The Lord giveth and the Corp taketh away

The New York Times had an article on Mary D. Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, the work the board does, and some of the opposition to the this work.  See “U.S. Climate Change Policy: Made in California”, Hiroko Tabuchi, 2017-09-27

It is amazing the corporate and “conservative” opposition to this work.  On the other hand, the comments were overwhelming in favor of clean air and the necessary regulation to obtain it.  And the profits to be made by leading the world in providing a clean environment instead of making matters worse.

Thus my title.  You would think that “conservatives” would be all in favor or preserving the clean air and water that “God gave us”.  Instead, they seem hell-bent on destroying them, bringing us back to days of heavy smog and burning rivers.

My own little comment was to a contributor who had been in China recently where pollution is endemic but the government is taking steps to improve the air quality.  I pointed out that “we the people” had enough of the pollution from backyard burning barrels.

What corporate efficiency?

“Free marketers” laud the efficiency of corporations over the inefficiency of government.  I think there is no difference between the forms.  What it depends on is management.  A good mayor or governor can get some great things done.  A lousy CEO or low-level corporate manager can make a real mess of things, such a mess as to cause death or injury.

What follows are my notes in trying to navigate vanguard.com to find a report that I was told today was available.

Vanguard site navigation

You sent me email that I had a report for Vanguard High-Yield Corporate Fund Admiral Shares Report, but you provide no direct link to it.  I finally reread the message and find that there is a link to Fund Reports.

I clicked on that but did not find Vanguard High-Yield Corporate Fund Admiral Shares listed!

Oh, there is a little drop-down box in the upper right corner that toggles between regular and admiral shares.

I toggle to admiral and then I get "Please wait".  I waited!  I went downstairs to get a snack!  I came back!  The "Please wait" box was still present.  I did something or another and got a page that asked me to log in.  But I already had a page up that had me logged in!  I am using that page, without logging in again, to send this message.

Off to try to get back to where I was ten or fifteen minutes ago.

Comment in satisfaction form

Recd msg today, 2016-09-20 of fund report for High Yield Corp Admiral.  No link given in msg.  Finally found my way to page with list of reports.  Latest report is 2016-07-xx!?!?

Also added in another part of satisfaction request: hire some good human interface people.

Follow up after signing off ins satisfaction.

Downloaded report, but Vanguard was unhappy with my Adobe Reader XI.  Report would not open, damaged.  Version is 11.0.17, undated.  Finder gives date modified as 2016Aug 5.  Checking for updates gives “Already up to date”.

End of notes.

Misfeasance and malfeasance: corporate and government

It seems the fashion for one group of people to think that government can do nothing right and that corporations always do everything right, and for another group to think that corporations can do nothing right and that the government always does everything right.  Interestingly, many in the first group think the government knows everything about invading other countries, and many in the second group are eager for the latest gadgets from large corporations.  This second group also buys books from Amazon on how bad corporations are!

This second group should consider buying books from local booksellers.  I know Duluth is down to one local bookseller, but it still has a few used booksellers.  If you do want to buy books online, try ABE Books.  It is a consortium of booksellers around the world.  You can find a whole range of prices, sometimes with free shipping.

This column was inspired by a head-banging problem on Apple’s iPhone.  About the middle of the month the weather app started giving the time for locales in the Central Daylight Time zone as five hours later.  How about sunset at 11 o’clock in the evening?

In the Apple Community Support topics, other users suggested various resets, that might or might not be disruptive to proper functioning.  I did a “soft reset” of my iPhone and it did nothing for this problem.  I and many others thought the problem was really in Apple’s own computers because the problem started happening for many users at the same time.  My post follows:

“Don’t touch that dial!

“I lay awake last night thinking about the weather app having the wrong time for the Central Time Zone.

“It occurred to me that the time given is Greenwich Mean Time.  I even got up and looked up the time in London.  It was one hour later than Greenwich Mean Time because Britain is on daylight savings time.  The British time was one hour later than the time in weather app.

“This morning I checked my wife’s iPhone.  It had the wrong weather time, and she is still on iOS 9.0.1.  I asked several people in a fitness center and they reported that their iPhone weather apps had the wrong time.  Some even reported that this started at the end of last week.

“I think what has happened is that whoever maintains the data for Apple’s weather app took off the -5 adjustment for Central Daylight Time.  So, the problem is not in your phone and no kind of reset will fix the problem.  We’ll just have to wait for somebody in Apple to put the correct adjustment on Central Daylight Time.

