Blind profit will lead them both into the ditch
Big trouble is brewing when a business group (eg, a corporation) drifts its prime focus from creating the best product for the customer, to instead creating the most profit for the business group owners & stockholders. One may idealistically believe that the two are the same; yet as product franchise takes root, virtual territories are formed via several mechanisms, and it becomes effectively impossible for others to compete via a better product creation, because the established corporations control the marketplace by means other than having the best product. From then on, it is a process of making most money with least effort, for efficiency; and the creation of customer-optimum product drops further down the list of corporate priorities. And thus the customer is deprived of the optimum product innovations, having to settle for whatever business will make available to the customer.
Part of the difficulty may be the formation of an in-group "political correctness" around a social mechanism such as "free enterprise" that soon forgets the original idealistic implications of the slogan, "free enterprise" in this case. The active suppression of potentially upcoming technologies that could obsolete a powerful corporate complex, is likely far more profitably efficient than by the path of harmonizing with the new technology, for example, and so the principle of maximizing profit for expenditure made, goes for the "suppression" option if it can be done covertly enough or by somehow implying credibility gap between the established old workable versus the potential innovative new useful.
When the relatively few who are focused on controlling power and wealth processes become entrenched in a business-political system, the "customer" becomes merely a resource base that may be more efficiently controlled by a large variety of methods other than by providing the optimum products for the customer. They lose sight of the forest by becoming totally engrossed in the fun & games of playing the trees.
For examples, imagine a nation's overall transportation system that had been created guided solely by maximizing functionality, time and energy efficiency for all the users of the nation; and a health system that had always been guided by a principle of maximum health for the population, instead of guided by maximum profit for the suppliers and practitioners. Amazing difference! Is there a way to head back toward being on track? Corporate structure and resources are well fitted to creating products and services; it is the guidance criteria that creates the problems. It must be a profitable concern to survive, true; yet the difference between optimum product for customer along with somewhat less profit margin, might be only a small amount; it would need to be rationally justified in reference to its probable integration by the customer base into the model of the world situation environs in which it will function in practice during its useful life and eventual removal. Improvement as projected into the big picture ought to be able to justify some level of lessened profit for the corporation, to provide a better product or service to the customer. Anyone heard of the saying that "what goes around comes around"? Think corporations and its people are immune to that principle?
In pure politics, the "customers" can vote out the "management," but in a corporate system, the only vote possible is that of buying, or not buying, the corporate product. But the customer can only buy from among that which is available, in the corporate-controlled marketplace, options that are controlled not by optimum usefulness to the customer, but often instead by maximum corporate profit. Management that would choose otherwise, are likely to lose their jobs, as the stockholders typically are also far from sight of the forest in which they exist and upon which they depend for enduring life.
When the nation of customers is thereby deprived of having optimum functional products for fulfilling their needs, a similarly increasing dysfunctionality grows. If the customer base of the nation is not identical with the stockholder base (that is, where the customers are not equal and identical to the stockholders) it is likely that drift will occur from the "reality" of optimum functionality, to a "virtual reality" of maximum profit. Virtual meals are not nearly as nutritious as real meals are.
Even for those who have long ago lost the big-picture-purpose focus, by instead increasingly focusing on amassing great wealth and power via an endless plethora of behind the scenes manipulation of others' lives and events big and small, money cannot buy that which is not availably created. Although in fewer instances than for the rest of us, they too eventually will go away either empty-handed or only with an inadequate item that won't quite fill the need, can't do the job.
The customer can only obtain that which has been created, and the most functional product for the customer is not at all necessarily the product that makes the most profit for the powerful corporation. Blind profit will eventually lead them both to fall into the ditch, as it is said.
Part of the difficulty may be the formation of an in-group "political correctness" around a social mechanism such as "free enterprise" that soon forgets the original idealistic implications of the slogan, "free enterprise" in this case. The active suppression of potentially upcoming technologies that could obsolete a powerful corporate complex, is likely far more profitably efficient than by the path of harmonizing with the new technology, for example, and so the principle of maximizing profit for expenditure made, goes for the "suppression" option if it can be done covertly enough or by somehow implying credibility gap between the established old workable versus the potential innovative new useful.
When the relatively few who are focused on controlling power and wealth processes become entrenched in a business-political system, the "customer" becomes merely a resource base that may be more efficiently controlled by a large variety of methods other than by providing the optimum products for the customer. They lose sight of the forest by becoming totally engrossed in the fun & games of playing the trees.
For examples, imagine a nation's overall transportation system that had been created guided solely by maximizing functionality, time and energy efficiency for all the users of the nation; and a health system that had always been guided by a principle of maximum health for the population, instead of guided by maximum profit for the suppliers and practitioners. Amazing difference! Is there a way to head back toward being on track? Corporate structure and resources are well fitted to creating products and services; it is the guidance criteria that creates the problems. It must be a profitable concern to survive, true; yet the difference between optimum product for customer along with somewhat less profit margin, might be only a small amount; it would need to be rationally justified in reference to its probable integration by the customer base into the model of the world situation environs in which it will function in practice during its useful life and eventual removal. Improvement as projected into the big picture ought to be able to justify some level of lessened profit for the corporation, to provide a better product or service to the customer. Anyone heard of the saying that "what goes around comes around"? Think corporations and its people are immune to that principle?
In pure politics, the "customers" can vote out the "management," but in a corporate system, the only vote possible is that of buying, or not buying, the corporate product. But the customer can only buy from among that which is available, in the corporate-controlled marketplace, options that are controlled not by optimum usefulness to the customer, but often instead by maximum corporate profit. Management that would choose otherwise, are likely to lose their jobs, as the stockholders typically are also far from sight of the forest in which they exist and upon which they depend for enduring life.
When the nation of customers is thereby deprived of having optimum functional products for fulfilling their needs, a similarly increasing dysfunctionality grows. If the customer base of the nation is not identical with the stockholder base (that is, where the customers are not equal and identical to the stockholders) it is likely that drift will occur from the "reality" of optimum functionality, to a "virtual reality" of maximum profit. Virtual meals are not nearly as nutritious as real meals are.
Even for those who have long ago lost the big-picture-purpose focus, by instead increasingly focusing on amassing great wealth and power via an endless plethora of behind the scenes manipulation of others' lives and events big and small, money cannot buy that which is not availably created. Although in fewer instances than for the rest of us, they too eventually will go away either empty-handed or only with an inadequate item that won't quite fill the need, can't do the job.
The customer can only obtain that which has been created, and the most functional product for the customer is not at all necessarily the product that makes the most profit for the powerful corporation. Blind profit will eventually lead them both to fall into the ditch, as it is said.
Labels: corporate, customer, forest, functionality, profit
posted by Unknown at
07:56
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