of destruction.

In the 1980′s we faced a manufacturing power that had products and lessons for us to learn. These improved us here, with a more focused effort on quality and ingenuity that we have built the most productive working population on, who delivers excellent value in quality and price.

In 2010 we face a manufacturing power that has contempt for us as people, who see us as consuming cows, who are paying our manufacturers to abandon us here. This, while delivering to us ghost products, that look like what we want, but are facade junk that is short lived and poor performing. We cannot defend ourselves from this. We can’t go back to domestic exploitation of labor, we’ve seen how corporations wield that power. We can’t devalue our own economy to level the playing field overall, as this will crush those already burdened with the mess we’ve made for ourselves by not managing the dynamics of the trade balance now.

I have no faith at all that Chinese product will ever be of the same quality as that made here, in Germany, Italy, Spain, or Japan. I have seen very little indication that we will see anything more than an expansion of the exploitation, more shoddy junk from stores, and continued erosion of our home market as a result. With each market turning into 100% made in China, the options to find products of quality to stem the tide of landfilling becomes less and less viable. This removes any pressure to resolve quality issues, and simply presses the low low prices strategy further, until all you can buy anywhere is non functional, super-cheap junk, trinkets parading as actual product.

2010 is not 1958, it is not 1980… We face new challenges today from two countries (China and India) that out number our own population by a factor of 7, with exploitable labor forces we cannot hope to compete with. Because of this, we must redress our consideration of the dynamics of free trade, and deploy controls that allow us to support our own people, our working class, and establishes an expectation for quality that supports R&D, without handing an unfair advantage to thieving corporations that will use any protective legislation to rob us blind. This is a huge and critical challenge, requiring new thought and new approaches. Failing any attention to this will result in our eventual failure as a nation.

How Long Before We Wake Up?

Corporations across this country have been devaluing our workers, tradesman, and craftsman for decades. They have destroyed the middle class in pursuit of optimal profits to feed executive bonus pools, thrown people out of their houses to cover their shady financial game playing, the perfect storm of setup – failure – cover up. Then, when they have filled the pool with their waste, beg us to bail them out and cut their taxes, under the threat of impending doom should they be allowed to fail.

Most interesting, is the population of voters who support this activity as the true free market. Victims of the corporate thieves, crying aloud to give the criminals every chance to improve their game. Founded on the promise that one day we may all be rich and desirous of lowest possible tax rates, the pirates scam us on every level. Yet, as in any pnzy scheme, any robbery, and hijacking… the only people who profit from this gracious-nous are those who run the game. Make no mistake about it, we are being gamed. Not only are we victims of the big con, we are being robbed by professionals, who pay other professionals to develop even grander schemes with which to make what yours… theirs.

When are we going to wake up? How many cities of abandoned manufacturing plants do we endure? How many people on the unemployment roles, how many lost in the system no longer counted do we accept as reasonable? How much further down the income scale do we allow ourselves to slide under the threat of imports? How much more are we willing as individuals to sacrifice while reading about how phenomenally rich they are  getting on our backs? Just exactly how much do we want to hand these corporate gas bags, before we realize that we are being duped, scammed, and robbed?

Let’s look at a contemporary issue – tax breaks. First of all, let’s get over the baloney about rich people spending saved taxes in any way that will build wealth for anyone else. They do not invest here in the USA as a rule. They take their money and build factories oversees, where they can exploit low cost labor to get rid of our own “over-priced” local labor. They use their money to buy congressman to protect their positioning, to keep us from controlling their outsourcing our middle class into oblivion, and to lobby for tax breaks, so they can invest more oversees, close more factories here, and exploit more labor in countries where corrupt governments whore their people out for kick backs and under-table deals. The wealthy do buy American – old cars, expansive mansions designed with little taste, filled with opulent and pretentious crap of no meaning, that supports a very very small population of specialists. The only trickle down one is likely to experience is when one is called at 2:AM to repair a broken toilet by the privileged who feel it their right to demand such service.

