Every once in a while an otherwise fairly sensible journalist drops off the edge of the world and engages in drivel. Such was the case with Terence Corcoran writing a column in today’s National Post, entitled, “Warm, fuzzy dictatorship".
First, he engages in the Straw Man Fallacy, asking us to imagine a situation in which the Obama administration wants to invest in our oil patch through some U.S. government- controlled agency buying out Suncor Canada at a premium. Then, he knocks the straw man down by claiming there would be national outrage at Americans taking it over.
His main point is that the government of China is doing much the same thing and being welcomed with open arms. He attributes this imagined difference to Canadian knee-jerk anti-Americanism, because he thinks there is no good reason to be treating with a dictatorship and if we had our wits about us we would be able to separate the wheat from the chaff – the chaff being China.
It is certainly an argument, but, leaving aside the fantasy problem, it is not an especially persuasive one.
In the first place, Canada has already opened its resources arteries to American investment through NAFTA. If there was a horse in the barn to be protected, it long ago left the stable, never to return. Fortunately, we are rich enough, and America is apparently not hungry enough, so that we have excess capacity to sell to others. Why not China?
Secondly, we have traded resources with other dictatorships for years. Our foreign business dealings have never been based on other countries being mature democracies or being as pure as the driven snow on human rights. What compelling reason would there be during a major international economic meltdown to start drawing this Boy Scout line in the sand now?
Thirdly, it makes economic sense to have competitors for your resources. During Pierre Trudeau’s years the government tried to stimulate more trade with Europe, to no avail. Since then, it is the Pacific region that has become the greater economic zone, and China looks to be a good customer.
Fourthly, we are not discussing technology transfer here. We are talking about things that you dig out of the ground – Canadian ground. If there were an international crisis in which China was on the opposing side, we have physical control of the assets, so there is no national security issue.
Fifthly, it is not clear that the U.S. will remain our best customer for oil if all this global warming nonsense is translated into American-driven carbon penalties for shale oil. We need to diversify and China makes the most sense as an alternative customer.
Finally, I would not count on the outrage of Canadians. The majority of the citizens in this country are quite taken with the Obama mystique (not to their credit, in my opinion). They would not get worked up at such an Obama initiative any more than they thought the firing of the president of General Motors was anything extraordinary for him to do, and probably cheered him when he did it.
These are different times, Mr. Corcoran. Please try and keep up.
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Tuesday morning gripes with China and autoworkers
May 27, 2009 Addendum
Yesterday, I took out my lawnmower to cut the grass in my backyard. My lawnmower is Canadian made and has given me good service for 20 years. I have only had to tighten the nuts on the wheels and sharpen the blades from time to time. It is an electric model. Unfortunately, I guess its time has come. My grass is very dense and the mower is a basic model and has no height adjustment. Consequently, it was really difficult to push it through the lawn. The motor no longer seems up to the job and the cutting stalled repeatedly. Time for a new mower.
I looked in several retail outlets, not having purchased a mower in two decades I was not up on the latest technology. They ranged in price from a $100 to over $500. For a $100, you got the basic rotary push mower -- I might have been inclined to this, except I do not think it would handle my lawn and my wife would have none of it, since she has to mow the lawn occasionally. I finally settled for a model that cost $450. It is a cordless electric and it carried a well-known American brand name.
Since I wrote the posting below, I made sure to check the place of manufacture. Without exception, every brand, known and no-name, including the one I purchased, was made in China. I hope mine will last through the summer. But the reality is, if you have to mow your lawn in Canada, you have to buy a mower made in China -- there is no other option.
May 26, 2009
Some days you wake up cranky and the first thing that puts you off sets your mood for the day.
I like a cup of tea to start my day. This morning my electric kettle quit and I had to boil the water in a pot on the stove. No big deal. Except this kettle is only a month old. It replaced a kettle that was in use for 6 months before it also expired. The new kettle was cheaper than the old one, but not that much cheaper. In both cases, the label on the bottom of the products said they were made in China.
You know that old saw about the kettle lecturing the pot for being black. Can’t happen. The Chinese kitchen products die before they even have a decent set of fingerprints on them, let alone getting discoloured from use.
In my last home, I had to replace the new clothes washing machine twice in one year. Made in China.