“Now I have to find Apple’s Feedback page and post the above to it.”

I did send feedback as did several other users.  The problem was fixed in about three days.  The squeaking wheel does get greased!

I have another iPhone problem in that my bank’s online access will not work when I use cellular data.  It either gives a cryptic error message or states that the connection could not be made.  It works fine if I use Wi-Fi.  The bank says that my provider keeps changing the IP address.  My provider states that they do not change the IP address.

How often have you been caught between corporate pointing fingers?  “Not our problem.”

If corporations can do such marvelous stuff, how come there are so many recalls?  The Volkswagen diesel exhaust problem is one of malfeasance:  knowing the problem existed and not doing anything about it.  The ignition problem with Chevrolets was a mix of misfeasance and malfeasance.  It took GM awhile to realize they had a problem and quite awhile before they acknowledged it.

If corporations are so smart, why can’t they figure out that doing something right in the first place is cheaper in the long run than cutting corners now for short-term profits?

I think in too many cases, corporations have become the broom of the sorcerer's apprentice.  They keep working away mechanically without considering the real needs of their customers.

Many who are pro-corporation relish bashing the federal government, especially the Post Office and the Internal Revenue Service.  My experience is that many government agencies, including these two, strive to do the right thing for their customers.  Unfortunately, they are undercut by those who should be supporting them as part of “Promoting the General Welfare”.

Interestingly, some of these same government bashers think that the military can do no wrong.  Have they forgotten the terms SNAFU and FUBAR were created by draftees or enlisted personnel who were fed up with the bureaucracy and the mistakes of generals and other officers?

I think these military worshipers also forget their history.  A bunch of ragtag farmers held off an imperial army for several years, mostly by avoiding combat until their general thought the situation was favorable.  In another country and in another century, a bunch of civilians kept harassing an occupying army until other countries could mobilize for an invasion to push back the occupiers.  Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent, an army of mostly peasants took horrific losses to repel that same occupying army from their country.

In the long run in case after case, it is the local people who, if they don’t prevail, will keep harassing the invaders as long as there are more to take their places.

The secret to the success of any organization is the management.  Does management come up with ideas to make its employees effective?  Does it listen to its employees and support them when they have good ideas?  Or does it “know best” and keep muddling along until another company takes away its business.  In the case of government, do the elected politicians act in a positive way to support government workers?  Or do the elected politicians do their best to belittle the workers?  We certainly are lucky to have so many thick-skinned government employees.

This was also published in the Reader Weekly, 2015-11-04 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/11/04/6189_misfeasance_and_malfeasance_corporate_and-1.

Who is doing what social engineering?

Every too often somebody writes a letter to the editor complaining that public transit is “social engineering” and “taking our cars away”.  Have they considered that building all the freeways is social engineering?

How many people lost their houses to make way for the freeways?  How many neighborhoods were separated by freeways?  How many farmers had their land taken by imminent domain?  I know, I know!  It’s eminent domain but when your land is taken it is also imminent.  Aren’t these changes to city and country social engineering?

When the freeways are first built, it becomes much quicker for many people to drive than to take public transit.  More people drive instead of taking the bus, the bus service becomes less frequent for those who don’t drive.  So to save time, more people have to buy cars.  Isn’t this social engineering?

Remember “Field of Dreams” where Robert Redford was told, “Build it and they will come.”  Well, we build freeways and they come.  Soon a four-lane freeway has to become a six-lane freeway.  Soon the six-lane is clogged and has to become an eight-lane freeway.  Where are all the people going to live as the freeways get wider and wider?  Isn’t this social engineering?

For some reason those who complain about their cars “being taken away” don’t seem to realize that the more other people take public transit the more room there is for them on the freeways.

And actually, public transit should have dedicated lines or lanes right down the middle of every freeway.  I remember driving out of Chicago on I-90 on a Sunday afternoon.  It was stop and go in three lanes in my direction.  We would move a bit and a train would catch up to us.  Then we would move forward ahead of the train.  This went on for fifteen minutes or so and the pattern was reversed.  The train would pull ahead and we would catch up.  Eventually the train was long gone and we started and stopped, started and stopped.

