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In Reply to: RE: Dumbest remark of the week from an audio dealer posted by rossini61 on October 22, 2017 at 11:49:53
1st rule of business;
If the doors are open, the business is making money, turning a profit.
Follow Ups:
I doubt there are too many small B&M audio/video dealers today that show a profit at the end of the year. Profit is what is left after all expenses have been paid. That includes a wage paid to the owner. The owner's wage/salary is not profit.
Just because the doors are open doesn't mean the dealer is turning a profit.
You have to have more money coming in the door than going out.
In the long term? Certainly.
I'd also say that your "rule" seems to apply even more to "nonprofits."
If the $$$ isn't rolling in to ensure fat salaries for all involved (at least at the mid to upper level,) the doors will most surely close.
With respect to "for profit" businesses? I've known more than a few that kept the doors open LONG after what would have been advised, because the owner felt a responsibility to the employees, or to the customers they served.
> > I've known more than a few that kept the doors open LONG after what would have been advised, because the owner felt a responsibility to the employees, or to the customers they served. < <
Yes, those are private companies owned by people with actual blood in their hearts. Publicly-owned companies are a completely different story. They are largely run by soul-less sociopaths. Harvard Business Review did some studies in the late '80s on this topic and found that corporate executives of publicly-held companies have a sociopathy rate that is 10x to 20x higher than the general population (~1%). I'm sure it is even higher now, 30 years later. They will literally do *anything* to make money - contaminate the groundwater and waterways with cancer-causing petrochemicals, recycle chemical waste (eg, fluorides) into drinking water, strip-mine entire mountain ranges, clear-cut old-growth forests, lie, cheat, steal, and kill.
Sociopaths are broken human beings that have no sense of remorse nor empathy. They see other people the same way most people view a mosquito. Yet we are programmed to admire them because they are "wealthy".
The vast majority of politicians at the state and federal level are also sociopaths. They have written the laws so that bribery (corruption) is legal. If you are poor and powerless you will go to jail for possessing marijuana, peacefully protesting under your 1st Amendment rights, or being a whistle-blower on illegal government activities. If you are "rich" and "powerful", you will escape punishment for the most heinous of crimes. Every president since 1980 has committed illegal war crimes (under the Geneva Convention, ratified after WWII) often killing tens of thousands if not millions of innocent civilians, and none have even faced charges, let alone been fined or imprisoned.
> > Sociopaths are broken human beings that have no sense of remorse nor empathy. They see other people the same way most people view a mosquito. < <
All humans are sinners. Forgiveness leads to redemption - something all humans need.
> > Publicly-owned companies ... are largely run by soul-less sociopaths ... The vast majority of politicians at the state and federal level are also sociopaths. < <
Having know more than a few corporate business leaders and politicians, this seems a bit too sweeping a statement. Many good and empathetic people inhabit the corridors of power in business and government. Others are greedy or corrupt. This is why it is important for us all to be informed as voters and as consumers. Every purchase or investment represents a vote with our dollars.
Mr. Hansen,
You offered an interesting blend of evidence and opinion:
"Yes, those are private companies owned by people with actual blood in their hearts. Publicly-owned companies are a completely different story. They are largely run by soul-less sociopaths. Harvard Business Review did some studies in the late '80s on this topic and found that corporate executives of publicly-held companies have a sociopathy rate that is 10x to 20x higher than the general population (~1%). I'm sure it is even higher now, 30 years later."
Can you offer evidence for your extrapolation, not merely anecdotal, that the rate "is even higher now"?
I'm somewhat pollyanish about humanity in general and the wealthy in particular - but can be convinced to be more cynical if your assertions can be backed up by evidence.
"Anybody that has a net worth of a billion dollars is likely a sociopath. An ordinary human cannot comprehend how much money that represents (etc.)"
"we have literally been programmed to admire sociopaths like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and so on - simply because they are wealthy. "
Never mind rhetoric that mere reading of news and other literature amounts to "programming". And never mind that such is "literal" and not figurative.