Then my clothes dryer caught fire. Fortunately I was home and able to shut it off before it burned my house down. Dryers are supposed to come with a failsafe thermostat that shuts them off when they get too hot, long before reaching the temperature that melts the insulation on the wiring. My failsafe failed. Made in China.
We paid over $500 for a fancy stainless steel hood over our kitchen stove in our new home. After 6 months, it doesn’t work. I had a repair guy in and he said he couldn’t fix it (he specializes in that brand) and he charged me $75 to tell me that.
Guess what the manufacturer’s label said? No, really, guess. If you said made in China, give yourself a Cuban cigar. At least they are still the real deal.
Western civilization will be over if you ever get a Cubano made in China.
We have gone from a society of “planned obsolescence” to the “disposable age” and have now entered the “made in China” phase. Planned obsolescence was a boomer concept. Disposable was generation X. How do we label this one – maybe the “crap generation?”
I laugh every time I see an advertisement on television flogging what used to be known as brand identity. “Buy this product because you know the name of the company and it stands for quality.” Bullshit. They all make their stuff in China and it’s all crap.
I can’t wait for the North American highways to be flooded with Chinese cars. Watch the ensuing chaos and road deaths.
Speaking of cars, I finally got my tea and started to read the newspaper. It seems General Motors Canada has inked its 3rd renegotiated collective agreement this year with the auto workers' union. The workers voted 86% in favour. GM now has labour costs (leaving aside legacy costs) the equivalent of Toyota Canada, which was a demand made by the government of Canada, the company’s new minority shareholder.
Oh joy! Government made cars. Since the government has been unmasked as buying Canadian flags and Canadian lapel pins from China, I wonder how long it will be before it gets the bright idea of having GM makes its cars in China.
The workers got the message, but, in a way they still don’t get it.
One individual said, “We still fought hard.” No my fuzzy little auto worker friend. The days of “fighting” the company as if it is the enemy is at an end. When you go into survival mode you band together to save the ship from sinking.
Another said that the company was badly managed and the “brass” got off scot free. One definition of badly managed is agreeing to outrageously expensive union demands during collective bargaining. If this assembly line worker meant that management ought to have said “no” much more forcefully in earlier bargaining sessions then perhaps the union ought not to have made such profit draining demands in those same sessions.
As to the brass. Well, in the U.S., Obama fired the company CEO, while you, my friend, get to keep your job.
Yesterday, I took out my lawnmower to cut the grass in my backyard. My lawnmower is Canadian made and has given me good service for 20 years. I have only had to tighten the nuts on the wheels and sharpen the blades from time to time. It is an electric model. Unfortunately, I guess its time has come. My grass is very dense and the mower is a basic model and has no height adjustment. Consequently, it was really difficult to push it through the lawn. The motor no longer seems up to the job and the cutting stalled repeatedly. Time for a new mower.
I looked in several retail outlets, not having purchased a mower in two decades I was not up on the latest technology. They ranged in price from a $100 to over $500. For a $100, you got the basic rotary push mower -- I might have been inclined to this, except I do not think it would handle my lawn and my wife would have none of it, since she has to mow the lawn occasionally. I finally settled for a model that cost $450. It is a cordless electric and it carried a well-known American brand name.
Since I wrote the posting below, I made sure to check the place of manufacture. Without exception, every brand, known and no-name, including the one I purchased, was made in China. I hope mine will last through the summer. But the reality is, if you have to mow your lawn in Canada, you have to buy a mower made in China -- there is no other option.
May 26, 2009
Some days you wake up cranky and the first thing that puts you off sets your mood for the day.
I like a cup of tea to start my day. This morning my electric kettle quit and I had to boil the water in a pot on the stove. No big deal. Except this kettle is only a month old. It replaced a kettle that was in use for 6 months before it also expired. The new kettle was cheaper than the old one, but not that much cheaper. In both cases, the label on the bottom of the products said they were made in China.
You know that old saw about the kettle lecturing the pot for being black. Can’t happen. The Chinese kitchen products die before they even have a decent set of fingerprints on them, let alone getting discoloured from use.
In my last home, I had to replace the new clothes washing machine twice in one year. Made in China.
Then my clothes dryer caught fire. Fortunately I was home and able to shut it off before it burned my house down. Dryers are supposed to come with a failsafe thermostat that shuts them off when they get too hot, long before reaching the temperature that melts the insulation on the wiring. My failsafe failed. Made in China.
