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Google's Love For Small Businesses
bariswheel writes "The Fearless Frog is at it again: In his latest post, Cringely aims to slap some sense into Microsoft, Apple, and IBM altogether. From the article: 'What counts is that for Microsoft the platform is the PC while for Google the platform is the Internet and nobody can hope to control the Internet -- not Microsoft OR Google. Google is making a ton of money from people [small/medium sized businesses] who never were even in business before. This is not only a fundamental change in how advertising is done; it is a fundamental change in how BUSINESS is done.'"
...If Microsoft's business theory is antiquated, then Apple's- - which is for the most part derived from Microsoft's -- ought to be antiquated, too.
So what's antiquated about making a product and selling it? Sure it's been done for a 1000s of years but that doesn't mean it's outdated... people will be doing exactly the same in the next 1000 years
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
For the life of me, I still do not get America's obsession with small business. Sure, smaller businesses are less powerful, but they're also problematic from an economic standpoint; most small business either don't hire very many employees, or do not pay for their health insurance, or even both.
I understand they're "living the american dream" and all that, but how much is that worth us as a society? It seems to me that people have just automatically assumed that larger businesses are bad (by associating them with some bad actors among the super-big actors) and that smaller business are somehow intrinsically "good," regardless of the costs to society a large number of small business vs. a smaller number of larger business incur.
This is a testamonial to the shortsightedness of America and specifically the business and political communities. This is happening all over the country. Most local governments give huge breaks to "big" companies to locate in their towns, while ignoring or hasseling the small businesses with too much buracracy. And they wonder why they don't generate as much tax revenue or big companies pull out, relocate, shut down or outsource out of the country? It may seem like some quick-fix or quick-cash but it's never worth it in the long and run.
Google is making a ton of money from people [small/medium sized businesses] who never were even in business before.
They have no choice but to be in business. They all got FIRED from their careers and lost their benefits.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Want business, pay Google.
Want more business then the next guy, pay Google more.
Want to stay in business keep paying Google.
Want to kill the next guy, click-fraud your competitors, so they pay Google.
Oh oh, here some the spyware companies on your keywords, pay Google more money.
Bill it all to the customer of course, who is screwed no matter what.
Hash, but that's the new world order. Smart business. Now if Google would only apply all those smarts to something not evil.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
For anyone who read the article, the author suggests that Microsoft should license Vista and Office for no more than $50.
Visual Studio 2005 Express was originally thought to be priced $50 a copy, then Microsoft made it free (as in beer) for anyone who downloads it before November 2006. The express editions have pretty much anything that you get in the real thing, except Microsoft's analog for CVS and a few other enterprise things. Express is a great product for anyone who wants to have fun with coding or even write commercial applications. I think Microsoft may be heading in the right direction, because I'd never pay more that 50 bucks for Windows in the country where I live in, because the pirated version of XP Pro Corporate Edition costs $2.5 and because it's corporate, you'll never need to activate it - installs on any number of PCs without cracking anything.
And because I prefer to be on the safe side, I'm currently using a perfectly legal version of Kubuntu.
For the sake of argument, let's put aside the total absence of numbers in that paragraph... But, if one company is going to be credited with "making a ton of money from people who never were even in business before", surely it's E-Bay!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Microsoft can build software for a handheld or tablet computer, a mobile phone or a TV set-top box and even though the wrapper is different, the feel is always very much the same -- that of a fat PC client. Microsoft can't allow a phone to be a phone because they can't dominate and control a plain old phone unless it is more Windows than phone. That's a problem.
It surely is. That was obvious in 2000 when they came out with "Pocket PC", their most successful spin on the handheld, and "Stinger", their fialed attempt to get into the cellphone market.
The Pocket PC meant the end of the Windows CE micro-notebooks and the Windows-CE-based tablets. They were pushing Windows NT as the new tablet... the problem is that while Windows CE felt like a spin on Windows 95, and the Pocket PC felt like a Palm on steroids, the Tablet PC was just an overpriced notebook.
Luckily for Microsoft, Palm had no idea what their product was, and has been trying to turn Palm OS into Pocket PC... and failing, big time. If Palm was smart they'd be selling black-and-white 68000-based Palms for $30-$50 in every grocery store in the USA, and they'd still own the business... because Microsoft couldn't do that. But, no...
But, anyway... Microsoft's platform is Windows. If you're not Windows... even if you look like Windows, Microsoft just wants to make you an annex to the Windows desktop. And if you don't even look like Windows, Microsoft doesn't want you to be a platform. That's why they completely redid the XBox, people were turning it into a platform.
