Hi Peter,
On 12/15/2012 01:56 AM, Peter Blodow wrote:
> Przemek,
> when I want to build (or also keep) up a business I have to be reliable
> for the customers and grant continuity for my products. Therefore, I
> have to demand just the same from my suppliers. I will have to put a lot
> of money into my business, in most cases from loans, and have to keep
> the risk of loss as low as possible. I will need banks and insurances
> which want to calculate the risk of lending money to me and at which
> cost. All this calls for professional solutions, as well in machinery
> as in computer hard- and software, be they ingeniuous, modern, inventive
> or not, they have to be reliable and calculable in the first place. A
> large company with an international name gives me more of this security
> than the best and most ingenious free product. This is why Linux can't
> break though on the professional office market, and this is why LinuxCNC
> can't make it on our professional production market. A lot simplified,
> as the saying goes "if it costs nothing, it's worth nothing".
That's not true about Linux. My career depends on companies using Linux.
It's professional software that makes (Internet) world go around and
Linux plays a huge role in this. Virtualization would not happen without
need to run multiple operating systems on the same hardware at the same
time for example. Whole new innovations came out of that, supercomputing
in "cheap hardware", "cloud computing", better HW utilization, etc.
Here it doesn't matter how many university degrees you have as long as
you know how to make systems run. Many of us simply learn on the job to
become productive Linux Meisters.
>
> Another thing is that there are legal regulations to be licenced and
> authorized to run a commercial machine shop. To be allowed open up a
> production of any kind you have to have a certain degree ("Meister" in
> German) from the Chamber of Crafts and Industry, preceded by a three
> years apprenticeship with final exam, several years of professional
> experience and a Meister school degree exam in the end. During all this
Not long ago, public TV had an interesting program about that German
apprenticeship system in practically every kind of business or trade,
from chimney sweeper, to butcher, pastry maker, etc. Impressive indeed.
Traditional trades do evolve into highly specialized fields in the
industry. Some is due to regulations as a reaction to accidents or
disasters. Other is simply a tradition or to protect the "union" which
prevents innovation in many cases. Meister wants to keep doing it the
old way, while there might be a better way.
Countries without industrial tradition make poor quality products. We
(regretfully) end up buying cheap machines from China instead of quality
from elsewhere. My small lathe/mill is an example of that. It's such a
sloppy work and you can't improve it. Chinese !CRAP! for 1/3rd of what a
German made would cost. Granted, it's only for a hobby; no way to make a
living with it.
In the US you can start almost any kind of business regardless of your
profession. If you don't know how to do things you try a few times until
it works, hire somebody to make it work, or outsource to other
businesses. Example is emerging private space industry. I know people
who used to work in computer industry, made some money, and decided to
go build rockets. They are successful.
Some use KickStarter to start new things or fill the need:
http://joshondesign.com/2012/09/17/innovator_terencetam
And when things go bad, we have lawyers that line up to "take care of
the problem" ;-)
> time, people get acquainted with professional equipment and want to rely
> on it in their own business later on. Large companies, as is
> understandable, do a lot of advertizing for these people in order to
> make them stay with their equipment later when they are on their own. I
> have experienced myself that shop workers insisted of buying a specific
> machine without which they would refuse to grant the quality of the
> products they were making.
>
> So, there is your German "conservativism". Our dual educational system
> of schools and apprenticeship with its pursuit of quality and continuity
> has made Germany a blooming economy among a lot of declining countries
that's true, however, it would not be possible to keep going on it's
own. Other countries buy goods from Germany or do labor intensive work
for German companies, sometimes on borrowed money and that made things
go ugly for a number of EU members when the economy went south.
> all around in Europe, and this only a few decades after a war that had
> destroyed three quarters of all buildings, virtually all means of
> production and millions of men to run this production.
>
> Peter
>
Well, that would not happen without help from the USA to rebuild West
Germany after the war. At least the rate of reconstruction would be much
slower for whole EU. Remember that huge number of men were killed in the
war and had to be replaced with "imports". If US used the same kind of
regime as the Soviets, you would not see Mercedes and BMW on the streets
of EU and much less in Asia these days. It was loans and access to
American market that made western EU recover so fast.
One thing that Americans are terribly conservative about is standards.
They will not adopt metric system, not even at the gun point. Part of
that is due to conservative unions that want to keep doing the same
thing over and over. We could turn our economy around simply with
mandatory conversion to metric system.
--
Rafael
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