Musing on how to make a "Free Enterprise" system able to actually work
Am having an urge to attempt to write some wisdom to help the American business scene of the moment.
Me, have business wisdom? Sure, as I have mentioned before, my business acumen is so poor I probably could not sell a tall glass of cool clear water for a dime to a rich man dying of thirst in the desert. In fact, my efforts to convey my "KESTS to GEO" concepts fits that category quite well, a reality test. Nonetheless, I - a naive Aspie - have this urge to write something here. So, with a cup of wine to help fend off any virtual sneers from the spinmasters of the moment, I will attempt to describe a thought that keeps surfacing although is not quite surfaced at this point.
It has to do with how to make a "Free Enterprise" system able to actually work. Well, maybe "Free Enterprise" only purpose is to be used as a slogan for the power grab of the past decade. But naive me thinks there might be some sincerity among some to make it actually work, so ....
It seems to me that the theory behind "Free Enterprise" is that the customer will choose the best product or service among those offered, thus enabling an ever better system of products and services. Businesses would sprout up of all kinds and the customer base will pick which ones work, and go back and buy some more of the good ones, but not so much of the poorer performing ones, as evaluated by the customers.
The humongous problem with the system as now practiced, is in the available selection presented to the informed customer base. If the customer is unable to easily find out the options, or if some of the options have been blockaded by the system, the customer cannot choose adequately, to test and see what fits their need the best. Their options are stuck with choosing among what advertising tells them, and what is available after big business has staked out its territories.
There are root causes, more than the single minded drive to make the most profit for the least effort. Such as ... imagine for a moment, that someone has invented some widget, say a simple battery powered cheap gadget, that a person could use that would work better to maintain good health, than does much of the conventional extremely expensive medical system of chemical pills and surgical knife getting rid of the bad things in a person's body and mind. And that thousands of people worldwide have individually exprimented and found that the electronic gizmo does indeed work. But widespread adoption of the cheap electonic gizmo would bring down trillions of dollars of the existing health industry; and that means a lot of jobs that are well paid and people need that income coming in month by month to pay their commitments from mortgage to college ed for kids to groceries. Millions of people. Perhaps most of all the powerful investors, who like those easy dividends continuing rolling in on time. Consciously or unconsciously they will all work to keep the existing system functioning as it already is. That means, no little cheap electronic gozmo is going to be allowed to step up and prove its worth in comparison to the existing mega system.
There is lots of incentive to quietly hide and erase the existence of the little electronic gizmo. By lots of people. Who have the territory staked out in many ways.
Yet this seems a violation of the ""Free Enterprise" system. Customers are supposed to be able to pick and choose from all options. Yet existing business commitments have taken the measures to prevent that option to the customer base. Low cost of health and improved wellbeing has been denied the customer base, sacrificed to maintain the jobs and lucrative existing business system.
So ... maybe there is a way to have the American nation step in and ease the transition - in this example - for the existing pharmaceutical and medical system, while the honest evaluation is going on as to what actually is the most efficient protocols possible, instead of the protocols permitted by the business-profit-guided system. Continuing to provide the income to all those who would lose their jobs and yes even their stock dividends, while the customer base shifts to the hypothetical widget that generally obsoletes a significant amount of prior conventional medial protocols. The customers benefit overall, with better health and less down time, even when paying for non-working medical systems, which still have going for them the things they can do best. So some form of buffer system would enable this to happen, spotting the obsoleted protocols and materials, and finding new uses for them that work well. Lots of on-the-job-retraining going on, paid for by the American system, which is greatly benefiting overall per the customer base.
Now, this kind of thing does not seem possible in a free-for-all anarchical tunnel-visioned "Free Enterprise" arena, where business is free to stake out territory against potential rivals, and to subtly ditch the upcoming potential competition by all sorts of trickery. Cheaper to do that, than to make a better product, by far, too much of the time, as has been going on for a very long time.
Probably the reader of this - if there are any - has long ago realized that the missing part is that things are not done by protocols and gizmos, they are done by a hierarchy of people, a system that makes people function harmoniously by knowing their place in the who-is-boss-of-whom grand scheme of things. And the upper bosses insist that only they can make the significant decisions, as proof of their right to occupy the lucrative positions. Protocols, elaborate chemical pills and the wielded surgical knife are all just footballs in their games. They are the shakers and movers, all that counts in the system. Customer base making decisions, hah. Customers are not boss. And who is boss is all that counts among this mentality. "Free Enterprise" thus is mere slogan camouflage, like waving a little American flag hiding their gun to pretend patriotism. The criteria for who climbs higher in this business hierarchy is not the evaluation of the resulting optimal evaluation by the customer base given all possible options from which to choose.
Ah, my little cup of wine is long emptied and has mostly worn off. Remaining are the echos of words of wisdom by a former coworker, who would comment that Parker Brothers are the ones to blame. Puzzling about that seemingly off-the-wall statement, the realization would seep in that the Parker Bros games, such as Monopoly, so conditioned the young minds as to have created the dysfunctional paths we are now so solidly following.
But does "blaming" work? It seems to me that the thing that works is to go in and fix the problem.
But, I again forget, it is only the "bosses" who enable things to happen. And they are too busy with other things. And political bosses can eventually be voted out if they are not doing the good job; but corporate bosses cannot even be voted out, we are stuck with them.
Me, have business wisdom? Sure, as I have mentioned before, my business acumen is so poor I probably could not sell a tall glass of cool clear water for a dime to a rich man dying of thirst in the desert. In fact, my efforts to convey my "KESTS to GEO" concepts fits that category quite well, a reality test. Nonetheless, I - a naive Aspie - have this urge to write something here. So, with a cup of wine to help fend off any virtual sneers from the spinmasters of the moment, I will attempt to describe a thought that keeps surfacing although is not quite surfaced at this point.
It has to do with how to make a "Free Enterprise" system able to actually work. Well, maybe "Free Enterprise" only purpose is to be used as a slogan for the power grab of the past decade. But naive me thinks there might be some sincerity among some to make it actually work, so ....
It seems to me that the theory behind "Free Enterprise" is that the customer will choose the best product or service among those offered, thus enabling an ever better system of products and services. Businesses would sprout up of all kinds and the customer base will pick which ones work, and go back and buy some more of the good ones, but not so much of the poorer performing ones, as evaluated by the customers.
The humongous problem with the system as now practiced, is in the available selection presented to the informed customer base. If the customer is unable to easily find out the options, or if some of the options have been blockaded by the system, the customer cannot choose adequately, to test and see what fits their need the best. Their options are stuck with choosing among what advertising tells them, and what is available after big business has staked out its territories.
There are root causes, more than the single minded drive to make the most profit for the least effort. Such as ... imagine for a moment, that someone has invented some widget, say a simple battery powered cheap gadget, that a person could use that would work better to maintain good health, than does much of the conventional extremely expensive medical system of chemical pills and surgical knife getting rid of the bad things in a person's body and mind. And that thousands of people worldwide have individually exprimented and found that the electronic gizmo does indeed work. But widespread adoption of the cheap electonic gizmo would bring down trillions of dollars of the existing health industry; and that means a lot of jobs that are well paid and people need that income coming in month by month to pay their commitments from mortgage to college ed for kids to groceries. Millions of people. Perhaps most of all the powerful investors, who like those easy dividends continuing rolling in on time. Consciously or unconsciously they will all work to keep the existing system functioning as it already is. That means, no little cheap electronic gozmo is going to be allowed to step up and prove its worth in comparison to the existing mega system.
There is lots of incentive to quietly hide and erase the existence of the little electronic gizmo. By lots of people. Who have the territory staked out in many ways.
Yet this seems a violation of the ""Free Enterprise" system. Customers are supposed to be able to pick and choose from all options. Yet existing business commitments have taken the measures to prevent that option to the customer base. Low cost of health and improved wellbeing has been denied the customer base, sacrificed to maintain the jobs and lucrative existing business system.
So ... maybe there is a way to have the American nation step in and ease the transition - in this example - for the existing pharmaceutical and medical system, while the honest evaluation is going on as to what actually is the most efficient protocols possible, instead of the protocols permitted by the business-profit-guided system. Continuing to provide the income to all those who would lose their jobs and yes even their stock dividends, while the customer base shifts to the hypothetical widget that generally obsoletes a significant amount of prior conventional medial protocols. The customers benefit overall, with better health and less down time, even when paying for non-working medical systems, which still have going for them the things they can do best. So some form of buffer system would enable this to happen, spotting the obsoleted protocols and materials, and finding new uses for them that work well. Lots of on-the-job-retraining going on, paid for by the American system, which is greatly benefiting overall per the customer base.
Now, this kind of thing does not seem possible in a free-for-all anarchical tunnel-visioned "Free Enterprise" arena, where business is free to stake out territory against potential rivals, and to subtly ditch the upcoming potential competition by all sorts of trickery. Cheaper to do that, than to make a better product, by far, too much of the time, as has been going on for a very long time.
Probably the reader of this - if there are any - has long ago realized that the missing part is that things are not done by protocols and gizmos, they are done by a hierarchy of people, a system that makes people function harmoniously by knowing their place in the who-is-boss-of-whom grand scheme of things. And the upper bosses insist that only they can make the significant decisions, as proof of their right to occupy the lucrative positions. Protocols, elaborate chemical pills and the wielded surgical knife are all just footballs in their games. They are the shakers and movers, all that counts in the system. Customer base making decisions, hah. Customers are not boss. And who is boss is all that counts among this mentality. "Free Enterprise" thus is mere slogan camouflage, like waving a little American flag hiding their gun to pretend patriotism. The criteria for who climbs higher in this business hierarchy is not the evaluation of the resulting optimal evaluation by the customer base given all possible options from which to choose.
Ah, my little cup of wine is long emptied and has mostly worn off. Remaining are the echos of words of wisdom by a former coworker, who would comment that Parker Brothers are the ones to blame. Puzzling about that seemingly off-the-wall statement, the realization would seep in that the Parker Bros games, such as Monopoly, so conditioned the young minds as to have created the dysfunctional paths we are now so solidly following.
But does "blaming" work? It seems to me that the thing that works is to go in and fix the problem.
But, I again forget, it is only the "bosses" who enable things to happen. And they are too busy with other things. And political bosses can eventually be voted out if they are not doing the good job; but corporate bosses cannot even be voted out, we are stuck with them.
Labels: free enterprise
posted by Unknown at
18:55
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