But what's Apple's "platform"? It's not the Mac, and it's not Mac OS, or Mac OS X, because their "handheld/..." is the iPod, and it's nothing like a Mac. It's not even tied in to the Mac. Apple's platform is, near as I can tell, "whatever they can make money selling". That's not something they can control like Microsoft can control Windows. Microsoft isn't Apple's proxy, but what is?
Ms uses their monopoly in OS's to allow them to lose lots of money in consoles, apple uses their monopoly(AFAIK it technically is one) in mp3 players to keep their PC business safe.
Both also like bundling, ms bundles various stuff they want to push in with their OS, apple bundles together hardware, an OS and a platform for 3rd party programs(though you can't blame them for not encouraging a wine type API for other platforms, and they probably don't even resist it as much as ms).
I work for a small company. I used to work for several big companies. I don't make as much money now as I used to, but I have ten times more freedom and ten times more happiness and ten times less stress. I do more work than I did at the big companies, but it seems less like "work." Even though, technically I don't make as much money as I did working at some larger companies, somehow it feels like I do have more money. Maybe this is because the quality of my life has improved to the point where I am not engaging in consumeristic, distractive or self-destructive behavior as much as in the past, and this leaves me more resources as well as more peace of mind?
When I worked at big companies, there always was an illogical hierarchy that insured good ideas would get buried behind the ambitions of politically-motivated managers. People used internal memos to talk in lieu of face-to-face conversations. We had way too many meetings that didn't get a goddam thing done. And half the staff's specialization involved blaming others for things that went wrong. Normally accountability and responsibility go hand-in-hand, but not in big companies. And things constantly broke down and got lost in the cracks. When I was young, this was huge hit to my idealism and I had to make a decision: Did I want to live my life this way and end up being programmed to accept mediocrity as the status quo? Or did I want to find an environment where the people were truly appreciated and weren't constantly living in fear that some corporate boss would cut their job without even introducing himself?
I would never go back.
Show me a large company and I will show you an organisation with huge inbuilt inefficiencies and vast inertia. In the long term it is going to die or split up. That's part of the business cycle. To drive the business cycle, you need new dynamic startups and a regime in which, when they become medium sized, they can still grow. You need strength in depth, like the German Mittelstand. Some will be winners and turn into large companies. But if you only have large companies, in the long run there is nowhere but down. Small companies cannot monopolise their markets, so they have to do something well to survive.
I am surprised myself, but I find myself agreeing with Cringely - over the long term. Until recently it has taken a very big enterprise to build cheap computers, phones, or volume software. The problem is that these things are now commoditised to such a degree that they do not command a premium. It's like the transition from a world in which iron was a scarce commodity and the man who could afford a steel sword could be a military leader, to a world in which iron was a cheap building material and the emphasis moved to poeple who could think of new things to do with it. That this transition is happening over a couple of decades rather than a couple of millenia is a sign of some sort of progress.
Pining for the fjords
you would really rather have a couple people own big companies and small businesses be non-existent? that would generate the smallest percentage of rich/wealthy people in the united states, leaving the rest of the people (more than 99.9%) in the middle/low class. i guess this would be fine if it didnt sound stupid.
For anyone who read the article, the author suggests that Microsoft should license Vista and Office for no more than $50.
No, he suggests that Microsoft sell a new OS that's actually usable on existing computers and doesn't have the legacy bloat and security problems of Windows... for $50.
Maybe they could bring back Windows CE?
Hope I get this comment in M2. I'd especially love the moderator to log out and post an explanation as AC. The mod is undeserved and an excellent example of why slash moderation is fundamentally broken.
I'm counting on Google and eBay to save America"
While it is wonderful that ebay and Google are offering large scale exposure and nation wide distrabution to small businesses, let's not demonize all giant corporations. Some things are better done on a huge scale. Think Boeing and FedEx. While other things are best done on a small,even personal,scale. Like fine dining or health care. The real hope for America is finding the appropirate scale for different industries, instead of business success being defined as becoming a huge market-dominating multinational, success can become about a balanced harmonious place in the economy and community.
We are all just people.
The way software and products are funded is definitely changing. The days of licensing software products on widespread scale (certainly with Microsoft) do look as if they are going to be pretty untenable over the next ten years. With licensing for Windows, licensing for Office, licensing for servers, licensing for other spin-off software like Sharepoint, licensing for Exchange and CALs etc. there are small businesses who will never in a million years be able to use this software in a full, useful and productive manner. Even if they were to, by the time they did the next fifteen versions would have been brought out, leaving theirs unsupported.
