There are always those scattered throughout any organization that are only looking out for number one and to hell with everyone else. And it doesn't end with big corporations either, it extends into ever facit of our lives and every organization of more than one person. They are a minority within most organizations with notable exceptions of those organizations formed for the sole purpose of screwing the world and everyone it it. Even those organizations are often filled with a lot of good intentioned people but they will always be overshadowed by the others. As for Enron, those fabulous bonuses were pretty limited in who received them and they didn't extend to the majority of employees.
The substitution of cheaper raw materials is difficult to do without scrifice of quality at the same time. Automation is good if the production can be automated but involves high capital infusion to accomplish and that must be factored in. On the other hand, some business is based on labor and not manufactured products which limits any attempt to reduce costs.
Back in the early 70's I had an online computer services company that specialized in offering inventory control services to my clients. I also offered a service to insurance companies for rate computations by their local representatives. My product was information and the distribution channel was online terminals in the clients offices attached to my computer system. It was effecient and very effective for that period of time and was a great business model when I first started the business. It was also a time of huge changes in both communications and computer systems. I ran the business with a profit from the first year and for the next six years. During that time I experienced one huge cost increase that I couldn't control and that was for the communications lines. (That was back when MaBell controlled everything.) My costs for those lines went up over 1000 percent within one years time. It would have been much more except for a huge investment in multiplexing.
In spite of being profitable it became clear to me that the future for my business was not looking good. I saw the cost of the mini- computers decreasing at such a rate that it was no longer an advantage to try and process from a service. The business model was simply no longer valid. It really became clear when the insurance company that I was providing service for requested that I consult with them to setup the same service I was providing locally from their headquarters to their representatives nation wide. They agreed to continue using my service for the local area even though what I setup for them could have easily replace my service. Instead of waiting for the business to turn unprofitable I decided instead to perform an orderly shutdown. I negotiated with my customers to buy my equipment for what was owed to the banks and I would provide the software and setup for their operations. I helped other customers buy the needed equipment for their operations and provided them the software. Finally, the insurance company agreed to buy all of my communications equipment for their own operation. All of this took place and was completed at the same time my office lease expired.
I ended up sutting the business down over a three month period without any of my customers being hurt in any way. In fact, all of them realized a total savings as a result and I received some consulting business from them in the years that followed. I also shutdown without owing anyone anything including the landlord of my office building. It was a hard decision to make at the time but I realized that when the business climate changes that you must accept it and move on. The computer service company ended but I moved on as a self- employed business and computer consultant for the next 25 years.
You're right when you mention "culture." There's no real widespread "team spirit" in America anymore. Mostly dog eat dog, accumulate money or debt and buy toys. I retired from a large corporation and saw a pretty quick cultural transition after they went public in 1993. One time I thought a guy on my team should get a raise so he didn't fly, despite his "performance" review. He was being paid under "market rate" and I was way over. He was good for my team. Good guy, and decent performance. Budget was tight, so I told the boss I didn't need a raise, give it to the other guy. He looked at me like I was a Martian. No, I got the raise and other guy shortly flew the coop. Everybody thinks money is all that matters.
Bonus level employees did whatever it took to, guess what? Increase their bonus. I saw many abandon their "principles" to go for the money. They followed whatever lead their bonus level superiors wanted. What guided the leaders? Money. Just money. Not long term vision, just short term money. What does "shareholder value" mean? Current stock price. Money. That's it. Money. They were guided only by "shareholder value." And that money buys the pols.
The clearest and neatest example of this in a nutshell I ran across when SBC took over Ameritech. I had an Ameritech guy over to my house to fix a problem with my company-paid twisted wire phone line just after SBC took over. Hot day and we had some iced tea on the front porch and chatted after he fixed my problem. Turned out the AT&T guys who put in my personal lines had screwed up the Ameritech connection a couple weeks ago. Time-delay screwup too, as I made sure the company line was working before they left. They were the first Bulgarians I ever dealt with. Nice enough guys if I understood them right. Don't know if they were legal. Anyway I asked the Ameritech guy what he thought about the SBC takeover. He said, "A few days after the takeover there was a big poster in our ready room with the SBC charter, listing priorities." He paused and drank some more tea. "Vic, what do you think was at the top of the list?" I instantly said "Customer service." I mean, that's a no-brainer. He shook his head, "Nope. Shareholder value."
