How to get beyond the parasite economy
ericgarland.co
ericgarland.co
That this is not obvious shows how far we've fallen off the path of simple rational thought.
Why do you assume that the novel abuses of the system become non-obvious in time for anything to be done about them?
It's perfectly feasible that the creeping forces of darkness stay hidden until far after it's too late to do anything to stop them.
Life is not a movie. In reality, you sometimes lose; the hero sometimes dies alone; the person you love sometimes marries someone else and lives a happy, fulfilling life never thinking about you. In reality, you can't rely on literary clichés to save you. Nothing will save you. You are on your own.
Life usually has objective victory conditions. Even if you're playing by your own rules, the rules tend to be objective, because humans tend to care about the real world, not what we can convince ourselves.
If your startup fails, you are not going to wave a wand in your mind and say "I've won!" If you do, you will not feel fulfilled. You will not feel happy. Even if your startup was viciously heaving its death throes for years and you finally, finally pulled the plug, you will not feel "victory" in the sense you would if you were bought by Oracle and made a millionaire, because of your stock options.
Your employees will not sit around a table clapping, like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nObH1R9ONw
It's very true that people try to convince themselves, following a loss, that they in fact won. They try to convince themselves that now they're free to start the next company, which will surely be a success, or that the person who left them wasn't right for them anyways, and that they'll meet someone new.
But in reality, the next company is sometimes also a failure, and the person who left you sometimes was your only soulmate, driven away by your workaholism or your nagging or whatever else you did.
We can lie to ourselves, but it's hard to truly deceive yourself. Think back to the times in your life when you've lost; you know what they are, and you know how they feel. When you lose again, and you will lose again, you'll know that you've lost then too.
I didn't exactly say "I've won!", but I did feel happy, and I did feel fulfilled for what I'd accomplished. Yes, I would've liked to have been bought (not by Oracle though, ick) and left a millionaire. However, I was hired by the best company to work for (according to Forbes) in the worst economy since the great depression (it was Oct 2008 when I applied). I know plenty of people who work their whole lives to do that. When I moved out to California, my friends and roommates were like "Well, I still have a job. I haven't been laid off yet." That puts getting hired in a somewhat different light.
I've had plenty of losses since - I've had projects canceled, projects succeed but been kicked off out of my leadership position, projects that succeed within the organization but fail in the marketplace - and a few genuine successes too. Ironically, it's often the successes that feel like more of a let-down, because suddenly this big ambitious goal that I thought was just a dream is now a reality, and...what next?
The key is to remember that the goals themselves are artificial. I set them because I like having a sense of purpose and ambition to my life, but then I remember that I set them, and they wouldn't even be valid if somebody else set them. And so if I don't reach the goal, one interpretation is that I'm a failure and a loser. But another, equally valid interpretation is that the goal was wrong in the first place - it was infeasible, or something I didn't actually want enough to trade away other things in my life, or too dependent upon external events. And then I've learned something too.
Since you seem intelligent, I entirely disbelieve that you think an "equally valid interpretation" is that any failed goal was misguided. Presumably you've written buggy code -- do you want to convince yourself that you didn't want correct software enough to trade other things in your life? The only way we improve is by acknowledging mistakes.
(You can always blame external events, so I'm not going to touch that, except to say that for the responsible person, everything is their fault.)
The point I'm making - and this is pretty much straight out of a few philosophy courses in college - is that there's a fact/value distinction. Whether or not you achieved a goal is a fact - if you're setting them right, it's measurable and externally verifiable. Whether that goal is good or not is a value - there is no possible way to answer that question other than resorting to your personal value system (or adopting someone else's personal value system). Your personal value system might decree that "It's a good thing when I achieve my goals" - but there is nothing inherent about that, only that you have decided to live your life in a goal-driven way. Other people may hold different values. I do, for example - after much self-examination, I figured out that I'm really discovery-driven, and for me, learning things is an inherent good and achieving my goals is only instrumental.
Also, there's a distinction between inherent and instrumental values. An inherent value is something that's intrinsically good, based on your value system. An instrumental value is something that helps you achieve an inherent value. Many of your goals will be to satisfy instrumental values - if they fail, then you try another approach, you don't think of it as a failure.
