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03/21/2007: "Capitalistic Conundrum"

You'd have to say that, on the whole, capitalism has served America well. It drove the Industrial Revolution, built the war machine that won World War II, and transformed the United States from third-rate hacks to a true world power. But cracks are appearing in the capitalistic facade, and one can't help but wonder if the infrastructure is about to collapse.

By now, everyone has seen Howard Schultz's epiphany memo in which be bemoans the fact that, somewhere on the road to 13,000 Starbucks outlets, the company lost its soul. Barristas gave way to automatic espresso machines, fresh ground coffee was replaced with regional warehouses full of product, and the Starbucks "experience" - the one thing on which the brand was built - was seriously compromised. Little decisions, each of which made sense at the time, ultimately led to a dilution of the product - one which could only be seen in hindsight. It's the death of a thousand cuts - each one isn't fatal, but the net result is nonetheless death. It remains to be seen if Schultz can put the genie back in the bottle, but his is not a unique experience. I can share one from closer to home.

I've talked before about my rose garden. I don't have much of a back yard, but it's totally green. One of my favorite stress relievers is to hand water the roses - an opportunity to, for at least a little while, forget the troubles of the day. Because the experience is important, I took the time to get the right tools. Ten years ago, when I first started planting roses, I went through a pretty exhaustive process to select just the right garden hose and sprayer. I went through quite a few before selecting a setup that has served me well - a Colorite WaterWorks 100-ft hose and a Sears Craftsman nozzle. I liked the hose for its high rubber content - important when you're dragging it around the yard and need it to bend without kinking. And the nozzle is built out of machined parts to perform just like a fire hose - it rocks.

Like all good things, though, time took their toll. Last week, I wanted to take the nozzle off to use just the hose, but it was fused to the brass hose end due to corrosion. My attempts to remove it only resulted in breaking the hose. Being anal, I wasn't going to go through the research process again, so I marched off to buy the same items. I brought them home and hooked them up, but something wasn't right - they just weren't the same as the ones they were replacing, even though they were the exact same models. The rubber hose had given way to a stiffer vinyl model that kinks and refuses to bend properly, while the nozzle just doesn't have the same machined precision (perhaps related to the "Made in China" label that wasn't on it's predecessor). Yeah, they're the same - but they're not the same.

Now, I don't think either company made the conscious decision to make a shitty product and try to pass it off on the customer. Rather, little decisions - innocuous all by themselves - add up to create these little piles of crap. A few years back, someone probably decided to save a couple of pennies by slightly altering the rubber content of the hose. A couple of seasons later, they did it again - and again a few years after that - each time saving a little more money. Meanwhile, over at the Craftsman management center they were seeing how cheap similar items were being sold at WalMart. Sure, the quality wasn't there, but hey - a buck is a buck, right? So they stop making the pieces in Wisconsin and start getting them from China - no one will know the difference.

Except me.

In the free enterprise system, there's no check and balance other than the market. Your only vote is with your dollars, and apparently we choose to go for cheap over quality. The system just gives us what we want, but what happens when we decide we want quality and it's just not there anymore? Some outsider will find a way to provide it to us - but at what price? Our souls?