Critical Thinking

The company that I work for has moved quite a few jobs to India and Mexico over the past few years.  They call it off-shoring.  The benefit is that labor rates off shore are less than half that of an American worker.  However, it is not the financial bonanza that it might appear to be for one reason - off shore workers are not as productive as American workers.  When a business function is moved off shore, the project starts with an equal number of off shore employees as was used on shore.  The business function rapidly fails due to the decrease in productivity, so additional off shore workers are hired.  In the end, the financial benefit is smaller than originally projected.  I have wondered why foreign workers are less productive than American counterparts.  My curiosity has sparked a few conversations with peers who have trained off shore workers.  Their answers are interesting. 

First there are cultural differences that lead to a loss of productivity.  A 40 hour work week and 8 hour work day are not customary in many societies.  But aside from cultural differences, my peer pointed to something else that he believes explain the productivity gap.  He explains it with an analogy.  When teaching a class of off shore engineers to perform a function, he would begin by saying that 1 + 1 = 2, and then ask the engineers what 1 + 1 equals.  They would enthusiastically respond 2!  He would then build on that by telling them that 2 + 2 = 4.  After asking the class what 2 + 2 equals, they would respond 4!  He would then test their critical thinking skills by asking what 4 + 4 equals.  The response would be “We don’t know because you haven’t told us yet”.  My peer’s point was that off shore resources must be told every minute detail on how to perform a function.  If the unexpected occurs, and it always will, they freeze until someone in authority tells them how to handle it.

Americans may be critical thinkers when it comes to their work, but the last election has proven that a majority of Americans wait to be told what to think about the federal government.  It is the only explanation of why so many voters could not parse facts and conclude that a liberal agenda is bad for the society.  Instead they wait for authority to tell them what to think.  The mainstream media has filled this authority for them.  They hear NBC/CBS/ABC tell them the Bush tax cuts favor the rich and have led to trillion dollar deficits and they believe it.  They hear NBC/CBS/ABC tell them the rich do not pay their fair share and they believe it.  They hear NBC/CBS/ABC tell them that conservatives wage war on women and they believe it.  Currently they are hearing NBC/CBS/ABC tell them that conservatives won’t compromise to reach a deal on the fiscal cliff and they believe it in spite of an Obama quote where he said he would not compromise. Senator Dick Durban says there will never be any meaningful deficit reduction until taxes are raised on the top 2%, NBC/CBS/ABC report it without challenging the utter absurdity of the statement, and the moron majority believe it.

The enemy of conservatism is liberalism, but we will never defeat liberalism until the moron majority hear truth from their authority, the mainstream media.  This means that conservatism must defeat the mainstream media before they can battle liberalism.  FOX News channel was a first step.  FOX did report news in a fair and balanced way, however seems to have changed course.  They now seem to believe it is their responsibility to offer as much conservative spin as the rest of the media offers in liberal spin.  For this they are demonized by the mainstream media.  The moron majority won’t believe anything from FOX simply because they are FOX.  This wasn’t the intent.  FOX has become the most watched news channel, but that is probably a consolidation of conservative viewers.  Conservatives watch FOX, while liberals split time by watching NBC/CBS/ABC.

This problem has no obvious answer, just as the republicans seem to have nothing to counter the disparity in minority and women voters.  Discrediting the mainstream media hasn’t worked.  Dan Rather reported on forged documents, ABC reported blatantly edited and  out of context sound bites, and the moron majority didn’t  care.  The only way to defeat NBC/CBS/ABC may be to turn them off.  Unfortunately there is a majority of Americans who believe the mainstream media is their source for truth.  Until that changes, conservatism will struggle to get a fair shake.