"Products designed on computers by focus groups, refined by bean counters, assembled from mass produced parts by semi-skilled labor for gullible end users looking for "style" at a price point.
We are seeing the gun industry turning into the auto industry."
Also spot-on.
I think there is a lot of cost saving, subcontracted parts stuff going on that effects quality.
But I think there is a great deal of lost corporate knowledge. Who is it that is actually doing gun design these days? How often do you actually hear a name? Do the engineers running a CAD simulation actually understand what is really happening, or just an abstract idea of how the gun feeds and extracts?
The P320 debacle is fascinating to me because I can certainly see how SIG screwed themselves by including so many off-center rotating parts. But I'm willing to bet none of the engineers involved or even Bruce Gray saw the potential problems that created. SIG USA does not have a room in the basement where they keep Swiss and German gun designers that they got when they bought the name "Sig Sauer". They got whoever they hired, and when was the last time an American company designed a truly brilliant auto pistol?
Without going into too much personal detail, suffice to say that after dealing with extremely large numbers of the public in an extremely intimate setting, I've seen that the bottom 85% of the U.S. (however you want to define "bottom" - intellectually, morally, wisdom, etc.) is VERY depressingly mediocre. There's a culture of corruption / greed / laziness / entitlement that (excepting a handful of positive cultural changes like civil rights) taints the U.S. in virtually every way, rendering us vastly inferior to the culture of the 1950's / 1960's. People used to be proud to work at the factory. Now they prefer to sell and/or use drugs while on Medicaid. CEOs used to be proud for their company to make outstanding products. Now they make deliberate crap purely for profit (e.g. Glock / Sig), or intentionally run their companies into the ground for short-term personal financial gain, confident in their golden parachutes / government bail outs (e.g. Colt).
It's a cultural thing. The Germans / Swiss / Austrians just have a cultural pride in the idea that, whatever your job is, you should be the very best at it that you can. No matter whether you're an engineer or a janitor. And spending money on kids' education is ten thousand times more important than spending $2 million of taxpayer money to keep every 105 year old grandma alive in the ICU for 2 years.
Our culture has degenerated tremendously relative to theirs over the past 50 years - see our abysmal public education system - and imagine the unavoidable consequences when those tens of millions of kids become the working class. Obviously there are exceptions - that's the top 15% - but it cannot erase the other 85%.
It's 99% cultural. Morally bankrupt and very deliberate past and ongoing choices. The U.S. overwhelmingly simply refuses to be better - it's not that it can't be. Ron Cohen isn't unaware that he wrecked Sig's quality. And Glock is lying when they feign ignorance of BTF for the past 8 years in a row. Both are fixable situations that aren't going to get fixed.
None of my above post is an exaggeration. That's why I buy HK / Daniel Defense / Federal / Speer, and other like-minded companies. At least they truly give a shit (and it shows).
If there were factories to work in, people working in those factories would take pride in that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Naphtali
The reason the Germans have held things together is that their laws don't incentivize outsourcing labor. The US is going down the tubes because we are getting poorer. That's what decades of trade deficit is - living off savings. We are not generating wealth but spending it. I don't know how we can blame the people in the lower half for sensing their peril and feeling helpless.
There are many factory owners around the country who complain that, despite having many available jobs and a lot of unemployed working-age people in their communities, they cannot fill the positions due to constant failures in random urine drug tests.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gödel
I'm not talking about wealth when I refer to the bottom 85%. People in the 1950's were far poorer with a lower standard of living, yet they took pride in their work. Now employees are being fired left and right for constantly failing drug tests, or behaving in inexcusable apathetic ways that force their employer to fire them. My wife and I - both business owners of different businesses - both have to deal with those issues all the time (more the latter than the former). It's not that we don't have jobs - it's that people don't want to work or act like responsible adults.
It's the beginning of how successful Democracies ultimately commit suicide when enough of the 85% mob elects a Socialist government (e.g. Venezuela). Their demise was self-inflicted, Bernie Sanders style. Bernie was not as bad as Chavez, but it's a slippery slope. You elect someone like him, and then the next guy runs on a platform of "Bernie didn't give you enough - I'm going to give you triple that" - and the mob eats it up. That's the death spiral for Democracy.
We are in an opiod epidemic caused by the pharmaceutical industry, and pot in on the cusp of finally being legalized as the largely harmless drug it is. So I can't say that I am shocked to hear that. When the mess the medical industry created is cleaned up and factories stop testing for pot, the problem will shrink.Quote:
Originally Posted by Naphtali
Very well said in your last few posts. I think that captures many "issues" seen in out country in a nutshell.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Naphtali
This being part of the American problem...instead of people taking responsibility for their own actions, blaming problems/cause on others (read:drug addicts are as such because of big Pharma).
Enough off topic....
I wonder if the sheer volume of guns produced has led to a larger statistical failure anomaly?Quote:
Originally Posted by Gödel
Everybody likes to talk about personal responsibility, which is usually followed by a long diatribe about how some other group of people is at fault for bringing down the country.Quote:
Originally Posted by hotrodder636
Doctors getting large numbers of people hooked on legal heroin at the behest of a drug company that advertised low addiction rates is not "personal responsibility".
I suspect the issues with certain models have always existed but the internet now sheds the light on them. Many of you remember how Glock denied there were issues with the early Gen4s (the reason I actually accidentally started a youtube channel) and they just claimed it was user error/ammo/etc.... That was really the last time a company tried to tell customers they were wrong in the face of overwhelming evidence. It really was akin to if Sig said they didn't have drop firing issues today (they're not, but for example...)