To answer your (rhetorical) question: yes, I've written buggy code, and sometimes I've written buggy code deliberately. The reason - in the instance I'm thinking about - was because writing the correct code would've increased latency (this was Javascript, where all the program logic has to be shipped to the client). User happiness was the inherent value, and performance was judged to be a more effective instrument to get there than correctness. So the decision made was to ship the buggy code despite it being buggy, because that actually achieved our purposes much better than making it correct.
That's the sort of flexibility you get from understanding what you're really going for and what are just steps to get you there. You can swap out the steps if they don't work out.
Westerners say that, as if the Reganesque march of progress will destroy any and all nation-states not ideologically subservient to the US of A, but in reality, China is never going to fall; Iran is never going to have free elections; not even Myanmar or even North Korea are going to shift.
The greatest and most heralded revolt of the 21st century replaced an autocratic president with a military dictatorship. But we pretend that Twitter can solve the dire social problems we face; that autocratic regimes can never suppress human curiosity; that one day, maybe not this day, maybe not the next day, but one day, freedom will ring.
But again, life is not a movie; you are not Mel Gibson; you live in reality, and in reality sometimes you lose.
But this point is too far afield to be useful here.
It does seem like something that needs to run its course though. At some point people have to think for themselves, and learn to ignore or deconstruct the commercials which result.
Stuff I would prefer to see: A list of websites helping to support alternative business models that the author thinks is not all evil and immoral. A list of businesses that try to source their products from approved, moral places as much as they can. Other pro-active things that one can actually do (other than "just don't buy from Bad Guys" -- I mean more in the vein of "here are the Good Guys you can and should buy from").
Last, "parasite" economies tend to kill themselves. Historically, Greece, India and Persia all placed extremely high value on bees as a naturally occurring mental model for business, basically: Bees neither kill flowers nor get killed by them. They exchange their service (pollination) for product (pollen, with which to make honey) and both sides gain something of benefit without being harmed. This is a brilliant thing to value culturally when most of your examples from nature fall into the category of "kill or be killed".
It is brilliant because it is the only paradigm that is sustainable. If you are enough of an asshole, you can and will be taken out eventually. Even Roman emperors sometimes got offed by their own Praetorian Guard for being too assholish to put up with. No one is beyond reach. You learn to engage in a symbiotic exchange where both sides gain something or you eventually get a Darwin Award. That's just how it is.
Yeah, the problem is that there are a lot of good people who depend on this economy. This is why its last near-death experience resulted in a bailout sponsored by "the rest of us".
I wasn't addressing all of your points; just the one I quoted. The implication that "parasite economies tending to kill themselves" is somehow helpful because the problem is thus self-limiting has a major flaw. That is, the death of such an economy can be catastrophic for everyone; not just the bad actors.
Otherwise, I agree 100% with your sentiment that we should promote positive solutions vs. simply attempting to punish businesses we don't like. I have long believed as much myself, and have worked to that end. In the meantime, we do also have to be aware when an economy threatens the greater good and take specific measures (regulatory, activism, and otherwise) to directly address the threat.
I upvoted that comment, by the way.
Well, ok, but how many people really pay attention to the ownership structure of companies they purchase products from?
I know that 'vote with your dollars' is a typical answer to problems like this. On average, I suppose I purchase ~5 individual items each day. I don't really have the time to make sure that each of these companies that make these products conduct themselves in a manner that I consider ethically sound.
Scan a bar code before you buy a product and see either a big red "EVIL" banner or a big green "GOOD" banner, depending on the ownership structure of the company who makes the product.
Version 2 could let you configure what things you consider evil (owned by private equity, venture-backed, owned by cigarette companies, etc.)
Some clients would request that portions of their portfolio be devoted to 'Ethical', 'Socially Responsible', 'Green', etc. companies or funds. Ask them to elaborate on what exactly constitutes a 'Socially Responsible' company, and you get wildly different answers.
