My Examiner column is up – “Why liberalism matters in an age of excess”
…our new Gilded Age risks both ruining the republic, as those forced out of the game withdraw their political and social allegiance … and ruining our economy as those who are winning the game focus on capturing value rather than creating it.
John Edwards 25,000 sq/ft; Al Gore 10,000 sq/ft.
_“Armed with the addresses of 432 CEOs of S&P 500 companies at the end of 2004, Yermack and Liu found that 12 percent of them lived in homes of at least 10,000 square feet, or on a minimum of 10 acres. And their companies’ stocks? In 2005 they lagged behind those of S&P 500 CEOs living in smaller houses by 7 percent, on average.”_
_When the people at the top are focused on preserving the trappings, the enterprise suffers._
When the enterprise suffers- the enterprise suffers and the competition has the opportunity to prosper. I think the main difference between conservatives and liberals in this realm is faith in the market. A.L. looks at a corporation where the CEO is getting a raise and the company is doing poorly and shakes his head. I look at them and smile and know exactly where _not_ to invest my money. They’ve made a bad decision, they are going to suffer for it and somebody else is going to end up prospering.
A.L. uses Circuit City as an example because the CEO laid off a large number of high earners. I look at Silo and marvel that CC has survived in the Best Buy/Walmart era at all. Is it better for the Captain to let his ship sink altogether, or fall on his sword in some emotional gesture? Did CC make the right decision? I have no idea! But if it was the difference between a company being allowed to do what it deems necessary to survive, and a government telling them that cant do so (as Europe does), the ‘right’ answer from an economic standpoint is obvious. An existing company short 3400 workers is better than a shuttered company short all its workers.
There is a “headline”:http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070409/us_nm/executive_pay_study_dc today at Yahoo “CEO compensation rises in 2006: study” that is pretty typical for the way business is portrayed. Did businesses make more money in 2006? By and large, YES. So is it logical CEO’s made more? One would assume so. Some doubtlessly overpaid, but that is how the game is played. Their companies will suffer for it and someone else will prosper.
I read a study somewhere that a company’s success tends to vary inversely to the size of a CEOs home- likely indicating that CEOs who are busy making money instead of spending it perform better. I dont doubt it! But if GE beleives paying Jack Welsh a fortune to turn their business around is the right move, do we really want the government getting involved in that? Has government proved itself more capable of making these decisions? I’ll take the market any day.
I’m with *Mr. Buehner* regarding the right of business leaders to make stupid decisions. The layoffs were an appalling decision by CC, but trying to legislate wisdom generally only expands the reach and scope of stupidity. A healthy economy is a dynamic system, and tampering with that fact, however noble the purpose, tends to produce stagnation.
I do agree with *Armed Liberal* that there’s a destructive trend afoot of businesses focusing more on capturing value than creating it, but I think that the only real cure for that is to reduce government’s interference with markets and micromanagement of business, whether by taxation or outright regulation. The only way to make it less profitable to game the system is to shrink the system.
I think AL has encapsulated why I am not a liberal. I can’t find any use in looking at CEO salaries. And I certainly can’t look at Circuit City and decide anything.
Electronic retailers make 50% to 100% of their profits from extended warranties, which I almost never buy and consumers are purchasing less. It’s the job of the sales person to sell the warranty, but he/she is being undercut by technology, not the CEO. Technology, including internet retail, keeps prices low, which decreases the value of the extended warranty. (If your flat screen t.v. costs 25% less than it did a year ago and will cost 25% less next year, not only are you less likely to buy the extended warranty, but the dollar value of the insurance decreases as well) Information technology also reduces the value of the sales person’s expertise. More people can educate themselves on the internet, decreasing the sales person’s opportunity to build repore with the customer. The bottom line is the sales person has become less valuable to the company’s profits and the number of people boycotting CC to buy from Amazon, suggest that the trend will only excelerate.
OTOH, the primary beneficiary of these price reductions are the working class people who increasingly are able to afford technologies only the rich were once able to afford.
What concerns me is the inequality of internet access. Also, the competitive disadvantage that brick-and-mortar stores have due to sales tax. Neither of which appear to be addressed by scolding CEO salaries.
_I do agree with Armed Liberal that there’s a destructive trend afoot of businesses focusing more on capturing value than creating it, but I think that *the only real cure for that is to reduce government’s interference with markets and micromanagement of business, whether by taxation or outright regulation*. The only way to make it less profitable to game the system is to shrink the system._
I’m curious; how exactly does one equate taxes and regulations to causing greed? You’re saying that the only way to limit greedy business practices and abuses of power is to lower taxation and to eliminate regulation? Explain.
“OTOH, the primary beneficiary of these price reductions are the working class people who increasingly are able to afford technologies only the rich were once able to afford.”
If you believe that argument I’ve got a wonderfully high-tech Victorian era toilet to sell you…
_”I’m curious; how exactly does one equate taxes and regulations to causing greed? You’re saying that the only way to limit greedy business practices and abuses of power is to lower taxation and to eliminate regulation? Explain._”
Not to speak for Umbriel but i believe you are misinterpretting his point. He wasnt talking about limiting greed (greed is good!), he was talking about limiting the destructiveness that misguided attempts to limit greed inevitably produce (the cure being far worse than the disease).
Limiting ‘greedy’ business practices is as arbitrary as it is foolish. You limit _unfair_ business practices, which is different. Government should be in the business of maximizing competition, which it rarely is. Worse, government programs (particularly those meant to help the little guy) almost without exeption actually end up limiting competition by favoring certain parties (amazing they are always campaign donors).
In other words, government is demonstrably not a fair broker, and hence looking to government to be the arbiter of fairness is nuts. What I find interesting about liberals is that they can scream bloody murder (fairly to some degree) about things like Halliburton and then in the same sentence favor more government interference into the business world.
If Circuit City goes under—I won’t be buying there again—who exactly is going to suffer? Mr. CEO, because he won’t get another $165M next year (his salary about equals the total savings from the layoffs, by my reckoning)? I don’t think so. The CEO class has insulated itself from risk. Frankly, with $165M in the bank, there is no risk, unless and until we bring back the guillotine for the aristos.