Set aside the bull argument about wealth redistribution. This is a marketing scam that sounds right, but isn’t. Ignore also the idea that the founding fathers envisioned a country where ones wealth is protected by government… that is not only baloney, it is simply factually incorrect. Our founding fathers financed this country out of their own pockets. They saw the wealthiest as being the most responsible for supporting the government, and the responsibility as nation builders. While their has always been a balancing act between the necessity of government at some level, and the desire to run free of government, there was never a point in the founding of this country when the founders saw the working class as principle financiers of government and supporters of the wealthy. Yes, we have far too many entitlement programs in place. Most are necessary due to the way we treat our elderly and our underclass, while allowing our corporate leaders to create conditions in the labor market that destroy upward mobility. We as a nation have failed to build a culture of caring for those less fortunate than us, failing to provide a place where the elderly have a productive place. We as a nation have allowed the corporate thieves to drag out working class wages down, while providing ample opportunities for unreasonable and irresponsible indebtedness that make it impossible for anyone to survive hardship – which is guaranteed to occur, either from loss of job or aging.  As long as this is our approach, there is no choice but to take from those who can afford to pay in order to avoid a growing proportion of our population from falling into third world status.

The first step away from redistribution of wealth is simple – reduce the disparity between those who have it all, and those who have no hope of getting anything. This starts with a healthy, well supported, growing labor market. A market that encourages skills development, craft perfection, and productivity participation. This can only happen if we have a place to sell our product, which means restriction of competitive forces that push our own labor out the door in favor of a higher profit from exploitation. Is this protectionist? Hell yes it is. The notion that we cannot employ such policy is antiquated. At no time very in the history of the USA have we faced such enormous masses of low cost labor, hungry to sell us cheap goods to enrich their own wealthy and ours, at the cost of our own employment. Asia as a whole outnumbers the population of the USA by SEVEN to ONE.  They need money as much as we do, and will do what they can to get ours wherever they can. For every individual here in the USA employed, there are seven in Asia alone in a position to work for less to do the same job. Just as we have a military to protect ourselves from intrusion of hostile military forces, we need legal and trade protection to keep us from being destroyed by an even larger force – low cost exploitable labor that displaces our own workforce.

One has only to look at the condition of three countries to realize our fate. England, who has completely lost its industry to foreign powers, has frightening chronic unemployment, and a continued erosion of its capacity to serve its own needs. Then we have France, who saw the end coming too late – moving toward socialism and communism to avoid the inevitable. Then we have Germany, who simply refused to allow itself to be crushed by the intrusion of foreign wears, who have maintained an active and growing manufacturing environment that encourages craft and tradesmanship, as well as science and technology. There is another we might look at – Rome. In the face of crushing financial disaster, they chose to maintain their wealthy elites, and allow their “people” to be crushed by intruders. In the end, thats all there was… and end. Australia too has trade protection policies, as do every one of the countries the corporations who prey on us use to en-richen themselves at our expense. There is no free trade with China, India, Malaysia, Germany, or Japan. All trade with these countries are restricted and regulated. Yet here, we consider trade restriction as somehow bad for our country? Yes, when every country we use to devalue our own workforce has restricted trade, while we have an open door policy, trade restrictions are bad. We need trade restrictions of our own to avoid the inevitable – which the last 30 years has proven in vivid living color.

We need to take control away from the corporations, now. The first step is another bad word in the pirates log – Boycott. Boycotting imported products that could and should be made here, like computers, cars, machinery, furniture, and clothing is a bid first step. Second, research into the corporations who are of foreign registry, like British Petroliem, who pay no taxes here, yet exploit our resources, is another. Then, look into the corporations who have systematically shipped our workforce oversees, like Ertl toys, Schwinn bicycles, Tecumsa motors, Sears Craftsman, and retailers like Walmart who dilute domestic value by low low pricing strategies founded solidly on importation of cheap products to dominate market share.  Then, look at the corporations who pay bonuses to their executives as they close facilities here to move overseas.