I guess what I am getting at is any definition of 'EVIL' or 'GOOD' is highly subjective. For example, not everyone would consider cigarette companies to be 'EVIL' ;)
Add info about country of origin, political affiliation of owner, or things like that, and you have a nice tool for boycotts.
Didn't something like this already exist?
Let's go through this logic again. So a hedge fund comes in, buys a company, levers it up with a partner's money, leaving a pile of toxic debt on their neighbor's lawn.
With you so far.
The company issues more junk bonds in order to pay it's existing creditors, and that gets snapped up by other PE firms / Hedgefunds, who need it in order to fulfill a never-ending quest for returns.
Yup got it.
GC then goes bankrupt and the banks are evil.
Whoa, wait a minute. Where is this whole process did anyone get hurt? The author seems to think Guitar Center, and YOU, the average consumers. But in order to really understand that, let's look back in time.
Guitar center, if were any other company, were started by a few enterprising individuals with a passion for what they do. In turn, they were able to build a great business, and grow it to serve the entire country. After a while, wanting to cash in their success, they sell the company to a buyer, knowing very well what they planned to do with the company. The rest is history.
Not as clear anymore is it? Now lets look at what happens in the future.
GC goes bankrupt. Or it doesn't but becomes irrelevant. The 800-pound gorilla in the space dies, and there's room in the space now for another innovator, a new group of passionate individuals who can now bring their vision to life.
And the cycle starts anew.
But now maybe Eric Garland should look into the capital structure of Fender Musical Instrument Company. Then we can all get really depressed.
Is the problem a lack of information, the lack of better investments, or that investors don't care about their money?
Those investing the in debt (most likely with someone else's money, mind you) are yield chasing. They probably aren't betting the farm on this company, just a small % of whatever money they manage.
If it works out and the company doesn't go under, great! They just make 8% in a low-yield environment, they look smart, they get bigger bonuses! If the company goes under, that sucks. But, they can rationalize it to investors as 'this stuff happens' and becomes a write-off. Imagine this is a hedge fund, the managers probably didn't lose their money, they lost their investors' money.
The problem is that any boycott initiative needs both a datasource and a UX that integrates into our buy habits. Something like a "PQ" - a parasitic quotient.
> There are dozens of industries that have been locked up by a few players in this way
I can perhaps see boycotting working for musical instruments, at least in the short term. They're crafted items that are infrequently bought, heavily researched, can be sent direct from manufacturers, and have a talkative and reputation-based community. But that doesn't really address any of the countless sundry-supplying industries that have been dominated in the same way.
Now, maybe I'm just one of the "people [who] believe that ... there is no other game in town", but I don't see that "voting with your wallet" works well in general. Perhaps with some automation it could, but similar automation would also help people compare prices, which is the thing your average person will be interested in. And at any rate, he really needs to expand on how he thinks boycotting can be made to work this time.
I agree. Would need to span all products - not just music - and mindlessly enhance my existing buying behavior. The problem is that boycott-able products are a small fraction of my total purchases. Could work, once I start buying everything with a smart phone. Then a plug-in, similar to those found on iPhone's Passbook, could pop up with a vendor rating. I would subscribe to such a service.
Until then, I’ll just boycott Guitar Center.
What the author is suggesting amounts to little more than "only buy boutique gear" which is ludicrous. For one, most of it is laughably and unnecessarily expensive and a lot not even that good (poor QC). You can't repair your own amps half the time because the small company enamels the whole damn circuit board so their competitors don't copy their (textbook EE) design. And there's no good alternative if you're someone who works on Keyboard Workstations.
People like cheap stuff more than they like brand/industry loyalty.
If the parasites are investment bankers, and the hosts are the investors with 401(k)s, then fine. But that has nothing to do with music.
If GC is the host and the investment bankers are the parasites, that doesn't quite make sense. GC apparently sought out the "parasites" at every turn, and that doesn't sound like a normal parasite/host relationship.
It sounds to me more like a business that just used too much leverage/debt, presumably to grow quickly. That works sometimes, and sometimes collapses. This time it collapsed. The times it works it doesn't make the news.
So what's special about GC?
So, until Guitar Center actually collapses, it is actually harming the economy because its existence is preventing the formation of companies that might actually make a profit.