For kicks I looked up Bill Daley, brother of Dick Daley, mayor of Chicago. Staunch Dems. Bill Daley was running SBC for a while.
Here's his recent record. Compensation is peanuts, about $200,000.
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But he doesn't need money now. He pulled $millions out of SBC.
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SBC merged with AT&T. The veteran Ameritech lineman I talked to probably lost his job and maybe got screwed in other ways. But ole Bill Daley is doing just fine.
Anyway, make of that what you will. I say whether the pol is red or blue, follow the money. And "small business" is usually an entire different animal than "big business." No Wall Street "analysts" guiding them and no "shareholder value." More "people oriented" you might say. It is really shocking how many pols are millionaires. "I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!"
Tell that to the almost 18% of the public that is currently unemployed. The 9.5% quoted by the government is ONLY those who are still collecting unemployment and actively seeking employment. The rest are not being counted.
Wealth and jobs are two different things. The jobs were there but they were being offshored as fast as a speeding bullet in a headlong rush to lower costs.
The stock market is over inflated and meaningless as a measure. Home prices were back where they should have been to begin with. I also don't blame W for the mass stupidity of everyone in regards to the stock market or home prices. I have seen it all before.
Gawd, have you had your head in a bucket or what?
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And you don't think Obama has done exactly the same thing? So what, that is the nature of most if not all politicians. I don't fault them for it, it is what they are and the best you can do is recognize that and make sure you don't give any of them too much power. On that point, we have failed miserabley.
Gawd but your head is buried up O's ass.
Of course you do! You can't do anything else without admitting that you have made a horrible mistake with Obama.
All of which don't even start to add up to what Obama has done and is going to do over the next two years if Congress doesn't rein him in.
You haven't presented any yet so how could you give more?
Dream on but please wake up soon. By the way, I didn't agree with the TARP bailout either but almost everyone in Congress did and nobody pushed harder for it than Obama. Oh, and most of the TARP money was spent during the first months of the Obama administration.
Cite? Where have you been for the last two years? Why don't you provide some proof of where all that money went, nobody else can seem to.
Funny that you would make a statement "You can't spend your way out of a recession" when that is exactly what Obama has been doing for the last two years and is proposing for the next two. You really need to pay more attention to what is going on and who has been spending what.
In my view, it's not GREED that's the culprit, per se, it's the motivation and methods used to foster it.
Greed is a normal human emotion, but like some others (hate, anger*, etc.), it needs to be engaged with care. It's the difference between an eighteen pound bowling ball and a similar amount of dynamite.
Consider Jonas Salk as he peered through his microscope during long nights of investigation. He was, no doubt, motivated by many altruistic urgings, such as uncontrollable empathy for children condemned to iron lungs. But amongst all the forces driving his effort, I'll bet there was some "greed." Greed in the sense that if he could whip this problem, then he could get enough funding to do the kind of research he wanted without having to suck up to an imbecilic bureacracy and cretin grant administrators.
So, what's the result? To some degree, a little or a lot, "greed" helped eradicate Polio in my lifetime and yours.
To suppress a normal human emotion or motivation is often impossible and always a problem. The trick is to direct the urge in productive ways.
But most of the people screwed at Enron were the employees who kept buying the company stock and reinvesting their company dividends in more stock. And, of course, everybody in California.
Neither group consisted of people one could actually CARE about.
No, the 18% is known as the "U6", or the number that are *under*employed, meaning those that aren't working full time, or in a lesser job than they're qualified for.
What's quoted as the "unemployment rate" is the U3, or the number that are actively seeking work but have none. It doesn't matter if they're collecting unemployment insurance or not. The key is that they're actively seeking work.
Both statistics are collected by phone interviews (there is also an employer survey). Again, unemployment checks have nothing to do with these statistics.
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In fact he warned of the bubble, and the F&F twins *many* times, at least twice in SotU messages. The Dems, like Franks, poo-pooed the suggestion that the housing market couldn't last and that F&F were in deep trouble.
You demonstrated the sequel to the axiom "Find a need and fill it," the sequel being "get out when you're on top." I applaud your foresight - many entrepreneurs hang on to the bitter end.
I heard this interesting (fictional) tale you might find interesting:
An inventor reportedly concots machine for "reading" x-rays. Hospitals e-mail him a digitized copy of a patient's x-ray and he sends back a reading within four hours. His invention, moreover, allows him to charge about one-tenth the cost of an on-staff radiologist.
Hospitals are dubious, but they send him some x-rays already read by staff experts. Lo and behold, the invention turns out results every bit as good or better than a board-certified radiologist!
He corners the market. The radiologists are upset. They demand a governmental investigation charging, among other things, practicing medicine without a license!
The inventor protests - to no avail. At the appointed time, a committee from the state medical board appears at his office to inspect his invention.
Turns out, there was no "invention." The "inventor" simply forwarded the digitized x-rays to radiologists in India who inspected the data, wrote a report, and e-mailed the results back to the "inventor." He, in turn, merely forwarded the report back to the originating hospital.
The story goes no farther. But if this happened in real life, I suspect the "inventor" would spend his declining years in the Grey Bar Hotel.
You can prevail over your competition even if you don't minimize the cost of those three and have a higher priced product. The trick is, you must have a product so superior that people are willing to pay a premium to have it. The quality of goods from China has improved considerably so the stuff from here no longer commands the premium price. Couple that with the fact that many consumers don't care if a product lasts a long time, they want the newest model next year anyway.
The Kalifornican politicians *made* Enron. Many employees (the ones you saw crying on the MSM) invested their entire 401Ks in Enron stock and then rode it down through the basement.
The whole idea of divorcing the generation from the delivery was bad from the beginning. The idea of unregulating the costs of electricity (generating) while closely regulating the prices consumers paid was a piece of idiocy that could only be concocted in California. There was a bit of punishing the electric companies involved, too which is seldom a good idea.
First, I think, we had "Designer coffee." Then "designer jeans." We now have "designer water!"
Aside:
Why must designer water have the government-mandated "Nutrition Label" (Calories - 0, Trans-fats - 0, Carbohydrates - 0, and so on) but the water that comes from the tap doesn't? Is it because the labels would clog the pipes?
My favorite bottle water label was in China where they included the amount of lithium.. which is water soluble so the more water you drink, the more lithium is excreted.
Money grab. Company A generates the power but does not sell it to the consumer directly. They wholesale it to Lehman Brothers (or equal) who add on a tiny amount and sells it to Broker C that sells it to Broker D with another tiny amount added to it, and then to someone that actually bills the user. All those tiny add ons amount to millions of dollars for doing nothing but handling paperwork.
At least in CA there is fairly ample evidence in the debate that many in the Legislature thought that the power companies were getting too big and it was a way to break them up and help the consumer. Ooops.
In some ways the people of California got screwed by their own government and Enron was simply the instrument of that screwing. Enron was NOT the only company that took advantage of the stupid laws in California to screw the residents. The residents were no less at fault for wanting cheap energy not matter the environmental consequences so long as it wasn't created in their own backyard.
Yes, most of the people screwed at Enron were the employees and other stockholders who lost everything. What I have found interesting is that Enron has become the poster child for corporate screwups only because it seemed to have some remote association with GWBush. At the same time Enron was going down the tubes another company that was even larger went down and nobody has ever used them as an example and that is WorldCom. We not have another example in GM but that too seems to go ignoreed. In all three cases the stock holders, bond holders, and other business suppliers that took the hit. I know because I lost most of my retirement fund on heavy investments in WorldCom. Such is life.
So would the managers at any hospital that used the reports for billing to Medicare since they have to certify who the radiologist was that read the X-ray and signed off on the report.
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