Google funds its activities and development through advertising and spin-offs based on that from the services they provide, provided by their development. Small businesses and individuals have got several times the chance of using Google Calendar or Google Groupware than they have of using Exchange. That's what makes them a bit dangerous to Microsoft. Even then though, Microsoft still makes its money through licensing. There's no real way of getting around that.
Ditto with open source software, and that's why it will not be brought to the masses by Red Hat or especially Novell. They charge license fees in all but name. If someone can find a way of taking open source software, and finds a business model that allows them to fund their development whilst giving it away for free, it's bye, bye Microsoft, Novell and a few other companies who make their livings from pure software licensing. Seriously. IBM are a little bit different in that they do more than just that, so they have a chance. There I disagree. But, if you're a pure software licensing company you better hope damn hard that you're providing an adequate service to your custoners and you're in a specific well defined market.
Been around for how long? Ever since someone invented the newspaper and realised that a load of penny ads still pays for all the costs just as good as full page ads with the advantage you can stick those tiny classified ads anywhere you got a spare space.
Nothing new here.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Cringely aims to slap some sense into Microsoft, Apple, and IBM altogether
Um, IBM makes its money through enterprise-level applications and services, with some hardward. Apple plays the hardware/music/software game. You may as well "slap some sense" into Boston Market, Sears, and Starbucks for not joining Google's model.
Visual Studio Express and all components will remain free. Visual Studio Express
This is becoming a very large and very rich site for the hobbyist programmer, including many starter kits and tutorials.
I work in a small bussiness.
;) Otherwise, you can only lose by giving your patronage to the big corporate places.
People in town know me, and I know them. The people who run the other small bussinesses in town all know me, and I know them.
With a relatively small number of customers, I have to treat them right, or we'd be out of bussiness really really fast.
When I do treat the customer right, I know that they'll tell their friends... and I also know that the other small bussinesses in town will stear people my way, just like I send bussiness their way.
Occasionally, I'll get customers who are complete assholes. Over a certain level of assholeness, and they're not worth my time or trouble... and I make certain to send them off to some large corporate store so I can concentrate on the customers who actually respond to being treated well.
The customers I want, I treat like gold.
Now, take your typical corporate environment. The workers could give a fark about their customers, because almost none of the workers in a corporate environment have a direct stake in how well the bussiness does overall (beyond making sure that it doesn't go belly up).
Your typical corporate employee treats the customers at a certain minimum level of service, because he'll be fired if he doesn't.
So, EVERYONE who goes to do bussiness with the corporate places gets treated in a "lowest common denominator" sort of way. They're not quite treated as badly as garbage that blew in off the street, but they're never treated like the "good" customers that I treat like gold.
Everyone in the corporate places, employees and customers alike, gets treated as just another cog in a big machine.
So, if you spend your money at big corporate places, you're in effect voting with your dollars to be treated just slightly better than assholes get treated. But, if you spend your money at small bussinesses and act like a decent human being, then you'll be treated much better.
Every dollar you spend at Wallmart or Blockbuster, is a dollar that you're "voting" with, to be treated as a disposable nothing who gets the bare minimum of courtesy... and nothing else.
I guess if you're a complete asshole, then you'd come out ahead in that bargain
This is not a phenomenon solely for local governments. All levels of government are just as bad. This is also not restricted to small businesses.
For example, if you're in Pennsylvania and take Interstate 81 south you'll suddenly see a number of major corporate buildings in all fields - manufacturing, financial, consulting - across the Mason-Dixon before you even get a chance to cross the border. This is because various states also have different ways of handling corporations. As a Pennsylvanian, I can state for a fact that the Commonwealth of PA is *not* tax friendly and instead treats its citizens and businesses as an endless money pit that is constantly subject to increasing taxes. It's no wonder why corporations mock Pennsylvania by having so many offices across the border. Same with Delaware. Their tax laws are much friendlier than Pennsylvania's, which is why so many financial mega-corporations are headquartered in DE.
One thing that I have noticed, however, is that PA municipalities, particularly in the more rural areas, are becoming increasing hostile towards big corporations. Wal-Mart has been defeated no less then three times in the past two years from building their mega-stores in the Harrisburg/York/Lancaster area due to citizens fighting them. I know that Wal-Mart is a favorite anti-corporation whipping boy in the past few years; however, the reasons that were cited for stopping W-M include undesirable increase to local traffic and destruction of local, small businesses, both of which are commonplace after-effects of W-M.