_” Mr. CEO, because he won’t get another $165M next year (his salary about equals the total savings from the layoffs, by my reckoning)? I don’t think so. The CEO class has insulated itself from risk.Frankly, with $165M in the bank, there is no risk, unless and until we bring back the guillotine for the aristos._”
If that level of money was meaningless to him, why would he care about making it in the first place? This is the classic class warfare argument that millionaires dont worry about money, or if they do its just astonishing greed. Well maybe Mr. CEO is heavilly invested in the stock market, real estate, maybe he’s a major charity contributor. Losing his job _is_ going to affect those things. Maybe the breast cancer charity doesnt get their 5 million dollar donation next year because Mr CEO lost his job.
The truth of the matter is its a damn good thing successful entrepreneurs still worry about success. If Bill Gates retired after his first 10 million, would the world be a better place? How much charity do the Rothchilds, the Rockefellars, the Kennedys do?
Warren Buffet is giving away _31 billion dollars,_ and i for one am better Bill Gates and Warren Buffet will spend their charity money more productively than the government would have, had they taxed them to death.
bq. If Bill Gates retired after his first 10 million, would the world be a better place?
God yes.
Unless you’re typing on an Apple 2E i find that hard to believe.
A.L. is a liberal because … WHAT?!
I don’t know if that’s a good reason to be a liberal, but it’s a pretty lousy reason to be a Democrat.
Those rich California grocers are major contributors to the Democratic Party, and the UFCW got precious little help from that quarter during the strike. Some believe that the Democratic Party (which is itself enjoying record profits) used the AFL-CIO to break the strike.
Of course, that could just be the leftists talking and I’m sure lots of people could supply angry denials. The fact is that the Krogers and the Ralphs could so easily give the UFCW the finger – even loot and humiliate them – because every major city in California is a sanctuary for cheap ready-to-exploit Mexican labor, and they need union workers like they need a Ladies’ Temperance Club.
This is a situation which liberals seem to be encouraging, not protesting, but perhaps I underestimate their Bene Gesserit-like cunning.
Marc, are you saying that it’s the poor who have withdrawn their allegiance to the social and political ideals of this great republic? As both a capitalized and uncapitalized (r)epublican, I think that’s rather the opposite of the truth. It’s the trust fund brats and the board room scum and the 700-acre politicians who have sold us out, not the little people.
bq. Unless you’re typing on an Apple 2E i find that hard to believe.
Mark, the idea that Microsoft has contributed in any way to the state of the art in computing is laughable and totally unsupportable. Every product they have ever sold is either third-rate or was acquired. Funny thing you should mention Apple-remember the bumper sticker “Windows 95 = Macintosh ’89”? 12 years later, their latest release (Vista) is a warmed-over copy of Mac OS X Tiger, with its main selling point, a compositing desktop graphics engine, copied from the very first Mac OS X.
Face it, Microsoft is a perfect example of what AL calls “capturing value, rather than creating it.” They’ve never contributed to the state of the art in computing, and are directly responsible for a multitude of its woes.
Name *one* revolutionary, original Microsoft product. Just one! Everything they do is “Me too, except I control Windows so I can force everyone to use mine”.
evariste, you are confusing the idea of invention with dispersion. The genius of microsoft was bringing the technology to the marketplace in a way that _invented_ a new kind of consumer. Gates’ genius was in understanding the ramifications of the new technology for the average person, developing ways of getting it to them, and perhaps most impressively of all _convincing consumers of this._ Why didn’t IBM bring the PC to the people? Because they never thought to. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, it takes a unique kind of genius to recognize the blindingly obvious that hasnt been recognized yet.
bq. Warren Buffet is giving away 31 billion dollars, and i for one am better Bill Gates and Warren Buffet will spend their charity money more productively than the government would have, had they taxed them to death.
Buffett came by his money honestly. I have no problem with his wealth, and in fact I admire him immensely. But the real question for me isn’t “is it more utilitarian for Bill Gates to have and spend the Microsoft fortune, or for the government to have confiscated it?” Rather, it’s “how much more wealth could the personal computer revolution have created for society, had Microsoft’s unethical business practices been absent from the market?” We’ll never know what we’ve truly lost in the wreckage of Microsoft’s rampage across the technology industry, destroying companies and technologies in their insatiable lust for domination.
I just hope when the next big transformational technological wave washes over, be it biotech, nanotech, or god knows what, that no Bill Gates clone gets a chokehold on it at birth.
Glen (#13) – you’re absolutely right that the Democrats here sold the workers out for a ride in Ron Burkle’s jet (one reason I’m not unhappy to be considered a less-loyal Democrat), and about where the worst threat comes from – but the “trust fund brats” need to have their power checked by an engaged population, and when more and more of the population just doesn’t care…
A.L.
Just like that Henry Ford, Gates is sure to go down in infamy. Im sure Preston Tucker is still spinning in his grave. Toss in Thomas Edison screwing over Tesla at every turn and its no wonder we have such a corrupt, dispicable nation.
Mark—
bq. evariste, you are confusing the idea of invention with dispersion.
I respectfully submit that I am not. Microsoft didn’t popularize anything; their sole innovation in business terms was the terms of their contracts with computer manufacturers, which gave Microsoft a Windows tax/royalty on every computer they sold, whether it included Windows or not. This created their self-perpetuating monopoly money machine, and every new market they’ve entered since then was funded by their monopoly cash. If they succeeded in that market, it was because they were able to leverage their monopoly into control of it. The markets where consumers truly have a _choice_ and aren’t forced to buy Microsoft are markets where Microsoft fails, because like any stodgy monopoly, they don’t know the meaning of appealing to the consumer. Zune: failure. Xbox 360: only in second place because Sony botched the PS3 so badly, overpricing and underdelivering.