I am willing to be "reprogrammed" - please provide evidence for any of the above.
This link might be of a little help:
Those are excellent questions and deserve more of a reply than I am currently able to give. I would suggest watching at least the first 15 minutes of the video I linked as a start.
Stehno linked another video with which I am unfamiliar, but that would likely be another good place to start.
Another good place to start is "The People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn. (I think they even made it into a movie.)
I will link to a short (5 minute) speech that you may find interesting, below:
It's not an easy journey to take to learn that pretty much everything you think you know is simply wrong. It doesn't happen overnight.
upposing "sociopathy" is a word, it, like other adjectives describing sentient creatures (and presuming that includes billionaires) would better be used as a continuity than a binary choice.
Spectrums require that the measurer knows how to multiply and divide - and do historians (presuming that includes Zinn and Co.) not only know how, but actually employ, such metrics?
And what of the subjective element? Does one put his wet thumb to the wind and get its speed?
The likes of Zinn like to focus on the downtrodden and make sweeping judgements while ignoring the vast middle who did not want to relive the lives of their ancestors knowing that they really did make life better for them.
Zinn seems like he joined the blind men when they investigated the elephant. His nose took him aft where he raised the elephant's tail stuck his tongue in deep, and supposed that was a valid sample. And then he wrote that book (and got paid to infect undergrads's minds).
Yes, definitely a continuum and not a binary choice.
There were two major articles in the HBR 30 years agao:
https://hbr.org/2004/10/executive-psychopathshttps://hbr.org/2004/10/executive-psychopaths
Just a fairly reputable place to get started, although clearly out of date.
.
*************************
Where am I.. Who are YOU!
He definitely *seems* to be the most normal of the billionaires. Yet he has a personal fortune worth $81 billion. If you had $81 billion, wouldn't you try to do *something* good with it, instead of just making more money?
Almost everyone involved in keeping any type of "economy" alive MUST be doing at least some amount of good, while doing some amount of bad. Otherwise, a massive revolt would ensue.The trick, or so it seems, is to mix as much "bad" as possible in with enough "good" to keep the majority weak enough to be disinterested in change or in slacking off or in organizing a revolt, but strong enough to perpetuate the optimism and motivation required in a forward-moving economy.
Exactly how "forward-moving" people can get caught up in the building of the most static and monolithic of structural entities - the pyramid - is a wonder to behold!
Edits: 10/27/17
If you search 'Warren Buffet Philanthropy' you get a lot of sites which claim him to be the N0 1 philanthropist around.Probably because he has pledged to give 99% of his personal wealth away to good causes.
83% will go to the Bill Gates Foundation in annual installments under the proviso that within that year the Foundation will hand out money equaling his donation +5%.
Another link to Forbes Magazine:
Edits: 10/27/17 10/27/17
> > 83% will go to the Bill Gates Foundation < <
I certainly don't consider that to be a "good cause".
That is a) your opinion and b)besides the point.
Point being that Buffet is giving away 99% of what he owns after having been accused here on just sitting on his cash doing nothing.
It is still his money and he can do with it what he wants. Buffet chose to give it away though seemingly to someone you disapprove.
I have no opinion on the Gates Foundation but reading comments on the web opposition seems to come almost purely from tea-bagging conspiracy theorists and people who have issues with Bill Gates the person poo-pooing everything with his name attached.
You could of course just check out for yourself what they do as all their activities are public domain. Having skimmed through their wiki entry I see very, very few to none I would take issue with.
If you ever get a chance, I recommend that you watch the made for Netflix film "Pirates of Silicon Valley". It was released some years ago and is free to view on Netflix. It does not paint a flattering picture of Jobs, Gates, Ballmer, or Allen - to put it mildly. The only one of the bunch that may have a shred of soul was Wozniak.
I'm quite sure that everything in the film is true - otherwise Netflix would have been sued to death - but the truth is a sure defense for charges of slander or libel. And I'm also confident that there were even worse things that happened that were left out of the movie as the people would not go on record. Some very sad and twisted humans.