If we continue on the path we now travel, there will be little hope of future recovery. The economy is in yet another hole because we are blindly allowing the pirates and thieves to run the show. We need to wake up and stop pandering to them, stop accepting their paid marketing and lobbying for their own selfish interests, and look forward to what we want this country to be. This means waking up to the fact that hard work should pay, that artisinship, craft, and tradesmanship should be a highly valued asset, that the health of the largest possible population is worth more than the wealth of a few elites at the very top. We need to wake up to the fact that we are being gamed by professionals, who profit from selling us the story that their wealth is our concern.

How long will it be before we wake up? I am not hopeful. Currently, we have a population of future victims protecting and supporting the criminals that will eventually destroy them. We have a screaming silly lump of voters who actually believe that the government should be destroyed to allow the free market to thrive – while ignoring evidence that in the last 30 years, where the free market has indeed thrived, the working class has declined, the middle class has been crushed, while the largest growth in class is at the very bottom. Bleet and chant all you want, but the system as we know it is a failure, and the corporate leaders are the ones responsible. Take them down, and we take down the lobby influences that have created a government hostile to its own population.

How long? Likely never. Only when we have been gamed and played out will it likely be redressed. By then, we will be powerless to affect real change.

What Happened to Design?

I’m one of those designers who fuss with things, think about stuff a lot, and judge good design on the combination of aesthetics, tactility, and functional elegance of simplicity. I don’t find complex messes good design, nor do I believe that “designing for the masses” is good design. I really don’t care what sells for $0.99 from shipping container loads – bad design made cheap enough to sell, is still bad design. I am far more interested in design that causes someone looking to spen $0.99, to pay $9.99, because the product is so evidently superior. Anyone can push volumes with throw-away procing, it takes expertise to deliver real value that enhances the human condition. Further, I believe that truly good design includes some amount of controversy caused by pushing the observer to see something new and unfamiliar – that will capture some, satisfy some, and offend a few. If the worst one can say about a product is that is is a little boring, I contend it is a design failure. Good design should create at least 2% negative “hate it” response, or it will never capture the 10% who will become advocates, committed addicts, and pure lovers of the product. the balance is found in creating a product that generates a certain number of over-commitment from more than it generates distaste. if it generates neither, it is nothing more than engineering without design.

Humans are junkies for stuff. The more we have around us, the better we ares supposed to feel. I believe we do have a fear of loosing stuff we care about, or having a favorite thing wear out and not be replaceable. Unfortunately, the marketing gurus have latched on to this. First, they fuel the addiction by flooding us with stuff to collect and stack around us. Second, they provide us so much of this cheap crap, that we set aside our love of quality and design in favor of cheap junk that barely satisfies the intended need. This allows us to avoid the risk of loosing something we care about, or having some favorite thing wear out. Better an endless stream of junk we don’t care about, that we can toss without concern when it fails, than to pay for something we eventually find priceless, that wears out. Marketers want us to buy the same thing over and over and over. They give us reasons to do just that – new models with added features, new styling, fresh colors, bigger advertising… etc… Wrap ourselves in piles of short lived, low performing junk – it’s the American way!

What better way to make something new than to jam it full of micro-processors, flashy blinky lights, digital readouts, and other such nonesense? Wrap all that in some shiny plastic and we have a winner! The design teams making these things will tell you about all the wonderful advancements in technology, and how surveys tell them these things get great response from focus groups, etc… Let’s not forget that the personality-less Hondas, Toyotas, Chevy’s, Fords, Hyundais, etc…. are all products of expert design teams, given the horrid assignment of developing the least risky product ever in the minds of consumers, trained for decades now to suspect anything with real style, or who fear actually choosing something they like, lest someone judge them. Better to own something that puts the dog to sleep than something that someone might not like. We’d rather be boring than controversial, seen as a spot in the dull gray fabric of humanity, than a star shining amongst the flat landers.