Of course, the U.S. itself is very hostile to businesses because of the on-going mentality that if you're rich, you've done so solely through ill-gotten means and therefore need to be punished through taxation. The increasing conversion of the U.S. from capitalism to a federal socialism is also not conducive to corporations or frankly anyone who wants to work hard to achieve wealth because if you're rich, you're living unfairly and need to have your income forcibly removed so that the local, state, and federal governments can give it to others more deserving of your money than you. This is one of the reasons why so many companies have their corporate headquarters off-shore where they can't be subject to the taxes and regulations. Whether or not people think that's ethical, I think that anyone with any sense of economics can at least understand why corporations do that, particularly with so many other countries offering greatly reduced taxes or no corporate taxes at all.
I agree with you completely that small businesses are the ones that get hurt the most. They don't have the clout and financial support that mega-corporations can fall back on. However, harmful taxation is not limited to being subjected to small businesses nor are local governments the only ones who create an environment that is hostile to small businesses. All levels of government are too blinded with short-term greed because of tax dollars that they think they can collect in the here and now.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
posting Cringely's articles. They're nothing but flamebait and don't deserve to make slashdot's front page.
it's what "everybody" is a part of. http://www.sba.gov/aboutsba/sbastats.html
FTA: ...nobody can hope to control the Internet.
The big telecom companies beg to differ.
(See: Net Neutrality
Meanwhile they'll still be selling desktop software of course, but this area will start to decline in profitability. Windows and Office are their cash cows and the software-as-service stuff is their new direction which will eat cash for a number of years.
As far as Cringely's suggestion that MS offers a lean and mean, high performance, secure version of Windows, fully compatible with XP applications and peripherals, that could be sold for $49 without major loss of revenue and internal disruption, well, would that it were that easy. That's Cringely's advantage of being a blogger.
If someone can find a way of taking open source software, and finds a business model that allows them to fund their development whilst giving it away for free, it's bye, bye Microsoft, Novell and a few other companies who make their livings from pure software licensing.
You mean like IBM and Apple do?
So America's savior is a company that is entirely dependent on advertising revenue? Does Cringely remember 1999? Has he read anything about Google's problems with spammers hacking the PageRank algorithms, and polluting Google's cache with useless auto-generated sites?
No offense to Google - I'm a regular user - but I'm not pinning the entire nation's future to this one tech company. That's absurd hyperbole. Something that we know to expect from Cringely (and Dvorak, et al.)
Well, first off, you have to consider that we have other objectives in mind than just employing a lot of people and giving them good health benefits... Those things are both important, especially health benefits since for some dumbass reason we still haven't adopted socialized health care, but as far as our national and personal objectives go those aren't in the center.
One thing that small businesses can do that large ones cannot is innovate. Now, you may think to yourself that most of the new innovative technologies that come out you ultimately buy from a large company that has the resources to mass produce them. That's absolutely true! However, those large companies often as not get their technology from smaller companies, either from buying the technology directly, or as is more common in software where development teams are important just buying out the smaller company all together.
Microsoft and Apple are good examples. A huge portion of their respective product lines were purchased from smaller companies, everthing from itunes to virtual pc. OSX itself comes from the purchase of NeXT.
Smaller companies can take risks and if they fail, which they usually do, they won't take down a huge corporation and cause thousands of jobs to be lost.
Overall I'd say, to the extent that we think "as a society," which we honestly just don't do that often, we value the economic power that being an innovator lends us. As individuals, I'd say that many people want the freedom to take risks. Playing it safe in a big company guarantees you won't lose your job... but it also pretty much guarantees you won't get rich, and it certainly hampers your ability to try new things. If I have to choose between being a well paid middle manager at a huge company who has to do everything by the book, or the head of a small company where I'm making much less money and have no health care where I get to do pretty much whatever I want, I would find option 2 pretty tempting.
"Walk into any big corporation and you find a bunch of uptight, miserable people who hate their jobs; don't care whether the customer is happy, and generally feel powerless to effect positive change on any grand scale within their operation."
Good thing size isn't everything, otherwise all you small-dicked people would just have to give up. Seriously why is your stereotype any more accurate than the stereotype that a small business is a better environment? Except all you want (for there is always a counterexample). You still want us to basically believe; big:==bad, small:==good.
"The bigger they are, the harder they fall."
You better stay away from tall or fat people then.
"It's also a fallacy that smaller companies don't employee more people."
Only when it's applied to an aggregate. OF course if you can pull an "exception", then so can I.
"They are an intregal part of the workforce in the country."
Here's a saying for you. "It talkes all different kinds".
