Too Much is Never Enough
Probably one of the most infuriating rhetorical tactics you see these days from the plutocrats and the media who love them is their emphatic insistence that the “free market,” as it is currently constituted, may have its flaws, but in the end it “rewards success.” It does, I suppose, to the extent that it rewards the people who take the most money out of the system, but what distinguishes this “successful” group is that none of them actually “do” anything for the money any more, or even bother to try. Everything they do and sell is so overpriced and unworthy that it would be laughed out of any actual market in the real world, and the worst products and services inevitably come from the best-compensated upper management… selling shit and calling it Shinola is where the big money is, as we have seen time and again. This is where “free market,” the slogan, is used to untether its busy practitioner from “free market,” the thing, where the irritating slings and arrows of competent work and real competition can cut mercilessly into having a good time, and enormous wealth is rather implausibly, but undeniably conveniently, equated with usefulness to society.
In the past fifty years, but particularly in the last thirty, American corporations have essentially stopped competing for excellence in favor of competing for profit alone, and when such contemptuous money-grubbing invariably threatens to lead to lost business, they take the money they might have spent on R&D, say, and spend it on lawyers and lobbyists instead, so they can legally buy out the competition and game the rules to allow them to charge even more more for even less. Seemingly every day another story appears of how some current “Master of the Universe” got so rich by selling some garbage that turned out to be defective, dangerous, and/or fraudulent, and the media noddingly agree that it was good while it lasted, and these things happen. ”Have you thought about running for office?” usually comes next.
We once tended to think of such flagrant frauds and shysters as being mostly confined to the “solutions” industry, i.e, FIRE, who just take peoples’ money with utterly no intention of giving anything in return, as they always have. But lately, this ethic, as it were, has spread to companies that used to visibly, if lackadaisically, provide something, however inadequate, for the money they demanded from all present: utilities, telecoms, newspapers, none of whom could possibly exist anymore without their government-enabled monopolies, all operate on the principle of offering the crappiest possible product at the most absurd and escalating price, because once you’re the only game in town, that’s what the “market” will bear. Heads I win, and all that.
What’s worse, and in the end could prove even more damaging, will be when the dirty and odious task of actually “doing” anything is, as a result of this attitude, done here so notoriously poorly that “Made in America” will go from mere anachronistic oddity to outright laughingstock, rendering what remains of our productive economy a dim and fading memory. This already happened locally about ten years ago, when the demi-monopoly “engineered” wood products company, Louisiana Pacific, itself a spinoff of broken-up monopoly Georgia Pacific, got busted for selling a shockingly cheesy and dreadful but nonetheless popular fake wood exterior siding that grew mushrooms in a few years and had to be expensively replaced, leading to a lot of homeowner annoyance, as you could well imagine. But because “profits” had skyrocketed over the years that this inferior product all but captured the national market, CEO Harry Merlo lived like Ken Lay, with nearly as many airplanes and a growing multi-acre estate in the West Hills, which he “rented” from the company, for a little more than I paid for my apartment at the time. I worked on another mansion the company bought for him next door, so they could redraw the property lines and resell the place so Harry would have more room for his peacocks and such. After all, he did boost the economy, if you count the millions spent replacing his crummy products and the money LP saved by turning down the oxygen on the guys that worked in the resin vats, so why not give him the expanded estate, a golden parachute, and send him on his way when it all went shithouse? Keep your plane privileges too, Harry. That’s the “free market” at work.
