To reduce stress I have asked bernie at casa del caffe to blend 3/4
decaf with 1/4 espresso. I know I will be calmer.
In addition, no major fires - yet. The cancer will kill me slowly - but
I have some hope that jim pick, ihor, alex and adrian combined will have
some positive effect on hosting.
With the ability to put out fires taken care of - I need a reliable way
to create accounts. I need to write the order up for adrian or who ever
to execute.
Alex? Or ricky.
also thinking about the final solution to the worlds problem. Malthus
has not been defeated. Too many babies are ultimately responsible. How
the very old and rich fit in I am not sure.
I still belive that the root of all evil is the production of luxury
products.
20% of the population consuming 80% of the resources - how is that a
population problem? Even in Malthus' time equations were likely similar
- with soldiers stallions eating more than the masses of the poor.
However when downsizing a company to increase profitability - it is
always better to layoff 6000 staff than 1 ot 2 vice presidents.
Which brings me to comments made in 2003 by john kenneth galbraith in a
sept/oct interview in the ivey business journal - and comments made in
2006 by warren buffet at the annual berkshire hathaway shareholders
meeting. The comments are critical of the rise professional manager.
These comments echo "no taxation without representation," in that they
are bureaucrats that set their own pay - and have taken over the
machine. (Brought to me by bill who I am not sure saw the irony in
handing me this article - as he has set his salary)
Galbraith wrote his book pre-enron - but revised it.
and what is to blame?
is the stock market a cancer demanding ever increasing resources to
satisfy like a mystery religion and its blood sacrifice of innocents?
Hyperbole.
Huge organisms have huge impacts on their imapacts. Coke and unions,
elephants and farms. There is no doubt. But due to their size, huge
energy inputs are required to sustain them, making them more susceptible
to environment change than smaller organisms.
So we created frankenstein's monsters to do the heavy lifting for us -
creating identical burger joints around the world so we can eat what we
want wherever we want too.
However their immense power comes with immense cost - they are severly
constrained to their tight environmental niche.
Maybe they are djinni that can't be put back in their bottles. We are
addicted far to much to the electronic prong at the base of our skulls.
I know where the managers fit into the equation - and how the stock
markets are the bottle - and how stock markets are the road to
prosperity that leads to destruction.
All roads lead to destruction.
All destruction leads to new roads.
The trick is to do the building and destroying yourself faster than your
competitors.
So stock markets allowed owners to manage and distribute the risk of
ships, insurance and railways. You accept this much risk for this much
potential reward. No responsibility is attached to the investor - we
will leave that in the corporation - limit our liability - and hire
managers to sweep that away.
But the liability doesn't get swept away - and the managers stuck with
liabilities the owners deny owning hide them as the system requires them
to in order to meet compensation targets agreed to by owners. I raise
stock price to x you pay me y. You don't care how much liabilities I
create in the company because they cost you nothing.
And the managers fit because as an owner I need a broker to sell my
assets. The managers really exist to facilitate the trading of stocks
and to guarantee their value. Managers that fail to preserve value are
replaced. Managers that preserve and increased value are rewarded
because they allow me to sell my asset. Because they are independant
prospects feel falsely confident in the values. Without the manager
there is no illusion of ownership without work - and so professional
managers are required if owners are to retire - which they have.
Consider the oxymoron - shareholder activist. It is inconcievable that
an owner would NOT want to be active. But being destroys the illusion of
the virgin production of wealth - which the stock markets promotes.
Automagically double your money is 7 years!
So how is the stock manager the all powerful corporate capitlism's
djinni bottle? Managers are bound by quarter by quarter performance.
They have all the power in world - as long as they met or beat the
analysts forecasts.
How does it all add up to destruction?
There are no owners.
Because it divides ownership up into smaller and smaller units - many
are essentially meaningless.
So other companies with owners that own something come along - the
ownerless companies can get eaten.
No comments:
Post a Comment