CAN CHINA INNOVATE ?
The immense weight of China dominates much economic prognostication these days. Will it overtake the USA and become the dominant power of this century ? What are its strengths and weaknesses ? In the November 18 edition of Time Magazine Michael Schuman looks at this question from the perspective of China's need to learn innovation. Not simply to produce. This is one area in which it is well behind the USA, to the great comfort of American apologists.
China is facing a period of transition and needs to adjust.
"China is a victim of its own success....The country can no longer rely on making lots of stuff; China has to invent things, design them, brand them and market them. Instead of following the leaders of global industry, China has to produce leaders of its own."
China has taken steps to address the needs of its new stage of development, but it has a long way to go. Chinese labour is no longer the dollar-store market of the world. Chinese firms are beginning to outsource to other countries. The author looks at one instance, that of Speciality Medical Supplies who tried this year to shift production to India. Their Chinese workers revolted and held the American manager hostage in his office for six days. Tsk !
Labour costs in Mumbai would have been 75% less than in Beijing. Wages in China are growing, courtesy of demographics and a shortage of skilled labour. Companies such as toymaker K'NEX are even beginning to "reshore" production back to the USA as other financial factors put pressure on the shrinking labour-cost advantage of China versus America.
There is also the problem of China's slow adoption of cutting-edge technology. The failure of China's auto industry to make an impression in world markets is illustrative. Failure to adapt has resulted in a 49% rate of initial defects in Chinese-made cars. Ooops ! China has overtaken South Korea as the world's largest shipbuilder, but its vessels are built on older models while the Koreans have moved on to the lucrative markets of supermassive container ships and vessels for energy exploration.
What innovation there is in China generally builds incrementally on existing technology rather than groundbreaking ideas. The Chinese educational system is good at skill-building but poor at instilling creativity. Chinese engineers tend to be conservative and every concerned about possible consequences of failure. Especially when new ideas are involved.
China is also notably deficient in marketing. As the author says; "Chinese executives are too fixated on their production and not enough on their customers.". This may be a hangover from the Marxist mode of management, and new Chinese entrepreneurs are indeed trying better ways to sell their products to the world. Jazzed up with a veneer of the exoticism of Chinese culture.
China lacks management skills, and those who have them can often command relatively huge salaries. Some firms have responded by making their businesses top heavy. What they lack in quality they try to make up for in quantity. Perhaps this managerial over-oversight is also a Marxist leftover.
Yes, China has had almost miraculous economic growth, but there are many problems that still hold the country back. This article is a good overview of some of them. It's valuable even though it is replete with "evidence" that is only anecdotal.
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Showing posts with label Time Magazine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Time Magazine. Show all posts
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Friday, November 22, 2013
THE SHADY SUCCESS OF THE SECRET SUSHI SYSTEM
THE SHADY SUCCESS OF THE SECRET SUSHI SYSTEM
Good old Time Magazine. It struggles on in the internet age, devoting more and more of its pages to bite-size "factoids" that rival websites for speed of transit through the intellectual digestive system. Each and every article has to be illustrated - over-illustrated. Colour and highlighting adds to the illusion of ethernet illusion, and the layout owes much more to Facebook than to any school of journalism. I love it, and I'm a long term subscriber who has lived through Time's evolution.
Every once in awhile it digs up some true gems, and the November 18 edition is no exception. I have to admit that the inevitable long feature articles on the personalities of US politics (Is there any US politics that is not personality-based as opposed to issue-based ?) are eminently skipable. Even for Americans who live in that soap opera. Even Canada's entrance in this contest, good old Rob (Fat) Ford gets a mention. His cameo is splayed across an insert that is 1/2 title, 1/4 photo and an incredible 50 word run on sentence that has almost as many errors of syntax and punctuation as I have fingers.
Enough of such trivia. The true meat of the issue comes in the back pages. 'The Mysterious Provider of Sushi' is a five paragraph article that it, amazingly, too three people to write. Do the mathematics. Time looks into the murky undersea world of the dreaded "Sushi conglomerate". Who controls the uncooked fish market in the US ? Hold onto your chopsticks; it ain't the Yakuza. Far worse by several orders of magnitude.