For what I've seen, many small businesses are not the best places to work. This is because in a large corporation, a manager who is being an asshole or otherwise does not perform well e.g. does not get a change in the way the business is done is usually quickly replaced, whereas in small businesses he usually owns the company and there is no one to sack him. Of course the company will go under soon, but this is equally bad for the workers.
Amazon also seems to have embraced small bussiness. It seems every time I order from them, they forward the order to some tiny business somewhere. This makes sense for them -- no inventory, no shipping paperwork, etc. They just become one big hosted e-commerce site.
...for they are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
[Yeah, it's an old one, but do I get bonus points for spelling 'ketchup' correctly?]
Actually, MS is pushing pretty hard into the small business arena.
They have retail management and point of sale software for small businesses. Plus many offerings for business accounting, like SBA. They actually have some pretty cool offerings in this area, compared to the competition anyway.
...licensing "door bell tones."
Don't tell the RIAA.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Making and selling products is so yesterday!
Click here and sign up for our maillist and you will get Fr33 m0ny!!
Suppose that Google had 95% of the search market. Then, if Google either denies advertising space to a small company or lowers its page ranking (so that the company appears at the bottom of a list of 666 other businesses selling the same product), then the company could be hurt irrevocably. There is no viable way for the company to use an alternative search portal since since its tiny search of the search market reaches too small an audience. "Too small an audience" means "too few potential customers".
"Apple is just Microsoft with a sense of style" - Robert Cringely
My post was a bit longer before it was edited by Zonk. It was a bit long, so thank you Zonk for editing it. It dealt with the twist ending of the article, which I thought was possibly the most important and thought provoking piece of the article: "Will Google's own vertical obsession hamper their growth?" "here's a failure strategy for Google. While not intending so much to create a platform, Google has done just that. And once you control a platform, the way to best leverage that control is by sharing the platform generously. Google is right now the basis of much Web 2.0 creativity from third-party firms -- every one of which is afraid that they'll be put out of business next month by Google rolling-out its own version of whatever that ISV has built and proved. That's the Microsoft domination model, so why not? Because it poisons the well, that's why not. It is great for Google to buy-up these little firms making millionaires along the way, but Google's obsession with reinventing the wheel might hurt them over time. I hope they are smart about this, but I fear that they aren't, and that Google's own vertical obsession might hamper their growth."
Insinct is stronger than Upbringing - Irish Proverb
You are making a very mistaked assumption. What you are calling "marketing" is actually "advertising". And advertising is only a tiny fraction of marketing.
Without marketing, you would have no product (or service). At all.
And yes, the kind of advertisement we have these days also annoys me. And yes, I too think they spend too much money on it.
morcego
Small businesses are less efficient, they /don't/ have the economies of scale - they have more employees, more overhead for the amount of business they do. That is, they spread what wealth they do have / create around more.
Purest capitalism would tend to give all that work to the one most efficient provider, minimize spreading the profits around, and maximize the flow to the owners.
The inefficiency acts like involuntary socialism.
Someday we'll all be negroes
Thanks for putting this story under the Apple category... we almost missed our daily quota of Apple related stories.
Note: we're also lacking the monthly story about AIDS finally being cured.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
You know, one nine of ten small businesses fail within a year. Of the remaining, nine out of ten fail the next year.
I remember hearing that a few years ago. The only places on the web to find the failure rates...want you to pay.
Pfft.
Blar.
It isn't just the product...software or hardware. It's the people who make it work. Sure, it isn't cheap.
Blar.
It became virtually impossible to put a new product on the market without paying hefty advertisement fees thru AdWords. The Google competitors in this space simply do not work so not doing Google ads is not an option. If you dont pay Google for this form of "product placement" - you do not exist and you get zero traffic.
This is monopoly Microsoft could only dream of.
I could take your comment (or any of the other "large companies are evil" comments on here and turn them right around...
"Show me a small company, and I'll show you a place to work with few resources, inflexible scheduling, lousy benefits, no hope for advancement, and where nepotism runs rampant."
"Show me a large company, and I'll show you a place with fine benefits, the ability to take vacation whenever you want, and not have to coordinate with the other four employees, only one of which can be out at any one time. You'll see vast oceans of expertise available, solid benefits, a clear advancement path, etc."
Both of those paragraphs are complete bunk, as they are obscene sweeping generalizations.
To look at your specific statements:
Show me a large company and I will show you an organisation with huge inbuilt inefficiencies and vast inertia.
Show ME a large company, and I will show you an organization with huge economies of scale that enable them to deliver quality products at lower prices (and that does not necessarily involve exploitation of anybody or anything.)
