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By Michael Bourque
One of the hottest television shows to emerge in the past few years is the History Channel’s Pawn Stars — the channel’s most successful show ever, with some five million viewers tuning in each week. The “pawn stars” — hilarious characters who own a Las Vegas pawn shop — accept all kinds of incredible items before asking patrons “do you want to pawn it or sell it?”
The underlying theme of the show (and of its sister show, American Pickers) is the value and desirability of western-made vintage goods, especially quality manufactured products such as motorcycles, bicycles and other machines. Obviously, there are great stories attached to every item. Many of these products are no longer made in North America or Europe; few of them are now made with the same quality and durability. The show’s fascination with these items seems to go beyond their intrinsic value and may be a commentary on our disposable society in general.
This is a History Channel show after all, and so we need to ask ourselves what we are learning from these stories and “artifacts.” Is it possible that these five million viewers represent people who long for better products and for a society capable of designing quality goods that last a lifetime?
It's impossible to separate the love affair with great manufactured goods from the broader issue of today’s economic climate. Today, one is hard-pressed to find anything that isn’t made in China; with its growing middle class and strong economic growth, it’s not surprising that investment has flowed there. “Made in China” used to be reserved for dollar store items, but that isn’t the case today. China has created the capacity to make better products, and is preparing to design and engineer them in the future, with over 300,000 engineers graduating each year, according to Duke University.
So does that mean that North America’s manufacturing capacity has gone and there’s no point in trying to win it back? Are we past our “golden age” of manufacturing? The answer can be found in the numbers, but more importantly in our values as a society.
That same Duke University study questions the reliability of Chinese data on engineering graduates, pointing to the fact that many are IT graduates or technicians. They also point to studies showing that the US (and presumably, Canada) graduate greater numbers of employable, “dynamic” engineers. In Canada, the Conference Board has measured the percentage of science, math, computer science and engineering graduates out of total number of graduates, and found that we rank somewhere in the middle of our peers, with about 22 per cent of graduates from those disciplines. It seems that as far as the hard data is concerned, we are still holding our own, even if there is room for improvement.
But the key point is that manufacturing great products is more than just an engineering challenge. The genius of Steve Jobs didn’t come from computer science training or engineering. In fact, Steve Jobs was a college dropout who hung around taking random courses, including calligraphy (which he says was one of the inspirations for Apple’s emphasis on good design).
Our society is certainly under pressure from a challenging economic forecast, debt and other financial pressures. However, it is the uniquely vibrant, creative and novel aspects of our open and diverse western society that have given us the ability to imagine new things, find solutions to big problems and to remain at the leading-edge of entrepreneurship, invention and innovation. Our open society encourages free speech, including criticism from our harshest critics, as a means for continuous improvement. This has led to a business model in North America and other western societies that values ethics, respects intellectual property and rewards risk-taking. This business model is responsible for the lion’s share of new discoveries, inventions and therapies.
Which brings me back to manufacturing. In the US, approximately 90 per cent of new patents are filed by manufacturers (and no doubt the numbers are similar in Canada). We can continue to make things here if we work with other open societies through trade and in defending our business and societal models. It is unlikely that we will ever be able to deliver lower costs on all manufactured goods and, as such, many of the items manufactured outside of North America will not be repatriated. But it is also unlikely that these competing societies will be able to replicate North America’s creativity, giving us a unique and lasting advantage that we can use to expand into new fields of endeavour, to solve new problems and to create new companies.
The entrepreneurs and inventors who conceive and make products in their basements and garages, and eventually grow into multinational entities, are the drivers of innovation. They are at home in North American society — which is uniquely capable of harnessing the raw materials, human resources and imagination to succeed. Because of its vast resources and open society, Canada is rich in all of these critical inputs, especially natural resources and energy.
Pawn Stars fans may be nostalgic for a long-departed era. But they may also be eager to foster a new manufacturing culture based on our powerful social and business model. Let’s continue to look for ways to nurture inventors, to make important products and trade them with our neighbours.
