It Came From Indonesia - Page 1
The U.S. trade deficit with Indonesia was $10 billion in 2012. They sell us the world's best coffee. We sell them The Clapper. Thus, the deficit.
I don't know much about the dynamics of international trade or The Miracle on Clap Street but I've seen the latter on TV and I know about TV. The reason I've never seen the former on TV is because nobody's trying to sell it to me for $19.99. But Wait, There's More! The folks in Key Demo, USA aren't interested.
Unlike your Geometry teacher back in high school, television isn't going to bother you with things you don't understand. Would you pay 20 bucks for a Pythagorean Theorem? Of course not. But what about some gizmo that could, let's say, at the snap of your fingers, automatically fill-in the correct answers on your quizzes, mid-terms and finals in Geometry?
With the exception of those cerebral lefties destined for distinction as Mad Mathematicians given to tousled hair and the wearing of smocks to ward-off Euclidean spills during anxious moments of frenzied calculation, every kid in Everytown, America would snap those up.
International trade isn't that simple. They pitch that to consumers one small piece at a time in the form of things like a Beetle as opposed to Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft, or some type of Android as opposed to Google or a pound of Sulawesi coffee beans as opposed to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
I've owned a couple of Beetles, a couple of Androids and a couple hundred pounds or so (where "or so" leans to the heavy side) of those coffee beans. I like all of these products but as expert witness testimony goes, I'm going to have to stick to the coffee to keep my keel of credibility in the water.
After years of suffering from the wayward belief that coffee comes from a can, my wife presented me with the gift of a grinder, some support utensils and a sample bag of coffee in the shape of beans. That first bag was called Dakota Something-or-Other. It was a blend and I was about to crash into the realization that blends are like paint colors. Someone makes up names for them, names like Cobalt Ash, because that sounds sexier than gray.
The problem with Dakota Something-or-Other was that it tasted like gray. And I like gray for products like suits but I'm not fond of drinking suits. The name made it out to be the kind of potable that cowboys would pour in a thick lava stream from a smoldering campfire pot; the sort of flaming goo that would sizzle when it hit a tin cup chilled from a night in a saddle bag.
I'm sure Dakota Something-or-Other is someone's cup of tea. It's just not mine.
© Geoff Crunick 2013