Japanese Zippo
A Speculation On Trade
Have you ever heard about Japanese Zippos?
If you’re an old fart like me, you no doubt remember Zippo. The old style “windproof lighter” with the lid that snaps.
But did you know that Japanese Zippos are a thing?
I have a really small collection of Zippo lighters that I’ve built up over the years. Nothing special, just a few that caught my eye so made it home with me. I’ve got a couple fake Zippos too. Counterfeit things, probably antiques now, relics from a time when seemingly everyone smoked cigarettes.
To my eye, Zippos are undoubtedly cool.
They are also undoubtedly a pain in the ass. You’ve got to fill them with new juice all the time if you want them to work when you need them. Even if you don’t use them. Because they aren’t airtight, the lighter fluid will evaporate out in a week or so. I imagine this becomes normal routine for people who smoke all the time, but for a guy like me who only has a cigarette on rare occasions it’s just one more thing to have to remember.
A pain in the ass. It’s no wonder the humble Bic disposable lighter grew so amazingly popular.
Yep, a pain in the ass. But, if you were stranded in the snow and absolutely needed fire to survive the Zippo would, without a doubt, get the job done. The Bic, maybe. Probably, but I wouldn’t want to stake my life on that little bit of plastic.
Because of that, I keep one Zippo around, and full, with extra flints, just in case.
The others are just pretty things in my bookcase, neat things to look at.
All Zippos, the real ones anyway, are made by the Zippo people over in Bradford, Pennsylvania. One of the coolest things about that is the warranty. It doesn’t matter what on earth happens to your Zippo, or how old it is, or how badly it has been abused. If it breaks you just drop it in the mail to them and they fix it for no cost, with no questions asked. As long as a Zippo doesn’t get lost, it can be a true companion for life.
From Pennsylvania these things are shipped all over the world.
So, if all real Zippos come from Pennsylvania, what’s the deal with Japanese Zippos?
Ah, this is where things get interesting, and we can think about just how amazing international trade can be.
I’m given to understand that in Japan there are great numbers of people who collect fancy and cool Zippos. Because of that Japan imports a lot of Zippos, including completely plain Zippos that designers have plans for.
These plain Zippos arrive in Japan and then are completely modified, rebuilt, and decorated. They make some truly spectacular looking lighters out of the plain stock lighters that are brought over from the United States.
At least some of those lighters are then exported back to America for consumers here.
How amazing is that?
A small, cheap American product, sent to the other side of the world. Artists do their magic on it there, then send it back here for us to treasure. That’s just plain cool.
I never had one of these Japanese Zippos, but I’ll admit to lusting over a few of them on the English language version of the Japanese Zippo website from time to time.
That changed on my birthday recently.
The gift was in a little box. I opened it up to find a yet littler box inside. A perfectly standard Zippo lighter box. But also, little bags. Little bags containing all of the inside parts of a Zippo.
I’ll admit that, for a few seconds anyway, I was quite confused. A Zippo that one must put together himself? I’d never heard of, or encountered such a thing. Then I noticed a little piece of paper explaining that air shipping rules from Japan to the United States require the lighter to be disassembled. I realized that Mrs. Bailey had snagged me a Japanese Zippo!
I hurriedly put it together, filled it with juice, and sparked a flame. Excellent!
The ephemera inside the little Zippo box was interesting. It had the same paperwork as all Zippos come with, plus that same paperwork in Japanese.
But the lighter was the thing. It’s got a distressed finish unlike anything I’ve ever seen from Pennsylvania, and is decorated with extremely ornate Masonic symbolism. No plain Square and Compasses.
I’m keeping it filled with fuel for now, but I’ve decided that it doesn’t get to leave the house. It’s just too neat looking to get beat up.
International trade is such a huge issue in our country right now. With serious efforts to bring at least some manufacturing back home, both for reasons of employment and national security. Tariffs (taxes) are being slapped on millions of products from overseas. The debate rages: are we better off with free trade or protectionism?
That debate can be rather abstract. Divorced from everyday reality because international trade itself is just so huge and all encompassing.
But, I think we can learn from that little Zippo lighter.
It was manufactured right here in Bradford, Pennsylvania, resulting in good jobs for American workers. It was then shipped to Japan, resulting in more jobs both for American and foreign workers. Once in Japan it was very heavily modified, thus providing employment for people in Japan. Then it was shipped back here, to my little house, again creating more jobs in the shipping industry, both Japanese and American jobs.
An awful lot of hands touched that little lighter. A lot more hands than had it remained solely within the United States distribution system.
Yes. And, that sort of trade is much like government programs. See it helps to think of money as what it used to be, GOLD.
Now, funny thing about gold, it's a very soft metal. One of the softest in the world. It's much like the chaulk of our lectures. The least touch of which transfers some to the toucher's hand.
