American Factory

I couldn’t find anything but trailers on YouTube, Mr. Flu. And it’s not good enough to do a free trial of Netflix just to watch it.

Like I said, this documentary was not particularly enlightening. We don’t learn:

1) Why the GM plant closed down in the first place
2) Why a Chinese billionaire would want to open a plant in the United States

We never learn what’s going on inside the head of dog-faced Chairman Cho Tak Wong. Mr. Flu would likely remind us that the Asian way is much more tight-lipped than the American way.

This is one reason I view the documentary as either naive or just outright dishonest. There is little to no context to this. Do we really think Chairman Cho Tak Wong walked into this situation and he is “shocked, shocked” that he can’t get former UAW workers to be as efficient as the Chinese counterparts?

I suspect they were just going through the motions and had automation on their minds all the way (which eventually was part of the answer, although they still apparently employ at least a 1000 Americans and have since turned a profit). They started out with Americans in management positions (including president). But they were all eventually ousted. And we get zero idea for why they were fired.

We either believe they were fired for made-up pretexts (as presented in the documentary) or there was more going on. I suspect the Chinese never intended for Americans to be in management as anything but for-show in the short term. But it’s also possible that these American managers were incompetent. We just don’t know. We’re given so little true information in this documentary despite the camera being pointed somewhere all the time.

Two things are possible and I don’t know which one to believe, which is why I want Mr. Flu to watch this. Chairman Cho Tak Wong and his team, despite justifiable prejudices against the American worker (they certainly weren’t saying anything that shocked or offended me), seem to do all they can to coddle the American workers — even giving them a $2.00 raise at one point despite mounting losses.

So either this nicey-nice was just for show (having some master plan already in hand) or they were genuinely trying to work with the Americans. Given the slipshod nature of this pseudo-documentary, it’s impossible to know…unless one has abundant knowledge of the Chinese, which I don’t have.

It’s very clear that, at least for political/public-relations reasons, they were definitely trying hard not to be “the Ugly Chinese.” I kept thinking about the movie with Michael Keaton, Gung Ho. In that one, a Japanese car company buys an American auto plant. Keaton is in management and must mediate the clash of cultures and work attitudes. At the end of the day (in heroic fashion), both workers and management come together in a cooperative and high-spirited fashion to meet their quota.

You keep waiting for this to break out among the workers. And, of course, many of the workers say they are working very hard indeed. But, again, there is basically no information or objective standards. We don’t see, for example, how many pieces of glass (this is an auto glass factory) that come down the line in the American plant vs. the Chinese plant back home in China. We just know it’s less. But on all of the production lines? Are some of the workers nearly as good?

This is a documentary that tries to inform by rumor or fuzzy innuendo. For all we know, a significant number of the American workers were doing their best and were committed to the project. But we just have no way of knowing.

It also looks if, regarding the Chinese management, that it wasn’t just a clash of cultures as much as it was their ineffective management. Strangely (and suspiciously), somehow the American workers were expected to meet the same standards of the Chinese plant in China despite not requiring the workers to work more than an 8-hour, five-day week. Something smelled rotten.

Were they setting the Americans up for failure intentionally? It sure looks like it. But, sadly, there is no perspective on this in the documentary, no pertinent questions asked by the documentarians. The documentary was gutless fluff masquerading as a serious piece.

Musashi's main message was, "Be prepared." 

Good summary of both books and for a warrior or a businessman simple ideas, easy to quote and easy to follow in the first stages. Implementation at more complex levels is another matter. Forty years ago business schools were teaching both as the way Asians were getting ahead of the US especially in heavy industry. Thousands of students can quote Sun Tzu but have littler to no knowledge of Henry Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie or Stanford. They went for what they viewed as a quick fix and did not understand our own history. 

Stonewall Jackson never read Sun Tzu but he understood his teaching. Jackson's Sheudouh campaign in 1862 is taught in military schools around the world. As is Sherman's campaign through Georgia. 

This makes sense and is part of the explanation for why “moral narcissism” so easily takes root. Boredom. I still think Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Princess and the Pea” explains much of this as well. The better we have it, the more people obsess on the relatively trite nothings.