The "Codfather" of this piece is none other than the Unification Church - the Moonies. Nowadays they go by the name of the "Family Federation for World Peace and Unification". Obviously a play for the American market with the buzzword "family" bit. Or could there be another connotation to the word "family", most familiar in places such as Palermo ? Poor Japan. The Koreans have struck back.
Under yet another alias the Moonies market the morsels to the masses in the USA. The moniker - 'True World Foods'. Cough, cough and triple pneumonia cough. No kidding. The Moonie managers lack a sense of humour or they'd realize the irony of this.. TW denies its connection to the Moonies, but court documents show otherwise. Time found it hard to penetrate further as TW's New Jersey headquarters' phone system didn't work, and phone calls to their New York office went unanswered.
Time surveyed a selection of 70 restaurants across America, and True World was the supplier for 48 of them. TW counts 7,500 restaurants as customers in the USA. Their uncooked tentacles in this field make the Washington Post coup look trivial.
Look out Time. Any more raw exposées, and you may find a fish head in your beds. As for me this revelation has spoiled my sushi mania for at least a short while.
Good old Time Magazine. It struggles on in the internet age, devoting more and more of its pages to bite-size "factoids" that rival websites for speed of transit through the intellectual digestive system. Each and every article has to be illustrated - over-illustrated. Colour and highlighting adds to the illusion of ethernet illusion, and the layout owes much more to Facebook than to any school of journalism. I love it, and I'm a long term subscriber who has lived through Time's evolution.
Every once in awhile it digs up some true gems, and the November 18 edition is no exception. I have to admit that the inevitable long feature articles on the personalities of US politics (Is there any US politics that is not personality-based as opposed to issue-based ?) are eminently skipable. Even for Americans who live in that soap opera. Even Canada's entrance in this contest, good old Rob (Fat) Ford gets a mention. His cameo is splayed across an insert that is 1/2 title, 1/4 photo and an incredible 50 word run on sentence that has almost as many errors of syntax and punctuation as I have fingers.
Enough of such trivia. The true meat of the issue comes in the back pages. 'The Mysterious Provider of Sushi' is a five paragraph article that it, amazingly, too three people to write. Do the mathematics. Time looks into the murky undersea world of the dreaded "Sushi conglomerate". Who controls the uncooked fish market in the US ? Hold onto your chopsticks; it ain't the Yakuza. Far worse by several orders of magnitude.
The "Codfather" of this piece is none other than the Unification Church - the Moonies. Nowadays they go by the name of the "Family Federation for World Peace and Unification". Obviously a play for the American market with the buzzword "family" bit. Or could there be another connotation to the word "family", most familiar in places such as Palermo ? Poor Japan. The Koreans have struck back.
Under yet another alias the Moonies market the morsels to the masses in the USA. The moniker - 'True World Foods'. Cough, cough and triple pneumonia cough. No kidding. The Moonie managers lack a sense of humour or they'd realize the irony of this.. TW denies its connection to the Moonies, but court documents show otherwise. Time found it hard to penetrate further as TW's New Jersey headquarters' phone system didn't work, and phone calls to their New York office went unanswered.
Time surveyed a selection of 70 restaurants across America, and True World was the supplier for 48 of them. TW counts 7,500 restaurants as customers in the USA. Their uncooked tentacles in this field make the Washington Post coup look trivial.
Look out Time. Any more raw exposées, and you may find a fish head in your beds. As for me this revelation has spoiled my sushi mania for at least a short while.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
A Freer Market
A FREE-ER MARKET
One of the perpetual myths of our so-called capitalist society is that we have the closest approach to a "free market", and that this is all to the good as it connects with our other freedoms. Is this true ? Certainly some like the left libertarians who are in favour of an actual free market would disagree with the idea that our present system is approximating an such thing. The left libertarians are actually quite the dissidents as not just apologists for the present order but "critics" such as academo-Marxists assume that free market describes the present state of things. The proof of the assertion that we don't live in a free market I will leave to the left-libs with their criticism of the many monopolies that states grant to certain insitutions and individuals but not to others. I can do more better than recommend the works of Kevin Carson, an outstanding modern exponent of their views.
How a real free market differs from what we call it today can be found in what is called dynamic pricing. This goes along well with internet marketing as it consists of constantly chaging prices to reflect an actual "market in the here and now". Obviously not all goods can be sold in such a way, and the ability of this much closer representation of marginal utility to the purchaser says nothing about the various advantages (monopolies) granted to some venders but not others prior to placing the commodity on the market.