Today I was reading a story in the NYT which felt eerily like the Merlo/LP debacle, though by now so unsurprising and redundant that had my bus not been stuck in traffic I’d have skipped it. It seems that a pipe manufacturer, JM Eagle, which is one of many hell spawn descended from the asbestos lawsuit escapee, Johns Manville, has been “succesfully” selling PVC pipe to municipalities all over the country that tends to explode, often monthly, which is not the best performance for a supposed 50-year product. And, it’s also peskily inconvenient and expensive for the company’s customers because this garbage is pawned off not just to homeowners but also to goverment agencies as something suitable for WATER MAINS. The story was of a whistle blower who worked for the company and was told to tell the thousands of distraught people complaining that the sinkholes, accidents, and shutdowns were all due to incorrect installation, but eventually he couldn’t believe such a thing after a while, said something, and was of course fired. If you can believe it, the CEO of that company was also a widely revered and indulgently compensated cost-cutter, and still is. Better yet, he started at the company at the top, at 25, thanks to his Dad, and made a big splash by firing everybody over 40, especially the expensive and uppity kind that knew how to make pipe. This kind of guy could probably rouse Ayn Rand from the grave for a roll in the hay; he has shown himself so clever at pillaging and killing the rabble for money. I find myself hoping so.
These are the people that are always threatening to decamp if they are ever taxed or regulated. I say, find a place that will take you; let your “market” decide. I’m guessing we’ll be stuck with you and your peacocks for quite a while.
Calling all merry men, women, and socialists!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/12/robin-hood-tax-campaigns_n_460424.html
And just wait for the fallout over Greece and the EU.
Bring back the drachma!
Well, such a campaign would never go over here. First of all the networks wouldn’t even run the commercials, then FOX would get a hold of it and it would all be over.
The people describing the “free market” this way are not actually involved in it. They are politicians, hacks, columnists, people who rarely live in areas where there were once factories and unions. There is the occasional politican who once held a real job, but they are few and far between.
Just off the top of my head, allow me to take a trip down memory lane and name names.
First, there was Fisher Body, a huge GM plant that closed in the 80s, then there was the steel mills that were on both sides of the city and only one remains open as a shadow of its former self. Then let’s remember General Electric, that had several lamp plants, NELA park, a chem plant, a tungsten plant, and several satellite wire plants in Ohio. GE had its entire incadescent and halogen light business in Cleveland, employed thousands who worked hard, showed up every day.
Then, out of nowhere, they packed up and shipped off to Hungary in the early 90s.
I remember thinking, well, at least Timken’s still here.
Timken was the largest, most highly reputable bearing company in the world. Their steel was unsurpassed, their quality enviable. They manufactured nearly every spherical roller bearing on every truck, train and auto you can think of. They had some competition, eventually, from Torrington and SKF, but they just up and bought Torrington and kept neck-in-neck with SKF.
Then, after three generations of excellence, after buying almost every square inch of Canton, Ohio, after having high schools and hospitals named after it, Timken up and left – leaving hundreds acres of empty factories, thousands of third-generation factory workers left without jobs, and faces stark with shock.
When Timken left, I knew it was the end of the world as we knew it.
LP moved to Nashville. Nashville! The move failed to kill Portland, though. Right down the line, these corporations forget that their workers are also their customers. Where will people get the money to buy their products?
I remember USG (US Gipsom) was a huge factory here, one of my family’s big customers, and they up and left not long ago. Don’t know where they went. I’ll have to look it up.
It went to Alabama. Hey, at least it’s still in the USA. A lot of factories went south in the 80s and 90s because of the union issues. They could have non-union factories in Alabama, Mississippi, the Carolinas, etc.
Pretty soon, even the underpaid south was too expensive, and the good ol’ boys moved to China, Indonesia, India.
It’s so tragic.
Wouldn’t you know, a “Right to Work” state full of teabaggers.
Well wherever it was, they were caught without extra production capacity after Katrina, leaving people throughout the South with toxic Chinese drywall instead.
I recently got a bunch of USG greenboard, and was shocked to see that it had only been made a few weeks before.
We’ve had our share of that here. It was rather shocking to many,as it’s contrary to local tradition. IBM (it started here) , prior to Gerstner never (never!) laid off workers. They transferred, they retrained, they offered generous optional eary retirement buyouts . The Watsons , Ed Link (my childhood neighbor – great guy)of Link Aviation, and many others grew up with,absorbed, and praticed the ethos of George F Johnson.
http://www.nationalinvestor.com/EJ%20story.htm
I still hear new(to me) stories about how Mr or Mrs Johnson helped the storyteller, or relative. ( Btw, I have a pair of EJ shoes that I bought when I was 16, and are still good . )
Then came the Church of Latter Day Free Marketeers. Gerstner did a slash and burn . Received a $7M bonus , even while IBM’s prospects dimmed, and the ex-employees were still unemployed.
