Opinion

Just doing business

Sunday, April 8, 2007

Hi neighbors. I guess American grown wheat isn't good enough to make dog biscuits out of. Now we buy wheat from China. I'm sure this was an oversight and not intentional. But how did it happen? Where were the safeguards to prevent this mistake?

If you want to know which dog food treats to buy and which to avoid, check out the FDA recall web page: http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/petfood.html.

If you have already fed some to your dog or cat and just now realize they should have been recalled, again check out the above Web site.

I am wondering when the "global market" will implode. How long will it be before consumers decide they want to buy from people they know and trust instead of from the lowest bidder? How long before citizens of various countries (including ours) figure out that not all governments have the same safe guards on food and drugs that they may be used to. Sure, you might get trustworthy drugs, food and other things from most other countries with no problem. Then again, you might get a product from another country with something attached that you weren't expecting ... like an insecticide.

How can we know who to trust? With all the online banking being done now, how can you know your information is safe? Even if the company you are dealing with has a secure site; your computer may already be "infected" with a worm, virus or even spyware.

Spyware can lay dormant, just silently reading your mail, noting what Web sites you visit, who you do business with. Then one day you enter some information the spyware recognizes as a free ticket. Bam! Your bank account, credit card, or other financial means are compromised and you are left high and dry ... and broke.

Before you do any business online, make sure you have reliable protection for your computer; and that the Web sites you visit for business are safe and your information is encoded.

Are we too far past our roots? Are we more comfortable doing business with someone on the telephone whose broken English we can barely understand than with the man who's run the same store downtown for 40 years? What effect is outsourcing really having on America? Maybe we should think past saving a dollar on the cost of a pair of sandals and remember why people do business in the first place. If we are going to buy products from another country, shouldn't we know a little about what that country is all about? And what they are going to use our money for?

First, we buy oil from countries that have stated they don't like us or our lifestyles much. Except the part about using oil, that is. They buy guns with our money.

We also buy from countries that are run by communistic governments with little regard for human rights. Maybe just we baby boomers remember why communism was drummed into our heads as being a bad form of government. One communist government almost buried us in radioactive fall-out. For more information on that, check out "The Cuban Missile Crisis" in your local library.

But that government is all gone, you might argue. Yes, it is. "Tear down that wall" was the shout and people who had once crossed a brick and barbed wire barrier between Communist East and free West Berlin at risk of being shot, learned to walk across the street in peace.

That government may be all gone, but the memory of it should never be lost.

Although we should be open to meeting people from other countries and learning about their ways; we should remember that in many other countries the friendly citizens don't really represent their government. And their government may not represent, nor even care about, the people's wishes either.

We should not be naive in dealing with the world at large. When our parents told us not to talk to strangers they didn't mean do not make new friends. They were simply warning us that not everyone we might meet will want to be our friend and may not even be very friendly.

I have always maintained that there is little difference between the individuals and families around the world. Parents want the best for their children, children want the opportunity to make their mark on the world.

But the flip side of that coin is that for all the ways individuals are alike, governments can be extremely different from each other. Luckily most of us don't have to deal with other countries‚ governments; but we should know how they deal with their own people to gauge how they might deal with us.

Until the next time friends remember, individual people are alike but oddly enough, governments are not.