[TheForge] rant concerning quality of products

[Andrew Vida]

ries wrote:

> And Bruce- I am in no way blaming American workers- I KNOW we can  
> build anything, as well or better than anybody else.
> I am lamenting the profit driven state of americas CEO's and  
> financiers, who chase quick bucks over building real stuff.

	The disease you describe may not have originated in California, but the 
current and mainly fatal strain of it did.  This terminally diseased 
mindset originated with the Silicon Valley assholes, nary a one of whom 
ever made anything real.  The whole shell game, based on the notion of 
Star-Trek technology obviating the need for anyone to ever work again 
was, AFAICS, the origin of fraud-as-standard-operating-procedure in 
American business.  Why work when you can lie through your teeth about 
how your new "paradigm" is going to make everyone trillionaires in 3 
minutes.  People being what they are, were more than erect at this 
notion, ridiculous as it all was on its face... but who lets reality get 
in the way of a nice wet dream?

	I very carefully watched all this spread like a plague from the cadres 
of surf's up, fer sher crooks in the Valley all the way across the 
nation to Wall St.  There may be no causal link there... it could have 
just been timing... who knows.  But I looked on with a sense of 
horrified fascination as most of the industries that made real stuff 
went <poof> like I Dream Of Jeanie to far flung shores while the 
industry of fraud took over.  The software industry is one of the most 
unimaginably dishonest ones ever to darken the face of the earth.  The 
shit I have witnessed first hand by companies like IBM should have sent 
people to prison for a long time.  Instead, they run off with the cash 
while customers eat shit - often multiple times for anything from tens 
of millions to multiple hundreds of millions of dollars, and even more 
in some cases.

	It seems to me that as the rest of the world watched the software 
racket, of which I was an integral player, take off - yanking down 
untold fortunes by selling pure bullshit, they wonder why they could not 
do the same.  Turned out they could, and did, and do.
> 
> There are plenty of US companies that still do make quality products,  
> often the best in the world- Just not as many as I wish there were.

	Pittances in comparison to the juggernaut of shit peddlers.  Also 
notice that most of those are still privately owned.
> 
> I do feel that american workers often feel like its more secure to  
> just go to work for a huge company, cash the check, and let somebody  
> else worry about the bottom line- and I think that contributed to our  
> downfall, though.

	Just like our politics.  Americans are, by and large, unforgivably lazy 
politically, "morally", and intellectually.  It is a pretty disgustingly 
pathetic state into which we have lapsed.
> 
> In Italy, where I have travelled a lot, there are tons and tons of  
> small companies- and, when they start to get profitable, instead of  
> selling out, cashing in, and leading a life in your 50's of toys and  
> leisure, these small Italian businessmen reinvest in their companies,  
> and keep working.

	That is what is supposed to happen here as well, but this whole notion 
of "entrepreneurship" has been terribly perverted over the past 15 to 20 
years.  It now means, build the bait, make it smell good to a big fish, 
get them to bite, then run like a motherfucker to the bank before they 
can stop payment on the checks.  I won't say it is all fraud, but I'll 
say more than half of it is.  The truth of what has gone on out there is 
simply mind numbing.  I've worked at several of these concerns and the 
levels of bald-faced dishonesty made me want to bang my head against a 
block wall.  What is really scary about it is that the people doing this 
are often clueless about the real nature of what it is they are doing... 
they become experts in rationalizing and seeing what they want to see, 
rather than what is actually staring them in the kisser.  That is, they 
begin to believe their own bullshit.  I'm sure there is a small army of 
research psychologists who'd pay a large fortune to be able to have 
witnessed what I have in these regards.

> I have visited a lot of metalworking factories in Italy that are third  
> or fourth generation, where the parents gave the biz to the kids,  
> rather than taking the money and running. And that level of close  
> family control really helps product quality, and focus on the product.

	Precisely so - you don't have an army of douchebag shareholders up your 
six, incessantly whining and threatening about greater returns. 
Remember AT&T?  Remember NCR?  Back ca. 1989 AT&T got a hare up its butt 
to buy NCR.  NCR said "no thanks, assholes".  AT&T said "we'll see, 
bitches", and proceeded to throw so much money at them that the NCR 
shareholders finally caved and voted to sell.  Know what the CEO's 
parachute was?  $*70* million in *cash* and another $230 million in AT&T 
stock.  Not OPTIONS - actual stock.  NCR, a French company, had not 
known a line of red ink in its history.  In 7 months it was all but 
bankrupt.  AT&T's plan, and some of the top managers made no bones about 
this in private conversation, was to  rip NCR's guts out, keep the good 
bits, and toss the whithered husk aside, which was precisely what they 
did.  NCR actually recovered - dunno where they are now or how they are 
faring, but the point is that public corporations are only as good as 
the smarts, knowledge, and moral fiber of the average (or perhaps lowest 
common denominator) of the majority of share holders.  Given the 
prevalent attitude of take the money and run, it is no wonder that 
public corporations in the USA have turned into crap.  I would go as far 
as to say that public corporations are strongly homomorphic with the 
general culture's attitudes and morals.  Given this, things don't look 
so good these days.

> They had, until 2001, much higher estate taxes than we did- and, they  
> still do have a lesser estate tax. So its not our tax structure to  
> blame- its our mindset.

	Bingo.

> Greed.
> It hasnt helped much in the USA in the last 50 years, no matter how  
> much Gordon Gecko said it did.

	Strictly speaking, the Gecko character was almost dead-on correct, save 
for the error of making only a half-statement.  He should have said 
"Greed is good as long as it remains healthy and doesn't go morbid". 
Greed has given us all the good stuff we enjoy.  Greed really is good as 
long as it is kept on a short-ish leash.  Give it too much lead and it 
goes all sick and nasty, which is what we have today.  We are terminally 
ill with it unless we pull out heads out of our assholes and go back 75 
or 100 years in attitude.  But is that even possible?  The forces at 
work are malevolent and extremely powerful.  Try manufacturing a top 
notch plow at a price that competes with the crap coming out of China - 
chances are Mr. Shanghai will be eating your lunch because Mr. US Farmer 
can buy 4 China  plows for the price of one US sample.

	We are living in a Gordian knot and untying it is going to take some 
magic and a whole lot of intestinal fortitude.  I can only wonder 
whether we still have it.