I think I've just lost a friend and perhaps my mind. [View All]

[Better Today]

So I have this friend in CA whom I've only met a couple of times but we talk on the phone very regularly.

He, like me, is older, has a small shop, and no business in over a year. He was preparing to close down in about a month. BUT, a fellow who used to be part of his customer base calls and boy does he ever have a deal. This fellow and another guy are planning to make a product and run all the transactions and assembly through my friend. So I'm thinking great!

Then he tells me the fellow is in China right now trying to find an appropriate manufacturer for the parts and pieces. So I push a little, why in China, why not here. . . if not CA then at least some other US state where wages are a bit lower. NOPE, they are dead set, thinking that to undercut the company with the original patent (which was allowed to lapse) by more than 50%, they have to have China's slave wages. So then I ask, why would you need to undercut them by that much, why not just 25% undercut or whatever. He goes off on a rage about how he doesn't give a crap about all this, all he cares about is staying in business at whatever it costs the unemployed Americans, tough shit, whatever it costs the slaves in China who will be making these parts and pieces, tough shit.

I've never that I can remember wanted a friend's venture to fail, but I'm really having those thoughts now, and lots of derogatory names are floating through my mind and attaching to thoughts about this directed at my friend, well I guess not friend anymore.

It's one thing to know this goes on, it's such a wholey different thing when you know someone perpetrating it for a business as small as his, with so many of his laid off workers still coming by his shop regularly asking if he's any closer to re-opening. And he's just the type that would be happy to discuss all this new excitement with them and end with "but we're doing it in China, so no, I won't be needing you anytime soon."

I'm so angry, but I'm also just so friggin' sad. Y'know, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, just isn't something I can do. I can no longer make decisions based only on a monetary gain, I don't think I ever did.