About David Everitt-Carlson

Recent Posts by David Everitt-Carlson

Emerging and Submerging Markets: An American Company Shows Me the Difference

Funny. Having dinner with Dr. David Williams from Mojo Innovations in Shanghai and the ideas roll around to ‘submerging markets’ (David coined that) – the idea that we work in emerging markets but David, an Englishman, and another Brit, a woman from The Netherlands and myself are having a bottle of white and figuring out why we are all here, instead of living in our birth countries – the submerging markets – rich countries and the only victims of the recent financial crisis (and then we order the fish).

The woman from Holland, a young professional woman, is leaving an executive job at a foreign university here, to move to Istanbul, Turkey, with no job at all – just to live life, and live the best. Neither David, nor I nor the English interior designer showed much interest in going back to our home countries, for individual reasons. And so many of those reasons have nothing to do with money.

We are all career professionals, all capable of getting name-your-number six-figure salaries back home, yet we do not. Why not?

It’s all about where the future is, and we have all run into the roadblocks of our western countries trying to maintain the status’ quo of an old century while things here are just the Wild Wild East. It’s fun, and a whole lot better than pushing sand uphill back home to feed an economic model that is so obviously broken.

This all came to real this week when it came to getting paid for my first month at an American webzine, The Morton Report. When it came time to pay, an editor said they would ‘send me a check’. Ha. I laughed. Were they serious? Turns out they were.

When I explained that the check system they used in the US (Yes, printing personal money that may or may not be any good) did not work outside country, they truly didn’t understand – and then they got mad. “Wire transfer? WTF is that?”, they said. Now, this particular webzine, luckily has an online shrink, so I’ll leave it to her to figure out how f-ed-up that is – but that was the story. Getting mad over watching the world change? “Gee, American money is no good anymore?”. You’re broke guys!

And in telling that story, David chimed in, “Ha! I had an American client look at my invoice and say ‘What’s EFT?” – Electronic Funds Transfer. “I’m not sure we know how to do that”, the American company responded.

So it’s true, in submerging markets they will never understand that the reason the other markets are emerging, is that they are not just not doing the SOS. They are building something, something their children won’t have to pay for like America’s children will have to pay the Chinese.

So we are, in Asia, emerging and America is submerging. Do the math.

Good Morning America!

Motorbike Helmets for Kid’s in Vietnam? Not Yet

A few years ago Vietnam finally passed a law requiring motorbike riders to wear a helmet but this law only required them for adult riders. Kids don’t need them. Is somebody kidding somebody? We could blame the lawmakers for not seeing the fatalities and injuries amongst children but that shouldn’t release parents from their basic responsibilities to protect those children should it?

On launch day, the government deployed 5000 police around the city (Saigon) to enforce strict fines ($10 is strict here) and lo and behold – one day nobody had a helmet and the next day they did. Except for the children. And this baffled the crap out of me. Didn’t the people understand that a not fully formed skull can be crushed up to 60% easier than an adult’s? Didn’t they see it as important? And the answer is, ‘no they didn’t’. What was important to them was not paying a fine to comply with the law. Sad, I thought. No thought about the reasons one should wear a helmet at all.

So Kate Made 50 Days in England, But Could She Make 100 in Korea?

‘Agency’ in the Age of Corporate Decision Making

Philosphers and lawyers talk about agency. Responsibility comes with the capacity to act in the world. If you can decide, if you can act, you have agency. Why then, do organizations and individuals struggle so intently to avoid the responsibility that comes with agency? “It’s not my job, my boss won’t let me, we’re prohibited, it’s our supplier, that’s our policy…”

With my small company in Korea I had only three employees, and all of them had agency to an assigned degree. They had the ability to act and to spend money in their appropriate assignments. After two years of running our company, I felt the need for a long vacation. We had won the big account, were financially on good footing and I felt I had earned the holiday.

Motivated Reasoning: The Opposite of A Suspension of Disbelief

by Jonathon Rosen

How I Met Oscar Schindler

Nearly two years ago I was beginning a trip to Europe from Vietnam and our first stop was Frankfurt and a meeting with Oskar Schindler – you know, the one from Schindler’s list fame.

But not exactly in person. I would meet Mr. Schindler through the gift of a book from a friend, and even have a short visit to his last apartment.

Finally this year I got around to reading that gift ‘Oskar Schindler – The untold account of his life, his wartime activities and the true story behind the list’ by David Crowe. As you might have guessed, it’s not the same story told in the Spielberg film.

In this telling, Crowe, a historian and President Emeritus of the Association for the Studies of Nationalities at Columbia University, brings us a less-than-riveting portrait of a man who was both conflicted and complex in his wartime work and personal life.

A lover of wine, women and song, a spy, a man playing both sides in more than two sides of his life, Schindler is presented by Crowe as more of a historical study. Much less is revealed about his motivations. Given this document of study and a Hollywood film we still know little about the man himself.

But I learned a little more that day. I learned that given the Internet and new ways to communicate, that a jazz singer from L.A. living in Germany and a man from New York living in Vietnam (who had never met) could meet and find common ground over Schindler. So even in death he has an impact. A positive one.

Schindler’s wife was less charitable. At his grave, she had this to say:

Well, Oskar, we meet again. But this is not the time for reproaches and complaints. It would not be fair to you or to me. Now you are in another world, in eternity, and I can no longer ask you all those questions to which you would have given evasive replies…and death is the best evasion of all. I have received no answers. my dear. I do not know why you abandoned me…but what not even your death or my old age can change is that we are still married. This is how we are before God. I have forgiven you everything, everything.

Now, two years after a trip that had too many unknown unknowns, I understand that I may not ever understand what really happened – that I may never have many answers.

My mother would die with many secrets and one day my father will too. And the rest of us are left to piece together what they left us. And that in turn will become our own personal suspension of disbelief – the book of our own lives that we alone may write.

Willing Suspension of Disbelief

Did anyone else find the display and joy of Americans in the streets over the death of Osama Bin Laden just patently morose and self serving – even crass by conservative standards? I am American and I did. I also live in Vietnam, a country where America killed nearly 1,100,00 north Vietnamese soldiers over 40 years ago during the conflict and infected another estimated 5 million today with diseases and deformities as a result of Agent Orange dispersion – the 2nd largest display of attempted chemical genocide ever in modern times. Perspective is needed here. Information is needed here. History is needed here, compassion is needed here – not gloating in place of proper grieving for our small number of lives and architecture lost. This week was a media event, a play into our willing suspension of disbelief to have a bad man die at the end of a battle. You can leave the movie now, it’s over. Time for another presidential election campaign. I felt we as a country behaved deplorably in a moral capacity this week.

Steal This Book

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