Reply #134: I think it is much simpler than that.... [View All]

[RapidCreek]

Americans have historically been victimized by marketers and bean counters who have no knowledge of the product lines they direct and are selling. Their only frame of reference is short term smash and grab, inflated bottom lines, generated not through quality but shortcuts and vacuous advertising. It is all they are capable of understanding. They have never listened to 'workers' because workers "are stupid people who get their hands dirty". Functionality and efficiency have never been a concern. The automobile market is a classic example. The Japanese on the other hand place a great deal of importance on the input of workers as it concerns production, design and quality control. Look into Demming TQM and Quality Circles. Demming was an American who's theory of Total Quality Management flew in the face of US businesses the Marketer/Bean Counter run model of management. He was derided by US industry management because he pointed out the fallacy that a managerial structure who has no functional understanding of design quality, effective production and the value of the worker, can effectively run a company in a true capitalist system. His ideas were of course discounted as they suggested that US industrial business management was run by brainless parasites. Ironically it was the very arrogance of american management he addressed that led him to share his ideas with the Japanese. He went to Japan where his theories were embraced and implemented. Welll...I'll be....more American ingenuity stolen by those pesky little yellow men, eh? Initially Japanese and German products were not attacked on either their functionality or efficiency...the hue and cry from American marketers was an empty but easily digested argument that foriegn products were cheap junk. Whatever that meant. What they were not, was non-functional or inefficient. In the seventies, Joe citizen became very much aware of this fact and saw beyond the big, flashy, bloat is good argument made by American Auto Sellers. They quit buying piece of shit, poorly designed, poorly built, gas guzzling, unsafe Oldsmobuicks and went for Honda Accords instead. Eventually American auto-builders had to pay the Japanese to compete against themselves and or show them how to build a proper automobile in order to stay afloat. As a former wrench, I can tell you that most current "American Automobiles" are about 30 percent American...both design wise and manufacture wise.

EXACTLY The same argument Grant is making in defense of Microsoft and against Japan was made concerning the American Auto industry versus the state funded Japanese Auto industry. The validity of the argument is lacking however, as history has proved, quite plainly. Because the US bidness man thinks he is smarter than those he "manages", the stupid people who build and design product, blue collar folks who get their hands dirty, the Japanese kicked collective ass in the Auto industry. The same will hold true for OS's as well. The Japanese are smart. They sit back and watch these clever American businessman parasites drive the very valuable and brilliant efforts of the worker into the ground while stuffing their pockets full of cash. They then take the idea of the worker...where ever they may be from.... and empower their own workers to embellish upon it, refine it and bring it to its pinnacle. They then sell the resultant product based upon it's quality and functional superiority and the invisible hand pushes the US bidness man and the "stupid people" he employs to the curb. What do we in the US end up with? Whining, empty headed, parasitic bidness men, unemployed "stupid people", tariffs, taxes and import duties, all of which are diametrically opposed to Smiths Theory of Capitalism.

RC