#skousen

Frigor WFN901 er en 9 kg frontbetjent vaskemaskine, der især sælges i Norden via WhiteAway/Skousen-miljøet. Den går efter en klassisk “fornuftigt køb”-position: stor kapacitet, pæn energieffektivitet og et programudvalg, der skal dække alt fra hverdagsvask til tromlerens – uden at du behøver en app eller en ingeniøruddannelse. Af: Mikkel Kjerri, Journalist & Forbrugeranmelder Men: en…

Speaker Says, "Be Firm With Communists"

No Time to Panic: Strategic Survival Expert Joel Skousen Survives Plane Crash

Mac Slavo SHTFplan.com March 17, 2013

Former Marine fighter pilot and well known strategic relocation survival expert Joel Skousen (WorldAffairsBrief.com) was flying home from Las Vegas this week when his experimental Glasair I aircraft experienced an unrecoverable problem with the plane’s fuel flow system. According to first responders on the scene the plane was, “completely totaled in the wreck, after flipping and partially detaching the wings.”

“It’s the first time I’ve done an accident, an engine-out landing to a field,” said Skousen.

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“When I slowed down to put the landing gear down and went to put power back on, to reach speed, it wouldn’t come back up.”

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“As a longtime pilot for many, many years, you read about a lot of accidents,” he said.

“You’re trained to go through these procedures of trying to get that engine restarted, throwing on the pumps, throwing the booster, checking the fuel. And so you really don’t have time to panic because you are going through procedures.”

Skousen was not seriously injured in the crash, receiving only a few cuts and bruises. He was not transported to a hospital.

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“Emotionally, it’s really tough to go through an accident,” Skousen said.

“I’m very blessed. There’s no other way to describe coming out of that with only a couple of scratches.”

Source: KSL Utah

Images of Mr. Skousen’s mangled aircraft:

As Joel Skousen himself notes, the accident could have been much worse than it was. Providence and a little bit of ‘luck’ played a significant role in his coming out of this nearly unscathed.

His efforts in the midst of the emergency, however, should not be downplayed. Having trained as a fighter pilot for years, Skousen is well versed in the procedures required to counter-act such a situation. He had a plan and followed procedures step-by-step, even in the midst of what must have been a very high intensity, high stress environment.

His training paid off. He didn’t panic. His focus during a far-from-equilibrium crisis no doubt played a role in his surviving the crash, because had he panicked he may have made mistakes that could have led to a completely different set of circumstances.

Plan. Prepare. Practice. It may save your life.

The final disagreement that I have with Skousen is his contention that value is added in each stage of production. I'd say that the entire production process only takes place because of anticipated consumer demand for the its product when the product becomes available for sale. The producers at every stage incur costs in order to be prepared for this anticipated demand. They might be able to recoup these costs, plus interest and a profit, if they can sell their intermediate product to a later stage of production. This later stage producer, however, will still have to anticipate the eventual sale of the final product to a consumer. Any variation in anticipated consumer demand will cause variations in the entire production process.

We saw this clearly in the recent housing crisis. The builders, materials manufacturers, home lenders, and others expanded their businesses in anticipation of increasing consumer demand. When that demand collapsed, all of these businesses lost money.

I just finished reading Chapter 5, The Structure of Production: The Building Blocks in the book The Structure of Production by Mark Skousen. Having read and re-read so much on this topic, I didn’t expect to learn much from reading this book. To my surprise, however, Skousen raises several new questions, even if I don’t agree with all of his answers.

One of these questions involves how research and development costs figure into the structure of production. Skousen says that these should be classified as being the first order goods. In other words, in the production of any consumer product, research and development must occur before the remaining stages of the process of production can take place.

I disagree with him on this. I concede that all of the technology required to create a product must be completed before the product can be produced and that, in some cases, the research and development stage represents the first order expenditure. I think that in many cases, however, research and development represents the beginning of a separate process of production, the products of which can then feed into the process in question at any stage.

I’ll use one of Skousen’s examples, the production of shoes, to illustrate what I mean. He uses a simplified model of shoe production that begins with the production of hides, continues with the transformation of hides into leather, then into shoes in wholesale inventory, and finally into shoes available for retail sale. Under this model, and assuming that R&D expenses must be incurred at the beginning of the production process, any R&D efforts that improve the production process must be completed before the hides used to produce the improved shoes can be produced. I don’t think that this model is an adequate representation of reality.

Instead, I maintain that R&D can be used to improve any stage of this process. A separate production process might be developed for creating better machines to convert hides into leather or leather into shoes. The new machines might produce more for the same cost or produce the same amount at a lower cost or some combination of the two. Either way, the leather or shoe manufacturers could than buy and install these machines and immediately begin producing at a lower cost per unit. They would not have to wait for the production of new hides or leather before putting their new technology to use.

In fact, there is a real life example of how this occurred in the shoe industry. Many firms have contributed to the technology that makes it possible to create an online store. Few, if any, of these developers had anything to do with shoe production. The production of hides, leather, and shoes might have benefited a little from being able to purchase their raw materials in an online store, but the effect was marginal.

Zappos, however, has been able to use this technology to combine the wholesale and retail stages of production into one operation. They can immediately benefit from any improvements in online store technology by applying it to shoes that they already have in inventory. They don’t have to wait for new hides, leather, or shoes to be produced in order to improve their performance in the lowest stage of production.