When I grew up in Cleveland, we walked to neighborhood stores or took the streetcar downtown.  Now most neighborhood stores and downtown stores have been closed in favor of sprawling malls in the middle of nowhere.  Sometimes the lots are so big that it takes twice as long to walk from one’s car as it did to walk to the corner store.  Isn’t this social engineering?  And it was done without a public vote!

The irony is that most social engineering is done by corporations, not governments.  When a government does “social engineering” we might have an open debate about it.  When a corporation does “social engineering”, it is done behind closed doors and often by deceit.

In the Twentieth Century we as a nation were socially engineered by a man many of us never heard of – Edward Bernays.  A nephew of Sigmund Freud, he applied many of his uncle’s ideas to manipulation of public opinion.  Supposedly he believed that “public’s democratic judgment was ‘not to be relied upon’…’so they had to be guided from above.”

He worked in the Committee on Public Information during World War I.  One task was publicizing the idea that the U.S. involvement was “bringing democracy to all of Europe.”  We had a repeat of this use of “democracy” in our own times.  “The ill that men do lives after them…”  The success of “bringing democracy” surprised Bernays, and he wondered if similar propaganda could be used in peacetime.  Rather than call it propaganda, he labelled it “public relations”.

One of his first achievements was helping the tobacco industry break the taboo of women smoking in public.  He staged a big event in New York City in which models lit up Lucky Strike cigarettes or “Torches of Freedom”.  This promotion was not done as advertising but as news!  Smoking was giving women “freedom” and “liberty”.  Two more echoes in our time: “freedom” and “liberty” are smoke screens for doing what one damn well pleases without concern for the consequences for others.

Many Americans ate a light breakfast of coffee and maybe a roll or orange juice.  He arranged for letters being sent to 5,000 doctors asking if they thought Americans should have a bigger breakfast.  About ninety percent answered saying Americans should have bigger breakfasts.  This he had published as news in papers across the country.  In parallel, he had other articles published that bacon and eggs should be part of a larger breakfast.

He believed that we would have a utopia if the inner energies of individuals “could be harnessed and channeled by a corporate elite for economic benefit.”  This idea seems to be alive and well with all the corporate claims that they will create jobs and that environmental protection and safety rules will only take away jobs.

He wrote a paper called “Engineering of Consent”:  "Any person or organization depends ultimately on public approval, and is therefore faced with the problem of engineering the public's consent to a program or goal.”  Isn’t this a description of “social engineering”?

In many ways, Bernays was value-neutral.  He protected a play in 1913 that supported sex education.  He promoted fluoridation of water to help the aluminum industry sell a by-product of aluminum production.  He hosted the first NAACP convention in Atlanta, and there was no violence.  On the other hand, he inflated the threat of communism and was instrumental in the overthrow of the elected president of Guatemala.

For lots more on Bernays see Wikipedia and “Century of Self”, a four-part BBC series.  I hope these will help you be more skeptical of what anybody says for or against any idea.  Or as in “All the President’s Men”, “Follow the Money”.  Oh, and be skeptical of the attribution of this quote.  If you do so, you might inoculate yourself against “social engineering”.

Mel considers himself a gullible skeptic.

This was also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2015-05-21 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/05/21/5311_who_is_doing_what_social_engineering

Quick correction of corporate mistakes

This noon I tried reading the eEdition of the Star Tribune.  Safari on my iPod said it couldn’t the load the page because of “too many redirects”.  No matter how many times in how many different ways, I kept getting the same result.

Come on, folks, don’t deprive me of my comics fix.  They are not as readily available as in the eEdition, the screen equivalent of the actual printed page.

I sent email to the digital access address of the paper.  Then I tried calling, but there was a wait.  Ah ha!  I’m not alone.

This was about noon today.  By sometime around three, if not before, the problem was fixed and I could read the comics again.

I did send a thank-you email.

Voting choices

As I was balancing my checkbook, I noticed that a payment that I had sent last week had not been debited to my account.  I wondered if it was corporate slowness on the part of the recipient or a less efficient postal service.  That led me to think how too many Republicans are trying to make the postal service inefficient.

From that I thought about the voter mantra of “choosing the lesser of two evils”.   Isn’t that a bit harsh?  Shouldn’t it be “choosing the lesser of two incompetents”?

Excessive Corporate Inefficiency

This afternoon I got a call from the Essentia Health Fitness Center that I have not made the annual payment for use of the facility.  We never received any notice that this was due.  Last year we were told at the reception desk, and we were able to pay there.

