Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead
I was never a Deadhead but the MBA in me perked up at this article’s title in The Atlantic. Not one to tinker with perfection, I kept it for this blog post.
Who knew?
The Dead incorporated and pulled board members from the band, its road crew and other members of their organization. They rotated the CEO position.
The ran a profitable merchandising division and “peace and love notwithstanding did not hesitate to sue those who violated their copyrights.”
They made the strategic decision to let fans tape their shows, which on one hand gave away recording revenues, but on the other, widened their audience. They figured (rightly) that “a ban would be unenforceable, and anyone inclined to tape a show would probably spend money elsewhere, such as on merchandise or tickets.”
A management professor quoted in the story called the Dead’s approach “strategic improvisation,” and observed that people are eager to attend his lectures on the band. “People are just so tired of hearing about GE and Southwest Airlines.”
It’s one of the most profitable bands of all time.
John Perry Barlow, the group’s lyricist cum-Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, observed
What people today are beginning to realize is what became obvious to us back then — the important correlation is the one between familiarity and value, not scarcity and value…if I give my song away to 20 people, and they give it to 20 people, pretty soon everybody knows me, and my value as a creator is dramatically enhanced.
So perhaps it’s karma, not just deliciousness, that made Wavy Gravy and Cherry Garcia bestsellers for Ben & Jerry’s?
Prompts for Professionals
- If you’ve read this far, it probably has something to do with the novel nature of the subject. Try something refreshing for your next blog post or newsletter.
- The article said that the band pioneered ideas and practices that have been embraced by corporate America, most famously the Dead’s intense focus on its most loyal fans. Ask your blog or newsletter readers what they would like you to do in addition to or instead of what you’re doing for them now. If you don’t, someone else will.
- The University of California at Santa Cruz is curating the band’s archive of commercial recordings, videos, press clippings, stage sets, business records and correspondence using a form of crowdsourcing. They’ll post as much as possible online and let Deadheads contribute what they know about the items. If you don’t have a blog, get one and start crowdsourcing best practices, war stories, whatever. If you work at it, your blog could become the go-to place for existing and prospective clients to search for answers and community. I do this with my occasional posting of WORST communications practices by financial professionals — people inevitably chime in.
An Effective Apology
I remember when my elder son was about four or five and learning to say all the wrong things. One day he stomped into my room, ranting a string of expletives about his brother. He stopped mid rant, clapped his hand to his mouth, looked me in the eye and said “I’m sorry, Mom, my mouth was on fire.”
It’s hard to keep a straight face in situations like that.
Today’s agitated world creates situations ripe for effective apologies — from public officials and CEOs, to neighbors and family members — yet we too often find ourselves at a loss for how to give apologies earnestly or accept them graciously. Next time you need to apologize, turn to John Kador’s book and blog.
I had the good fortune of talking to John last summer and have heard him interviewed on this topic. He’ll show you how and why leaders who willingly and skillfully apologize make more money, enjoy longer careers and create stronger relationships than those who don’t.
Until you get your hands on the book, remember the Five Rs of an apology: recognition, responsibility, remorse, restitution and repetition.
Prompts for professionals
- John Kador says that some kinds of apologies make the situation even worse. If you’ve ever perpetrated a harmful apology, how can you turn the situation around? For example, let’s say your client left a trade request on voicemail — something your message reminds them not to do — and their trade wasn’t executed. Did you say something like “I’m sorry you didn’t follow the directions on my voicemail to call my assistant instead of leaving the request on my phone”? I bet that didn’t go over very well because it was a criticism wrapped in the language of apology. Perhaps something like this would be more effective: “I know you lost money because that trade wasn’t executed. I feel awful about it. If I had received your voicemail in time I would have called you back and perhaps been able to minimize your loss. While I can’t make you whole on this transaction, I can assure you that if you (take this action) in the future, we can get your trade executed on time.”
- Is there a chance you can break a stalemate with an apology? Something like “Ever since (the event) our relationship has been strained. Although there’s been a lot of water over the bridge since then, I want to acknowledge that if I had it to do over again I would have treated you better. I hope you’ll accept my apology for (ignoring your phone calls/blaming you/etc.). Although I can’t wipe away the past, I’d like to ask if you will give me another chance to work something out. If you do, I promise to (return your calls/refrain from blaming/etc.).”