So, let's look at the value of an item v the value of gold. The gold comes out of the ground, and in the process of handling it, some rubbs off on the miner's hands (his wages) It's then shipped to the smelter, and on the way, some rubbs off onto the wagon. (the shippers wage.) smelting loses you some, then it's shipped in blank form to the mint that stamps it. Now it's "money" It's already less than what came out of the ground.
In our modern monitary system, that can be seen as inflation, and fees, taxes and all the rest. If you did your work, providing that your work is something that a customer needs, like oh say Electrician, or Mechanic, and you did it "under the table" you would recieve much more for it, than doing it through a shop, with social security, taxes, U/I insurance, Medicare and Medicade, and all the other stuff taken out of it, along with some of the money from the work going to pay the "back office." Billing clerks, payroll guys, advertising, management, etc...
Is having someone do the stuff of advertising, paperwork of all sorts, taking liability if something goes wrong, and all the other various "services" that working from within a shop, verses working solo worth the cut in wages? That's an individual's call.
That shop also insures that you are making money (wages) even when no one wants their house wired for a week. Again, worth it? That's for the individual to decide.
Now the customer. He needs his farm truck fixed. It's not running right, and he has hogs to get to market. He can go to Bubba, under the table, and probably get the work done cheaper, even much cheaper than taking it to Wallace Ford, Chevy, Neason, and Whathaveyou.
But of course, Bubba doesn't come with a warranty. Bubba might not be able to actually fix it, and might call him up and say, "Yeah, Bill, I can't fix her and I broke some stuff takin her appart. come get her." Now Farmer Bill can take Bubba to court, but that's expensive, and he might not win.
Let's say Bubba does fix it, does a bangup job, she's running like brand new. Bubba likes ham, and sausage, likes it a lot. He'll take one of those pigs in trade! Well let's say that pig was going for $500 on the hoof to a slaughterhouse. Bubba's work on that truck would have been $800 parts an labor. Wallace wanted $1500 for the same work. THIS is where all that gold rubbing off onto other people's hands really shows up.
That pig was the gold you mined yourself, out of the ground. No one has touched it, and taken a little off the top. Bubba's labor was also mining gold. (we'll put aside the gold involved in the parts, as way too complex for this explination.)
So, pure barter economy, everything is cheaper, but what if your skills aren't directly translatable for barter? I used to wire nuclear submarines, and ran a fiber optics training program. While there might be a consumer demand for being trained to install and fix fiber optics stuff, there are very few people with nuclear submarines that need fixing. Yet, everyone in the United States benifits from my repair work on those submarines in things like keeping the sea lanes clear and keeping piracy to a minimum. This is where things get complex, and that gold starts rubbing off on a lot of people's hands.
The question you must ask yourself, each and individually, is "Is this thing, which cost X, worth the cost of Y because while it was made in the US, it was then shipped overseas, worked on, and shipped back?" Again, this is a value judgement, and there are no wrong answers.
If on the other hand it's something vital to the national defense, and it's on the other end of a five thousand mile pipeline, well that adds some really interesting complexities, now doesn't it?
What if what you need is being sourced from someone who now says they're at war with you? Or just doesn't like the way you do bussiness, and so is going to refuse to sell you stuff? (ask the Japanese why they started a war with us in 1941 and they'll tell you it was because we were economically strangling them by refusing to sell them material they needed for their war machine.)
Or maybe you are still friends with your supplier, but a third party is at war with your supplier and has embargoed them. You can ask China about that, vis-a-vis Iran.
Now let's look at something I implied at the start of this long ramble. Government programs. If it's a state, or even better, local government program, the number of hands that touch that gold between the guy that "mines" it, (whether by working in a real mine, or by producing some other way) and the people that need it*? Minimal. Transfer of value? Maximal, call it three quarters on the dollar at least.
If it's a federal program though... Oh son, there's about eight or ten layers of bureaucrats on the way up that handle that gold, and the same number at least on the way down. Transfer of value? Dimes on the dollar at best.
*Now, this all asumes that the people who were doing the mining agree that the people that "need it" really do need it. That is the other trouble with a government program acting as a charity.
The first trouble is that even in the cleanest situation: local government running the show, you're still not getting the transfer of funds that you would get out of a real charity. (and even real charities end up eating part of each dollar for required by law overhead.)
The second trouble is that by government running the show, especially if it's federal, they usually don't ask if we agree that "this" needs charity dollars. They decide (yes, that's what a republic is, I get that, we appoint people to make these decisions, and we say that we trust them to have our best interests at heart... But DO THEY? DO THEY REALLY?) what "charities" need your gold, and they take it, by force if necessary, up to and including lethal force.