The Red Brick Times

The millennium is over. This truly is the 21st century. The traditional companies who own dirty factories and make noisy and smelly things are dying as the world squeezes them out. Those that live by the dollar also expire under the same pressures. GM and Ford are changing fundamentally, finally facing the inevitable reality of loss of influence and product arrogance. But the band plays on. Yesterday as I was buying new wiper blade inserts for Betsy's car, a fellow customer came up, looked at the Aamco display and snorted "Made in Mexico. There used to be some made in the USA." I replied, "There probably still are, but they cost three times as much and only last half as long." After a few moments of glowering at me, he growled "Money well spent."

And that is why USA Inc. is in trouble. Slow to adapt, arrogant, fiercely self-protective, and unbelieving that any mere foreign firm could ever even THINK that they are as good as the ol' boys who beat up the rest of the world in the 1940s.

Result - pain. Lots of it. Mourning, wailing, lamentation.

The barbarians are at the gates. Rome is falling. All roads lead to...where? Ironic that when the world center of democracy (Greece) was threatened, they wanted to keep it all inside their city-state walls. Rome took it, changed it and evolved the concept to something much larger and less idealistic. The modern West has rubbed democracy in the world's face, denying others stability by prying with military and economic levers. Now that others are beginning to use capitalism as an engine of progress, the USA wants to surround them with the same ineffective economic and military sanctions. Robert Reich recently commented on NPR about the Bush inclination to surround China with an Asian "NATO" of Australia, South Korea, Tawain and Japan. He noted that China was the largest and fastest growing capitalist nation in the world, and indicated that the attempt to impose military and economic sanctions would could result in creating the enemy state that the Bush administration already imagines. Raich's comments, on NPR's "Marketplace", were broadcast on March 22, 2006 and can be heard under "China is our Friend" on the Web. Other Marketplace commentaries are avialaible, listed by topic. See the section titled "Asia" for additional thoughts.
Posted 12:24 PM by Andy (1) comments

       Comments:

An interesting book review (from The New York Times) that's more or less on this topic: 'The Disposable American'.

# posted by  whatley : March 29, 2006 6:02 AM
 
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