"I have no opinion on the Gates Foundation but reading comments on the web opposition seems to come almost purely from tea-bagging conspiracy theorists and people who have issues with Bill Gates the person poo-pooing everything with his name attached."
I don't like his vaccinating starving people in third world countries. Nobody should do that until they learn birth control. Feed 1 get 12, feed those 12 and get 144, feed those 144 you get 1,728. This planet can barely feed ourselves. With commercial farming the yield in tonnage has increased, but with a corresponding dilution of essential minerals and whatnot.
He stole Windows basically. Similar software was out there. It was called a DOS shell and really it still is. It will not run without a disk, unlike Linux. The GUI came from Apple. 'Early widows came from IBM's Presentation manger. More modern memory handling, scalable windows and a few other things cam from Desqview, put out by a company called Quarterdeck.
The main thing Bill Gatres did was to figure out how to get paid. He may be an ultrasickening liberal, but so are many people.
"It will not run without a disk, unlike Linux."
How do you figure? Windows can run from a thumbdrive, as can Linux. Or direct from a CD. Neither can run without a file system going.
About Windows -- "The GUI came from Apple. "
Nope. Apple got it from Xerox.
_
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You could aim the very same accusations with the same amount of justification at practically anybody very rich.
Edison stole most of his 'inventions' by systematically bribing patent office employees, Alexander Bell stole the telephone and so on and on and on...
Your main objection to Gates & Buffet seems to be rooted in the fact that they do not share your political leanings.
Well... suck it up snowflake. It is their money to do with what they want.
PS: Teaching birth control only works if you were to give these people a safe income once they become too old to work but all research shows that in when it happens birth rates fall by themselves without outside interference.
Sounds interesting and possibly true but your wording has me a little bit confused.
People everywhere might be persuaded to admit that an optimal balance between population size and available resources is essential to healthy economies and peaceful relations with their neighbors. The problem is how to get some people to actually do very much about controlling birth rates...
So please provide a link to studies showing a connection between retirement income and birth control.
Thanks.
I'm pretty sure this is the one I watched that was the perhaps the best explanation on population I've seen. If not this one, another one by the same guy.
Excellent points- JURB
no doubt that both Jobs and Gates, stole from others, in order to build their respective empires. And yes, both figured out how to get paid!
Forget the WIKI on Gates Foundation.
Go to the primary documents.
They give away a LOT of $$$ from huge grants to much smaller sums.
Too much is never enough
Thanks for the link.
Looked through the first 3 or 4 pages and again I didn't see any disagreeable donations.
The posters above appear to have mostly personal issues with Gates and/or Buffet but these don't matter and since it is their money (however they got it must have been legal) they are free to give away as they like.
At least Buffet's clause means that if he gives them 1 billion this year and they do not hand out 1.05 billion over the following year they won't get any more. Good clause me thinks...
Personally I prefer the way Bosch AG and ZF (world's largest and 2nd largest automotive suppliers) operate: They are actually wholly owned by charitable trusts and so automatically give away their annual profits.
In the case of ZF the trust is administered by the City of Friedrichshafen. More companies should be run like that IMO.
> > Otherwise, a massive revolt would ensue. < <
Yes, exactly. The ancient Romans called this "give them bread and circuses". So as long as we are not starving and have football games and movies to watch, most are quite content.
According to the Meyet-Briggs personality inventory the two largest quadrants comprise 80% of the population and they are quite content with bread and circuses.
The rest are kept in line with the famous "divide and conquer" - Democrats vs. Republicans, black vs white, Christian vs Jew vs Muslim - the list is endless. That was perfected in 1924 as shown in the BBC documentary "Century of the Self". (linked earlier)
Because I know,That mega-sociopaths ride on the backs of mini-sociopaths like me.
I'm trying not to be proud of my role as mini-sociopath,
But if I let my mood slip too low,
I might get depressed, skip work, miss my car payment, get slapped with a fee.
The wife will cry, the kids will bellow.
And so?
Hi-ho?
Hi-ho!