In the long term it is going to die or split up. That's part of the business cycle.
IBM & GE might disagree with that assessment.
Now tell me any large scale enterprise that shows real organic growth? Most of them can only try to absorb other companies and save money to pay the huge acquisition fees. They employ a lot of people - and frequently wish they did not and try to get rid of them by outsourcing,
Hmmm... Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Target, etc. seem to be showing "real organic growth" just fine without acquisitions, thank you very much. And plenty of "SMEs" outsource all kinds of stuff, just not overseas. Many SMEs outsource accounting, IT, billing, collections, etc. I have no doubt many of the WOULD outsource overseas if it were possible to do so.
They run strange tax avoidance schemes that cause their profits to be relocated far from where their employees and customers are based.
SMEs are not exactly as pure as the new-driven snow either. The difference is that most of their tax-avoidance schemes are obvious and mostly stupid. Most of the SME tax fraud is done by the owners directly. SMEs are notorious under-payers of taxes on profits (who's gonna know?), abusers of "business expenses" ("My 3-ton Luxury SUV is a "work truck""), and payroll tax non-payment (payment of workers "under the table") is quite common.
Summary: There are large, global companies that are ethical and great to work for, and there are plenty of evil small companies that are soul-sucking pits of despair. YMMV.
SirWired
You have to have something on which to run the internet. Can we really compare Google and M$/Apple? They started in very different fields with very different goals. Of course their business model is different; they're in different businesses! Of course, M$ is trying to move more into what has become Google's domain, but that's nothing new, nor should it be discouraged. Competition is always beneficial. We just shouldn't be surprised when different companies that have different goals also have different business models.
This guy subscribed to slashdot just to spam this shit?
WTF, sir. WTF indeed.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
Has anyone in this discussion worked in enough companies to make these generalizations? I feel like people are just repeating eachother's talking points.
The first agrarian societies were formed around the production of fermented alcohol. It required a stable population in one area, "gathering" especially early cereal grains was very labor intensive, whereas with farming it was shown to be less intensive for the yields. People drank beer instead of water and didn't get as sick as others who drank biologically polluted water primarily, hence the interest in alcohol production rose dramatically, and alcoholism was a side effect that caught on, we humans seem to be easily addicted but be able to half ass function with a buzz. Weird, huh? They developed farming by selecting an area to settle in that already had some crude cereal grains and then weeding the patches. Small step from there to scattering the seeds, etc, poof, "farming". In turn, the trade in booze (because it was the first high tech traded "manufactured" product outside of weapons and one of the earlier "intellectual properties") is what started "sales" and the concept of money for the most part. Basically, our entire modern civilization, from how we do business to organize into governments to our social customs and religions probably as well-almost all came about from *substance abuse*.
I'm a farmer, got a-wondering and looked it up one day a long time ago, that was what I read about it anyway, perhaps there might be links out there, this is just from my recollection. Probably a search term like 'beer, early agriculture, civilization' might work.
Oh, to the person who thinks most farmers in the US get subsidies-well--no, no they don't,and I don't care if your daddy was a farmer and you hated it, it is just not true and an urban legend, especially the "urban" part. Not to say they don't exist, but most farmers don't get them.
And prices are abysmal compared to 20 years ago. Please enjoy your *incredibly* cheap food while it lasts, the rising cost of energy will mandate some pretty serious price increases shortly, most likely you'll see it at least by next winters prices and then from that point forward. And imported food will not be much if any cheaper, the cost of transportation and refrigeration is rising faster than whatever they can offset by using literal plantation slave labor, and all the other costs-tractors, ships, rail lines, diesel fuel, chemicals, fertilisers, this or that, is roughly the same because it is a global market completely now. With oil prices as they are now it is iffy, much higher, there is no practical way to "make more money" by offshoring your nations food supply, and it is also INCREDIBLY STUPID to even think about offshoring your nations FOOD supply. And if you can't see why that is-anyone you I mean, just generally speaking-well, no help for ya I guess..
Major crossroads this year economically I am afraid. I've been watching it sneak up on us for awhile now. Looks like we are here. We've already started the crash, it's not in the mysterious future, it is happening right now if you go behind the headlines and honestly LOOK at what is going on.
Big hint:(to the 98% who don't produce any food whatsoever in any credible amounts) if at all possible, put in your own large garden (added bonus, less grass to mow), it will do you no harm in the fun and games to come ahead, especially if the idjits whack iran and take around 1/5th or so (it won't be just iran's oil off the market should that war commence, they won't roll over like iraq did, they'll hit back and various nations infrastructure that help facilitate attacks on them) of all the oil off the world market in a short time frame.