I can admire Dell’s just-in-time manufacturing and Wal-Mart’s revolutionary retail suppply chain management. These are innovations that had to do with the core business they are in. The sole source of Microsoft’s market power is in their contracts with OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), their total disregard for ethics, and their monomania for total control.
bq. Just like that Henry Ford, Gates is sure to go down in infamy. Im sure Preston Tucker is still spinning in his grave. Toss in Thomas Edison screwing over Tesla at every turn and its no wonder we have such a corrupt, dispicable nation.
Ford does live on in infamy in my book. Or at least, he has a lingering smell about him. Yes, he was a great businessman, but he was a terrible antisemite and funded the distribution of the Protocols out of his own pocket. However, he at least came by his money honestly in a free market.
It’s a true insult to Preston Tucker to compare him to Gates, because Tucker is more like Gates’s victims. He was destroyed by powerful entrenched competition before he could really get off the ground. As for Edison and Tesla, both actually invented useful things.
Supporting Microsoft is like supporting the old Ma Bell. It’s great if you like renting the telephone in your house and paying $50 to call California from New York for an hour.
PD Shaw: “OTOH, the primary beneficiary of these price reductions are the working class people who increasingly are able to afford technologies only the rich were once able to afford.”
Dustin: “If you believe that argument I’ve got a wonderfully high-tech Victorian era toilet to sell you…”
I may be missing the point of the sarcasm, but in case I wasn’t clear: Flat-screen and HDTV prices have dropped by as much as 50% and are “projected”:http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/sales-issues-could-plague-best/story.aspx?guid=%7BFA0B6A32-CC43-4267-B264-0CF1ECEDC030%7D to drop another 25% next year. Who benefits from such price drops? In a competitive business like consumer electronics, its the average consumer. Television may not be the most important sector of the economy, but “the principle”:http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2006/11/wal-mart-saves-consumers-two-ways.html has broad relevance:
bq. _One study, by the economic consulting firm Global Insight, calculates that Wal-Mart saves American households an average of $2,300 a year through lower prices, or a $263 billion reduction in the cost of living. That compares with $33 billion savings for low-income families from the federal food stamp program._
Mark, CEO salaries, like athletes’ salaries, are now based on a combination of value-added and sheer ego. Except in the case of multimillion-dollar athletes, it’s easier to judge performance. And it’s also true that the costs are a recouped very differently.
Look at it this way. What part of your trickle-down argument is inconsistent with a defense of Marie Antoinette and her lifestyle?
_”Microsoft didn’t popularize anything”_
DOS?!?!
Office?
The idea that some little start-up out of Bellvue Washington was muscling IBM into ‘forcing’ their product on them is ludicrous. Ok, so Gates ripped off Microsoft OS with Windows, but im sorry did i miss the part where Gates was sneaking in and loading windows on Macs in the dead of night? Or forcing consumers to buy PCs instead of Apple? If Windows was so awful why didnt Apple win the war? Because they were fighting the wrong battles. Like i said, Gates Genius wasn’t in invention, it was in delivering to consumers what they ultimately needed.
I dont even like microsoft products (of course i use them), much less their business practices,- but to somehow claim they cheated their way into everything they became is absurd. Nobody forced IBM to collaberate with Microsoft. If Steve Jobs had done so and recognized what the majority of consumers actually needed (as opposed to the very relavent minority that Apple has always serviced extremely well), then there would undoubtedly by OS based applications everyone on earth. But he didnt.
AL: _Because corporations like Circuit City, headed by men such as Philip Schoonover (salary $2.17 million per Forbes), lay off the 3,500 highest-paid employees and invite them to reapply for their jobs — at far lower wages._
By my math, if we eliminated Schoonover’s salary and distributed it to the laid off employees, they would each receive $620. I simply think the CEO salary thing is scapegoating.
_”Look at it this way. What part of your trickle-down argument is inconsistent with a defense of Marie Antoinette and her lifestyle?”_
Start over- what part _is_ consistant? Royal guardsmen and navy frigates dont ensure the tenure of any CEO i’ve ever heard of. I believe they generally serve at the pleasure of boards of directors, who are elected by the shareholders. Is someone with a bayonet compelling those votes? Don’t like what Circuit City has become? Buy a controlling interest. I believe _you_ are the one that seems to advocating compelling companies to do your will by force, via the government.
bq. If Windows was so awful why didnt Apple win the war? Because they were fighting the wrong battles.
Definitely…
bq. If Steve Jobs had done so and recognized what the majority of consumers actually needed (as opposed to the very relavent minority that Apple has always serviced extremely well), then there would undoubtedly by OS based applications everyone on earth. But he didnt.
…but don’t blame Jobs. He got kicked out of his company in a boardroom coup by Sculley, who proceeded to raise the prices of Macs through the roof and slowly destroy Apple as a technology company with hare-brained schemes (along with his successors in the CEO office). Now that Jobs is back, Apple is making beautiful computers that people want to use, and gaining market share fast.
bq. Like i said, Gates Genius wasn’t in invention, it was in delivering to consumers what they ultimately needed.
Consumers need Microsoft like they need a bullet in the head. Let’s talk in five years. I’ll still be using the MacBook Pro I bought last year, and it’ll still run the latest operating system from Apple. You’ll probably be on your second or third Windows machine since we had this conversation.
bq. to somehow claim they cheated their way into everything they became is absurd. Nobody forced IBM to collaberate with Microsoft.
They didn’t cheat their way into everything; a few of their coups were incredibly lucky breaks. For instance, IBM screwed up in not realizing that the potential of the PC market meant that agreeing to an exclusive Microsoft license was handing over the keys to the kingdom.
bq. DOS?!?!
Office?
They bought DOS from someone else and sold it to IBM. Office I give them full credit for; while parts of it were bought (like Powerpoint) and others derivative ripoffs (like Excel), the bundle, integration, and branding was genius. Of course, they used their control over Office (which was made for Macs first, because Microsoft’s own operating system was too crummy to run it) to bully Apple into handing over the rights to the GUI to Microsoft. With this in hand, Microsoft proceeded to develop Windows in secret, springing it on IBM, who were innocently working on OS/2 with Microsoft in good faith, believing it would be the future operating system for all PC-compatibles.
