Human Behavior

Mini-Book Review — Midler — Poorly Made in China

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Midler, Paul, Poorly Made in China: An Insider’s Account of the Tactics Behind China’s Production Game, John Wiley 2009, 241 pp.

Paul Midler began his academic career in Chinese history and literature and then went to Wharton for an MBA and further graduate work in East Asian business. Fluent in Chinese, over the past ten years he spent his time in southern China working as a consultant to American importers and was witness to the economic boom that’s amazed the world.

This book, however, is about all the other things he witnessed … the methodical transfer of technology and profit to Chinese manufacturers and the methodical transfer of risk, liability, and innovation/marketing/design costs to American companies. “Poorly Made” is a master class in how ill-equipped American companies are to operate in “low circle of trust” cultures … even when those American companies are managed by savvy mercantile clans and even organized crime!

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Sensing Reminds – but we forget

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Musings, seeing Sensing (here and especially here)

Some, Chomsky for instance, look at dots from a myopic & remarkably American perspective – narrower than the most jingoistic cowboy. The difference, of course, is that America is the spider spinning a web of death and intrigue. Of course, this particular (and peculiar) pattern leaves out what we reacted against, what others did, what we prevented others from doing. They are our victims. This ignores the larger world the one Jonah Goldberg describes, the dots Glen Beck connects. And, frankly, the deaths that total up in The Black Book of Communism make the Goldbergs and Becks and David Horowitzs of the world hyperventilating, perhaps, hyperactive, more radical than conservative, bombthrowers in their own ways – still a bit saner than the Chomskys and Zinns. Exactly what does it take to be hyperbolic when we describe the Ukraine of the 30’s or the Cultural Revolution or Cambodia or the cannibalism of North Korea or the shredders of Iraq?

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Self-Esteem vs Self-Respect

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An interesting essay by Theodore Dalrymple, a British psychologist who has worked extensively in prisons. Via psychiatrist Dr Sanity, who adds thoughts of her own.

My sense is that the self-esteem movement started benignly enough, with the sensible idea that it is usually better to focus on praising people for things they do right rather than on condemning them for their inadequacies. But it soon fell into the hands of various airheads, many of them professors in “education” schools, who too frequently have been hostile to the whole notion of individual achievement and individual accountability.

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Happy Warriors & Not-so-Happy Ones

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Long before I returned to my conservative roots, I loved the humor of a Buckley – the right seemed to have more fun with ideas. Great satire points out the foibles of the disproportionate. Jane Austen understood that. It is the sharp recognition of a truth about human nature that makes us smile, albeit ruefully. Even with the rather meager set of social values Seinfeld embodied, his friends, in their superficiality and greed and general laziness, made us laugh. We laughed because they didn’t recognize what we owe to others, what living with others requires of us say, not sleeping under the desk or sharing bathroom tissue. The writer’s sense of the variety & density of our cultural restraints and our own impulses permeated that series.

We enjoyed Seinfeld and his friends because they loved words but also because we took a certain pleasure in their violation of good manners that restrained us: we wouldn’t make their choices, but we would be tempted. We restrained those impulses (or hid them) because we understood they violated not just gentility but morality. The last episode made that clear to us: in the real world, we would have felt contempt (or guilt) – but watching them, we could laugh. That wasn’t a funny episode; it was an arresting conclusion.

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An odd and jittery performance on Charlie Rose

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By the Speaker of the House of Representatives, that is. Did you see the interview with the good Speaker Pelosi? The normally placid environment (that solid wooden table!) is not so placid with said guest visiting. Petty to note, perhaps, but I felt as if I were watching a performance, and the performer was a nervous and jittery one.

Anyway, judge the quality of the interview for yourselves. Here are a few choice excerpts from the transcript at Real Clear Politics:

Pelosi: “People are more optimistic outside of Washington D.C. than they are inside of Washington. They want to — they want to be sure that we stick to our path which is to take us out of this economic challenge and not be afraid to do so” – What?

Pelosi: “When the president began and he said that he called for swift, bold action now. And the public responded to it in a very positive way. And he said in a very shall we say professorial way, but also inspirational way, we will harness the sun and the wind and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories, and we’ll invest in science, have better healthcare innovation and schools for the 21st century.” – What?

Pelosi: “Universal healthcare. It’s a place where we are recognizing the damage to our planet by decision that said we have made that we need to reverse. It’s a place where we have to go — we had the industrial revolution, we have the technological revolution. Now we have to have a green revolution.” – What?

Pelosi: “I think there is a realization among all people that all the things we want to do, we need to think in public private — public, public, all different kinds of different combinations on how we get them done, so we can leverage our dollars in a safe way, but leverage our dollars so we get more than just the appropriate dollars.” – What does that even mean?

I could go on and on. What do you suppose she’s saying?

SUPER-DUPER MASSIVE AND IMPORTANT UPDATE: I screwed up – the link is to the 2010 Rose interview that I recently watched, while the excerpts are from the 2009 interview. I honestly did not pick up on that while reading the transcript, obviously. In my defense, here’s an excerpt from the correct transcript:

“It’s so historic. It’s so exhilarating to be part of
history that each one of us in the Congress is on the brink of making
history. This is Social Security, Medicare, health care for all Americans.
So it is its own — it has its own encouragement to it. ”

“It has its own encouragment to it.” Well, there you go. Make fun of me and my faulty memory, and her statement, in the comments. Or just me. Whatever.