As for American Factory, this documentary could be groundbreaking as simply one that doesn’t take a particularly good view of unions. It’s probably true (but, again, the documentary presents little but weak anecdotes) that the Chinese were more lax regarding safety standards than most American factories. And this seemed to be the impetus for a movement to unionize the workforce. But otherwise it was clear that these former UAW workers were Snowflakes compared to the Chinese.

The Chinese billionaire stated that if they unionized that he would simply abandon the factory. I don’t doubt he would have done that…or replaced all the workers with other workers, which I think was one of his options. But one thing this documentary did was to point out just the physical difference between the Chinese workers and the former UAW workers. The former were trim, diligent, well-dressed, and earnest. The latter were fat, tattooed, sloven, and lazy.

The Chinese noted the systemic problem of the American workers wasting so much time chatting amongst themselves. I don’t find that hard to believe although, again, the documentary presents zero evidence. For instance, we are never shown a shot contrasting a Chinese production line with one with the Americans all standing around and gabbing.

I would perhaps conclude on thing as I learn more about big business. The Leftist-based criticism is that these evil capitalists move their factories to third-world countries in order to exploit cheap labor. Maybe the “cheap labor” is a part of it. But I think the more important story is that American capitalists simply can’t make a functioning, efficient, and profitable factory with American workers. There are clearly transportation and other costs advantage with making things in the United States. And some still find a way to do this, especially with heavy automation.

But given the resistance to hard work from the typical American, and the willingness to work (and at a lower cost) in third-world countries, that’s going to make the decision easier for a lot of businesses. Why fight to reform fat, lazy, tattooed Bubba? And I don’t believe we’ve seen that documentary yet that explains all this, although this one kinda-sorta steers you in that direction.

Pat was kind enough to send me that and I emailed it to you, Mr. Flu. If Artler would like a copy, I could send him a copy as well. The fellow's name is George Freedman. Apparently he is a frequent guest on the show.

I heard this complaint frequently. Getting people to show up is a challenge.

In my day, the ethic was to show up a couple minutes early, stay a couple minutes late. Work hard. Ask the boss if there is anything else he would like done. Make yourself useful. Show enthusiasm.

Back in the day when even the average worker was not a complete slug, such an attitude might have made you stand out a little. Now employers would probably look at you as some kind of strange aberration and be shocked. They’d want to cut your skin to see if you bleed, to see if you weren’t a robot.

You wonder how much of that was virtue-signaling. “See. I really do love these little yellow slant-eyed fellows.” For the record, I hate what the Japanese did in WWII but have come to respect and admire their culture since then. Thanks to MacArthur and the bomb. Whatever. But they’re not lazy dirtbags, although I’ve read reports (and from you) that says the much of Japanese yute are infected with Progressive nonsense as well.

So, to sum-up…no culture whose state religion is Progressivism can be a threat to us (at least when measuring externaly...internally they're a killer). It is a religious movement that simply weakens any culture it touches until it has no defense against invaders. It's  exported threat is cultural malaise, disbelief, and destruction of norms and institutions. Our best weapon against China isn’t nuclear deterrence. We should ship over a 1000 cross-dressers and let them spread the faith. Hell, China will be closing factories and farming out work to 3rd-word countries in no time.

I'm up for that.

I respect Friedman he wrote a book several years ago outlining what he considered the potential hotspots for confrontation the bulk of them are in Asia. His view of Russia is that they have the desire to be a problem, but unlike the CCP are rational. It is a strange world where we view the Russians as rational next to the CCP. 

Had a discussion with a friend over the weekend. We were talking about Dr. Thomas Sowell. His book the Vision of the Anointed should be required reading for every conservative/libertarian. There is a lot to cover in the book but it sums up to: The conservatives/libertarians views leftists as normal people with bad ideas. On the other hand, leftists view us as bad people with bad ideas. 

If you listen to their rants, speeches, and writings the attack is always on the personal level. That explains cancel culture, attacks on Trump, Limbaugh and others. With the personal attack they attempt to discredit the ideas, which they know they can not do by argument. It is the same in international affairs. 

I will lead a class called “Opening a Door for a Lady.” Let me show you one of my graduates: