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Is Amazon the new Apple?
f0dder:
but it's simply not enough to claim that you helped an old lady across the street when your backyard is full of rotting corpses.-Renegade (April 20, 2011, 08:49 AM)
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Blasted! Gotta think of something else, then :(
wraith808:
But then again, that's the company bosses' duty - maximising long-term returns.
-johnk (April 20, 2011, 07:23 AM)
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Nope not necessarily. Just maximising returns.
In a meeting with several high powered executives (many of well known companies), a presenter asked the question in an icebreaker exercise, "If you had the choice of (a) a slow measured growth over 10 years, doubling stock price, but the company being strong in its industry, or (b) increasing the stock price 5x over the next year, but the company being out of business in 5 years, which would you choose?"
After tallying the results, over 80% chose (b). And that's pretty much true for corporations...
johnk:
But then again, that's the company bosses' duty - maximising long-term returns.
-johnk (April 20, 2011, 07:23 AM)
--- End quote ---
Nope not necessarily. Just maximising returns.
In a meeting with several high powered executives (many of well known companies), a presenter asked the question in an icebreaker exercise, "If you had the choice of (a) a slow measured growth over 10 years, doubling stock price, but the company being strong in its industry, or (b) increasing the stock price 5x over the next year, but the company being out of business in 5 years, which would you choose?"
After tallying the results, over 80% chose (b). And that's pretty much true for corporations...
-wraith808 (April 20, 2011, 10:47 AM)
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Well, all I can say is that the first thing you're taught at business school (yes, I did...) is that your duty is to maximize long-term returns. Any idiot can boost short-term returns, and, believe it or not, shareholders do worry about the long-term and have intelligent analysts who will see through and flag up short-term thinking by bad managers (obviously I am referring to the big shareholders, the pension funds and so on, not the hedge fund cowboys trying to make a fast buck).
It's not a fair fight. It's a slaughter. Consumers are nothing more than sheep in an abattoir.
<snip>
The big problems start when some nitwit figures out that he can also turn the abattoir into a brothel. Then every abattoir is the same within a short period. It's a downward spiral as Apple and Amazon are showing. They've turned the abattoir into a brothel. Now all the other abattoirs out there will follow suit.
Doom and gloom... :(
-Renegade (April 20, 2011, 08:49 AM)
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Goodness, Renegade, it's a wonder you manage to get out of bed in the morning, with such a gloomy view of the world.
"It's hopeless, we're doomed" is what you seem to be saying. I can't accept that. But neither can we change everything overnight. One thing at a time. Get angry about one thing, and help to change it.
On your example of light bulbs: after years of campaigning by various lobby groups, governments in Europe have finally taken action to stop the waste. In the UK, energy companies are compelled to supply heavily-subsidized, low-energy light bulbs to consumers - you can pick them up in supermarkets for about 10p (15c) each, with no limit on the quantity people can buy. They should last six to eight years. If energy companies are being forced to give them away, built-in obsolescence becomes unattractive, so bulb life should increase in the future.
Change, one step at a time.
wraith808:
But then again, that's the company bosses' duty - maximising long-term returns.
-johnk (April 20, 2011, 07:23 AM)
--- End quote ---
Nope not necessarily. Just maximising returns.
In a meeting with several high powered executives (many of well known companies), a presenter asked the question in an icebreaker exercise, "If you had the choice of (a) a slow measured growth over 10 years, doubling stock price, but the company being strong in its industry, or (b) increasing the stock price 5x over the next year, but the company being out of business in 5 years, which would you choose?"
After tallying the results, over 80% chose (b). And that's pretty much true for corporations...
-wraith808 (April 20, 2011, 10:47 AM)
--- End quote ---
Well, all I can say is that the first thing you're taught at business school (yes, I did...) is that your duty is to maximize long-term returns. Any idiot can boost short-term returns, and, believe it or not, shareholders do worry about the long-term and have intelligent analysts who will see through and flag up short-term thinking by bad managers (obviously I am referring to the big shareholders, the pension funds and so on, not the hedge fund cowboys trying to make a fast buck).
-johnk (April 20, 2011, 11:11 AM)
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Being taught and doing are two totally different things. I'm sure all of these people were taught also. But this is a true example, rather than some apocryphal tale.. The pressures of stock price in the short term put a lot of pressure on them to perform now rather than at some future date. So that's why you've had all of the collapse in the US economy recently- because of these pressures, and the executives who've been pressured by them/taken advantage of their position.
Deozaan:
Okay, apparently Gizmodo is wrong/confused about the back issues for cancelled magazine subscriptions:
I keep seeing the Gizmodo article picked up around the web – that is the one that incorrectly says that you will lose your Kindle back issues of a magazine if you cancel your subscription. This is just wrong and is an example of one of the downsides of the web – it perpetuates and spreads misinformation.-http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/you-will-not-loose-your-kindle-back-issues-when-you-cancel-a-subscription-gizmodo-is-wrong/
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It's pretty confusing how it actually works, so if you're interested you should read the whole article.
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