Innovation/Global Crisis Blog
You’ve Just Gotta Laugh!
By Shlomo Maital
The latest issue of The Economist has three separate items that, unintentionally, bring a smile or even a belly laugh.
Here they are.
1. China Eats America’s Lunch – Literally. China has been eating America’s lunch for years. By dominating manufacturing, China has taken away well-paying jobs from middle-class Americans, who now work at Wal-Mart for near-minimum wage. Now, fittingly, China is LITERALLY eating America’s lunch. A factory in rural Georgia, U.S., Georgia Chopsticks, is making 2 million chopsticks a day out of poplar and sweet-gum wood and exporting them to China. (p. 53). The company hopes to employ 150 people. America is saying, eat our lunch China and…here, let us give you the tools with which to do it.
2. Having achieved a Guinness Book of Records astronomical inflation rate, 230,000,000 per cent (that’s not a typo), Zimbabwe ended it by abandoning its own worthless currency and adopting the dollar. Now, Zimbabwe is worried, lest America’s irresponsible Fed print excessive amounts of money and destabilize Zimbabwe. A Zimbabwean newspaper, Newsday, wondered on Aug. 10 whether “it was time for Zimbabwe to ditch the dollar, lest it import America’s macroeconomic recklessness.” Pot calling the kettle black? Well – who’s the pot anyway? Can America learn fiscal and monetary responsibility from Zimbabwe? Apparently, yes. (p. 57).
3. A special police unit in Stockholm Sweden handles protests in a unique way. They have no weapons, no water cannons, no tear gas. They are known as Dialogue Police. They engage in philosophic dialogue with protesters, discussing the Manichean Ethic, relativist morality, deontological intuitionism and utilitarianism. My hunch is, they lull protesters to sleep. (P. 45). This has huge possibilities. How about Lullaby Police, who sing protesters to sleep? How about Economist Police, who teach segments of Econ 101, guaranteed to anesthetize an elephant?
Global crisis? That’s a laugh.
TIMnovate 
2 comments
Comments feed for this article
August 17, 2011 at 4:46 pm
Joseph
Dear Prof. Shlomo,
Reading your blog I decided to write you and to propose a discussion titled “The effects of a poor Leadership”.
Today in the western countries there seems to be a lack of leadership. My impression is that the economical problems we are facing are not technical problems, but social and human problems.
Especially in Europe (but also in US) we see ministers and presidents unable to produce realistic plans which can convince both people and markets. It’s evident by their actions that they absolutely don’t know what to do and they are trying to “push all the buttons” and see what happens.
This situation inspires me two considerations:
The first one concerns the poor charisma and leadership of European leaders. They don’t have a vision and a plan, and markets perceive these weaknesses. Most of the times they try to mediate between politics (which I translate with personal small group interests) and economical markets (which represents global interests).
The second aspect is the misconception that a lot of people have about what is happening. The majority of people believe that politicians know what they are doing, while I am afraid it is not true. My impression is that they really don’t know, and they just try.
My opinion is that, if in an hypothetic world we could put aside the political interests of small groups and we could have real leaders, ready to sacrifice their next elections for the good of their country, we could start the solution of the global crisis.
It is time to take uncomfortable and unpopular decisions. It is time to stop speaking and to act, it is time to base our economy on new and tangible products which allow the middle class to grow and which are the base of strong democracy and economy.
It is hard but it is right! This is what a real leader should think in turbulent times.
Being a leader not always means being a rich superstar…sometime means sacrifice!
Best Regards
Joseph Sfeir
August 17, 2011 at 7:20 pm
timnovate
Joseph, thanks for your insightful comments. I agree that we face social and human problems… please see the attached article. And re leadership: someone wise has said, “Politicians used to debate what they could give to people, now they must decide what they must take away…” and few political leaders know how to do that and get re-eleted… best, Shlomo