- Is there a situation where your company has taken a stand you disagree with and you’re caught between it and a customer? Is there a way you can apologize and accept some of the blame instead of throwing your company under the bus?
Banker Motivation
As I mentioned in December Book Lust I’m reading Dan Pink’s new book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. The book’s publisher had perfect timing, with January’s headlines of banker bonuses and the prospect of taxing TARP recipients.
There’s a lot of hand wringing about what will happen to the entire economy if the financial sector is reined in:
- Will “under paid” (therefore presumably under qualified) bankers screw up the economy?
- Will all the good financiers move to hedge funds, leaving our big banks in the hands of a bunch of brain-dead drones willing to work for a mere 25x their average company worker’s wage?
- Is limiting banker compensation the last nail in capitalism’s coffin?
And then there’s the rumor that Goldman Sach’s Lloyd Blankfein will be taking a $100m bonus for 2008’s work. That’s in contrast to the US Census Bureau’s report that the average 2008 per capita income was just under $27k. I don’t think the feudal lords of the dark ages made those multiples.
Before jumping in with Drive’s analysis of human motivation, I’ll let The Daily Show guide us down memory lane with those to whom much was given and nothing was demanded:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c |
| The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission-Team | |
The evolution of motivation
Mr Pink says Motivation 1.0 centered around survival. Sometimes survival meant stealing a meal or a spouse but eventually the human species figured out that cooperation was a less painful, more humane way to conduct ourselves, and Motivation 2.0 came into being.
Motivation 2.0 centered around punishment and reward and “it is so deeply embedded in our lives that most of us scarcely recognize that it exists.”
Despite its greater sophistication and higher aspirations, Motivation 2.0 still wasn’t exactly ennobling. It suggested that, in the end, human beings aren’t much different from horses — that the way to get us moving in the right direction is by dangling a crunchier carrot or wielding a sharper stick. But what this operating system lacked in enlightenment, it made up for in effectiveness. It worked well, extremely well. Until it didn’t.
The Seven Deadly Flaws of Carrots and Sticks:
- They can extinguish intrinsic motivation
- They can diminish performance
- They can crush creativity
- They can crowd out good behavior
- They can encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behavior
- They can become addictive
- They can foster short-term thinking
This is not to say that carrots and sticks are always bad
Drive has a chapter on circumstances where punishment and rewards work very well, thank you very much. But we’re headed full gallop into Motivation 3.0, which recognizes that while people are at times profit maximizers (and therefore extrinsically driven), we are also “purpose maximizers,” which means we’re motivated intrinsically as well.
For the word lovers among us, “purpose maximizers” has its own Latinate descriptor: Homo Oeconomicus Maturus (Mature Economic Man).
Bruno Frey, an economist at the University of Zurich says “Intrinsic motivation is of great importance for all economic activities. It is inconceivable that people are motivated solely or even mainly by external incentives.“
Mr Pink lists several highly successful business people who are driven by intrinsics to achieve and even asks us to ponder whether the intrinsically-motivated Warren Buffett and Oprah Winfrey are any less economically successful than Jeff Skilling and Donald Trump (whom most would agree are Motivation 2.0 poster boys).
What about the bankers?
Americans are stuck in Homo Oeconomicus (Economic Man) mode, instead of Homo Oeconomicus Maturus mode. We aspire to big bucks ourselves, so while there’s still a chance we can make the current system work for us, we’re loathe to reform it. I think this is why we didn’t DEMAND taxpayer representation on the boards of the organizations we taxpayers saved from the ash heap in October 2008. That, plus the fact that the moneyed class and the politicians they own have convinced us that we should fear big government more than big business (or perhaps anything else).
We’ve seen what extrinsically motivated bankers can do for society. I’m sure we can find some Homo Oeconomicus Maturus boards and managers out there — aren’t they the ones running credit unions?
Maybe Sir Richard Branson could bring “Virgin Money” to the US, too. The CEO (a woman!) says “Our aim is to make ‘everyone better off’ in the way we do business by offering good value to customers, treating employees well, making a positive contribution to society and delivering a growing profit to shareholders. Our approach to banking is founded on developing a sustainable, savings-based business.”
Finally, I’m not in a position to judge whether Lloyd Blankfein believed himself when he declared that his firm does “God’s work.” Stephen Colbert seems to have an answer to that question:
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c |
| Goldman Sachs Does God’s Work | |
Because You Can’t Spell Gold without G-O-D
The goddess Juno Moneto from whose name "mint" and "money" are derived
In our current frenzy for certainty in an uncertain world, gold is back in the news. Time for a little context on the current gold rush, starting with a tale from antiquity:
A man who wanted riches dutifully installed a money god in his home altar. He prayed to it for hours every day. His knees ached and his forehead bore a bruise from his repeated prostrations. He persisted in the fanatical belief that he was on the true path to prosperity despite the daily worsening of his situation. One day he flew into a rage with the god for all the time he’d wasted, picked up the little clay god and smashed it on the altar board, revealing a cache of gold coins.
The moral? I’ve heard a few including:
- We must slay our conceptions to achieve a breakthrough
- Praying for money brings us to rage and despair
- Money can be hidden in plain sight
- Go deep inside religion/a spiritual path to find true prosperity
The Wizard of Oz: an American tale of gold?
The last time I gave gold any thought was business school ten years ago when my micro-economics prof told us that some people considered The Wizard of Oz to be an allegorical story about America and the gold standard. BBC News summed up this story, reminding us that Judy Garland’s ruby slippers were a departure from the silver slippers of Baum’s original tale, which some believe represented the promise of a dual gold-silver standard.
Baum published the book in 1900, just after the US emerged from a period of deflation and depression. Prices had fallen by about 22% over the previous 16 years, causing huge debt.
Farmers were among those badly affected, and the Populist political party was set up to represent their interests and those of industrial labourers.
The US was then operating on the gold standard – a monetary system which valued the dollar according to the quantity of gold. The Populists wanted silver, along with gold, to be used for money. This would have increased the US money supply, raised price levels and reduced farmers’ debt burdens.
CHARACTER SYMBOLISM
Dorothy: Everyman American
Scarecrow: Farmer
Tin Woodman: Industrial worker
Lion: William Jennings Bryan, politician who backed silver cause
Wizard of Oz: US presidents of late 19th Century
Wicked Witch: A malign Nature, destroyed by the farmers’ most precious commodity, water. Or simply the American West
Winged Monkeys: Native Americans or Chinese railroad workers, exploited by West
Oz: An abbreviation of ‘ounce’ or, as Baum claimed, taken from the O-Z of a filing cabinet?
Emerald City: Greenback paper money, exposed as fraud
Munchkins: Ordinary citizens
A post-Depression history of gold prices
With a new gold rush in the news I wanted some historical context, which I plucked selectively from USAGold.
April 5, 1933: President Roosevelt, acting under the sweeping authority passed to him by Congress on March 9, invoked his authority to make it unlawful to own or hold gold coins, gold bullion, or gold certificates. The export of Gold for purposes of payment was also outlawed, except under license from the Treasury.
January 31, 1934: President Roosevelt fixed the weight of the Dollar at 15.715 grains of Gold “nine-tenths fine”. The Dollar was thereby devalued from $20.67 to one troy ounce of Gold to $35.00 to one troy ounce of Gold – or 40.94%. The Treasury, which had become the possessors of all the nation’s Gold on the previous day, saw the value of their Gold holdings increase by $US 2.81 Billion. The Treasury now “owned” the Gold, and no one else inside the U.S. was allowed to own any Gold except by the express permission of the Treasury.
Bretton Woods in July 1944: The new ratio of $US 35 was adopted and the U.S. Dollar was made the world’s Reserve Currency. The now international ratio of 35 U.S. Dollars to one troy ounce of Gold lasted until August 15, 1971.
January 1961: Shortly after President Kennedy was Inaugurated and newly-appointed Undersecretary of the Treasury Robert Roosa suggested that the U.S. and Europe should pool their Gold resources to prevent the private market price of Gold from exceeding the mandated rate of $US 35 per ounce. Acting on this suggestion, the Central Banks of the U.S., Britain, West Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg set up the “London Gold Pool” in early 1961.
The Pool came unstuck when the French, under Charles de Gaulle, reneged and began to send the Dollars earned by exporting to the U.S. back and demanding Gold rather than Treasury debt paper in return. Under the terms of the Bretton Woods Agreement signed in 1944, France was legally entitled to do this. The drain on U.S. Gold became acute, and the London Gold Pool folded in spring of 1968.
January 1975: After 42 years, it again became “legal” for individual Americans to own Gold. Anticipating the demand, the U.S. Treasury in particular and many other Central Banks sold large quantities of Gold, taking large paper profits in the process.
