Date:         Thu, 3 Jun 2010 08:16:28 -0500
Reply-To:     Mike South <msouth@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Mike South <msouth@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Plastic Ramps
Comments: To: mcneely4@cox.net
In-Reply-To:  <20100602221318.Q9R8L.602062.imail@eastrmwml40>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 9:13 PM, Dave Mcneely <mcneely4@cox.net> wrote:

> Ben, I disagree.  Most of the stuff sold at Harbor Freight is from China.
> Bryan was just recognizing that fact.  It is an economic observation, not a
> racial one.


Even without the racism question it still strikes me as political (perhaps
in the same way it strikes other people as racist, even if it wasn't
intended that way).  Why does it matter where their stuff is made?  If you
claim that it's because things made in China are crap, you're calling
producers crap because they are in China.  Hard to distinguish that from
racism or something very close (such as, say, hating all French equally,
independent of their race).  If you claim it's because we should buy
American, that's basically a political position.  (Why should we buy
American?  Well, to save American jobs!  But shouldn't we buy the best
priced one so that America will wake up to the cost of environmental
over-regulation and forced unionism laws?  What??? OVER-REGULATION?  Was BP
OVER-REGULATED?  Wait, wait, we should buy Chinese because their standard of
living is lower and we are duty bound to help out...  Minefield.)

To me, personally, the negatives on this one outweigh the positives by a
long ways.

mike