There is no replacement for it, none, nothing fast anyway, the infrastructure and production facilities to say nothing of the actual crude supply does not exist. Myself, I am stockpiling food (anything we can't produce ourseleves easily) and fuel and spare parts and seeds and such like knowing this will happen. As to "sharing" when the full crash hits--uhh, we have been dumped on for years and years now. thin
Take for example, Northrop Grumman employees are doing research for a new product or new technology. Google can tell where all searches are coming from (Northrop Grumman IPs)and can start anayzing what companies like Northrop Grumman are researching on the Internet (after filtering all the garbage). Not only does Google now have a nice research package; with some embellishments, they could possibly sell Northrop's research queries to Lockheed Martin - just a little bit more intelligence for Lockeed or whoever pays the highest price. I would also bet that Google knows more about Northrop Grummans queries than Northrop Grumman itself.
The queries themselves may possibly be more valuable than the advertising itself (on a per page basis).
The federal government recently wanted search phrases from the major search engines, under the guise of researching pornography access. Might they also start data mining the search words and anaylze what people, companies, forign countries are interested in - for future planning, or sharing with select industry contacts.
Call me paranoid - but I know questions (and every search is a question) lead someplace. After enough questions - search queries - you can visualize an individual, corporate, or national path to something.
This is a very insightful post; I wish I had mod points.
Please stop complaining about the articles you don't like and skip over them instead. You bitch as if Zonk were holding a gun to your head.
I find that attorneys have even less of a soul.
Libertas in infinitum
I am a management consultant working mostly with large companies. I have also worked at director level in one multinational and one (rapidly expanding) SME, as well as working for a range of companies from medium sized to very large. My wife oversees the accounts of nearly 60 small enterprises. And I stand by what I say. I believe we are now at a period where a number of large companies are in fact in long term decline, and this is most likely the end of the business cycle that began in WW2. All the outsourcing and cost cutting is a symptom of that decline, not the rise of China. Economic pressure from China, Russia, resource constraints etc. may be the birth of a new business cycle. In the meantime I am looking to put my money into small businesses with interesting ideas that ideally have local roots and global reach, even though recently most of my asset growth has been the stock market. Because I really do not know what sustains the present bull market other than high commodity prices, and that is no basis for long term growth.
Pining for the fjords
HAND.
Over time Boeing, Bombardier, AirBus and Embraer will increase the configurability of their designs to the point where a single design family can produce quite different-looking aircraft with a wide range of possible functions. The more a customer is willling to buy, the more minutely it will be possible to customize a design. Increasingly, a medium-sized business will be able to recognize a business need for a certain configuration of aircraft, and "design" it by tweaking configuration options provided by one of the big manufacturers, then customizing the resulting design.
Let's say you wanted to sell aquarium transport aircraft. Start with an AirBus with all the parameters tweaked to "heavy lifting", then design a special shipping container that keeps water in a large tank oxygenated.
In the same way, it will be possible to become a small car manufacturer by tweaking parameters and customizing a platform sold by a big manufacturer.
// DevsVult: The Machines Will It
You logged in, and responded to this fucking thread?
WTF, sir. WTF indeed.
timecop, at pepper.idge.net and sia.animenfo.com
>I'm fine with services too -- some people need them. I don't, usually.
The ISP you use to connect to the internet is a service. The utilities that supply water and electricity to your home are services. The entertainment you consume (TV, films, computer games, ad-supported web sites you visit including slashdot - the web page you are viewing now, and any software you buy) are services. The education system you were taught at was a service industry, the bank that holds your money and (maybe) lends your mortgage is a service. If you renyt, you do so from a service provider. Where do you work?
Simon Hibbs
That was nothing but a long ramble. He's gone off the deep end, his thoughts seem to wander and he can't seem to focus on the subject of the essay... first he talks of IBM... then MSoft... then Apple... next Google... back to Apple....
Christ... enough!!
Coastal town in CT. There is a main road that leads to the beach. About half of the store-fronts are different each year. Reastaurants, shops, whatever. They don't seem to stay in business, and this is only the retail businesses.
Obviously nothing like the 1 in 10 claim I quoted, but attrition seems pretty high.
Blar.
Well, in a smaller company there's a more direct recognition of how your work impacts the end product; there's less bullsh!t between you and the customer.
Additionally, there is more likely to be a better "work/life" balance as well, since those "at the top" aren't all that far from those actually performing the work.
