Platitudes Of Doom
Here's where I suspect things go wrong. I see a combination of two ideas at the core of a lot of corporate dysfunction. I can want things faster than you can build them. I believe that you can always do more if you really try. The former is obviously true. Wanting is cheap, instantaneous, and unencumbered. I want a car with a 500K mile all-inclusive warranty, Maserati looks and performance, moped operating costs, and a Hot Wheels sticker price. And I want it to drive itself. I am betting that the average reader had at least three improvements they would make to my wish list. None of us expect to see such a thing, of course. The engineering and design costs and material costs make this impossible. Wanting is cheap, but invention and production are expensive. There are material costs, costs of design, costs of errors and rework, costs of research, time and materials. There are human beings who do design, and they like to be paid. It takes them longer to work out the requir...