Partnering with Microsoft is lining up to be screwed. No one ever comes out of a Microsoft partnership happy. Just ask the latest screwee, their “Plays For Sure” partners.
bq. They bought DOS from someone else and sold it to IBM.
This is so imprecise as to be wrong. Sorry. What I meant was, IBM approached Microsoft about an operating system for their new PCs, and Microsoft said “sure, we already have one, sign on the dotted line” (which they didn’t). But they acquired someone else’s DOS pretty quickly, I’ll give them credit for that much.
_”They bought DOS from someone else and sold it to IBM”_
They bought it from a failing company that couldnt do anything with it. Like I said, THATS what was brilliant about Microsoft. No reason in the world that guy couldnt have gone to IBM and said, heh, lets do a deal. But he didnt. You asked what microsoft popularized, and DOS wasnt written by them but it was certainly popularized. It was a risk- IBM could have told them to take a walk and they would have been stuck with an operating system and no platform. Maybe Gates takes up break dancing. Luck is the residue of preparation and forsight in this case. Thats the point- guys that risk their livelihoods and their families future and it pays off _deserve_ to be rewarded, not jeered and told they dont deserve to have high salaries.
Your presumptuous response clarified my point quite ably Mr. Buehner. 😉
Random data points from last week:
bq. _The Labor Department reported today that employment outside the farming sector grew by 180,000 in March and that job growth in January and February was stronger than it had previously thought. The national unemployment rate also edged down last month to 4.4 percent from 4.5 percent, matching a five-year low it reached briefly in October._
bq. _Employers are not only hiring more, but they are paying more, too. The average hourly earnings for workers rose 4 percent in March compared with those a year earlier, to $17.22 an hour. The gains in weekly earnings were even stronger, up 4.4 percent, to $583.76._
“NY Times”:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/07/business/07jobs.web.html?ex=1333598400&en=fb101c276d2a9c1b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
bq. Thats the point- guys that risk their livelihoods and their families future and it pays off deserve to be rewarded, not jeered and told they dont deserve to have high salaries.
What about all the hundreds of companies that were destroyed by Microsoft? Didn’t their founders, many of whom who took the same risks and created superior products, deserve a fair chance to be rewarded? Or should outsized reward be reserved for those who got there first, entrenched themselves in a monopoly, and spent the rest of the time defending their monopoly and destroying not only all competitors, but all those who look like they might eventually one day threaten your product?
That’s exactly what Marc’s talking about with “capturing value, rather than creating it”. I have no problem with people taking risks, creating companies, creating products, and getting rich. I have a huge problem with one specific and counterexample to it, Gates, who is treated like a captain of industry when he’s more of a warlord or pirate. Microsoft is a “rent-seeking”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking monopoly. They rarely create value, but they’re great at elbowing out anyone who is and making sure that there’s no oxygen in the room for anyone but themselves. I don’t see anyone standing up to cheer for Comcast or Verizon. No one likes monopolistic or oligopolistic service providers, who can raise prices at will, practice horrible customer service, and have no viable competition because they use their influence with the government to squelch it. Microsoft is just like these companies, except that instead of using influence with the government to create stifling restrictions, they use their monopoly in the operating systems market, one that was gained illegitimately in the first place. It’s really difficult to buy a computer without Windows on it; isn’t there something wrong with that? It’s like being unable to buy a TV without being forced to pay the BBC licence fee, whether you watch BBC or not.
_”It’s really difficult to buy a computer without Windows on it; isn’t there something wrong with that?”_
Its difficult to buy a Mac? I could have a computer loaded up with Linux and Firefox to my house by tomorrow. Dell’s about to start offering Linux based PCs. Not buying Microsoft is _inconvenient._ A company that makes itself extremely convenient for consumers.. isnt that the point?
Regardless, its the governments responsibility to prevent monopolies, not the coorporations. They are _supposed_ to try cornering the market, its their function. It is governments job to stop them. Sadly our government is so bought and paid for it doesnt function in this capacity worth a damn.
bq. Not buying Microsoft is inconvenient. A company that makes itself extremely convenient for consumers.. isnt that the point?
That’s certainly an interesting way of putting it. Convenience like this, I could do without.
Don’t forget your history. Yes, it used to be difficult to buy a Mac. Since Jobs came back, to get around this, they created the Apple Store online and later started the physical retail Apple Store locations, and now it’s pretty easy for most people, but it didn’t used to be. However, Macs are a different market category of computer; they’re sold as complete systems and always have been. Apple makes both the hardware and the software. A Windows machine could just as easily be running BeOS (crushed by Microsoft), Linux, Solaris, you name it.
Well, other than for Microsoft’s contracts with the OEMs, which raised the price of Windows to them to untenable levels if they dared provide a choice of operating systems, and charged them for a copy of Windows per box they shipped, whether that box contained a copy of Windows or not.
Dell is finally daring to flout Microsoft’s dictates, _seven years_ (a lifetime in technology) after Microsoft was first officially declared a monopolist in court, because Microsoft has finally begun to be declawed by European regulators. The American DOJ let them off with less than a slap on the wrist. For once, I can point at something good that the EU is doing.
Looking at present vibrant and competitive state of the industry is no reason to let Microsoft off the hook for its past misdeeds, or whitewash their black history. We all know what Microsoft wants; it’s just becoming more and more untenable for them to exercise their will as freely as they once did. Apple is finally being led by competent product-focused management, and Michael Dell has retaken the reins at Dell to try and fix his company. How long have people been asking Dell to offer Linux? Years! Why didn’t Dell listen to its own customers? __Microsoft.__ In what way can you possibly justify Microsoft using its Windows monopoly for years to deny Dell the ability to sell its customers computers with their OS of choice on them? How can you justify “Microsoft preventing Dell, Hitachi, Micron, and Compaq’s customers from buying a computer with BeOS on it?”:http://www.birdhouse.org/beos/byte/30-bootloader/
bq. Regardless, its the governments responsibility to prevent monopolies, not the coorporations. They are supposed to try cornering the market, its their function. It is governments job to stop them. Sadly our government is so bought and paid for it doesnt function in this capacity worth a damn.