I came about this interesting development in a recent (Jan 21/2013) issue of Time Magazine. The article was titled 'This Offer Won't Last: Why Sellers are Switching to Dynamic Pricing' (page 56). I strongly recommend this article on how our version of a "market" is evolving back to how town markets used to be and still are in many minor ways
One of the perpetual myths of our so-called capitalist society is that we have the closest approach to a "free market", and that this is all to the good as it connects with our other freedoms. Is this true ? Certainly some like the left libertarians who are in favour of an actual free market would disagree with the idea that our present system is approximating an such thing. The left libertarians are actually quite the dissidents as not just apologists for the present order but "critics" such as academo-Marxists assume that free market describes the present state of things. The proof of the assertion that we don't live in a free market I will leave to the left-libs with their criticism of the many monopolies that states grant to certain insitutions and individuals but not to others. I can do more better than recommend the works of Kevin Carson, an outstanding modern exponent of their views.
How a real free market differs from what we call it today can be found in what is called dynamic pricing. This goes along well with internet marketing as it consists of constantly chaging prices to reflect an actual "market in the here and now". Obviously not all goods can be sold in such a way, and the ability of this much closer representation of marginal utility to the purchaser says nothing about the various advantages (monopolies) granted to some venders but not others prior to placing the commodity on the market.
I came about this interesting development in a recent (Jan 21/2013) issue of Time Magazine. The article was titled 'This Offer Won't Last: Why Sellers are Switching to Dynamic Pricing' (page 56). I strongly recommend this article on how our version of a "market" is evolving back to how town markets used to be and still are in many minor ways
Labels:
economics,
free market,
Kevin Carson,
Time Magazine
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20231124103129im_/https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_SFDPcITcycc/R89cWK8WqvI/AAAAAAAACTk/Rbwts72yaAg/s400/7_small_world_networkgray.gif)
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION:
THE MINISTRY OF ANARCHY ???
Every once in awhile those in authority suffer from an attack of either conscience or absent-mindedness. In other words they get around to admitting the obvious. The latest example that I have seen is in the March 10 edition of Time Magazine which just recently plunked down in Molly's mailbox. You can read the full article online at the website above. The article entitled 'Citizen Soldiers', under the 'Briefing' section of the magazine hardly lives up to its title. It has nothing whatsoever to do with any military adventures. rather it concerns a belated recognition on the part of at least the State of California that their "official" disaster planning actually provides only a tiny fraction of the help that comes forward during times of natural disaster. The article reports about how Governor Schwarzenegger was "impressed" by the fact that the majority of help in recent disasters in that state was provided unofficially by ad-hoc groups and individuals who responded outside of the State's response system.
The article goes on to say why this is true, though it hardly mentions the efforts of government to hide this fact in the past. As they say...
"After Hurricane Katrina, the secret was out that government alone would never be able to manage big disasters. first responders like firefighters and police make up less than 1% of the population. They cannot be everywhere-or even most (!!!-MOLLY) places. So the vast majority (!!!-MOLLY) of rescues are done by regular people. "
It is nice that the Governor has recognized this obvious fact. His response, however, is hardly productive. His decision is to establish a "cabinet level post to manage volunteers". Yes !!! As if voluntary actions of mutual aid can be centralized and controlled. On the ground the record of recent natural disasters in the USA has been that agents of the government have very often impeded ad-hoc voluntary efforts rather than assisted them. the same was demonstrated here in Winnipeg some years ago during the flood of 1997. The natural response of those who enforce authority is to confront those who seem to be acting outside of that authority.
The very nature of such mutual aid responses says that they are ad-hoc and cannot be planned, despite the illusions of governmentalists that they can. In normal times such government initiatives will result, at best, in minor improvements such as a slightly elevated rate of people taking first aid courses. The great majority of people who suddenly spring into action during crisis periods will simply ignore the propaganda of a state agency to sign up and be directed for an hypothetical future emergency. many will be (justly) suspicious of such an attempt to register them and keep track of them. Given how government has impeded voluntary efforts in the recent past such suspicion is fully justified. But even without this it should be obvious to anyone who thinks for a minute (rather than "thinking magically" that passing a law solves a problem) that the great, great, great majority of people who do respond in emergencies will simply respond with apathy to such a "Ministry of Anarchy".
