Letters to the Editor
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@froggy
The Germans are very serious about quality, but they are also very serious, as a people, about standards in many aspects of society. The problem with the US IMO is that the concept of acceptable standards--in production, lifestyle, mores, and the way life should be lived--is seen as outdated and quaint. We give lip service to "family values" and religion, yet those are also part of the throw-away culture: disposable spouses, churches you're free to join or quit as you like, a belief in Jeezus without believing what he had to say. With core values like these, it's not hard to see why our business model is the way it is; if 50% of people find it easy to dump their spouse, how hard is it for them to lay off hundreds of workers they've never met to boost the quarterly earnings and get themselves that nice bonus? Or close a mill in Ohio, potentially killing a town off, because they'll work for slave wages in Bangladesh?? Quality standards be damned, and ethical standards don't figure in to calculating stock dividends, amigo.
The natural result is that everything becomes expendable. Our culture is regurgative trash; look no further than Hollywood, which lately only seems to produce anything involving a '60's TV show or superhero. TV is the same thing. Education has been reduced to training worker bees for retail jobs. In the end, people become just another resource to be used or discarded as we see fit, which is why we have the highest homeless, poverty and prisoner rates per capita in the Western world.
(Rant off.)