Legal doctrine in the United States is that it’s neither’s responsibility to prevent monopolies. And yes, it’s the fiduciary duty of corporations to try to attain them. There is nothing wrong with obtaining a monopoly ethically, by offering the overwhelmingly best product for the market.
What’s both illegal and unethical is using that monopoly as leverage to monopolize other markets, and using control of the monopoly to crush all competition to it. A monopoly has legal responsibilities beyond those of a company that does not have a monopoly, and cannot legally compete as ruthlessly as a company without a monopoly can, in ways that can damage the free market. This is the problem with Microsoft.
Here’s a fun little thought experiment from “John Gruber,”:http://daringfireball.net/2007/04/some_facts_about_aac more relevant to today’s Microsoft than some other examples I’ve made:
bq. Let’s imagine for one paragraph that Microsoft’s and Apple’s digital music positions were flipped: that it was Microsoft that shipped the world-changing Zune in 2001, that they had sold 100 million Zunes to date, and that Microsoft’s online music store had 85 percent market share for legal downloads — all of them protected by Microsoft’s proprietary DRM. Can you imagine, in this scenario, Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates publishing an open letter like Jobs’s “Thoughts on Music”? Can you imagine Microsoft volunteering to switch from DRM-protected songs to an unprotected industry standard file format?
bq. Me neither.
bq. Microsoft would have told EMI to stick their DRM-free tracks up their ass. And the classic Microsoft, the Microsoft with a set of balls, would have told EMI that if they wanted to sell DRM-free tracks elsewhere, at other stores, that they’d suddenly find the terms changed for their songs at the market-dominating Microsoft store.
Armed’s column reminded me of something that Dean Barnett wrote this morning about Mitt Romney:
bq.[M]y guy [Romney] also had a problem of this sort last week when he touted his hunting bona fides.
bq.I understand what Mitt was trying to do; he was trying to communicate that even though he’s an incredibly successful billionaire, he’s still a regular guy. This is true – up to a point. From my experience, there are some super-rich people who have Cezannes and Van Goghs on their walls and have a veritable retinue of grape peelers surrounding them. These people haven’t done a load of laundry, emptied a dishwasher or seen the inside of a super-market since the earth cooled. I’m not judging them, just reporting. But I think we can all agree that decadent conspicuous consumption isn’t to one’s political advantage.
bq.Now, there are other super-rich people who lead a much more modest lifestyle. They live in the same house they bought 25 years before they made a mint, they do their own laundry and pick out their own produce. The Romneys fall into the latter category. Not only do they actually live in the same house they moved into before he became so wealthy, a couple of years ago I bumped into him and his wife as they shopped at Whole Foods on the day of a blizzard. …
bq.It’s understandable why Romney would want America to know that he has this streak of normalcy running through him. But Mitt’s appeal, at least to me, isn’t because he’s regular or ordinary but because he’s exceptional.
“Here’s the link.”:http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/g/ac693dc5-c534-4cf9-a077-9e7be5c646ad
evariste, i think we’ll have to agree to disagree. I appreciate the debate though.
I like your piece. It’s an effective argument against the crassness of today’s marketplace. I don’t find it particularly radical either in you seem to suggest that we don’t need REFORM or REVOLUTION to correct it. Just, enough people to say, “hey, we don’t like your practices”…and that – could – correct it.
Same here, Mark.
Articles like this remind me how thin and few are the threads of policy that make me “conservative”.
If liberal protection extended to all, rather than abandoning the very young and anyone else who falls into the grip of a murderous system of “choice” for the relatively powerful and death for the powerless – but this will never be.
If liberal concern for common-sense economic fairness extended to a common-sense appreciation of the different priorities of young men and women, and if we were still discussing things like “a family wage” – wage policies geared to the assumption that young men must be bread-winners for families if we want to have those families – but all that has fallen by the way-side, and there is no sign that it will ever be picked up again.
If liberalism was trustworthy on defense, war and foreign policy, if it was a force that in the 21st Century reliably maintained the shield wall and the stockade against forces determined to subjugate us, against true enemies such as Communism was and Islam still is and will likely remain – but it isn’t.
What good is a political force that is for slightly greater fairness in bargaining on wages and conditions of employment, but only for isolated individuals as families will be placed under excessive pressure society-wide, and at two deadly prices?
1. We have to agree to the functioning equivalent of death camps, slaying many thousands of innocents, and cumulatively, year after year, millions.
2. We cannot defend ourselves properly against awful evils on the march, against “revolutionary justice” and gulags, against sharia and jihad.
Some good. But not enough. Never enough to take that bloody bargain.
AL/Mark —
You really are a conservative but don’t know it.
Your concern for the working class, affordable family formation, living wages, wage stagnation etc. make you conservative.
You are in no way a Liberal. You cannot be.
Liberals WANT to destroy the middle and working classes by:
1. Importing a mass of cheap, exploitable Mexican workers, to economically cleanse those troublesome working class whites and african-americans out of jobs and replace them with compliant and subservient maids and gardeners.
2. Replace middle class knowledge workers with outsourcing and H1-B visas.
3. Offer restriction after restriction on what kind of car/SUV people can buy, lightbulbs, how many miles they can fly, etc. While the “important people” jet around from mansion to mansion.
4. Offering destructive anti-family utopias designed to eliminate or destroy the nuclear family and national unity/patriotism in favor of multicultural PC elitism.
5. Eliminating critical functions of government such as public safety and law enforcement in favor or political patronage based on ethnicity that empowers ethnic criminal gangs and handcuffs law enforcement. Security is only for those wealthy enough to hire bodyguards and live in gated secure communities.
In short Liberals dream society is like Venezuela or Cuba where a Dictator for Life controls every aspect of the economic and social sphere and hands out patronage goodies for those well connected.
You can see this by looking at who Liberals are: wealthy people like Ned Lamont, or those looking to scrounge off them like Markos Moulitsas, hangers on. People concerned with wages, quality of life, etc. mostly vote Republican and live in suburbs.