But there is an even more serious objection that one can raise to such efforts to "officialize" such volunteer initiatives. They may be not just useless, or close to it. They may in fact be destructive. Molly refers the interested reader to an academic paper here: 'Social Resiliance: The Forgotten Dimension of Disaster Risk Reduction' (the reference is to a pdf by one Guy Sapirstein). This makes pretty well the same points that Molly will give below, in different language of course:
1)The "resilience" of a society is determined by its "redundancy". In other words when a social order breaks down there are other groups that can step into the breach. When the state attempts to exert its control over such groups it undermines the vitality of such groups by making them dependent on state direction. No doubt the state, and many believers in statism, think that there is no better way to order things than via government. Even if this was true, however, pruning the "second best" options makes a society less resilient in conditions of disaster. Trying to subsume them under a central plan is one way that such "pruning" is accomplished.
2)The "resilience" of a society is also determined by the proportion of people in that society who have experience of actually "initiating" action on their own rather than existing in a dependency relationship where they "wait for help from others". In normal times such "help" comes in its usual dribs and drabs, following its usual bureaucratic rules. In times of disaster such help is unavailable. Fostering relations of and expectations of dependency inhibits the unofficial responses that people have to adopt when systems break down
3)The relationship of "dependency" is a two way street. Not only do "victims" wait until someone else comes to their aid and not initiate actions themselves. "Helpers" are also trained by bureaucratic structures to "wait for orders", thinking that someone else will be responsible for their altruism. Bureaucratizing the mutual aid impulses of people very much goes against everything that evolutionary psychology has discovered about human behavior. It is a recipe for reducing such altruism rather than increasing it.
How does this differ from an anarchist response ? First of all there are many types of anarchism. There are those such as the primitivists and "post-leftists" whose vision of society resembles ground zero after a nuclear bomb, denuded of all the rich social interactions and organization that humans naturally build up. To say the least this is an unrealistic, totalitarian, and naturally unstable vision, resembling a religious cult more than it does traditional anarchism. The vast majority of anarchists, however, have favoured a much more pluralistic vision where society is actually organized in a much richer sense than it is under our present system. It will be covered by networks of union federations, local communes, coops, cultural and practical organizations that would provide for human needs in a much more rational way (informed by better information because such organizations would be immediate and democratically controlled) than statist or corporate bureaucracies can achieve, no matter what technology they depend upon to acquire such information.
Yes, many rational anarchists have too often become entranced by a "single vision". Anarchist communists, advocates of the "commune", anarcho-syndicalists, advocates of the "union federation", individualists, advocates of "market anarchism", mutualists, advocates of the "cooperative" have often spoken as if they could march on one leg, by hopping along with only one way of organizing society. Yet, in its broadest majoritarian sense anarchism has always gravitated to a "pluralistic vision" where the variety of social organization is superior to the state for the simple reason of its variety. Yes, this will inevitably involve conflict as different groups content for their own ideas and interests. Anarchy is not an utopia. It is not a changeless society wrapped in an eternal harmony resembling death more than life. It is a practical alternative that is different from any ideological vision whether it be "left-wing" or merely our present superstitious dependence on government and law. The anarchist alternative is naturally more resilient because its very nature decentralizes power and increases the number of groups that are social actors. Such a society would be far better able to handle disaster than our present society can.
In recent years anarchism has finally achieved the weight of numbers to begin to put its ideas into practice. These practical efforts have been, so far, baby steps, but they hold great promise for the future if the movement isn't diverted by anti-organizational totalitarians or by romantic true-believers in militancy and violence. For instance the Food Not Bombs group organized great efforts at providing meals to victims of Hurricane Katrina. Their efforts were so effective that the Red Cross and government agencies were forced to refer people in need to them even as the local authorities attempted to chase them out of the places where they set up their meal distribution. Food Not Bombs has great potential providing it can overcome its ideological preconceptions about "veganism" and other subcultural irrelevancies and become what its detractors have often called it: the anarchist soup-kitchen. Many people in the network have made this transition already. To a large extent it is merely a matter of maturity as activists shed subcultural mores and become ordinary people themselves. Speaking of maturity, the Northeast Anarchist Network in the USA has a speakers' bureau, and one of the topics on which they are able to provide facilitators/speakers is 'Grassroots Disaster Relief'.
