> When are people going to realize that telling customers what they want, reducing value and quality, and ignoring their complaints is not a good business model?

Just as soon as they realize that short-term immediate profit is not the only goal that any business could ever possibly have.

Pretty much the day after never, or right after the collapse of capitalist society. Whichever comes first.

apparently it burned down in four hours in 1999, but not before the Sanders sold that restaurant.

US military used to be largely made up of state militias (dating back to colonial days), run by the governor, with the federal government sometimes funding, equipping, and mobilizing those militias in times of war. Commissions in state militias were sometimes used by governors as a reward or gift to their political supporters. In particular, "colonel" was a rank often bestowed on wealthy benefactors without any expectation of actual military duty.

The militias were largely nationalized in the early 1900s, creating what's now called the National Guard. Governors still have limited power to deploy their state Guard but they're mostly under federal control. But some states retained the tradition of honorary colonels, and Kentucky is probably the most famous.

(There are a lot of other kind of goofy honorary state militia titles in the US -- Admiral of the Texas Navy, etc. Some of them don't require much more than paying a fee.)