Link? Ivan Boesky did a hostile takeover, and sold off the parts. The remainder was still the area’s second-largest employer .Then the accounting laws, that in part made Enron possible, changed . (Thank you , St. Lieberman). Along came Hughes Aircraft . They decide to buy it,do a brain-drain of 1/2 – 2/3 , finish the current project, and then close it down.Accounting rules made it more profitable to close down a newly aquired facility, despite the actual profitability being in the opposite direction. Hilariously (to me) , after seeing Arlington, TX, and N. Virginia, most of the brain-drainees refused to go. Many of them, and the discarded stayed and went into competition with Hughes. It was a debacle for Hughes. Don’t know if they’ve ever recovered.
In another case, the owners of Anitec Image, a specialty photographic supplier, and by then the area’s largest employer , decided to “streamline”, and ell off all but the ir core business. Tyhey decided to sell Anitec because it was very profitable, so would generate much $. There were several suitors, but Kodak offered the sweetest deal . As there were tax , and other issues ofpublic involvement, statand local officials had to be involved, and sign off on the deal . Kodak lied. Had everybody snowed . As soon as the ink dried (maybe), they announced that they were closing it down. Bye-bye 1000+ employees. They just wanted the patents, and to eliminate competitor. ( The free market is sooooooo much easier without competition)
There’ve been many other instances in the last few years, that don’t make sense, other than because of the legislative alterations of the “free market”.
*( Mr. Link invented the flight simulator, mini subs, the aqualung(scuba) with Jaques Cousteau, and many other things. He had an empty lot [mowed it too] , that he let us use for baeball,football,soccer, etc. Adjascent to it was a 2-story garage convertd to a lab. On a few occasions he gave us the tour, and showing what he was working on.[not that we entirely understood it ];))
–George F. Johnson, circa 1919
- George F. Johnson writing to his workers on February 22, 1937
Remarkable, isn’t it, that it wasn’t that long ago that businesses cared about their reputations in the communities they inhabited, and now they don’t, and certainly would never advocate something so chumpish as a square deal for all concerned. That’s not how ol’ Trump did it, you know. All over the country, places have lost their identities as every business institution: the banks, newspapers, department stores, industrial companies have been bought out by a mountain of crippling debt, and are left barely able to function, much less excel under their absentee “owners,” whose only goal all along was to loot the place; in that one way, our CEO Presidency under Bush and Cheney was correctly advertised.
I was reading an article at The Atlantic on our “new jobless era” and thought I’d cite this:
This type of situation is always foremost in my mind when these fucks talk about the “free market” even as they pillage with the other hand.
If I were God ….
I, for one, would be a lot more optimistic if you were God. Sometimes, in certain darker moments, I’ve thought of applying for the job myself, but the truth is that after those first few moments of righteous fire and brimstone, I’d be very bad at it.
Let me know if you need a reference. After years of attempts at piety, I’ve grown tired of sky Gods whose idea of taking care of their creations is scarcely more than a long list of don’ts.
I’m with you on that. It also sounds like a lot of work, and I have a blog to write and all.
I don’t know why I instantly and irrevocably disbelieved in God, but I did from my earliest memories in church. When I was only seven or eight, I remember looking around our church, which was fairly affluent, and wondering how such obviously accomplished people could believe such utter horseshit. Some, I decided had sinned so horribly and so often that they were trying to hedge their bets. Some were running for Mayor. The rest were a mystery.
I read that article and it was part of what inspired me to write this post. It is unbelievable to me that the Obama administration, certainly aware of the long-term societal costs of such an employment situation, are choosing to do so little about it, to avoid riling up the righties as they whine about the plight of the rich. Horrible policy, and even worse politics.
When Obama said it was A-OK for a bailed-out bankster to make so much money because it was as much as a baseball player made, I about lost it. The median income in the United States is $52,000…..
TIMON
They’re welcome all; let ‘em have kind admittance.
Music, make their welcome! – [Exit Cupid] -
I . LORD
You see, my lord, how ample y’are beloved.
– [Music] Enter Cupid, with the Masque of Ladies [as] Amazons with lutes in their hands, dancing and playing -
APEMANTUS
Hoy-day!
What a sweep of vanity comes this way!
They dance! They are madwomen.
Like madness is the glory of this life
As this pomp shows to a little oil and root.
We make ourselves fools to disport ourselves
And spend our flatteries to drink those men
Upon whose age we void it up again
With poisonous spite and envy.
Who lives that’s not depraved or depraves?
Who dies that bears not one spur to their graves
Of their friends’ gift?
I should fear those that dance before me now
Would one day stamp upon me.’T has been done.
Men shut their doors against a setting sun.
TIMON OF ATHENS/ I,ii
Shakespeare
Oh let them go, please! I’ve been praying for decades that they would all decamp from California and go infest Laughlin or someplace like that and leave the rest of us alone.
But no, they will not go. Unless the Reaper comes for them, and then you have to deal with their spawn. What a nightmare.
For a while, you recall, localities were actually in competition for the right to be pillaged. Some still are fighting for their God-Given Right to be looted by the “Winners” as it were.
And I just love the notion that taxes or really anything that might contribute to the Public Good in any way that doesn’t produce an immediate return on investment to the pillaging class is somehow “punishment.” So if I’m getting this theory right, anyone who actually pays taxes (Ha ha, sucker!) is a “loser” who deserves his/her fate, and worse, oh just you wait, sucker!
“Punishment” is your due! Ha ha!
And it’s all accepted by the media chatteratti as the Way Things Are Meant To Be, tra-la tra-lee.
I think I’ll have me a good puke now….
Wait!
Have a few Kalamata olives.
Don’t they grow those on the sly in California?
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3cfeab9e-1813-11df-91d2-00144feab49a.html
How familiar all that sounds. Too bad Greece doesn’t have half of its budget going to wasteful and stupid military adventures, where some fat legitimately could be cut.
“Punishing the Successful” ought to be a rallying cry rather than a criticism, considering the new definition of “success.” Notice that Phil Knight of Nike “fame” immediately reneged on his promise to remove his ugly mug from this fair state when it passed new taxes on the rich… he had no plan B, and why would he? Plan A has worked so well for so long.
More on Greece …
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2010/0211/Greece-debt-crisis-Greeks-resigned-to-day-of-reckoning
The “solutions” sound so familiar… is Greece saddled with as many useless rich as we are? How are they taxed? In their case, such steps may be necessary, if painful. It’s been an awfully long time since those guys had an empire to support.
I’ve been trying (without success) to get a link to a story I read earlier today about “black money” in Greece.
The hook rests on the story of a doctor who is on the level, honest enough about his care to patients (more or less), openly declaring his expenses and paying taxes, providing services on a “do no harm basis,” compared to other doctor-businessmen who play the game there – which is to take cash for surgeries while bribing tax officials who occasionally get confrontational about an outstanding liability to the national treasury.
The tone of the piece includes the feeling – the attitude – that the black market is a way of life in Greece, and should not change, regardless of the crisis with the national budget, or whether EU ministers do or do not bail the country out of its current crisis.
More on Greece: the story of a silent partner …
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/business/global/14debt.html?hp
And more …
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/14/will-hutton-greece-euro
I kind of like the Class War perspective on the Greek situation, because it is what’s really going on, yes?
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/pers-f11.shtml
Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Belgium are all “next.”
All to pay off the banksters’ gambling debts.
Less jibber jabber, more guillotines! — something really stinks
I’ve been following the situation a lot, particularly when Goldman popped up. Yet another Shock Doctrine/Economic Hit Man job in the offing. Looks like we’ve got another “Axis of Evil” on our hands, to be taken out one by one.