This year, the phone call was my first notice from anyone, Essentia, Medica, or Silver&Fit.  The administrator said we had to pay Silver&Fit directly.

Now the fun begins.

I called the 800 number for Silver&Fit.  I was told by the pleasant recorded voice that there was a very long wait.  Have you seen anything in the papers about this like you’ve seen about MNSure’s wait times?

I went to the Silver&Fit website.  When I began the registration process, it knew my address and phone number just from my name, but then efficiency disappeared.

I had to enter my birthdate in a specific format; the format was not described next to the box. I was asked to select a security question and give the answer.  I clicked “Next” and then I was told how to enter my birthdate.  But then it would not go any further until I selected a security question again.  It showed my answer, but it wouldn’t show the drop-down list again.  It said I needed to select a security question??

I gave up and started a new session.  I ran into similar problems again.  On the third try I found the form for paying by money order.  No form for check or page for using a credit card.

I gave up on that and sent an email of dissatisfaction.  At least there was a link to do so.

I went to the Medica website and managed to find a form for paying by check.

So we each filled out a form, wrote our checks, and put them in a single envelope.  That will probably screw things up at Silver&Fit.  One of us will be credited with another year’s membership and the other not.

With Congress screwing up the Postal Service, it will probably take more than three days to arrive at Silver&Fit, two more days to get to a clerk to open the envelopes, and two more days for Silver&Fit to notify Essentia Health.

It is not the form of an organization, it’s the personnel and management.  Good and bad of these are found in both government and corporations.

BTW I went to St. Louis County Auditor’s License office last week to renew my driver’s license.  The longest part was filling out the form.  Somebody waited on me right away, had me sign the form, took my money, gave me a copy, and asked me to step over to the eye exam device and the camera.  It took me longer to take off my coat than to have my picture taken.  And all this was done with cheer and courtesy.

Incomplete quoting to fit ideology

Many who want government to stay out of corporate affairs quote Milton Friedman with “The only purpose of the corporation is to maximize shareholder value.”

However, he actually had a more nuanced statement:

"There is one and only one social responsibility of business--to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud."

See “The Benefits and Costs of Social Investing”, Alex Brian, Morningstar, 2015-01-07.

Too many forget everything after “so long as it stays within the rules of the game…”

Also, who should be the arbiter of “the game”?  The Chambers of Commerce?  But Chambers interests are those of its members.  Government?  Horrors!  Who else do we have that could be “impartial”?

Note my use of “could” rather than “can”.  Too many corporations work to get government to make decisions favorable to themselves without regard to the “General Welfare” stated in the U. S. Constitution.

What we have is that the “rules of the game” as manipulated by corporate interests often lead to lots of “deception or fraud”.

Software glitch gives ambiguous headline

The following is from the Olive edition of the Duluth News Tribune, 2014-12-19:

leaderskilledinairstrikes Three top Islamic State

This is the headline given when one asks for an expanded view of an article.

Just what does is mean?

“Leader skilled in air strikes”

or

“Three top Islamic State leaders killed in airstrikes”

This kind of headline frequently appears in the Olive Editions of both the Duluth News Tribune and the Star Tribune.  The Olive Edition is the newspaper as printed with the user benefit of expanding a page or a given article.  Really neat when it works.  But too often, a page is blank for several minutes.

The irony is that both the Duluth News Tribune and Star Tribune frequently have front page stories about problems that MNSure may be having.  Granted, this garbled headline problem is a minor nuisance compared to delays in accessing MNSure, but...

Democratic capitalism is an oxymoron

Democratic means government by the people.  It is commonly understood that each person has one vote.

Capitalism is raising money for an enterprise with the contributions of a few people or thousands of people.  Each contributor of capital to the enterprise has as many votes as the number of shares he or she holds.  One can argue that this is fair; the person who put one million dollars into the company had a greater interest than the person who put one hundred dollars into the company.

In practice, capitalism becomes distorted to the rule of a few.  Capitalism leads to a plutocracy both in the enterprise and in the various governments.

In the enterprise, members of the board periodically award themselves and the top executives shares in the enterprise, thus increasing the number of votes they have, at no or low cost.

In government, the executives and other large shareholders put a lot of money into lobbying government for laws in their favor and into campaigns of political candidates who they believe will be sympathetic to their interests.  Regular readers of this blog know what Adam Smith thought of that influence.  See "The Invisible Adam Smith".

