The Rural Voice, 1986-08, Page 10BUY A
TRACTOR
NOT A
FINANCE
PLAN
Lobbs mid summer sale
on all models of
KUBOTA
TRACTORS
Special Discounts
on M Series tractors with
a 3 year No Cost to the
Customer Warranty.
NOW IS THE TIME TO BUY
THE ®KUBOTA YOU
ALWAYS WANTED.
LOKUBOTR BUILT TO
LAST
The dealer tees make the
difference.
H. LOBB & SONS LTD.
BAYFIEID ROAD•484.3409
8 THE RURAL VOICE
COMPULSORY OPERATION
TO REMOVE EGO
I think the first thing they
should do to anyone who is con-
templating going into business is
to give him/her a compulsory
operation to remove his/her ego.
More of us in business pro-
bably get ourselves into trouble
because of our egos than about
any other cause. Without egos,
we might go ahead, listen to our
own ideas and struggle along.
Because we want to seem suc-
cessful, efficient and modern, we
get ourselves in over our heads.
Temptation has returned to me
since I got back into the
publishing business. When we
started up a new newspaper last
fall we went out and got equip-
ment that would have been
among the best available when I
got out of the business nine years
ago and is still good, dependable
equipment today.
We get along just fine with this
equipment that cost us very little
money to buy. Yet things have
changed so rapidly in printing
equipment in the last few years
that this equipment is about three
generations old. Some publishing
companies are now installing the
latest computer equipment, equip-
ment where an entire page, com-
plete with advertisements and
words of the news stories, can be
assembled on the screen at once.
You can move things around, see
how things will look before you
make a final decision, press a
button and have the page
reproduced in seconds.
It's a pretty sexy machine ...
not to mention pretty pricey. But
it's easy to tell yourself that it's
so "efficient" that you just can't
afford to be without it. It would
do so much to increase our "pro-
ductivity."
The problem with the argument
is that we're already getting along
quite nicely with the equipment
we've got. We've got a small,
very hard-working staff and it's
unlikely that even this magical
new equipment would cut out
many hours in staff time. Even if
it did, it would only hurt
employees who already get too
few hours work to give them a
steady income.
Someday we may have some of
that sexy equipment but for now,
I've managed to stifle my urge.
My wife, and the company's
bank account, will be pleased.
E. F. Schumacher expressed it
in his book Small is Beautiful, a
book that's just as meaningful to-
day as it was in the 1970s, even if
it's out of fashion now. "Ap-
propriate technology" he called it
and used it to argue against send-
ing tractors to small, impoverish-
ed Third World countries when
hand tools would do.
We've seen the horror stories
for ourselves now: pictures of
rusting, tireless, cannibalized trac-
tors and trucks in the grassed
fields of those countries. The
vehicles are expensive junk
because the poor people couldn't
afford to buy the gas or the
parts.
Where the machines did work,
they just put people out of work,
and forced more poor people into
the slums of the cities. We tried
to take changes that happened
over 200 years in Europe or
North America and make them
happen overnight in the Third
World.
But appropriate technology is
just as important here in Ontario.
We go to trade shows and we see
all this shiny equipment and our
ego, the pressure to be modern
and efficient, and the arguments
about how we've got to increase
our productivity often cause us to
get more equipment than we real-
ly need.
If only that ego could be snip-
ped out there might be more
former businessmen still in
business. ❑
Keith Roulston is the originator
and former publisher of The
Rural Voice.