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Gaffer Variety:
China 040:
By Willie Gaffer:
May 15, 2006:
It is interesting and somewhat satisfying to me that the buffoons of the media and government are starting to notice what I have been telling you for a year. The next great civilization will arise in China and the time is almost past where we can prevent or own decline. As usual, I have seen some very bizarre explanations and some comical ideas on what we are doing wrong. Much of this has to do with education and trade.
We don't teach our kids enough math, for example.
Or, unions have caused this and our workers have to get realistic.
Or, we have bad buying habits.
Or, some say we need more teachers and less students per classroom.
Others say the opposite, fewer better teachers and more students
in the classroom.
The truth is, it is about creativity and nothing else. We have stopped being creative and everyone else is getting better at routine things. It is education all right and cramming more math into our kids is exactly what's wrong. Automatons are not creative and we are making our kids into automatons.
If we want to continue being the greatest civilization in the
world, we will have to stay ahead of the rest in innovation. That
is what got us to where we are. Conditioned response will not
do that for our kids. What we are doing now does not work.
While it is true we need better teachers, better teachers won't
help if we emphasize the wrong things.
We cannot stay ahead by building the old things better. The Japanese and Chinese are better at that than we are. We can only lead by creating new things as we always used to do. That is what we have stopped doing. We need to look back and see how we used to do creative things. Let's be honest, we did not create new products by being good at math. For sure, math is useful and necessary, but it should not be the focus of education. Creativity should be the focus. That is where we used to excel.
While I agree our workers are very highly paid for what they do, what they do is determine by managers, not by the workers. Union leaders may have to bear some of the responsibility for the mess we are in, but the workers are really just pawns between management and the labor leaders. The biggest single problem with cost in manufacturing is the failure of management to look ahead. They gave irrational concessions to labor based on a dynamic that could not possibly last. That was irresponsible in the extreme and we are now paying the piper.
Look at management in America and you are looking at the single biggest cause of America's failure in the marketplace. These incompetent buffoons who paid, and are sill paying, themselves millions of dollars to lead have failed in all departments. They justify their huge salaries on the premise that they can predict the future and act to exploit it. They have proven that premise to be a huge lie. They cannot predict the future as well as a pulp science fiction writer can. Asimov has a better batting average than any of America's mangers. That's the truth of it.
Another problem concerns our foreign trade balance. Our politicians crow and strut when they can show a trade balance that is less negative than it was last month. They studiously ignore the fact that it is still negative. Talk about being poor at math. Any grade school kid can tell them that a negative flow cannot be sustained forever. The sands of time will run through the glass and sooner or later our resources will run out.
Our politicians and many writers want to place the blame for this on America's buying habits. One headline in the Detroit News said, "Bargain-hungry Americans fuel China. The news gave writer, Devin Scillian, half a page to run his stuff. The essence of his argument is we are to blame for our failure and China's success. I couldn't agree more. He cites a number of reasons similar to the ones I listed above, including our penchant for bargains, before he makes the real point. In that real point we agree. It is really about innovation. We just are not doing it anymore. None of the other things will matter if we don't get creative.
The truth is, the Chinese are willing to work for what a Detroit Union man would consider pocket change. Not only that, they are more productive than that Detroit union man. It's also true that we shop price when we shop, but we also look at quality. Remember the good old days when, "Made in Japan" was a synonym for poor quality? That does not wash anymore. Both Honda and Toyota have better quality products than we do. That's by an industry agreed standard of measurement, "returns to dealer in the first three months."
China is also outdoing us in quality on many fronts. Very soon, they will exceed us on all fronts. The only area where we have a chance is in innovation. If we don't get off the dime, we will lose that edge too. We need creative youngsters and we need them now. We don't need a lot of engineers who are great at math. We do need a few very good engineers to implement the ideas of the really creative people, the inventors. We don't need to graduate any engineers. Good managers can hire as many as they want in China, India, and Japan. It does not matter what nationality they are.
Good management is the one real pivot point of America's failure. We do not have, and we have not had good management for many decades. What we have is a pack of grossly overpaid deadweight bums. These are the products of neanderthal business administration schools. We need to hire a few good engineers, but one of these bums could not tell a good engineer from a bookend. That's why Ford and GM are overrun with engineers and still have nothing creative to show for it. That's why all of their cars look alike.
Here is the truth. Engineers do not create new things. Engineers
use formulas, procedures, and rules to make different, sometimes
better, versions of old things. We don't need more of that. We
need new things that are useful. It is interesting to look at
America's history and notice that the people who once created
those new and useful things were, by and large, uneducated. I
am not advocating that we stop educating our kids. I am advocating
we educate them in a way that will draw out their creative talents
rather than their conformity. I am also advocating that we create
a business environment that will exploit creativity rather than
reward "team player" conformity. Let us realize that
China is an anthill culture. With creative innovative people doing
their thing, we can exploit the hell out of that.
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