Capitalism, when there are many companies with similar focus, is a very good idea.  It means that there are many people working on bringing new or lower cost products to the market.  This doesn't mean that government can't produce good ideas; it just does not have enough resources to produce as many good ideas as are needed.  And often government is needed to encourage good ideas in certain fields or to curtail bad ideas that are harmful to the public.  In fact, corporations fall all over themselves to get government contracts to build roads or build more lethal weapons.

You might be able to come up with a better blended phrase that reflects the need for both democracy and capitalism.  My best shot today is balance of democracy and capitalism.  Now the next question is: when will this balance be achieved?

Whistleblowers deflate bloated bureaucracies

There are those who think Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning have betrayed trust, and there are those who think they exposed excessive and misguided government actions.

Although an organization depends on all involved following certain rules, what should an honorable person do when he or she feels that the organization is working against the public interest?  Will reporting the problem up through the hierarchy eventually solve it?  Or will somebody block it?

In more mundane terms, think of all the problems you have had with products and services.  If you report them to the company or organization, do you really believe that you will find a champion who will right what you think is wrong?  If you think that the reported wrong will be righted, take a peek at support boards of products.  There are some problems that have been going on for years and haven't been fixed yet.

For a better look at this problem in far worse situations than inefficient software, see "The Banality of Systemic Evil", Peter Ludlow, New York Times, 2013-09-15.

A bureaucracy develops own set of rules to function "smoothly".  Think of the bureaucracy of the Titanic.  From the president of White Star Lines to Captain Edward Smith down to deck hands.  Each person had a certain set of responsibilities, but almost none of them had all the information they really needed.  Were they ready to listen to any warning advice?  Was anybody willing to report upward anything that was amiss for a safe voyage?

Did anybody make a big fuss about forward observers not having adequate lights?  Did anybody question the command "women and children only" in the partly full lifeboats?  Did anyone question the locked doors trapping steerage passengers?

Patriotism is the ultimate "bureaucracy".  Not enough of us question why we are using military force.  It is considered unpatriotic to question the government in times of war.  Amazingly, many "patriots" don't think the government can run a post office or devise regulations to protect the public.  But few of them consider that "snafu" is a military term started by the troops.  See "Military Slang", Wikipedia.

Some have said true patriots are those who resist supporting military action.  I'll leave it to you to decide whether Snowden and Manning are patriots or scoundrels.

Corporations are efficient…at hiding problems

Admittedly, many corporations are run quite well and are open about their products and their effect on customers and the environment.

But those who extol corporate efficiency over government efficiency should seriously consider the malfeasance and ineptitude of many companies like Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) whose Fukushima nuclear power complex is rapidly poisoning our planet.  Talk about externalities being covered in a "free market", not!

Now the Japanese government has taken over management of the containment, citing the among other things TEPCO's "Whack-a-mole" approach, inadequate monitoring, and faulty record keeping.  The president of TEPCO, Naomi Hirose said, "We are very grateful that we are getting government support".  He didn't mention all the government subsidies to even get the facility started and running.

It's Adam Smith all over again: this "order… has deceived and oppressed the public."

See "TEPCO 'Whack-a-Mole' Means Government Takeover in Fukushima", Yuji Okada, Takashi Hirokawa, and Jacob Adelman, Bloomberg, 2013-08-26.

Unlimited with restrictions: corporate doublespeak

Ad on Facebook:

Want to be Unlimited
sprint.com
Switch to Sprint for unlimited data, text and more.  Restrictions apply.

Duh!  If there are restrictions then the service cannot be unlimited!

I have Virgin Mobile on my iPhone, which uses Sprint towers.  True, I don't worry about how many phone calls I make, how many people send me unsolicited texts, and how often I am online.  In fact, accessing the web with the iPhone through a tower beats using sporadic wi-fi hotspots.

On the other hand, Sprint has dead spots where one wouldn't expect them, like on I-35 at mile 175 between Duluth and the Twin Cities.  That is a restriction and a limitation.

If corporations are people, tax them like people

When I lived in Europe, as a U.S. citizen I had to file and pay U.S. income taxes.  I received credit for any foreign taxes I paid.  If I paid more foreign taxes than I would have paid for the same salary in the U.S., Univac reimbursed me for the difference.  Of course, that reimbursement was also taxable in the U.S.

I think this still holds.

