Maiden America ... the perfection of the mobile factory.

Maiden America

The perfection of the mobile home and the mobile factory.

So you want to get a life? Welp, you have just got to take another look at all things that run under the "the-best-things-in-life-are-free" category (or gorycat). To those who quip that that and a dollar will buy you a cup of coffee, I respond that I got my espressos for a Frank at the bar and also got a song. That's how I wrote many of my songs during my six years in Paris.

There is something to be said for the life-style that uses concepts of applied science to maintain a lower middle-class 'sufficiency' on a three-thousand-or-less per year income, something I did for about twenty years. I was able to observe carefully. I was able to learn.

I expect most of the two or three people who actually read this to, as the old hippy expression went, just blow it off. But hang in there as I get to the next paragraph.

What we're really talking here is the huge permanent factory that gets abandoned within a decade. Check out my painting "High Water '96". It's partially a portrait of abandoned factories from as late as the 19th century, but dating back to as early as the 16th century (better say 17th to be on the safe side). The only reason why they built them in the first place had to be because they could only waste manpower and materiel.

The income derived from profits from the impulse spending of the masses, the so-called consumers, is only a fraction of the available or potential sources of income that can distil a tangible and significant profit. The reason why people use money or monetary instruments of all kinds is because it's intellectually easy to use.

There is a fact here like a diamond in the ruff that at first glance seems insignificant to the layman. That our present society is only realizing a tenth of it's potential and that tenth, or maybe less, is what we think of as the monetary or the pecuniary. But even in the realm of the monetary, it is not the wealth that is so lucrative, but rather the flow of wealth, the pecuniary flux, which even a trickle of it can be more valuable than millions in the bank.

The problem with the global wealth is that so much of it has stopped moving. That's because of the glazing effect the convenience of wealth has on the individual. The person undergoes first a stagnation and then an atrophy. At the last, the fool and that fool's money are NOT parted. I'm using the term "fool" here because of the saying that was coined in the ancient days of capitalism which said that they were parted and that right quick. But they aren't. 

In reality we are all fools, and the quicker you can realize that, the sooner you can escape the syndrome. It's as I say in my little joke. A shopper at the mart realized that he couldn't afford a television set so he went outside and sat on a hill for a few hours and after a while, he had him a sun set instead!

Now, what's smart is a person who can release wealth from one side and receive wealth from another. It cost me everything to build my small room in my friend's dirt floor basement in Auckland, New Zealand, but in return, I got a series of lessons down there in my room I called "the sweat box". Things I'm applying right now to be able to write this down.

Now the NAFTA effort has begun to backfire as China becomes the factory of the world, but even now some of those boys are moving to Vietnam. So there was something to the old domino theory after all, but in a much different way. But I digress.

What we're on about here is the mobile factory. Maiden America. She's a honey. No concern or stewardship for the human worker, for the individual. Just the profit motive. There's a problem, here. The individual is really the wealth of the community.

People tend to gravitate away from what's good for them. They entertain disdain for other people. There is interdependence within a society, but often only in a limited way, when the individual perceives personal gain or well-being thereby. This is the cradle of criminality, the summit of which is the mastery of being able to break laws that haven't been written yet.

I've got a song, "Window Mind Frost Design" in which I warn that "the windows of your mind are blue with winter frost". The deposits of ice on the vision caused by the cold climate of indifference in human society has caused all involved to be unable to discern true wealth and how to handle it.

So the factory where the workers made their livings shuts down and moves to the area of cheapest labor. Then the pattern continues. From England to New England. From New England to the South. From thence to the Midwest, then to Mexico, then to China then to Viet Nam. It's the concept, or rather the ignorance of the mobile factory, like the mobile home, perfected in America.

Now the American mobile home is a huge thing that is only moved rarely more than once, but mostly not more than twice in it's lifetime -- limited lifetime, by the way. The only true mobility therein is abandonment in place, like the launch pad of the moon rockets of the mid 20th century. The same is true of the mobile factory. Abandon in place.

The management that does that is deceptively incompetent. They could generate more than seventeen times the wealth and profit by not moving, but they lack the ability to engineer the appropriate applications to do so. And I'm not telling. Why should I divulge my trade secrets? If management moves the factory, fire them. They're incompetent.

What meager profits they make by the move only masks their blunders. The fact that they couldn't make it with the first plant proves that they didn't know what they were doing and that they had no ability to use the human labor already at hand. They had no concept of the extreme value of the indigenous employee.  Unless they are just trying to relocate everyone to a more suitable environment, they are like water seeking the lowest level, searching for the cheapest labor market.  That reveals an inherent instability in the company.

People never seem to learn from their mistakes. They would if they had time to, but most are too proud to even admit to making mistakes but everyone does. If they're perfect, they're liars and that's all there is to it. We need to start learning something, here. Mistakes abound. They are the best teachers and history is replete with them. The truly wise person will learn from the mistakes they make, but even more from the mistakes of others. Forget Maiden America, miss-America. Get to know about miss-takes.

It reminds me of the hit song, a pathetic lament, actually. "Didn't we almost have it all?" it asks. Buddy, it doesn't matter how close you came. If you missed, you missed. You never learned the true value of the worker in your own neighborhood. You lost it all just to be able to mess up someone else's neighborhood. What did you loose?  A fortune, and not only that, but you could have also been able to branch out into something a lot more interesting to you personally.  Plus you would have been miles ahead of your competition.  The mobile factory concept is something that's easily mimicked by the less creative.  Time was wasted in the move to cheaper labor, you lost the learning experience, you forgot about the prospect of diminishing returns linked with less locals with less to spend.  Importing is never cheap.  In the long run, you'll pay for it somewhere.

Maiden America (lecture on You Tube) ...