Once upon a time in America, there was
an American company, "Joe's Twiddles." Joe's Twiddles
had a long history in America that began when a man named
Joe figured out a way to make a better twiddle. Americans
loved Joe's twiddles and bought them by the bezeezle. Joe
hired American workers to make the twiddles. He hired Americans
to service the twiddles. He hired Americans to handle the
customer service phones, accounting, and every other aspect
of his business. He also bought supplies to build the twiddles
from other Americans and American companies. You see, America
was important to Joe, and Joe was important to America.
A typical mid-20th-century American success
story, Joe became very wealthy selling and servicing twiddles.
He gave a lot of money to charity and to his church. He was
looked up to by those in his community. Joe's employees were
loyal, his customers were loyal and he swore to never forget
that his success never could have been if it were not for
the dream-making wonders that were possible only in America.
He made sure that his family and everyone who worked for him
understood the importance of this fact also.
Joe's success made him feel deeply patriotic,
very proud and extremely loyal to America and it citizens.
He thanked God for having been born into a unique culture
like no other before it in God's creation. He often gave thanks
to God publicly and in company meetings; this made people
admire him even more. Everyone who knew Joe was certain that
he was incapable of doing anything to harm his countrymen
and women; Americans like Joe just didn't do such things,
even when it meant that doing business sometimes cost him
a little more.
Sometimes Joe was practically forced to be
very innovative in order to to compete with cheaper foreign
twiddle makers, but each challenge of this sort only seemed
to make Joe's company, and his twiddles, better. All of this
being so, it soon came to pass that Joe's company was known
across the land for its slogan and mission statement, "We
build the Greatest American Twiddles."
Eventually Joe passed away and his kids took
over. Having been educated in public schools in the latter
part of the 20th century, Joe's kids had been somewhat indoctrinated
away from the drive, morals and ethics their father had tried
very hard to instill in them. You see, this group called "the
ACLU" had made sure that schools were made into "values
neutral" places, lest they offend someone who might possess
or wish to explore moral codes considered deviant by the majority.
Nobody seemed very surprised that Joe's kids
soon tired of running the business; they lacked what it took
to twiddle for a living. So, with the help of a bunch of lawyers
and accountants, they took the company public. They did keep
some shares out of family loyalty, but they mostly cashed
out and left the business.
Soon, a newly renamed Joe's Twiddle and Twiddle
Service Corporation (JTTSC) was being run by a corporate board
of directors. For the first time, the company was one step
removed from Joe's deep, abiding sense of commitment and thanks
to America for being a wonderful and unique cultural and business
incubator.
Over time, there was less and less talk in
the halls of the company about the wonders of a nation that
set the stage for many concepts like Joe's to flourish. And
there certainly was no talk about God because the company
lawyers said He might be deemed offensive by someone, an employee,
a customer, a pet...whatever.
Eventually people at JTTSC forgot the way
that Joe had always thanked God for making an America that
allowed his sweat and effort to so positively affect his family,
his loyal employees and his loyal American twiddle customers.
The disconnect from the ideals that Joe loved and built his
business upon was soon in full-swing.
Ten years and several changes to the board
of directors later, some hotshot young accountant at JTTSC
figured out that the company could save 5% of its overhead
if it moved its twiddle manufacturing operations to Japreaindichin,
a region of the earth ruled by despots, tyrants and profiteers.
It boasted a low standard of living for everyone but a small
and absurdly wealthy elite. Work was done in sweatshops; there
was zero government regulation of work conditions. The employee
prevailing wages wouldn't buy fish-food for a guppy in America.
Of course it would be less costly to manufacture twiddles
there, and JTTSC's board of directors didn't feel the obligations
Joe had felt during his life really mattered any more. They'd
never even heard of such things.
Not at all.
So, the board of directors looked only at
the numbers on the accountants' reports and legal briefs in
front of them, considered the investors (or was it their own
investments in JTTSC?) and promptly moved manufacturing operations
to Japreaindichin. They didn't bother to look to see if any
deeper ramifications might affect America as a result of their
action.
They didn't bother to change the company
slogan either. But they did lay off 1000 career twiddle-makers.
American consumers were at first a bit shocked
by this turn of events, but the board had planned for this
upset. Using their market clout, they drove the worldwide
price of twiddles down, temporarily...just long enough for
the people who were upset to cool down.
Not many Americans noticed a few months later
when some government agency reported in a press release that
the 1000 unemployed twiddle makers were for the most part
unemployable; the press must've missed the announcement. Or
might it have had something to do with the increased money
for advertising that JTTSC was sending them?
Americans also didn't know, because they
weren't told, that their tax bills reflected the cost of retraining
and social services for poor twiddlers. They weren't given
the information that showed the ties between the increased
cost of their health insurance to the uncompensated care bills
incurred by the former twiddlers and twiddler-dependent families.
Some Americans might have noticed that the
unemployment figures reported by the government went up, but
government soon took care of that by removing the former twiddlers
from the unemployment figures in the next reporting period.
You see, many of the twiddlers had given up on finding new
jobs because twiddling was all they knew how to or wanted
to do. So the government didn't consider them to be unemployed
since they weren't looking for work. Poof! The twiddlers weren't
"officially" unemployed any more!
The irony that American consumers ended up
paying more on the side of taxes and premiums than they saved
in the cost of twiddles was lost on most everyone. The fact
that people that didn't even use twiddles were, in effect,
subsidizing twiddle manufacture, sales and service didn't
get published anywhere.