July 1979: Paul Volcker was appointed as Fed Chairman while gold continued to surge, hitting $400 in October. While this was happening, Mr Volcker was attending a conference in Belgrade. There the assessment was made that the global financial system was on the verge of collapse. When Mr Volcker returned to the U.S. from Belgrade, he took a momentous step. He announced that the Fed was swiching its policy from controlling interest rates to controlling the money supply.
I worked at a jewelry store in 1980 and learned how to spot-price our gold merchandise because it was a waste of time to affix labels to the inventory. U.S. interest rates skyrocketed. As they rose, the dollar first slowed it’s descent, then stopped falling, and then began to rise. Both the public and the investment community which had stampeded into Gold was lured back into paper by this huge rise in interest rates – and by the prospect of a higher U.S. Dollar. The threat of financial meltdown was averted, but at a cost. The U.S. Prime rate hit 20% in April 1980 and stayed there (with a brief dive in mid-1980) until the end of 1981. There was a rush out of Gold and back to Dollars.
Once interest rates began to come down, in early/mid 1982, the choice of where to put the Dollars faced investors once more. The initial solution was just as it had been in the 1970s. The Dow took off – rising from 776 to almost 1100 between mid August 1982 and late January 1983. Gold fell $105 in the last four trading days of February 1983. As it fell, the Dow broke above the 1100 point level for the first time. The long bull market in stocks, and the long stagnation of Gold, had begun.
Post-meltdown gold rush
Fast forward to 2010 with stories about home parties where a jeweler brings in scales to buy party goers’ jewelery. What gives? As investor Jim Gobetz said to me, “Gold is traditionally (at least in the age of fiat currencies) a hedge against inflation.” Problem is, in certain circles, the fear mongering is unavoidable, deafening and self-serving. Take Glenn Beck’s hucksterism, as exposed on The Daily Show:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |
| Beck – Not So Mellow Gold | ||
|
|
||
If you prefer something more buttoned down, PBS’s NewsHour did a thorough job examining the current gold rush.
Gold as a sure thing
Gold investor Bob Chapman recently said “Gold and silver are the only real way to protect against financial calamity and offer possibilities for profit simultaneously.”
Really? If so, why are gold promoters letting the rest of us in on the security? Because they want to sell us something and make money on our insecurities. If gold really offered true protection, guys like Beck and Chapman would be hoarding — not promoting.
In The Secret Life of Money, I learned a lot about the history of money, including its many forms, from seashells and porpoise teeth to tobacco and beaver skins, to, of course, gold. Author Tad Crawford tells stories of how belief in the value of something transcends rationality, and sometimes, practicality.
For example, the Yap people of Micronesia used giant limestone discs for currency. These discs were so difficult to transport that eventually people left them in place with the communal understanding of who truly possessed the “wealth.” So isn’t gold similarly “accepted” as valuable despite its impracticalities as a currency? Do we really expect to carry bullion around? And do we want to carry a beaker of acid with us every day to test the purity of coins and bullion exchanged for goods and services? If we all believe gold is the only ultimate thing with intrinsic and everlasting value, then it is. It’s our belief that matters.
Crawford’s book discusses at great length the connection between money and the divine, from the ancients who minted coins with faces of divinities (see Juno Moneta at the top of the post) to the practice of stamping “In God We Trust” on American currencies since 1864. ”If the phrase means nothing, perhaps we should put ‘In the Federal Reserve We Trust’…In times of recession and depression, this slogan offers a way to understand why money fails us. Money, although a secular tool, requires our belief in the richness of a divine power.”
I think times like these serve the purpose of reminding us of how uncertain life really is. We middle-class Americans thought we’d somehow transcended subsistence issues like food and shelter, but the meltdown has driven record numbers of Americans onto food stamps and out of their homes. We thrash about for something certain and land on gold — the modern analog of a Micronesian Yap’s limestone.
Security is a head game — as JM Keynes reminded us, “In the long run, we’re all dead.”
Weighing in on the gold rush with some spiritual advice is Baha’u'llah, the Prophet-Founder of the Baha’i Faith:
Busy not thyself with this world, for with fire We test the gold, and with gold We test Our servants.
Low-Jargon Financial Blogs & Newsletters
I write blogs and newsletters for attorneys, advisors and accountants. These professionals often need to provide complex information without making their clients’ eyes glaze over.