However, a U.S. company doesn't pay any taxes on its foreign earnings unless it brings the money back to the U.S.

If a corporation is a person, then it should pay taxes like a person.  If a corporation is not a person, then it should not be able to indulge in "political speech".

But if this leads to justification for not paying taxes, then consider that the corporation uses a lot of infra-structure paid for by taxes.  Should not a corporation pay for the roads that it depends on for moving goods and people?  Should not a corporation pay for the court system that it uses to sue others: corporations and people?  Should not a corporation pay for the military that protects its interests around the world?

Is this effort to avoid corporate taxes another instance of the deception and oppression of the public that Adam Smith warned about?  See "The Invisible Adam Smith".

Private vs. Public, No Clear Answer

Many people are calling for the privatization of almost everything: schools, utilities, prisons, armies, and more.  They claim that a private corporation will be more efficient than a government operated entity.  The skeptic should ask what is meant by efficiency and what other values would be lost with privatization.

For example, if a private company operates a prison will a lower cost per prisoner come with a lower cost for security?

If a private company operates something, will it be calling for less regulation, regulations that could be protecting public safety and public health.  For example, BP was state-operated for a long time, and then Margaret Thatcher privatized it.  Apparently the deadly accident rate has gone way up because costs were cut to keep profits way up.

If private schools take away selected students from public schools, will the students left have fewer role models for success?  Many "failing" schools do graduate successful students.

Regardless of the form of an organization, three ingredients are needed for success: clear goals, management that understands those goals, and sufficient resources to meet those goals.

For more, see "When Public Outperforms Private in Services", Eduardo Porter, New York Times, 2013-01-15.  See also the book that he mentions, "The Org: The Underlying Logic of the Office" by Ray Fisman and Tim Sullivan.

Another inefficient corporation

When I bought my iPhone in September, I cancelled my Verizon Wireless account in favor of Virgin Mobile.  I was told at the time by the Best Buy representative that I would have a cancellation fee of around $80 from Verizon.

When Verizon notified me in early October that I had an online statement, I thought I would pay that cancellation fee.  Ha!  Even though the statement showed an outstanding balance of $89.46, in the "Pay Bill" section, the amount was $0!  The site wouldn't even let me pay the true balance online with my debit card.  The site did say I would get a paper statement.

The due date was October 23, and so I had plenty of time to get the paper bill and write a check. And the paper bill did not come, and it did not come.  Finally, about October 22, I looked up the phone number for "Contact Us".  The woman that responded said that I could pay at such and such URL.

Surprise, at that URL I could pay, and I could pay with a debit card.  I did and the payment has cleared my bank.

Yesterday, October 29, six days after the payment had been due, I received the paper bill.  The paper bill states that I owe $89.46!

From my posts about Netflix, you know the Postal Service can provide next day service.  If the sending post office is not within a day's drive of Duluth, Netflix states a DVD will be delivered within 3-5 days.  If memory serves me right, the actual delivery is 2-3 days.

The Verizon bill was dated September 28.  The only mail that takes over a week to arrive is mail that gets mis-delivered, stuck in a crevice somewhere, or is never sent promptly by the sender.  I will go with the last.  Is this a deceptive practice to hit me with a late payment fee or is this extreme inefficiency.  I think the latter.  Of course, if I were actually late with a regular payment, Verizon or many other vendors would promptly charge me with a late payment charge.

Thank you to Netflix, Best Buy, and many others for giving me counter-examples that show corporations can provide efficient customer service.  It just goes to show that the management/ownership form of any organization doesn't predict its efficiency or effectiveness; the real guide is the kind of people in the organization – from top to bottom!

Some business people in Superior, Wisconsin don't believe in free markets

One of the conditions of a classical free market is the ability to enter and leave the market at any time.

Many are faulting a homeowner in Superior, Wisconsin for not selling to a supermarket chain that wants to build a new store.  See "One homeowner holds up construction of new Superior Super One", Shelley Nelson, Duluth News Tribune, 2012-08-31.http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/241725/

Shouldn't the company have made sure that all the homeowners were willing to sell before buying any of the properties?  Many say the homeowner is holding up progress and should accept the very generous offer above and beyond "fair market value".  But are all values measured in dollars and cents?

