The Future Economy Belongs to Yin/Yang

Nathan, the real profit is in the process, the making of a product or service, not its design. Japan taught us this lesson, or at least we could have learned it. For instance, we come up with the design of the copier; Japan copies (no pun) the design and finds a more cost-effective way to produce them - to "fire back" our own R&D at us as a compeititve advantage for them.

Moreover, it is very very hard to replicate, copy processes, and this gives them competitive safety. It is easy to copy blueprint in comparison to processes.

Moreover, we learn how to improve the design of a product, service as we produce it. It is called "lessons learned," or Knowledge Management. As a result, the Japanese, for instance, gain "lessons learned" as they produce a product, which, in turn, allows them to further refine, improve, perfect it to gain competitive advantage. In short, we need to produce at home - locally, which is the opinion of your humble servant here.

Look for this to happen as our currency collapses and we will have to pay more and more debased dollars to purchase foreign goods.

In time, it will become cheaper, more cost-effective to come full circle and making things once again in the USA - and regain the competitive advantage of Knowledge Management.

We have sadly denigrated the making, separate the "head " (design) from the "hand" (production). In fact, our foreign competitors are smarter than this and like Yin/Yang see the need for both design and production in order to function properly. This is a very important point, and thank you for raising it.