We paid over $500 for a fancy stainless steel hood over our kitchen stove in our new home. After 6 months, it doesn’t work. I had a repair guy in and he said he couldn’t fix it (he specializes in that brand) and he charged me $75 to tell me that.
Guess what the manufacturer’s label said? No, really, guess. If you said made in China, give yourself a Cuban cigar. At least they are still the real deal.
Western civilization will be over if you ever get a Cubano made in China.
We have gone from a society of “planned obsolescence” to the “disposable age” and have now entered the “made in China” phase. Planned obsolescence was a boomer concept. Disposable was generation X. How do we label this one – maybe the “crap generation?”
I laugh every time I see an advertisement on television flogging what used to be known as brand identity. “Buy this product because you know the name of the company and it stands for quality.” Bullshit. They all make their stuff in China and it’s all crap.
I can’t wait for the North American highways to be flooded with Chinese cars. Watch the ensuing chaos and road deaths.
Speaking of cars, I finally got my tea and started to read the newspaper. It seems General Motors Canada has inked its 3rd renegotiated collective agreement this year with the auto workers' union. The workers voted 86% in favour. GM now has labour costs (leaving aside legacy costs) the equivalent of Toyota Canada, which was a demand made by the government of Canada, the company’s new minority shareholder.
Oh joy! Government made cars. Since the government has been unmasked as buying Canadian flags and Canadian lapel pins from China, I wonder how long it will be before it gets the bright idea of having GM makes its cars in China.
The workers got the message, but, in a way they still don’t get it.
One individual said, “We still fought hard.” No my fuzzy little auto worker friend. The days of “fighting” the company as if it is the enemy is at an end. When you go into survival mode you band together to save the ship from sinking.
Another said that the company was badly managed and the “brass” got off scot free. One definition of badly managed is agreeing to outrageously expensive union demands during collective bargaining. If this assembly line worker meant that management ought to have said “no” much more forcefully in earlier bargaining sessions then perhaps the union ought not to have made such profit draining demands in those same sessions.
As to the brass. Well, in the U.S., Obama fired the company CEO, while you, my friend, get to keep your job.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Chinese junkets and political disconnect from reality
Barack Obama made a telling comment about politicians in his book The Audacity of Hope. The longer one is in office, he said, "the narrower the scope of your interactions.
"You may fight it with town-hall meetings and listening tours and stops by the old neighbourhood, but your schedule dictates that you move in a different orbit from most of the people you represent."
This comes to mind in the face of the obstinacy of the mayor of Toronto, David Miller, and the Ontario government, insisting on going to China when the rest of the world is rioting every time the Chinese militarily-guarded Olympic flame passes through a new city on its global "good will" tour.
I once was a member of a board of directors of an international organization that held annual meetings in different cities in the world. It was an honour competed for and, like the Olympics, a city applied and was awarded the right to host the event several years in advance. A few months before the meeting was to be held in Beijing, the Tiananmen Square massacre occurred. We switched the venue to another city in Europe on short notice. China put a lot of pressure on us to keep it in Beijing, but we rejected it.
This is a time to seriously consider boycotting the games, not trotting off on junkets that will only be used by the Chinese authorities as evidence that the Tibet business makes no difference to anyone outside China.
"You may fight it with town-hall meetings and listening tours and stops by the old neighbourhood, but your schedule dictates that you move in a different orbit from most of the people you represent."
This comes to mind in the face of the obstinacy of the mayor of Toronto, David Miller, and the Ontario government, insisting on going to China when the rest of the world is rioting every time the Chinese militarily-guarded Olympic flame passes through a new city on its global "good will" tour.
I once was a member of a board of directors of an international organization that held annual meetings in different cities in the world. It was an honour competed for and, like the Olympics, a city applied and was awarded the right to host the event several years in advance. A few months before the meeting was to be held in Beijing, the Tiananmen Square massacre occurred. We switched the venue to another city in Europe on short notice. China put a lot of pressure on us to keep it in Beijing, but we rejected it.
This is a time to seriously consider boycotting the games, not trotting off on junkets that will only be used by the Chinese authorities as evidence that the Tibet business makes no difference to anyone outside China.
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