Few paid much attention when the price of
twiddles soon went back up to a level higher than it had been
before either. It was too bad the media tired of reporting
about it and didn't have a single reporter who knew diddly-squat
about twiddle economics to figure out what really had happened.
However, the stockholders were very pleased by this turn of
events when they got their dividend checks and saw the stock
prices rise; we can only wonder if they would have cared to
learn that the price of their profit was born by all Americans
via cost shifting and taxation.
A few years went by and that weasly little
accountant (remember him?) who figured out that it would be
just swell to move manufacturing offshore was promoted to
CFO of JTTSC. At about the same time, the Internet came along
and compressed the world. The new CFO, still out to make a
name for himself and stroke his own ego, figured out that
it was now possible to move most of accounting (not his job,
of course), and all of the other white-collar service jobs
to Japreaindichin also. It would save another 7% of overhead.
The Board of Directors loved the idea. So, they voted to move
the service jobs overseas too.
The cycle of layoffs repeated itself and
the hidden costs passed on to consumers still remained misunderstood
by the idiots in the media. They didn't seem to care much
anyway, they were more than happy to report about the rise
in suicides, the increased substance abuse and the other ills
that had cropped up in the communities around the now empty
JTTSC home office and factory. They reported mostly on what
sells newspapers and garners viewers: pain, suffering and
blood. It never occurred to them that the social deconstruction
they covered was all linked to the former twiddle-makers and
those who previously had made a living selling stuff to the
extended twiddle-maker family.
In the next few years, twiddles became much
more complex due to technological advances, so the demand
for Twiddle Certified Professionals (TCP's) went up dramatically.
The call went out to Americans to pay thousands of dollars
for Twiddle certification courses, but the reward was a higher
income that could easily offset the cost of such classes.
What these suckers...er...Americans didn't
know was that at the very same time that they were toiling
to master the intricacies of twiddle technology, the twiddle
lobby was begging Congress to allow for the import of TCP's
from Japreaindichin. For about a year, the newly certified
American twiddle technicians did very well...while they were
unwittingly training their lower-paid Japreaindichinese replacements!
Who knew that immigrants on work visas could afford to live
much cheaper than Americans straddled with mortgages, healthcare
costs and the other trappings of American culture and society?
Who knew that they didn't mind living with 14 people in a
two-bedroom apartment?
Such is the sad story of the Great American
Twiddle, which isn't really American at all any more. From
a truly American perspective, the biggest thing we probably
should wonder about is good ole Joe, you remember Joe? That
patriotic, charitable American success of a man?
How do you think he would feel about his
company today?
The End
So, Katie, the point
I'm trying to make here is that American traditions, ideals
and ethics are worth fighting to keep; it is just as important
to be mindful of them in business as it is to cherish them
with your family. They represent the best things that mankind
has ever accomplished on this earth. It is important for you
to strive to see that your ancestors' vision of America remains
alive, even through the darkest times. It bothers me greatly
to admit it, but unless a lot of things change quickly, you
will come to know of far too many leaders in government and
business who do not possess the comportment that used to be
required of American leaders and role models. You will meet
many people who lack an important uniquely American sort of
morality and love of country. As a result, these people will
be uninhibited and unable to make decisions based upon American
ethical standards. They will be like those who led Joe's company
after he was gone. Learn to recognize them and never give
in to them.
During my lifetime, too many of our leaders
have listened to, been co-opted by or have become just like
the folks who turned Joe's company upside down. Thanks to
their neglect, and even a bit of malevolent intent, I'm afraid
you'll never learn anything about true American morality and
ethics in any public school, and probably not in any private
school either. Over the past two generations, I believe that
all of our teachers have been educated in a system that has
intentionally attempted to obfuscate and obliterate some of
the core elements that make up what we call "traditional
American values." So, it is up to your mother and me
to make sure you learn them...and you must learn them so
that you can live by them and pass them on. There just
is no room for compromise when it comes to becoming and being
an honest, honorable American. The hurt caused to many good
people, good Americans, by greedy, uncaring and ignorant people
immersed in and obsessed by numbers and legalities and profit
in the name of some corporation is unforgivable.
Unchecked Corporatism, like its cousin Socialism,
may obliterate American shared community values just as surely
as Globalism harbors seeds to obliterate every nation's heritage.
Too much is being done for the sake of profit and the enrichment
of a small elite and not enough is being done to maintain
America's middle class. Never let anyone sell you the notion
that elitism is the natural result of Capitalism...at least
not the American brand of Capitalism. If there is a vision
I have for how I'd like to see you become a participant in
business during your time, I'd just like for you to remember
how important it is to think, act and be like Joe.
An important lesson that underlies the story
of Joe's Twiddles is that America, from its inception as a
nation, thrived through the good times and survived the bad
times by leveraging the unique culture, values, ethics and
mores that evolved during its formative years...America was
an ideal before it became a nation. Our founders went on endlessly
about the dangers of entering into entangling alliances with
"alien sovereignties." I believe this admonition
should just as strongly apply to companies, the corporate
world, government policy and any other thing that may too
tightly tie us to cultures and values that may conflict with
or undermine our own.
Just because it is easier today to do things
on a global scale, that fact does not absolve Americans who
run corporations...any business for that matter...from their
responsibility to turn first to citizens, second to citizens,
third to citizens and always to citizens to fill their human
resource needs and solve their business problems. This admonition
is especially valid when the true reason a business
has for reaching to other nations to fill positions is to
hold down or deflate wages of American citizens; the effect
of each and every imported worker's low pay ripples across
and negatively affects our entire economy even before we consider
the added broad social infrastructure costs.
Love,
Dad
5/24/03
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