Professionals with compliance/malpractice concerns too often navigate the middle of the road where nothing meaningful is communicated. Some admit they hope readers will pick up the phone and call for clarification “on the clock.” Bad strategy.
Everyone faces this challenge of writing thorough-yet-understandable communications from time to time. Here are writing tips for newsletter or blog writers who aspire to communicate without using jargon on one hand, or dumbing down the message on the other.
It’s a conversation, not a treatise
- Provide links to jargon, technical definitions and 50-cent SAT words like “treatise.” This way, everyone can get as much info as they need on their own and your writing doesn’t bog down
- Don’t mistake your articles for term papers!
- Use headers, bolds and links to enable (gasp) skimming
- Avoid passive voice; use active voice
- Write to the appropriate reading level of your audience
- Run your copy through a fog index calculator (tells the number of years of education needed to understand what you’ve written)
- If you use Google Docs, click Tools>Word Count and find the analysis at the bottom
- You’re not a professor
- Don’t try to tell everything you know about the subject. Pare it down to the essentials
- For weighty topics, write a series of short articles
- Provide an intro to the topic in your newsletter and link to your blog/elsewhere for details. If you can find a video (or make one yourself) your audience will be grateful. Here’s how one of my clients does it
- Leverage industry videos and handouts (be sure to comply with licensing and copyrights)
Engage readers
- Invite them to leave comments and comment on those of others
- Offer a free worksheet to help them apply the information to their lives — invite them to review the information with you off the clock, if appropriate
- Ask readers to weigh in on a topic by linking to a survey that gives them the option to see how their answers compare to those of other respondents
- Poll readers for future articles on similar/related subjects
Brains need variety
-
This infographic is from a parody site
Use stories – our brains are wired for stories -and people “find” themselves in them.
-
Use case studies for the same reasons
-
Link to a narrated presentation deck or video to stimulate the story-receptive part of readers’ brains. One of my clients does this very well
-
Use infographics or produce your own charts and tables. FlowingData is a great resource to learn about them and you might find one to use there
What techniques have you or others used to make complex information digestible? What have you seen out there that turns you off?
Die Broke Blogger
Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls ~Joseph Campbell
This month I began blogging on small business and the meltdown on the Die Broke blog, part of the StockTwits network. My focus is helping small business owners deal with creditors, the IRS, family members and their own inner demons.
What qualifies me for this assignment? Personal experience.
Since shuttering the industrial cleaning businesses in 2007 I’ve continued to deal with creditors (including friends and family), the IRS and a loss of face. I’ve learned a great deal about financial law, pondered business ethics and done a lot of navel gazing.
It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure ~Joseph Campbell
I won’t chronicle the whole debacle here…it will unfold over time over on Die Broke. But I will say that my entrepreneurial “failure” freed me to pursue the writing career I was always told would never be mine. How? Janis Joplin’s raspy lyric explains it best: Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.
In 2008, with no money to invest in a different company, a dismal job market and absolute loathing of corporate America anyway, I gave myself permission to hang out my shingle as a business writer.
The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are ~ Joseph Campbell
Fortunately my husband still has a job. The best off-balance-sheet asset an entrepreneur has is someone who lets them bunk in rent free. Thanks, Matt.
More Joseph Campbell bon mots:
- We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us
- Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself
- I think the person who takes a job in order to live – that is to say, for the money – has turned himself into a slave
- Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes?
- Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging
- The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure
- The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature
The Road to Success is Paved With…
lots of detours and false starts, from the looks of things.
I’m already on record as a fan of FlowingData, whose blog I subscribe to. This morning Nathan posted an evergreen allegorical cartoon, originally published in 1913, that blows me away. If you want to study it closer, click to get it in another browser window by itself, then zoom in.
Scroll past the poster for my thoughts on success and wisdom from the Buddha on healthcare, entitlements and financial reforms.
Macro events on micro successes
This allegorical poster works well across the range of arenas in which people strive to succeed, whether it be spiritual enlightenment, gaining the esteem of family and neighbors, building a thriving business enterprise or artistic mastery. When you think about it, there are really several mountains of success we climb in this life: family member, citizen, profession, avocation, seeker…everyone’s list varies. And none of us is at the pinnacle of all life’s mountains at the same time. Life is full of trade-offs.
