Re: ABC’s Made in America Campaign + a Rant about ThinkPads & bugmen
Date: Fri Dec 27 10:24:49 PST 2019
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Exactly one week ago, Republic sundog rak wrote an entry on ABC’s 
“Made in America” campaign [0].  ABC’s agenda was that buying products
made in America was the Right Choice™ for Americans.  Rak then goes on
to give examples where that “wouldn’t” be the case.

I was planning on writing a big long post about how I always try to
buy American made products.  But after looking at the article a few
more times, I realize that I actually agree with most of the article,
and that long post would really just be arguing over semantics.

With that said, there is one thing I’d like to pick at.

> [I]t is not “support” if you buy their superior product: you are
> trading them cash for value.

But there _is_ some support happening.  When you buy a product, that’s
telling the manufacturer of the product that the methods they used to
make that one product are good and they should keep making it like that.

As an example, let me talk about ThinkPads.  I’m writing this on a
T430.  I consider this to be the peak of the ThinkPad line.  Nowadays
the TP laptops might have more cores and a better GPU than mine, but
the build quality has drastically lowered.  The bodies feel more
flimsy now, they’ve done away with the variety of ports in favor of
the dongle, and keyboards have actually gotten _worse_!

Now considering all of this, I should’ve fallen head over heels for
the ThinkPad 25 that came out a while back.  But even if I had pockets
deep enough to afford a $1,900 computer, I wouldn’t have bought it.
This thing is nothing more than a modern TP with a shitty attempt at
the “classic” keyboard to try and get a revenue stream from bugmen
who browse reddit and use “nostalgia” as an excuse to get a dopamine
rush from consumeristic buying habits.  Now, if Lenovo had made an
actual attempt at making a computer like they used to, then I’d be
singing a completly different tune.  Point is, I am supporting the
method that Lenovo _used_ to use when making computers, even at the
cost of a slower machine.  Or more specifically, one with fewer cores
as that seems to be the way computers are getting faster nowadays.

Going back to the article that I’m replying to, I try to buy American
products when ever possible.  Granted, I won’t buy a lower quality
prodcut made here.  But if I had to choose between two screwdrivers
of equal quality, one made in America and one made in another country,
I’d buy American.

I’m gonna keep the TP rant because it’s a good one.  Appologies if this
article has been a bit of a wild one.


[0]: gopher://republic.circumlunar.space/0~rak/phlog/2019-12-20-ABCs-Made-in-America-Campaign.txt