Skinny blogging this President's Day. The Weekly Standard has a great piece supporting the Iraq War. NRO and the Wall Street Journal are silent.
How about Samizdata. says I? The brits will be at work!
Better still, Christopher Pellerito, a yank on Samizdata writes about something I have witnessed but didn't put together with its cause. There are a lot of good, cheap guitars today. Why? Globalization:
One trend that Driscoll does not pick up on is that this is also happening with guitars. Just as American streets are filling up with Korean-made autos (more Korean cars are sold here than German cars) the American guitar shops are filling up with Korean-made (and now Chinese-made) guitars. The Korean manufacturer Samick now accounts for almost half of the world's guitar production. Even Gibson, best known for its estimable and pricey Les Paul (see photo below) is offering high value from its Epiphone series guitars (which Samick builds for them in Korea.) If you have ever picked up a surviving 'bargain' guitar of the '60s in a pawnshop or a secondhand guitar store -- a Harmony, Kay, Eko, etc. -- you would likely find cut-rate construction, weak intonation, mediocre playability and thin-sounding pickups. But today's 'bargain' brands offer workmanship and playability that sometimes give the premium brands a run for their money. Danelectro, for example, makes hip, great-sounding guitars that are easy to play and can be had for about US$200.[..]
Driscoll is right that we are not going to see a lot of major innovations in electric guitars anytime soon, in large part because the players themselves are somewhat resistant to change. (Even the most avant-garde noisemakers tend to prefer traditional guitar designs.) What we are seeing instead is global capitalism commoditizing electric guitars and making quality instruments more affordable than ever for a generation of young players.
Rock on. China and Korea still make their share of shlock, but in some cases they build with real craftsmanship. There are folks over there who take real pride in their work, something that seems to have been mostly lost in this country.
Posted by: Silence Dogood at February 17, 2004 09:01 AMSide bar side note: I noticed an interesting side bar on the NRO web site about tech jobs heading overseas and that this "represents the ultimate betrayal of American workers by current US trade policies". I think it will be very interesting to see how the debate over jobs shifting overseas changes as those jobs now include professional positions. I think you JK once blogged about how workers need to retrain themselves and perhaps learn to write software. In the future they could also find their software job sent to another country. I am for global trade but I never hear anything about what seems a logical conclusion to globalization - that the basic standard of living across the globe will equalize. We have been successful so far in equalizing from one direction, pulling up poor countries without pulling down the rich ones, but can this last forever?
Posted by: Silence Dogood at February 17, 2004 10:09 AMOverall I agree with you; there are lots of great, cheap guitars on the market, foreign and domestic (peavy for the most part), but I've got a '59 Harmony Rocket that I found for $200 and I'll put that sucker up against anything out there, including all the Gucci Gibson stuff. The funk factor and the odd tones those old train wreck guitars produced make up for their lack of polish.
Posted by: Sugar Chuck at February 17, 2004 01:40 PMYes, there are some great old Harmony guitars but I do remember growing up with a $10 Kay that was virtually unplayable. I looked at $99 guitars as a possible gift last Christmas, and there were some pretty cool and very playable selections.
It seems 10 years ago you really had to pony up at least $300 to get anything playable.
Silence,
Flattery will get you everywhere -- quoting my column back at me...
The software that is going overseas is lower-level stuff. The ability to get cheaper software will make more complex projects and products viable. And I trust US workers and firms to compete well if they are not killed off by overregulation.
That is why it worries me so that we are ranked 11th in broadband adoption. That is a lot more troubling to me than some additional competition from India in software.
Posted by: jk at February 17, 2004 01:46 PMI do agree about the broadband adoption rate, the rats nest of regulations in telecom is a scandal. I also agree that US firms can compete against foreign software, but that competition is only lower-level stuff? Uh, yeah, and don't worry about those tin can Japenese cars.
Posted by: Silence Dogood at February 23, 2004 01:46 PMOkay, look how the US has profited from quality Japanese cars. When Indian programming is as good as Honda cars, the world will be better off.
I hold with Mr. Mankiw, even if my beloved President has distanced himself. Open trade for labor, like free trade for goods, makes us all wealthier. Sad that no politician will say it but I still believe.
Posted by: jk at February 23, 2004 03:18 PM