Who will replace Circuit City’s workers? Cheap illegal aliens from Mexico. No doubt cheered on by Liberals everywhere. A victory for influence, power, and control by the rich, elitist Liberals (Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Fortune 500, etc.) over the common man.
Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jack Welch, Barbara Streisand, John Edwards, Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio are all Liberals. What does that tell you?
I will submit to you that you are not a Liberal, but rather a conservative who has not yet had your political awakening.
AJL (#9),
I often read the writings of the more extreme leftists and think, “Sheesh, do you really want a civil war???” Then along you come, divulging perhaps a little Too Much Information, and we get to see exactly what kind of a revolution lurks in your imagination. Chilling, very chilling…
And thanks for adding #22 so we don’t think it was just a fluke.
evariste (#26),
You grossly overestimate obsolescence in the Windows world. I’m typing this on a machine that was configured, best I can tell, in October of ’99. No, it doesn’t run the very latest version of Windows (nor would I want it to, as I might have trouble finding enough RAM of the right type, and evening if I did the max the machine will take might not be enough for the admittedly piggish XP or Vista. But it does run the very latest version of Firefox, and all the other tools I need. It also runs some of the oldest, DOS-based tools that I still occasionally use, including some from 1988. How much ’88-vintage Mac software will your Macbook Pro run?
Not that I like Microsoft’s business practices, I might hasten to add…
Kirk—I guess I wasn’t specific. On average, PCs really are replaced once every two to three years. Yes, there are exceptions, including you and me. I can keep a machine running essentially indefinitely if need be. You’re an exception because you clearly know how to take care of your machine. but a lot of Windows users, faced with spending $100 or more on a technician to repair their spyware-ridden, virus-infested PC, will opt to buy a new one for $400 instead. People treat them as disposable, for all intents and purposes.
As far as being able to run all the software you want to run: if you need to run Office 2007, which lots of people do or will soon, it only runs on XP or newer. If you need to run IE7, which you do if you’re a web developer, it only runs on XP or newer. If any games you want to play come out that require DirectX 10, you’ll have to run Vista. You seem not to need a lot of the newer stuff, which means that your machine is just fine.
Low End Mac has a “list of Macs”:http://lowendmac.com/misc/07/0122.html that can comfortably run Mac OS X Tiger. It’s pretty amazing how old of a Mac you can buy and still run Tiger. Can you get a Windows machine that old and run Vista on it?
Vintage software from 1988: well, I can run “SheepShaver”:http://sheepshaver.cebix.net/ on my Mac to run PowerPC-based System 7.5.2 (vintage 1991) software all the way up to System 9. Reaching further into the past, I can run “Basilisk II,”:http://www.users.bigpond.com/pear_computers/BasiliskII.html which runs Motorola 680×0-based software, emulating either a Mac Classic or a Mac IIx. That covers the rest of the gamut, from System zero-point-something to System 7.5. Yes, neither of those comes with the Mac out of the box, but they’re free, and the Mac gains in security when obsolete insecure APIs can just be dropped. One of the biggest problems with Windows security is that everything from the past lingers on in the operating system for compatibility.
Instead, I can just run older operating systems in a safe sandbox. That’s a tradeoff I’m willing to make.
In addition to being able to run software from every Mac System from 0.whatever to System 9, I can also choose from “several emulators”:http://www.wbwip.com/a2web/a2emul.html for the Apple II/Apple IIgs, which was an entirely different (older) platform than the Mac.
Not to mention running Windows XP and Windows Vista in Boot Camp.
Not to mention running any version of DOS, ever, any version of Windows, any version of Linux or BSD, Solaris, BeOS, you name it! under Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion.
The bottom line is that my Mac can run anything your Windows machine can, and it can also run a lot of stuff your Windows machine _can’t_, including Mac OS X. Therefore, it’s the more versatile machine! Interesting times.
I was in on the early days of the computer revolution when there were 5 or 6 major operating systems and maybe hundreds of minor ones.
Much as I hate B. Gates he did bring uniformity to the market which in turn made computers useable by other than geeks like me who could write their own drivers, port applications, and do operating system enhancements.
Gates had a network effect on the market. All to the good.
BTW any FORTH programmers among this crowd? A really good language. So dead that only a few uber geeks still use it. Instead we have the uglification of C and C++. Another network effect.
BTW Sarbanes-Oxley is killing America’s start-up culture. Another government program to destroy capital formation in the name of protecting investors. Whoop peee.
Mark/AL —
Patterico has a post up regarding Spec. Lozano, the Army Private charged with deliberately murdering the bodyguard of Sgrena, the Italian Communist Journalist ransomed for $60 million or so by the Italians.
The Army has hung him out to dry. A part time Lawyer unfamiliar with Italian Law who speaks no Italian.
NO ZILCH NADA ZERO Big Time Law Firms (including all the ones representing Gitmo killers like KSM) would get involved even when asked.
Why?
Because Lawyers are LIBERAL. They hate the common man, common cop, and ESPECIALLY THE COMMON SOLDIER. No Liberal at any time would want to defend a man like Spec. Lozano, especially as the Army has already cleared him of all wrongdoing. Terrorists responsible for planning 9/11 and cutting of Danny Pearl’s head?
Heck no problem Liberal Lawyers are lining up for that.
Part of it is that they are on the pad from “Gulf Oil Terror Sheiks”:http://junkyardblog.net/archives/week_2007_03_11.html#006504
But part of it too is that Lawyers are so Liberal they will rush to defend the terrorist, the criminal, the mobster, the OJ, etc. But would cross the street to avoid helping the common man, the cop on the beat, the soldier in the war, the man who calls in suspicious terrorist activity on the plane.
From backing Terror Imams in the sky to Blasphemy Laws in San Francisco State University against “blaspheming Islam” (College Republicans tread on Hezbollah’s flag which had “Allah” on it’s flag in Arabic) … Liberals HATE the average guy.
