The Bruce Report

The word makes a manufacturer’s corporate blood run cold; its connotations promise years, if not decades, of blackened reputations and costly litigations. Yet, “recall” is becoming the mot du jour for some of the biggest and once-most-trustworthy companies in the world, as the rest of us face the banality of routinely diminishing expectations.

            Not long ago, Toyota was the auto brand to beat. Now, with 14 recalls on makes and models dating back to 1998, it is a hobbled giant barely able to explain its failures to consumers and their public representatives. And, though it is the most famous (or infamous) trend-setter in this new game of mea cupla, it is by no means alone.

            The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recently announced the recall of a record number of popular, formerly innocuous items – everything from drop-side baby cribs and fitness benches to rechargeable batteries, scuba tanks and toy drums. Meanwhile, research in the United Kingdom finds that the amount of product recalls issued in that country rose from 112 in 2004 to 253 in 2007.

            The reasons for this development are not difficult to divine. New product safety legislation introduced in most developed countries have cracked down on manufacturers who cut corners. At the same time, buyers are better educated than ever before on the potential hazards of the goods they procure. All of which points to the inexorable conclusion that much of what enters the so-called global supply chain these days is, in the blunt language of consumer advocates, junk.

            According to a 2005 post on cnetnews.com, “For the past few years, it has appeared that U.S. corporations are once again employing strategies that emphasize short-term gains from the production of cheaply made products. Kitchen appliances, power tools, cell phones, computer printers, DVD players, toys and many other consumer goods are increasingly conceived and sold as disposable commodities. Although these products have more features and capabilities every year, their durability and longevity are rapidly dwindling.

“As in the 1970s, this strategy poses serious dangers – from the erosion of well-established brands to the ultimate financial failure of companies. But it may be harder now to reverse the tide because several trends in manufacturing and marketing subtly reinforce one another. Instead of facing competition from high-quality Japanese manufacturers, companies in industrialized countries face tough competition from low-wage countries and high price-cutting pressure from global retailers.”

Still, the replacement mentality is not solely, or even chiefly, a business issue any more. It has seeped into our collective consciousness like a heavy metal leaching from a garbage dump. As we rarely see quality in our goods and services, our public servants and elected representatives, we don’t expect the superior to supplant the inferior without requiring, from the rest of us, enormous sacrifices in time, money and well being.

It’s why bold, new ideas about financial market responsibility, corporate governance, health care, education, energy policy, literacy and poverty frighten us. After all, the world doesn’t work to remake itself. It operates to maintain the status quo and, when necessary, switch one faulty gizmo with another until it, too, inevitably fails.

We’ve grown accustomed to this farce, and in a perverse way it comforts us. Why strive to be innovative or better when the remedy of recall exists to produce the immediate, if short-lived, satisfaction of believing that because the lowest common denominator has not yet destroyed us, it probably never will?

But it will, as legions of corporations discover ways – as they surely must – to “monetize” their mediocrity and “externalize” the downside of reproducing returned goods. The market is demonically gifted at shifting blame and cost to the general population and the environment on which it depends.

Meanwhile, we keep our ears open and our eyes trained on the latest news of recall, and wonder why we can’t apply the practice to our own feckless elected representatives, oblivious to the fact the true price paid for their replacement, from a thinning pool of political talent, is continued incompetence.

What did Grandpa say? Do it right the first time?

How quaint.

And how utterly unnecessary.

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