Post No. 47: Needed - Attitude Adjustment Following Meltdown

© 2008, The Institute for Applied Common Sense

Much has been made in recent days regarding a prospective leader’s ability to multi-task. And yet we must recognize that there are consequences.

Just yesterday, a colleague here at the Institute mentioned that there was plenty blame to go around in connection with this economic mess. He also suggested that the first step in addressing a problem is to take responsibility for having participated in its creation.

Consequently, we the citizens of this nation, must examine ourselves, since a nation is not comprised of political and business leaders alone.

Most available evidence suggests that members of the last two generations do not read anything but comic books. They purportedly depend almost entirely on friends, and the Internet, for their news. In the competition to be among Phil Night's "Cool Five," (http://www.meetup.com/members/3961181/) being first with the rumor counts more than being right with the implication.

And when you are doing six things at once, who has time to run the numbers, or check the sources? In the interest of fiscal responsibility, GM has canned more than half its North American work force in the last five years... replaced them with a workforce with virtually no experience in auto manufacturing… but willing to work for half as much. And while GM was busy canning workers, revisiting the expectations of retirees, cutting "supplier" costs, building new factories in the cheapest labor markets possible, and taking a fling in the sub prime real estate lending market, Toyota increased its US production by half to become the best selling brand in the US, and the best selling producer in the world.

In the mean time, Toyota's credit arm surpassed both Ford and GM's captive units to become the most profitable lender in the US.Toyota's currently underutilized employees are still working for Toyota... most receiving more training, and thus looking toward the future.

That may be partly due to government involvement in corporate conduct, as is the case in many countries, but it still reflects the nature of the competition, not quite as anxious to post quarterly profits and thus sacrifice the long term. The scientific method teaches us that experience is not expensive; it is priceless... that results you cannot duplicate cannot be attributed to the work you are doing... and that repeating the same actions and expecting different results is insane.We do not need to reproduce the ten year long recession Japan suffered after their housing bubble burst.

But if we are going to avoid it, we are also going to have to concentrate on what they did right...and wrong, and learn from their mistakes.

We as a nation need to observe how others do things, and take notes. To do that, some of us are going to have to spend a bit more time reading printed material other than comic books...and a bit less time on FaceBook, running down the latest rampant rumor.

A colleague, after teaching adults students at a local community college, called me up and said that he felt that someone had “cheated these people out of an education.” The cheaters obviously did not appreciate that cheating affects us all, and for the long term.

With the New Deal, more and more of our citizens learned to depend on government. In recent years, more and more workers learned not to depend on jobs, particularly in the corporate arena, and launched out on their own.

Having now determined that we can not trust our government and political leaders, perhaps it’s time for ordinary citizens to take charge of their destiny, and rely less on our purported “leaders.”

Maybe McCain had it right in picking someone who could connect with “regular citizens.” I can’t imagine any hard working citizen from that social strata doing to this nation what our corporate and political leaders have done.

© 2008, The Institute for Applied Common Sense