I personally have had my limit of gadgetry. I have a Corvette that at 25,000 miles has had to have driver and passenger side control modules replaced, has regular issues with stuck electric window regulators, intermittant door lok control, a battery sucked down from security system drain. The mechanics of the car are flawless, the gadgets are crapolla. This goes for my BMW 325is, which regularly has some warning or another on the dahs, that eventiually goes away, or requires the car to restarted – more gadgetry. Meanwhile, our older 318ti, with minimal doo-dad load, has had virtually no issues in 70,000 miles – except for one electric window regulator failure, something we have had issues with on viurtually every car we have owned at one time or another. I guess the general population has gotten so lazy that cranking a window is considered a deal breaker.
I’d love to have the ability to buy a car today without all the junk crammed into it. Manual windows, manual door locks, and toss all the phony marketing farf key without a key junk, witness protection brother is watching electronic interfaces, and a stereo that sounds great without including a super computer processor. I’d trade all the garbage any day for a car with personality, light weight, and simplicity in maintenance. I;d prefer time be spent on the design, the feel of the machine, and the ergomics. In other words, fire half the electrionics engineers and replace them with creative designers. Put more into molds for interesting shapes and great tactical components (like plastic that is no plasticy), and seats that don’t rock on the computer controlled, security interfaced, memory modules interactive junk rails. Just give me the old school lever adjusters on a rigid mechanism – more mechanical expertise, less electrionic wizardry controlling bad quality hardware.

For the designers out there who need to infuse every project with video game mind-warp virtual reality, I offer that there needs to be more time spent on hard reality, and less on the ether and magic of computer games in product design. The development of cheap made-in-China hardware  controlled by made in Taiwan computer dood-daddery results far too often in product that is poor in function, complex for no reason, and short lived. When the failure of one $1.90 relay requires a customer to replace a $1,200 door control interface module, their is no value, and no coolness. When the failure of a $0.05 chip causes a failure of an entire $3,500 engine control module, someone might want to reconsider the sense in this obsession with gadgets.

Let’s give the electronics and hyped up marketing smoke and mirrors a break, and look hard at the principle that is always applicable – Keep It Simple Stupid. Design is the path to freedom from drudgery and marketing department fed fervor for crap. What has happened to the profession of design? Seems to have been replaced by the double edged sward of product death – Marketing departments demanding “features” to sell, coupled with Accounting departments constantly wringing every last penny out of cost structres. The results ahve grown to be cheaply made, overly complex junk that is short lived, poor in tactile feeling, and mindane in style to make itthe most widely acceptable. That’s not design at all, that’s just sad.

An Ode to the Struggle of the Republican Party

To be perfectly clear: I am not a Democrat, nor do I endorse the Democratic party, its current policies, approach to governance, or its ideals. I am an independent (small “i”)  – in that I have no party in which to believe in or support, as there are none that are truthfully representative of our needs as a people. The fact is, the “Independent” party is neither, thus, many like me find no affiliation.

I WAS once a Republican, a believer that we as a people should be empowered to pursue our happiness unfettered by federal intervention, in a truly free market. This was at one time the ideology of the party. While it continues to spout these ideals as its rhetoric, it has utterly failed to support them – while embracing other ideology that I absolutely degree with. It has become a party of white anglo-saxon protestants bent on forwarding conservative religious views as policy. 

Recovery by Design

We have a golden opportunity to put design and conservation at the front of the new economy. If there was ever a time when value could be seen as a priority, its now. We need fewer throw away products brought in from exploitation markets, and more high value products with efficiency, durability, and tactile satisfaction. We need products that have minimal impact when made, minimal impact in use, and long life to reduce the impact of the end of the life cycle. This has been all but abandoned in the pursuit of cheap cost products to realize maximum profits from repeat purchase churns from product failure, and low quality to generate high profit. We need to return some of what we have lost in hyper consumerism to create a more robust and solid future.