It's off to work for the mega-sociopath,
I go!
Edits: 10/25/17 10/25/17
The fact that you recognize and acknowledge your role in the structures set up in this society proves that you care about others than yourself. And you also acknowledge that it is painful to do so. And you (rightfully) point out that it is not just to benefit you, but also your family.
You have already passed the beginnings of what is often referred to as "waking up". "Waking up from what?" is a a good question. I would say that it is much like the movie "The Matrix" where we have all been programmed to believe certain things, much as the masses in George Orwell's novel "1984".
The scary part is that "1984" is real, and is really happening and we are in the middle of it. When I ask people when they think that "1984" happened, they usually miss by a long time. Go ahead and take a guess and see what you think.
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The correct answer is 1924, as shown in the linked (and banned) BBC documentary. It comprises 4 one-hour episodes, but just watch the first 15 minutes of the first episode and you will start to understand exactly how we have been programmed.
So it is not just us who have been living in a programmed existence (almost like Jim Carrey's character in Peter Weir's brilliant "The Truman Show"), but so have all of our parents for all of their lives, and in many cases, our grandparents for much (if not most) of their lives.
The good news is that humanity is in the middle of its fourth revolution - revolutions that brought about profound social changes. The previous three were:
1) The language revolution. Homo sapiens is roughly 500,000 years old. For the vast majority of this time, we likely lived in packs of between 10 and 20, much like wolves or apes do. Then around 50,000 years ago something happened and we developed language. With the advent of language came the abilities to tell stories and have oral histories and the ability to work together in much more efficient teams. The new societal structure became tribal, with groups of 100 to 300. Tribal societies are largely nomadic, following the game and wild crops as the seasons changed.
2) The agricultural revolution. Around 7,000 years ago homo sapiens discovered both planting and harvesting crops and also domesticating animals. This allowed for massive increases in the supply of foods, but forced societies to stay fixed (with their crops) and introduced the idea of "ownership" of land. Societies were now organized into civilizations, with groups between the thousands and even up to hundreds of thousands.
3) The scientific revolution. After a false start in ancient Greece, the real scientific revolution was 300 to 500 years ago, with Copernicus, Galileo, da Vinci, Newton, and many others driving mankind into "the age of reason". Societies shifted from monarchies, where specific families were chosen by God to rule over people into democracies, whereby "all men are created equal".
Currently humanity has come nearly full circle with the scientific revolution, whereby a few hundred families around the world have literally accumulated the vast majority of its material wealth. They are largely sociopaths who view themselves as "genetically superior" and many are actively seeking to expand their power and control - either by using "ordinary" humans as pawns or even worse, to kill them off to ensure that there will be enough resources for them to continue to live their decadent lifestyles (think of the film "The Hunger Games" here).
The massive concentration of wealth began with the British and Dutch monarchies (the only ones that survive today), continued through the 1800s with bankers, was built upon in the late 1800s and early 1900s through the oil monopolies of the Rockefellers, were added onto by the billionaire industrialists in the transportation industries (railroad barons, automobile dynasties, aircraft billionaires like Howard Hughes), and most lately with the technology giants of Microsoft, Apple, Google (Alphabet), Facebook, and Amazon.
Anybody that has a net worth of a billion dollars is likely a sociopath. An ordinary human cannot comprehend how much money that represents. If a person had $1 billion, and they were young (like, say, Mark Zuckerberg), their wealth is literally unimaginable. Zuckerberg made headlines when he promised to give away 99% of his fortune. It's all a big scam. First of all, who is he going to "give" his money to, and what does he expect in return? Secondly that still leaves him with a half billion dollars in the bank. If a 34-year old person had a half-billion in the bank and didn't earn any interest or returns on any of their investments - just the starting money only, they could spend nearly $1,000,000 per MONTH and not run out of money until they were 84 years old.
Please think about this for a moment. If you could spend a million dollars per month, what would you spend it on? In a couple of months you could pay cash for your dream home. In a couple of more months you could pay cash for a "vacation" home. Then the next month you could buy every exotic car you ever dreamed of. Another month would pay for multiple year-long around the world vacations. I don't know about you, but I probably would have anything I had ever wanted at that point.