The one thing the poster doesn’t account for, however, is the role of macro events in our micro lives. For example, let’s say you created the world’s most precise wristwatch and fashioned it into a gorgeous piece of jewelry at a time when mobile phones have essentially replaced the need for a separate timekeeping device. Your company goes bust, taking down the family and friends who invested in your vision. Does that make you unsuccessful? Depends upon your definition of success, doesn’t it? I had a similar experience, touched upon lightly in this essay published in Charlotte Magazine, Breathe In, Breathe Out.
One thing I hope we’re all learning in this Great Recession, is how interdependent we are. Investors in now-failed enterprises run by managers with the highest moral fiber have suffered alongside those who placed their life savings in Ponzi schemes. And now investors of all stripes are suffering alongside those now unemployed by the companies crumbling around them.
Here’s a story about some Madoff investors now marooned in a RV park in Arizona, because they can’t afford the $2500 to drive home to NY. He was a New York City Department of Corrections officer and she, a computer analyst; hardly the glitterati we associate with Madoff’s victims.
It’s a compelling interview, including this quote by the prison guard, “We have our money in a viable institution and nobody was there to check. I mean, if I went to work every day at the Department of Correction and just left the door open and let the inmates out…. That’s my job to keep them in line, keep them behind the gate. Did anybody do that at the SEC? Absolutely not.”
A third way — between unfettered capitalism and outright socialism
I’m growing deaf listening to the various screaming matches on financial reform and fixing healthcare/entitlements.
To hear those on the far right, Fascists monsters are lurking under our collective bed, waiting for us to fall asleep so they can nationalize all industries and make the US unattractive to capital, thereby plunging this great country into the abyss alongside other empires on which the sun has long ago set. The left sees virtue in centrally coordinated systems that make the quality of life in America less dependent on highly variable, state-based programs. In this vision, we’ll provide for the common weal and wipe out blood money-derived profits, but unless we take swift and broad-sweeping measures to centralize federal control immediately, we’ll be swept into the dustbin of history as another fallen giant.
Interesting that no matter the side, both meet in the middle with their conclusion that we’re headed down the road to ruin.
Look, the desire to organize society around an enforceable ethical code and to take care of the poor, old and infirmed are goals as ancient as the human race. These aspirations separate us from the beasts of the field. Our approach to these goals differs as society matures and technical advances enable us to try new things. So let’s all take a deep breath and look under the bed. With a flashlight.
I’m a fan of Buddhist monk Pema Chodron’s book When Things Fall Apart and think her work provides a useful frame of reference for the dread we feel about the changes now upon us. “We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again.”
When we can accept the falling apart and coming together of all things in life, starting at our personal lives and including our entire world, we might approach financial reform, health care and entitlements with less dread, hysteria and finger pointing.
All these systems met needs pretty well for a time as originally designed and implemented; things came together at those points in time. Times have changed and new tools and social conditions have come on the scene since then; things have fallen apart.
Two examples:
- Things fell apart during the Depression, so we implemented entitlement programs and erected new regulatory bodies. Things came together. I argue that the only reason we’re not in another Great Depression today is the post-Depression social safety nets that now provide unemployment insurance and a baseline of health insurance to our elderly and most financially vulnerable citizens. But since we essentially dismantled Glass-Steagall, and financial mathematicians developed products that were unforeseen by jazz era regulators anyway, we produced fake wealth and things fell apart again.
- Employer-provided health insurance came into being in a different age, too, beginning in the 1930s and quickly expanding as an employee fringe benefit when wage and price controls were implemented during the Second World War. Breathe in. Time for an update — we don’t even drive vintage 1960’s automobiles anymore, so why a ’60’s era healthcare system? Breathe out.
Now let’s all chant Om and get on with finding third-way solutions to financial and social services reforms that work for all of us.
Corporate vs Personal Bankruptcy Attitudes
Blame the victim?
I ghostwrite a bankruptcy practice’s blogsite and moderate the comments. Got an interesting comment last week. The commenter wanted to be on record that bankruptcy attorneys are devil’s spawn who enable the deadbeat insolvent to saddle the piously solvent with their mistakes.
The commenter isn’t the only one with this attitude, which is why I bring it up.
When a company declares bankruptcy the angry mob doesn’t break out the pitchforks and go after the management team or board (with a nod to the quasi-exceptional case of former GM head Rick Wagoner). But the screeds about people in foreclosure and those who seek bankruptcy protection proliferate like melanoma cells.