Counterpoint: Imports are Necessary – In Balance

Imported products throttle unrestrained profiteering and monopoly building that arises from closed markets

Left to its own, an unregulated  free market protected from the intrusion of competitive forces beyond its domestic borders generates another exploitative behavior – price gouging and monopoly building. The was played out in the late 19th century, when severe import tariffs stopped the flow of imports, leading to runaway price inflation. This is the foundation upon which protectionism gained its reputation as destructive. Corporations exist for the purpose of creating wealth though optimizing profits. When protected from competition, this comes in the form of higher prices – whatever the market will bear. With the opportunity to use imports, wealth building comes in the form of exploitation of cheap labor abroad.

We suffer a form of domestic protectionism now, that actually fuels the exploitation and devaluation that occurs from imports. The interesting paradox of this is that the restriction of immigration restricts domestic access to low cost labor, which leads to artificially high labor rates here. In reaction to the unrestricted immigration of the turn of the century, which depressed wage rates to intolerable levels, we enacted restrictions to immigration to ease stress on the working class.

So Why Would Anyone Harm the Home Market? (Devaluation for Profits Part II?)

One might read this article on the Apple iPod and its related job creation and think that this import thing is just not all that bad at all….  Of course, dig deeper and you will find that the “wealth” created here is not for higher salaries at all. The analysis is actually upside down. Professional and worker earnings in the USA are stagnant or declining, not improving.  This has been well documented, and getting worse since 2006. Apple is doing nothing to repair this, or even change it.

The Pursuit of Devaluation for Profit – and How it’s Destroying Us

A robust value delivery structure includes many layers, each employing a variety of skills and talents. These layers all feed into a layer above, and often to the side of the primary value chain, creating an inter-connectivity within industries that reduces the impact of any one chain failing or slowing.

Our economy is being driven by a process that seeks to extract profit from DEVALUATION over value creation. The difference is lost on those who focus on profit outcome and market share numbers over the buildup of a robust national inventory of value generators. The destruction of the manufacturing sector in the United States, along with the design, engineering, and services industries, is eroding our national capacity and reducing our economic diversity – leading to the volatile state we find ourselves in today. The United Kingdom discovered this too late, Germany has not – that is why the Germans own so many English brands, and still manufacture products shipped around the world – not to mention manufacturing around the world. Once a nation has lost its leadership in this value creation infrastructure, rebuilding it becomes virtually impossible. Others are using theirs as a weapon against our own – fed by our greed and lack of vision.

Time Magazine Gets It – well sort of anyway…

Check this article out in Time. It explains everything I have attempted here – that conservation is our best , cheapest, and most readily available fuel source. I am not alone….

The article made the cover as well

Time Cover Story – December 31, 2008

Here’s a piece of the action:

“This may sound too good to be true, but the U.S. has a renewable-energy resource that is perfectly clean, remarkably cheap, surprisingly abundant and immediately available. It has astounding potential to reduce the carbon emissions that threaten our planet, the dependence on foreign oil that threatens our security and the energy costs that threaten our wallets. Unlike coal and petroleum, it doesn’t pollute; unlike solar and wind, it doesn’t depend on the weather; unlike ethanol, it doesn’t accelerate deforestation or inflate food prices; unlike nuclear plants, it doesn’t raise uncomfortable questions about meltdowns or terrorist attacks or radioactive-waste storage, and it doesn’t take a decade to build. It isn’t what-if like hydrogen, clean coal and tidal power; it’s already proven to be workable, scalable and cost-effective. And we don’t need to import it.”

Now if we could only get the rest of the press to wake up and smell the free fresh air…

So here’s the dig – putting the blame on lighting (cover art), and using that spiral CFL lamp as the icon of energy conservation. This is becoming a little silly, espesially when the article makes a great deal of noise about foreign oil, which has nothing to do with lighting at all (electrical energy is not produced from oil.) The problem with rolling all energy into one big pile, is it leads people to believe thatif they buy an energy efficient car, they are doing their part… while sucking energy of a different type up at home, which taps totally different resources. Conservation is a two-front war. Oil use in transportation, Coal and Nuclear material use at home and in the office. Both are in need of substantial improvement.

But, at least it gets the big picture – we’ll just have to beat them up on details later.