Dubious Constituency

The Wal-Mart sushi is not for eating. It has a rooting interest in something; it exists because of intentional effort, however despite its seeming availability, is not meant for your utility. Similarly, your mother in law is not your mother.

We exist in frequencies, semi shared running parallelograms. We are AM, FM, CB, VHF, UHF, digital, analog and rotary analog. At moments we process everything,  bestowing some grading on all content. Over time, we tune some content out, either because it is not actionable, false, in sharp contrast with our established preferences or is asking us to make a continual payment with our cell phones.

There is a rhythm in all of us, the ticking of a time bomb that will someday just stop. As we become more aware we become better able to sort time wasted from time well spent. Most people navigate accordingly, becoming blind to as much nonsense as we can, jumping pot holes, avoiding sidetracks, dead ends and cul de sacs. If you are deft and smug, you are where you should be, no doubt in the presence of other deft and smug types. And if you are normal, you are  helping others while also being helped. Most people are either Scrooge McDuck or Donald Duck.   

Most forces in our mind forged manacles world are geared broadly at the type of Duck you are. Investment programs for the Scrooge McDucks, expanded Basic Cable for the Donalds and Depends and Huggies for all. BMWs, Audis, Corvettes and such for various age ranges of Scrooge McDucks and Teslas and Leafs for the outliers of all ages. Similar but broader groups of cars are offered to the Donald Ducks. All cars being car component containers, with an 85% similarity in systems and only three distinct classes of quality within each system, there is a wide variety but little difference in what is offered to whom.* Clothing, furniture, the law and food are fairly much aligned similarly. Either caviar or peanut butter will get you fat in the right doses. And no one in the United States gets an effective mass transit system.

In short, we have hazard control and pecking orders down pat. Keeping up with the pace of change has been a mandate on active adults since the 1870s.  Each new idea is ratified against a collective help/hurt horizon. The Scrooge McDucks wanted the public trust companies and the railroads. The Donalds drove banking, medicine and the police. Luxury niceties such as automatic transmission and cell phones became necessities. Entire segments of the economy are created and destroyed, realms of existences traded, the farm for the city, the city for the suburbs, White Out correction fluid for computers.

Most ideas in the guise of innovation either pass the test of time or fail. As my laser disk player will tell you. There is, however, a new wrinkle in the process of ascertaining progress which has emerged. It is an outlaw to the process, a manufactured subversive. Evidence of this new breed of Bug Bear has crossed our desk enough for us to identify it. The Wal-Mart sushi is just one example.

Before describing how to identify these Bug Bears, allow me to place the blame for their existence squarely on the shoulders of Microsoft and its founder. Bill Gates is a thief. He invented nothing and the firm he built owes its existence to plunder, almost to the exclusion of any other force. ** Other people invented browsers and word processing and spread sheets and operating systems. By in large these were good products which worked. All Microsoft did was commission less functional knock offs of these programs, package them and sell them to the Scrooge McDucks of this world. The McDucks, in turn, shoved them into our work spaces.

The overall effect was to create a new shoddy standard for everything, to undercut the general presumption that products and services should do what they are supposed to. Today most complex things are sold with the expectation that they will require continual tweaking. Moreover, it is now expected that we will continually pay to maintain an entity which was shipped to us defective.  That’s a hell of a trick.

It is this environment which has allowed the latest class of Bug Bear to thrive. Its calling cards are the shouted maxims “We are smarter than you” and “We are indispensable.” They don’t actually mean it, although they may think they do. What this is evidence of we will define later. A few examples of claimed transcendence illustrate the creature’s behavior.

Recently GE (General Electric) has fielded a slew of public communications asking the question “Do you know what GE is?” Simultaneously the company has been shedding all of its entities that might actually bring GE to mind. It no longer makes toasters and coffee pots. It sold its television networks and movie studios and the parts of it which issued credit cards. The divisions which make light bulbs and freezers and even plastic are now all on the block. So if you are no longer interested in selling me anything or interacting with my life in any meaningful way, why do I have to pay attention to you? Because Miss America would like to tell you that she is now in the marrying a billionaire phase of her existence; other than to distribute admiration in her direction, your actual participation is not required. What happened to bringing good things to living? What happened to imagination at work?  Even the business which GE is actually advertising (integrated production automation, I think) has no broad calling. Surely there is a better way to reach the room full of people who make such decisions than network television? Ditto the computer engineers the firm is seemingly out to recruit. (All of whom, no doubt know that GE sold its actual computer service business to IBM long ago.) For the rest of us it’s a big shrug and a sideways mouthed “Thank you for sharing.” Such loudly bleated irrelevance is typical of the form.

Perhaps more typical is the sudden aspirational offering of a product or service clearly beyond the purveyor’s normal range. This is where Wal-Mart sushi comes in. The folks in charge of the place are trying to communicate to their customers that they are deprived of nothing. In this they are asking their said target consumer to ignore the reality of every waking second of their lives.  No, you are not flunk outs, not children of a lesser god. Look… sushi, just like normal people in real cities get to eat. Sadly, this is a hard sell to people whose feet are sticking to the floor and who have no doubt already passed through the produce section—one glance at which demonstrates Wal-Mart’s all thumbs approach to fragile objects not to mention its minor incompetence with “food” in general. To Wal-Mart sushi is just a form of produce, but it is analogous to Midas suddenly offering HVAC repairs. Yes, you have tools, but stay the hell away from my furnace. Even master makers of sushi can horribly screw it up, rendering it either poisonous or bland. And Juan Wal-Mart over there is no master maker. (This is the same “grocer” that’s so proud of their ground beef that they package it in opaque tubes.) In the end, common sense kicks in and few people are tempted. Again it’s not really Wal-Mart’s intention to poison you or even sell you sushi. They’re just out to make you feel happy, in the weirdest way they can.

On some level it’s that form of resume padding that buildings in the old west used to do, commonly putting the façade of a second story up on a building that only has one floor. But there is a very dangerous section of this Bug Bear continuum.

Toyota’s problems have been well documented. Whereas simply being cheap skates was at the heart of Toyota’s problems, a far more pernicious version of our Bug Bear has inflicted its fellow Axis war criminal profiteer cousin VW. (VW owes its existence to one of Adolph Hitler’s directives.) VW launched a sales campaign to boost the image of their same model year in year out car line. In these ads a group of old women sexually assault VW employees and leer at stray fellow prospective VW buyers. Lost somewhat in this oddness was the “revolutionary” product being pushed, cars equipped with a new cleaner and quieter diesel engine. Perhaps with good reason, because it turns out that the innovation in question did not exist. At no time did VW endeavor to manufacture a cleaner diesel engine. They didn’t think they had made one and fail. They just said they had it and moved on from there. In retrospect, the odd communication style—one which met the classical test of causing observer distress—should have clued us in to the total bat-shit crazy lying underneath. No rational human being would think of trying to get away with something like this—much less a group of them. Moreover, no effort was spent on formulating a mitigation strategy on the offhand chance that the firm got caught. Surely they don’t think they’re that smart or that all of humanity is that stupid.

That’s exactly what they think.

*The systems included in your car have more to do with the size requirements of various compartments than they do with quality. Some perfectly wonderful cars have at least a few systems which were chosen entirely due to the fact that they fit. There are also channels of compatibility between systems which impose their own considerations.

** Mr. Fun’s opinions do not represent the opinions of the Hil-Gle Wonderblog or its managers, some of whom own stock in Microsoft and GE. (And Ford and Apple.)

Note: I could have made this a lot less hoity toity and still made my point. But the subject is hoity toity so I felt my tortured prose should reflect such. You don’t buy that? Blow me.