Upside-down logic
According to the Institute for Financial Literacy, the four most common causes of financial distress include overextension on credit, unexpected expenses, reduction of income and job loss. These are essentially the same reasons corporations file for protection (income and job loss more logically rolled together in the case of businesses).
So when it’s the masters of the universe and captains of industry at the helm of corporations making short-sighted decisions that drive their companies into financial distress, why are we so hard on the employees and small business owners whose personal misfortunes are tied to corporate failure?
Welfare Queens?
Those of us alive during the 1980’s remember the famous stories/urban legends of the woman paying for groceries with food stamps, then carrying them out to her new Cadillac. In other words, gaming the system and thumbing her nose at the rest of us.
Is there a bit of that same belief about individuals who go bankrupt? That they use bankruptcy as a personal money management strategy like Donald Trump uses it as a business strategy? Hrumph, even The Donald gets his own TV show and multi-level marketing network of millions. What gives with our idol worship of this guy and our disgust for the little guys?
I’d really like to know what’s behind the difference in attitude here. Please weigh in.
Multi-tasking
Here’s a cool online simulator of texting while driving.
It requires you to navigate toll gates (of the type you see on a toll road) while answering a text message and avoiding pedestrians. It comes with a disclaimer that you should never text and drive, no matter how well you score.
At the risk of sounding sociopathic, I wonder why texting and driving can’t be an acquired skill.
In July 2009 a new computer AAA Foundation released a new computer program designed to help Baby Boomers retrain their brains and delay the impact of aging. Developed byPositScience, DriveSharp claims that using it 20 minutes a day 3+ times a week will:
- Increase your useful field of view by 200%—see more in your peripheral vision
- React faster to dangers—stop 22 feet sooner when traveling at 55 mph
- Drive with greater confidence at night, in traffic, and in new places
- Cut your risk of a car crash in half
The brain is capable of miraculous things. Why not texting and driving?
Books in Queue
I’m a book lush. My reading aspirations, however, always outstrip my productivity.
Here are a couple of books that have my attention. I’d love to hear from anyone who’s read them.
Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture
From the shuttered factories of the rust belt to the look-alike strip malls of the sun belt—and almost everywhere in between—America has been transformed by its relentless fixation on low price. This pervasive yet little examined obsession is arguably the most powerful and devastating market force of our time—the engine of globalization, outsourcing, planned obsolescence, and economic instability in an increasingly unsettled world.
“Around the world, people are being forced to reconsider the very idea of prosperity, and to ask what kind of wealth matters most and can be sustained. Cheap appears at just the right moment to enrich this discussion. This history of discounting and bargain-mania will change the way shoppers think about their next trip to the mall. As an examination of the global effects of the quest for rock-bottom prices, Cheap an important addition to arguments about America’s economic future. This is a valuable book for a troubled time.” —James Fallows, author of Postcards from Tomorrow Square
“More stuff for less!—the American recipe for material well-being. Now Ellen Ruppel Shell takes a hard look at this apparently simple notion and finds it isn’t so simple after all. Cheap pulls apart the old economic verities and subjects the glib new promises of Wall Street and globalization to scrutiny. How did we find ourselves in our current mess? Shell finds part of the answer in our confused ideas about what, exactly, is a bargain price.” —Charles C. Mann, author of 1491
To Serve God and Wal-Mart
The world’s largest corporation has grown to prominence in America’s Sun Belt—the relatively recent seat of American radical agrarian populism—and amid a feverish antagonism to corporate monopoly. In the spirit of Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas? historian Moreton unearths the roots of the seeming anomaly of corporate populism, in a timely and penetrating analysis that situates the rise of Wal-Mart in a postwar confluence of forces, from federal redistribution of capital favoring the rural South and West to the family values symbolized by Sam Walton’s largely white, rural, female workforce (the basis of a new economic and ideological niche), the New Christian Right’s powerful probusiness and countercultural movement of the 1970s and ’80s and its harnessing of electoral power. Giving Max Weber’s Protestant ethic something of a late-20th-century update, Moreton shows how this confluence wedded Christianity to the free market. Moreton’s erudition and clear prose elucidate much in the area of recent labor and political history, while capturing the centrality of movement cultures in the evolving face of American populism. ~ Publisher’s Weekly