The end result will most likely be that his house will be taken by imminent domain and at a price far less than the maximum he was offered.  I know, I know, it's "eminent domain", but unless you are a large corporation with deep pockets, the result is imminent.  Remember Best Buy versus Lindahl Oldsmobile in Richfield, Minnesota?  Lindahl Olds and many homeowners were forced out.

The Corp giveth and the Corp taketh away

I thought this parody of Job 1:21 might be original with me.  I found only two references in my first try, both in reference to the Army Corps of Engineers and New Orleans.  When I broadened my search to "the corp gives", I found 17,000 references, some of them with my meaning of Corporation.

I thought of this phrase as I was working with macros in Excel 2011 for the Mac.  Microsoft took away macros in Excel 2008 and put them back in Excel 2011.  But the macros that worked in Excel 2004 don't always work in Excel 2011.

Also, when I plugged my iPod into my Mac, iTunes would automatically be launched.  iTunes would then begin syncing my iPod.  This was true even with OS X Lion.  Then in some version of iTunes the auto load/synch stopped.  I have to start iTunes myself.

This certainly is just an annoyance compared to Job's problems, but one would think the "free market" could provide a more consistent and efficient experience for its customers.

Think of the complaints if this corporation were the government

On Thanksgiving morning, I went to the corner to get the Duluth News Tribune and the Star Tribune. Instead of copies of the DNT, there was a sign that the DNT was available only at convenience stores. Well, this is not convenient to me because the nearest convenience stores are about a mile away.

So, we reversed our normal order of newspaper reading and read a large part of the Star Tribune first.

We were going to our cabin and planned to buy a few things at the supermarket, and so we would get the DNT there. Surprise, they had none. I asked the head cashier about this, and she said they had a call in but it hadn't been returned.

I needed gas anyway and stopped at a gas station/convenience store. I put fifty bucks of gas in the tank and pulled out $51 to pay for the gas and the newspaper. Inside I picked up a DNT thicker than the normal Sunday paper. The clerk warned me that was only the ads and the real newspaper was in a different stack. I picked up a normal size paper and left the want ads behind; we would only put them directly in the recycle stack at home. I went to the register to pay for the gas and the paper, and the clerk told me I needed to pay another dollar. The Thanksgiving Day paper was two dollars!!!

Can't Forum Communications, the publisher of the DNT, live within its means? Shouldn't the advertisers be paying for all the extra paper and printing? Is Forum Communications being efficient by having all the ads left behind for the clerks to clean up?

How loud would the complaints be if any government agency suddenly doubled a fee or a tax? How loud would the cries of government waste be if an office threw out such a huge percentage of paper?

I bet we won't see any letters to the editor about this Thanksgiving waste, but we will continue to see letters about government living within its means. A while ago I asked Chuck Frederick, the opinion page editor, if he had gotten any letters about the 33-1/3% increase of the DNT (75 cents to one dollar). He replied, "Haven't gotten any letters about our price increase. Shh!" I read his reply with a smile. What else can he say? He probably has very little input into pricing decisions.

It is amazing what companies can get by with in price increases but governments are heavily criticized for the same or even smaller increases. People are complaining vociferously about property taxes going up about $100/year, but there are no published complaints about the cost of a newspaper going up $104/year.

Another wasteful practice of Forum Communications, that may or may not continue, is providing two copies of the weekly Budgeteer News to some of its customers. For as long as we've lived in Duluth, a free copy of the Budgeteer News has been thrown on our porch on every Saturday. A few weeks ago Forum Communications started putting it in the DNT delivered to the boxes. What need do I have for two copies of the same paper, of which I throw out two-thirds without even looking at?

I don't know if the doubling up will continue or not. There was no Budgeteer on our porch Saturday, and the Saturday DNT didn't contain it. However, there were some stories posted on the Budgeteer web site on Friday. Were there not enough articles to publish this week? We'll probably never know; corporations don't have to have the transparency that we demand from government (and often don't get).

Update: 2011-11-27 16:00 - Sometime after eight o'clock this morning, the Duluth Budgeteer was thrown on our porch. I just noticed a few minutes ago. I'll see next Saturday if the DNT resumes the double publication of the Budgeteer.

Update: 2011-11-27 18:03 - Paragraph about $100/year for tax/price increase added.

Quote of the day - a new four letter word

I was chatting with Bill Bastian, a well-known Duluth tenor, at a fund raiser for the Lake Superior Chamber Orchestra. When we touched on politics, he said that "corporation" has become a four-letter word to him.