Evariste: yes Macs rock. I’m using one now. But nice alternative is to get a cheap Windows laptop and (if you have a second machine to connect to the internet to debug install/config issues) throw something like Ubuntu on it. Current laptops are notorious for burning out because they run so hot. PC or Mac doesn’t matter. I had a nice Office Depot Toshiba Satellite, 512 MB RAM, DVD-RW, 80 GB HD for around $500. Windows Vista Home ran like a pig on it. Ubuntu Linux installed flawlessly except for: existing internal wireless would not work, old spare Belkin PCMCIA Card worked fine, and widescreen laptop did not work so I had to re-run Xorg configuration after install to get resolution. But then I knew what I was doing and had my Spec Sheet with me. Machine runs fast and I can do almost anything.
Widows is OK but resource hoggish particularly when you add the obligatory anti-Virus.
Evariste:
You’re correct that I’ll probably be using another PC-type computer two, three years from now, and another one two, three years from that.
The difference is, I’ll still have spent less than you! ;p
Frankly, I can’t look at the computer market and imagine how you -couldn’t- take it as one of the ultimate vindications of capitalist progress. Think about it – twenty years ago, the amount of computing power I have under my desk would have represented the massed computing resources of a large research university, a cabinet department, or a multinational corporation. Now I can afford it on a student’s work/study salary and afford to have it mark time doing nothing while I type out a comment on a blog.
Or more to the point, even if we ignore the several-thousandfold increase in capabilities, the darn thing is still half the price a cheap desktop was back then.
Yeah, you have to be a little schizo on Microsoft. They really are a big evil nasty monopolist who stomps around and screws things up. But back before they were a monopoly, they hit on a really good idea – that they and a lot of other people would win if computers turned into a commodity, and they made it happen. Now I can get my dad kitted out with a system ten times as powerful as anything he’ll use it for for less money than I made today, and I ain’t rich, folks.
As to the original article, well, we’re not at anything like “let them eat cake” levels of opulence yet, and even if the median wage is stagnating, the standard of living is still keeping up. You don’t need a six-figure income to conclude that, golly gee, I can afford stuff. Not the -best- stuff, not the most stuff, but more than I need, that’s for sure.
And say what you will about the costs of things like medical care, but nowadays it’s routine to survive things that were certain death twenty years ago. The cost has grown, but the cost also reflects (at least somewhat) a genuine increase in utility.
Are things perfect? Hell no. Not even close. There are plenty of things which would make our country a better place. However, economic populism isn’t necessarily one of them. The economy is complicated, but it mostly takes care of itself if you don’t try to throw all the levers to make it do something. I’m happier with an economy that putters along with the occasional cough, than I would be with one that someone drove into a tree because they were making decisions with their gut or with their heart instead of with their wallet…
M. Simon –
I vaguely remember FORTH, the way I remember that big yellow crib toy that I could never quite get into my mouth. It was supposed to be the big coming thing for computer animation and robotics, back in the 80s. (According to people who didn’t have enough freaking foresight to realize that 2000 comes after 1999.) I never stuck around to find out; until PCs came along I’d given up computers for dead Russian novelists. It was COBOL that did me in – nearly did us all in! That blocky, verbose, inelegant so-called language for clerk-typists …
Though what all of this has to do with the dialectic of Armed Liberal’s class struggle, I don’t know.
There are three things you should avoid talking about in polite company: abortion, gun control, and PCs vs. Macs. ESPECIALLY PCS VS. MACS.
Evariste,
“You’re an exception because you clearly know how to take care of your machine. ”
Uhh, not really–I mean, I suppose I could take care of this machine, except it’s never needed any taking care of. But I suppose we ought to wind up this mostly off-topic banter! So I will, right after I note that I’m not a PC proponent, either, as I have nothing against Macs and think the Apple notebooks in particular are quite nice.
Now, the overly-detailed pictorial widgets in OS X, Vista, and to some extent XP? Terrible, horrible, and I’m sure my good friend* Jakob Nielsen has a column somewhere detailing how harmful to the user experience this kind of visual clutter actually is.
——————————
*”Good friend” is a joke–far from being a friend, I’ve never even met him. But his stuff is really good.
M. Simon;
I coded in FORTH for a bit. But it’s not dead – PostScript is FORTH, just with a bit of glitter on it and PostScript is widely used.
_Because Lawyers are LIBERAL. They hate the common man, common cop, and ESPECIALLY THE COMMON SOLDIER. No Liberal at any time would want to defend a man like Spec. Lozano, especially as the Army has already cleared him of all wrongdoing. Terrorists responsible for planning 9/11 and cutting of Danny Pearl’s head?_
Unless this is misposted from a different thread, I fail to see what this has to do with CEO’s, irresponsibility and what to do about it. It almost sounds as is you’re trying to buffer your ‘liberals are cowards’ weekly quota and just stuck this in somewhere.
#39: _Liberals WANT to destroy the middle and working classes by:_
Are you serious? Liberals are out to destroy the middle class? I don’t even know how to debate such a fallacious remark. I could dig into each of your arguments, but I fail to see the connection to the class/ceo corruption debate. Can you illustrate your arugment ON THESE ISSUES better?
You drastically mis-stated the case of the grocery workers strike in 2003.
Gabriel – really? Please explain.
A.L.
If all you had to go on for your information was the UFCW fact sheets, then I could see how you could get the jist of the strike wrong. It’s a minor point in your overall class-warrior screed, but Safeway had an $828 million NET loss in 2002, and we all know that margins in the grocery business are very low between 1.5 and 3%, the groceries make profits by economies of scale, and profit numbers for 2003 would be skewed by the strikes impact on the groceries, their ability to hire cheaper labor during that period. I tend to want to look at the bigger picture of the corporations health, instead of a single year, of course much of this doesnt take into account what the company did differently from year to year to either make or lose profits, stating income figures (much like the kooks who rail against the oil companies who lost billions over the years only to now have large profits) does little but to persuade the ignorant.