That is a guy with only a half-billion dollars. Why to billionaires always seem to want even more money? Because they are broken human beings. To them it is no longer about money. It is strictly about power and control. Not only do they lack empathy and compassion, they lack all regard for humanity.
A wise man I know told me that all (normal) human beings want 4 things:
Peace
Joy
Love
Purpose
In the decades since has told me this, I've not come up with anything missing from this list. Money can certainly be an aid to bringing you peace of mind - when you are not struggling to make ends meet, or feed your family. Yet I don't think it contributes much to the other three. So will a billionaire be any more fulfilled than a millionaire? I don't think so, do you? At what point are you content to say "I have enough material things - having more will not bring me any more of anything meaningful"?
Yet we have literally been programmed to admire sociopaths like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and so on - simply because they are wealthy. Now in the fourth revolution, the world is waking up. And society will change in ways that are just as unimaginable to us as a tribal society of language-speaking humans was to a pack of pre-vocal humans who only communicated via grunts, barks, howls, and signs.
Fascinating...intense...brilliant!
Thank you for the link.
Vbr,
Sam
Good analogy about the Matrix and living in America today, Charles.You said, "The scary part is that "1984" is real, and is really happening and we are in the middle of it. When I ask people when they think that "1984" happened, they usually miss by a long time. Go ahead and take a guess and see what you think."
I would attest that 1984 really kicked into gear in 1913 with the Federal Reserve Act and up another notch with the illegal passage of the 16th amendment the infamous "Federal Tax amendment". And matters just exponentiated from there.
For those unfamiliar with such things, an excellent and scary intro would be a 10 year old documentary entitled, "America: Freedom to Fascism" and produced by Aaron Russo, Oscar award winning producer of movies like Trading Places, etc. I've included the link below.
I suggest giving the documentary 10 minutes and you'll be hooked. If you make it to just the halfway mark I can almost guarantee you'll be beside yourside with anger. I've had friends call me when only viewing the first half mad as hell and asking what can they do.
But even such things as this are but the tip of the ice-berg for the real world in which we live.
In comparison to America today, 1984 was just a walk in the park.
The real scary part is most of us don't even realize it.
Edits: 10/26/17 10/26/17
I've not yet watched the video, but I know that the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was a complete scam to give private bankers control over the entire monetary supply of the entire country.
It started with the "royal" families - and the British and Dutch ones (at least) are still around, with unimaginable wealth, control, and power. They granted powers to private bankers around 1800 or so and they quickly became nearly as rich and powerful (eg, the Rothschild family, originally from Germany and now based in England).
Others joined these "elite" as they accumulated vast fortunes, starting with the oil barons, the electrical barons (Edison and Westinghouse), the transportation barons, the military-industrial barons, and most recently the technology barons.
Keep spreading the word.
Not complaining, but I may not live as long as I should. Just like billions of others living outside of the loop."It is not growing like a tree, in bulk doth make Man better be..."
Old age and financial security are, as far as I can tell, mostly for the sociopaths.
Edits: 10/26/17
> > Old age and financial security are, as far as I can tell, mostly for the sociopaths. < <
Everybody wants to enjoy as much of this amazingly beautiful universe as we can get. Traditionally societies were organized to care for the elderly (who were revered for their wisdom and knowledge). Only in the modern United States has it become necessary that one try to accumulate wealth by oneself to survive when one is no longer able to provide a meaningful contribution to society - today that contribution is measured in dollars and usually requires work, although many think that if they have enough surplus dollars, they think they can "invest" it and "earn" money without having to "work".
Sometimes those "investments" actually contribute to society as a whole, and things make sense. Often they don't and the investment contribute to the demise of the society (eg, investing in the military-industrial complex, big pharma companies, tobacco companies, and many technology companies) that makes money by harming society. These "investments" simply hasten the collapse of the American empire.
Tom
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