Month: December 2010

I had a pleasant half hour reading an old WIRED article called Dumpster Diving written by Torontonian Cory Doctorow. It is all about a man named Darren who makes a huge living salvaging electronics from Toronto’s dumpsters. Granted environmental legislation has taken a bite out of that business because of garbage police who insist that electronic trash be sorted, labeled and delivered to recyclers, but I am still awed by the entrepreneurial spirit and organizational skill of the featured dumpster diver. Anyone would agree with Darren that a proprietorship which has zero capital outlay, no overhead cost beyond a tank of gas and a midnight snack, and which often yields a thousand dollar with a few hours of work. (Sometimes up to $10,000) It’s a “niche” worth developing.

I can’t help wondering how many Darren’s there are out here in Vancouver. Further, I am curious as to the utility of using dumpster diving as an economic indicator. In the first instance, electrons become outdated faster than any other product including fashion. The discarding of unwanted hardware is colossal. But would a sudden upsurge in orders lead a wholesaler or manufacturer to mark down older stock or simply discard it? Possibly no two managers would make the same call.

Of course Doctorow only covered the issue from Darren’s side of the fence. When a retailer or a manufacturer fills his dumpster, severe things had happened. The first thing is a dollar value has been given to the material which has to be accounted for at tax time. Additionally, serial numbers, lot numbers or batch numbers are kept because discarded items are no longer covered by warranty. Further, should these goods – damaged, expired or even pristine turn up in a consumer’s hands, and fail, there is a great risk to the brand or reputation of the company. All business mangers understand this. Dumpster divers don’t care.

According to a report on the Canadian Statistics site, Canadian GDP dropped 2.9% in 2009. With China’s GDP continuing to fly like a rocket, the Canadian figure should be setting off an alarm bell to the parliament. Why is that? Could it have something to do with the Nation aversion to discussing the “p” word (productivity). Until Canadian overcomes their squeamishness on these issues, we are not going to get our hand around the throat of this productivity dragon.

In December 2005, when the liberal government was preparing a pre-election mini budget, the finance minister hired the polling company Decima Research to discover which words should be avoided when explaining government’s economic objective. By far the most offending word is productivity. This is bad news because as Canada’s population ages and the available workforce shrinks, only two factors can possibly keep up with the need to fund the nation’s social safety net – productivity and sky high prices for our natural resources. This was not a simple telephone pole a series of ten focus group section held in the major cities. The groups loved the words prosperity, growth and innovation. They hated the word productivity and as a result minister Goodale switched to the only “p” word that will pass muster – “prosperity”. He decided that “rates and ratios” and “obscure statistics” were to be avoided. (Vancouver Sun December 2007 “Productivity a negative word”)

Currently on Statistics Canada website reports that Canada’s GDP declined 2.9% in 2009. The wikipage “Comparison of Canadian and American economies”, has something to say on this issue although the information is dated. “Canadian workers are estimated to be 82% as productive per hour as their American counterparts”. It further says Canadians are more productivity in construction and natural resource sectors.

The CGA association defines productivity as “the efficiency with which goods or services are produced by a given set of inputs, such as capital, raw materials and labour”. They list six key factors that are causing decline in our worker’s productivity. None of them had anything to do with employee initiative, motivation, or work ethic. The employee is rendered blameless just as he was when minister Goodale was working to craft the message that would hoodwink the Canadian voters.

The goal of companies are to make profit. They are free to take any measure or action within the laws and regulations set by the government to maximize their profit. Unfortunately some companies are willing to take the risk of practicing unethically action for their own benefit. Sometimes they get away with it, but when they are caught its a huge price to pay.

On October 26th, Glaxo settled criminal and civil complaints with $750 million US for knowingly selling contaminated baby ointment and an ineffective antidepressant. This is just one of the “growing number of multimillion-dollar whistle-blower lawsuits”. Cheryl D. Eckard, Glaxo’s quality manager was fired after warning the company regrading the contamination of a plant in Puerto Pico. What’s the point of the point of having a quality manager if you are going to fire her? Clearly Glaxo only wanted to meet the minimum requirement to obtain its license.

On October 10, 2010, Virgin Galactic had its first successful sub-orbital flight. This marks another milestone for human in the space exploration. Not only will it serve commercially but also provide support to “agency exploration, science and aeronautics mission” for NASA. Reference. NASA will also rely on Virgin Galactic to provide transportation to the International Space Station (ISS) as NASA sets its aim on more wondrous missions. Earlier this year, the US congress has granted NASA over $100 billion US to support its mission for the next 5 years. NASA BUDGET

There are more urgent problems that the US government is facing at the present such a health care, national defense, and financial crisis. Moreover, nearly 1 billion people in Africa are without access to safe drinking water. Is it ethical for the US government to be allocating such an significant amount of money into the space program? Perhaps the answer is Yes which might be a surprise to many people. Stephen Hawking, Physics Nobel Prize recipient, stated that “the human race will not survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space since there are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I’m an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.” If humans continue to destroy the Earth, one day Earth will no longer be able to sustain life. Without the space program, we will not have the ability to deal with it when that day comes.