You seem to have taken the Union line in this particular case. The Unions argued that the poor bannana scanners were being unfairly asked to pay into their healthcare benefit plan, to the tune of a whopping $40 dollars a month (for some workers), when they previously paid nothing .A quick primer:
The two-tiered employee hiring is a cost savings move, given that the average salary for a grocery store worker was $19.70 an hour, I could see why they would want to do it. And honestly, if the two-tiered seniorty based pay sham is so horrid, why do the Unions use it themselves? The seniority-based salary scale is a multi-tiered arrangement that rewards people solely on the basis of longevity. What about the quality, or more specifically, the economic value, of someone’s work? What happend to “equal pay for equal work”?
The point is, business has the right to hire/fire who they want in California, they also have the right to make as much profit as they can, thats Capitalism. What urks me about people who rail on and on about CEO pay is that if they were in the same position, they would take the money too. Classism is usually pushed by people who are envious of the other class, look at England and India as perfect examples of tired class societies and look at the resentment that still simmers years after the class systems have been technically eradicated.
I’d say there is far more to be concerned about with our current Education system and its massive failings than the inequality of CEO pay and the concentration of wealth. Which does more harm to our societal fabric? Raising a nation of illiterate lemmings, or a guy spending 6000 bucks on a shower curtain? At least one of those two is contributing something to society.
I usually worry about CEO pay the same way that I worry about Pete Rose gambling on his baseball team… (ie Pete Rose making decisions that may win a single game, but to win that game may overuse pitchers in a way that prevents victories in the future).
Basically, will a CEO make decisions that temporarily drive stock higher, which increases his chances for bonues, even though that decision has a negative net effect on the company? I am by no means a business expert (many of us scientists don’t understand economics at all; those that do get rich) but one of the other problems I have heard on CEO’s is that they serve very briefly in that position sometimes as low as 6months-1 year, and are replaced at the slightest sign of stock decrease, or praised during short-term stock increases. IF this is true, and their bonuses are also tied to such a system, it creates incentives to make short-term concessions that raise the stock but can have disastorous long term effects.
By the time the ‘blank’ hits the fan, the CEO is gone (with his bonuses), but the lower income workers are stuck with the bill.
The shareholders are stuck with the bill, and if they expect their company to prosper they will correct the mistake. Everything you guys are saying is a _feature_ of capitalism, not a bug. Small hungry companies cant (and rarely do) behave like this while fat bloated ones sometimes do. This gives the little guys opportunities.
The beauty of capitalism is that every time one company screws up it creates an opportunity for someone else. What you guys are suggesting is artificially preventing a company from (in your opinion) being stupid, its the business equivalent of social promotion. And what about the company that would wildly _benefit_ from some particular CEO that has a huge price tag? Should we arbitrarily tell them tough luck? Let the next Steve Welch take up fishing? Remember, we generally only hear the horror stories. The guys that through personal skill and drive run their companies successfully and make everybody lots of money dont get much press. How do we tell those guys how much they ‘deserve’ to make? Can you put a price tag on Steve Jobs or Sam Walton?
I just dont see the sense in subsidizing mediocrity while capping brilliance. Yeh, you might ‘save’ some jobs in the short term, but jobs in a company that by definition is poorly run. Meanwhile you are artificially preventing a competitor who might be a far better boss that will employ more people with better pay from emerging.
One more example- what about lawyers? You don’t often hear about how high priced lawyers make ‘obscene’ salaries even though they sometimes lose cases. Should we impose a limit on how much a lawyer can make? Would you be ok with your lawyer if they all capped at 100k a year (or pick a number)? If you were on trial for your life, would you be comfortable with that, or would you start to think that maybe that artificial limit has syphoned off some experienced litigator that could have saved your bacon but he decided the money he was making was a joke so he’s going sailing for a few years?
Bump that up to the corporate level- I guaruntee you Circuit City and every big company shells out more to their law firms every year than they do their CEO. And they lose cases, have to settle, etc all the time. Why not pass a law saying no business can exceed 10 million dollars in legal fees a year? After all, why let these fat cat lawyers ‘screw over the little guy’? What, a cut rate lawyer cant do the same job a high priced one can?
Interesting variety of disgruntlement and all valid.
Input here from moving from Reagan era software engineering to Pharma R & D.
During 80’s Microsoft was not tied to creating the hardware and able to integrate the most useful business apps into the desktop despite the fact they were never 1st to create much of anything, but it provided a stable base for moving forward AND had a healthy 3rd part HW basis behind it. Macs had superior DTP & graphics ala SGI on 3G, but these secular markets are hard to sustain in economically choppy waters. Apple shot themselves in foot releasing hardware competition to unprepared self cannalbalising competitors that eroded their bottom line, while microsoft lawyered away sybase code to create MSSQL Server as some form of going forward in the DB wars – rest of that os history.
Moving from defense to heath care was like moving from america to some neoliberal nazi triad based on royal grading of personality traits. Their focus on where genetic discovery was headed was atrocious as they boarded the .com liquidity train. I was driven out based on being an honest and capable engineer who would not tolerate their lies. I have paid with this with the loss of my immune system while they covered up their propaganda tactics which you are all being conditioned with by commercial on a daily basis. Prior to that I ran marathons, played basketball, flag footbal, golfed, mountain climbed – but that being human part is a problem for health care. They adore the sick and the creation of bad health.
It is a neo liberal / neo conservative gulf of bi-polar conflict that has made it impossible to focus on the politics of this teardown. Hollywood jumped on board with manipulation techniques used by the uni liberals (psych groups) and escalated their formula into pure sexual sleeze and presenting to america that evry community is defective.
Uni psychs stole the computer terminology of meta analysis as they employed their stereotyping in the Pharma industry to control behavior and to aid the clintons in spin control for a country blowing up in revolt of their sleezy ways. It used to be the Nuclear family – now with Meta Analysis any problem can be seen as any thing and their services are always the solutions.
In the mean time we have all forgotten our 1 best chance for progress across this country which was proper integration of networked systems – aka Ross Perots plan whether you like “that guy” or not. Since then Google was handed the reins to take us back down the path to the same old brick and mortar we were trying to crawl out from under. You have a choice of commercial or institutional ratings or you can indulge in the eye candy diversions that used to be hidden away under our pappas beds.