Wednesday, January 28, 2015

On the Concept of Fearing Home Depot and Starbucks More than the Entity Which Dropped Two Atomic Bombs, Perpetrated Genocide Against Native-Americans and Filipinos, Rounded Up Innocent Japanese-Americans and Forced Them Into Internment Camps, Persecuted and Deported People Simply for Opposing Dumb Wars, Passed and Strictly Enforced the Fugitive Slave Act, Plunged the Country into a Litany of Needless Wars, Etc., Etc.

Somebody's gonna have to explain this to me again and, please, this time do it slowly.

7 comments:

BB-Idaho said...

A business, like a government, is a collective. In the US, the leaders of the collective are elected. In the business collective, the leaders answer
(however slightly) to the shareholders and the customers, and far more so to the shareholders. Next, lets take a look at laissez-faire: de-regulate the airlines and fares
go down. Fat chance. Service and fares are preposterous; they
cut labor, their fuel prices are down by half, they cut maintenance
and the fares go up more. However, you may hope that once
the Kock brothers own the government things will greatly
improve. Good luck. (and no,
I don't frequent Starbucks or
Home Depot. With them, my fear
is the number of fine local small
businesses they have driven under-and they and their minions have incredibly convinced the naïve that it was government regs and taxes ) We both have put in our working years in the private sector, seen it operate and conclude with disparate POVs, no?

Les Carpenter said...

I'm a capitalist.... back in the days when capitalists knew a rising and growing middle class lifted all boats.

I'm a capitalist... back in the days when the CEO made maybe 50 times what the ave. employee made; not 500 times as much.

Overregulation is a problem yes, but BB is correct, when the Koch brothers and others like them own the government and we are full blown Oligarchy/Plutocracy perhaps many millions will cry uncle. It will be too late.

dmarks said...

BB said: "de-regulate the airlines and fares
go down"

Deregulation is one thing. Reforms where the government stops giving airlines corporate welfare, and gets rid of all the regulations which exist solely to block competition? a great idea.

Many of us see a major difference between two types of corporations. Corrupt crony capitalists like to ram through the regulations which are gifts to them while hiding them alongside necessary safety regulations.

Then those who want true reform, getting rid of the corruption, are accused of wanting planesto crash.

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As for Starbucks and Home Depot, can you name any businesses that they "put under"? Any? Or is the case that the businesses that failed did so because they provided bad service and Starbucks, Home Depot provided good service.

dmarks said...

And, no, it is not naive to blame government rules and regulations for business businesses dying.

This has a HUGE part of the blame, BB. Big businesses can better survive this onslaught than small ones can. They have the resources.

Such as any minimum wage increase. These all force small businesses to give full time employees hundreds or thousands of dollars un an unearned gift. A sort of government-forced fine to punish a business for hiring an employee who has low-worth skills.

What does the company do? They fire the worker. Service goes to crap, and they go out of business, while the big ones that are better able to handle this thrive.

There are some things that are obvious that can be done to stop killing small businesses. Abolish the minimum wage, so no employer is forced to fire someone because they can't afford to pay the massive government penalty for keeping a worker employed. Workers benefit too.

Rusty Shackelford said...



Why do people from the left have such issues with successful big business? Starbucks,Home Depot and WalMart all began as one store operations.They just did it better then the other guy.They don't drive anyone under,people that cannot compete cannot survive,plain and simple.Should mom and pops hardware store stay in business just because they are nice guys? The market should rule....if you can do it better and faster....you will win.

dmarks said...

Rusty: I don't think they are very "nice" when they ate hardly open at all. Off to Walmart, where they are nice enough to unlock their doors to let me in.

Les Carpenter said...

Big business buys political influence, someday they will own government. Then it truly is bye bye competitive capitalisn hello feudalism.