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Americans have an idea of themselves as an industrial superpower. We like to think that we can make the most and it will be the best of anything in the world. At one time, this reflected reality. But not so anymore.
To whit: say it's coming up on one of the annual parties, and this year is our year to host the company across the street. Last year, their spread included a seafood buffet and top-shelf booze on every table with all the beer you wanted to wash it down, and an out-of-town band with a hot singer plus a ladyboy crooner. There is no option but to meet that precedent; this year, the party will cost 10,000.
In America, you make loyalistic and patriotic appeals to raise the money. You sell wrapping paper and brownies and advertising space and do your best.
In Asia, you divide that 10,000 by however many employees you have, round to the next hundred, and dock that amount from their pay.
In America, most insurance is based on long-term treatment and care. Cheap accident coverage is the student's alternative.
Here, if you have an accident you're covered, but as soon as there's a greater, longer term expense, you're on your own. Long-term care is a family concern; why would a workplace want a sick/crippled/handicapped worker when there are thousands of other people, generally with equal qualifications, available for the same post?
Plus, in this collective-based society, the workplace ranks just below the family. While the family is the heart of the unconscious and instinctive mind, the workplace is the seat of social consciousness. Bettering the family is an act as unconscious as stepping back from a precipice to keep yourself from falling off; doing something to make the family look bad is as contrary as slamming your face in a car door. Conversely, whatever the family says, wants, or needs is accepted without question or thought. The workplace isn't quite as sacred, but it is approached with the same mindset: what the boss says is law, and what the company asks is given without question. The bosses know this and operate with the company's best interests in mind, despite the possible effects on individual employees. I'm too embarrassed to list the examples that come to mind, so I'll just say that I rarely even think, "And you're okay with that?" anymore. And that's in a relatively cushy school job.
In America, there is high regard for the individual. Each and every person matters, and one screaming bearing can stop the works. Here, that screaming bearing is subsumed and the wheel keeps spinning.
Not to mention environmental concerns--not that they wouldn't care with the right context, but when there are people pouring cleaning solutions on a hunk of machinery held in a bare hand, then arc welding on the sidewalk without masks or anything to keep sparks from flying onto passers-by, you don't worry about what might be affected at the far end of the drain pipe. Whether it's someone stitching together salvaged jeans, circuit boards, industrial products, or raw materials, raw material is more precious than an individual person, and until Americans adopt that idea, their products are guaranteed to cost more.
What we can offer that seems to occupy a unique niche is realizing innovations, i.e. Kennedy's challenge to get to the moon by the end of the decade. Americans are tremendous tinkerers completely discontent with most everything. We approach the world looking for loopholes and flaws to exploit or explore. Legos and erector sets are fundamental parts of childhood; a childhood without Lincoln logs and wooden blocks is like a baby deprived of milk (formula, breast, bovine, or otherwise). In America, a kid who builds a Lego model without making cool emendations--the palm tree on the spacefighter or the bristling gun pod, extra engines or superfluous wheels--is as rare as the Asian kid who alters the one design for which the blocks were intended--it doesn't matter if it'd be cooler or easier or better or safer or faster or anything, if it's not as directed, it's not happening. No, scratch that example (but I like it so I'll leave it): the Asian kid who tweaks with a lego model is as rare as the American kid must follow each sequential step exactly and never thinks of which block might come next. America's strength is the malleability of concepts and adaptability of production.
Let some factory in China worry about shaving down the cost of the plastic handles for razors--that's what they do best. Let the global-scale mining and inevitable environmental disasters happen elsewhere. Is the gamble on eventual profit really worth the amount of bellyaching and litigation?
Instead, get back to the design and production of innovations. Instead of investigating new mines or new overseas markets, figure out how to make a new generation of battery in an old steel mill, how to produce better car frames at the textile mill, how to make a 400% energy return at the mine.
When I left America, ambient patriotism and pride was on a steep wane--the American dream was asleep, as it were.
Something else I've learned about Asia is that the American dream is alive and well elsewhere in the world. Hopefully it wakes up in time to catch the worm.
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