As I said, all these are baby steps. as anarchism continues to grow such initiatives will undoubtedly become more and more common. By themselves they don't substitute for an active and self-governing citizenry, but they do show the way forward in contrast to attempts of government to destroy the initiative of ordinary people during disasters by attempting to control it.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20231124103129im_/https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_SFDPcITcycc/Ruap85oCGuI/AAAAAAAABVE/yY9u7M8Vz7M/s400/world+governance.gif)
HOW FREE IS THE USA?:
NOT VERY MUCH:
While reading the September 17th edition of Time Magazine Molly came across an interesting item in their 'Dashboard' section. Entitled 'How Free Is Your Country ?' it has a world map that gives a visual about how various countries size up on the 'Voice and Accountability' indicator of the Worldwide Governance Indicators project. Think the USA is the "land of the free" ? Guess again. This indicator is a measure of how free citizens are to voice their opinions and select a government. The World Governance Indicators actually compare 212 listed countries on six different parameters ie
Voice and Accountability
Political Stability and Absence of Violence
Government Effectiveness
Regulatory Quality
Rule of Law
Control of Corruption
On most of these indicators(except for one-more on this later) the USA scored fairly high, but in no case was it the top country or even close. The 'Voice and Accountability' section measures basic parameters of democracy and freedom of speech. In this field the USA has dropped from a rank of 22nd in 2005 to the level of 35rd in 2006, a reflection of both increased distrust of public officials and further restrictions on freedom of the press. Most West European countries score as "freer" than the USA as do Australia, New Zealand and Canada (at the 12th ranking). Some of the countries that beat the USA, however, are interesting. Italy ! Hungary ! Chile ! Now, I can see that there may indeed be more freedom of speech in Italy. Probably a heck of a lot more. But is it possible that Italians distrust their government less than Americans do.
If you examine the indicators two things strike you. One is that this is not a set of biased estimates by some obscure left wing think tank. The estimates are produced by the WORLD BANK INSTITUTE, an outfit that nobody in their right mind could accuse of "left wing biases". The second is that each estimate of the six parameters is produced by integrating a number of different reports from up to 24 different organizations. The estimates vary from organization to organization. What the world Bank has tried to do is draw a composite picture. Some "in house' groups such as Freedom House or Global Insight Business Conditions and Risk Indicators give the USA much higher ratings than say the Economist Intelligence Unit which puts the USA down at position # 83 rather than 35. The Gallup World Poll puts it even further down the list at position # 106. The latter is, of course, biased, but no less so than such things as Freedom House. All told those outfits that have the least to lose or gain by their opinions, other than the fact that they are selling them as "the truth" to those who depend upon them for business decisions, tend to cluster around the aggregate estimates that the Governance Indicators bring out as the best opinion.
There is one of the indicators that is particularly damaging to American self perceptions, perhaps even more so that pricking the balloon of America's preeminence in "freedom", something that most of us foreigners doubted in the first place. Being the 35th freest country in the world is still a fairly high score. Where the USA really scores low is on the 'Political Stability and Absence of Violence' indicator. Here the USA comes in at the 89th place. This has fallen tremendously in the last 7 years. All other indicators have also fallen, but none so dramatically as this one. It should be noted that the Gallup World Poll played no part in compiling this particular index. This is not the perhaps biased general world public opinion that the USA is a violent country both domestically and internationally. This is the estimate of people who have to base business decisions on such estimates.
Anyways, the WGI isn't just about the USA and its trials and tribulations. Drop on over to see how your own country and others rate on this yardstick.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
A Little Funny From Time Magazine:
Time Magazine runs a page in each issue consisting of a)Punchlines ie humor and b)Numbers ie a collection of oddball statistics. From the Punchlines section of the Sept. 25th edition :
"Several Democratic and Republican primaries were just held across the country. It was evenly split between those who forgot to vote and those who chose not to vote."
Conan O'Brien
Time Magazine runs a page in each issue consisting of a)Punchlines ie humor and b)Numbers ie a collection of oddball statistics. From the Punchlines section of the Sept. 25th edition :
"Several Democratic and Republican primaries were just held across the country. It was evenly split between those who forgot to vote and those who chose not to vote."
Conan O'Brien
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