I've heard an interesting remark about game theory and management theory: "Leadership is about maximizing gains, management about minimizing losses" which even included the comment that management/accountability in a large corporation is a good example of being "on the defensive".
Finally, large corporations usually have flaws in their feedback mechanisms; while management is supposed to be top-down, the whole function of management memos reporting results back up the food chain seem to specialize in NOT giving useful information. Information theory goes awry since management wants to hear the "expected" rather than anything unexpected. This, IIRC, is called "politics".
As for costs, how long does it take to get treated in the US? Millions of people in the UK pay twice. Once for the socialist NHS, once for private provision. Why? Because if you don't, then you'll wait months to get seen or treated. If I wanted to see an ear specialist, I had to wait over 3 months on the NHS, or 2 weeks privately.
Notorious for hiring illegal aliens at obscenely low wages...
Hard to characterize, but frequently are one-man/woman or family-run (i.e. no real employees) operations...
If large enough to need to hire outside the family, see "contractors" above.
Are you aware that businesses this small aren't even required to pay minimum wage, to say nothing of benefits? I worked at a small, family run restaurant for a number of years as a busboy, and never got within $.50 of minimum wage.
Sean
So do we. You get whatever amount of health care your insurance company decides you need, at a cost greatly inflated over so called "socialist" systems.
A buddy of mine used to claim he thought socialized medicine would be fine, except that in the event of a really serious problem, he wanted access to the "best care money can buy". My standard reply was that he couldn't AFFORD the best care money could buy (he was a university professor in national security affairs - not rich by any means). In any case, a single-payer system such as proposed by Hillary Clinton wouldn't have prevented you from spending as much of your own money as you wanted on medical care.
I was in the military for many years. While on active duty, I effectively had socialized medicine. I'm here to tell you, socialized medicine is good and you definitely want it. Compared to the ridiculousness that is private insurance, socialized medicine is heaven on earth.
Sean
This is without a doubt the dumbest thing I have ever seen written on Slashdot, and that's saying something. For one thing, it's objectively false. The reasons for high health costs are covered pretty well here (what they don't address is the spiraling costs of administration resulting from insurance paper shuffling). The bottom line is that medical care isn't very well provided via the market - customers don't have the information they need to compare providers, and as the linked article points out, no one is particularly interested in going for the lowest bidder when they need heart surgery done. "Cartelization" and "excessive government regulations" are nothing more than strawmen for the radical right to tilt at.
Even if your proposition WERE true, what exactly do you propose to do? Get rid of government regulations on medicine? Do away with physician licensing? That would lower costs, all right. Of course, you'd never have any way of knowing which of the hundreds of "doctors" in the phone book was a quack, but who cares, right? Big insurance companies would save lots of money.
Sean
the days of the franchise station are over. Very few owner operated gas stations still exist, at least in major urban areas. All through the 80s & 90s the company stores were retailing at about the same price that they were wholesaleing, forcing owners to either give up the pump and focus solely on service, survive on the soda pop margin, or to become computer programmers.
Mcdonalds does franchise, but you can't get into one with less than a $1M, and owners often own more than one. I worked at a fast food franchise when I was a kid, it wasn't a great job but it wasn't a bad relationship, the owener and I both got what we wanted out of it. I've talked with more than a few mickydees emps that view thier jobs there as a stepping stone on the path that is the American dream (it's only a matter of time before we start seeing H1B visa holders there).
It's a gross generalization, but it's true: Smaller business survive because the employees and customers alike share a higher level of satisfaction with conditions of the execution of the agreement. Big business is ALL about the economy of scale and squeezing every last drop, customer are driven by price/performance ratios that they mistake for quality, employees are driven by FUD and the hope of climbing the ladder towards the land of the golden parachute.
The irony is that the the bigger a company gets the more it tends to waste.
Wish I had some mod points....
'Your brain is God.' -- Dr. Timothy Leary
Martini Glasses
emphasis mine
The link you gave me tells part of the story of why health care is expensive, and all of the points you gave me in that link were valid. But it doesn't tell the entire story. The article didn't suggest socialization of health care, which unfortunately you have deduced from the article. The article didn't use attacks such as "the dumbest thing that I ever seen written" and calling excessive regulations "strawmen for the radical right."
Your argument is illogical. "The bottom line is that medical care isn't very well provided via the market." Prove it. In the United States, the market served medical care well before the government intervened in the 1950s and 60s. Since then, the cost of medical care have skyrocketed. You are suggesting complete government involvement in health care. Plus, we don't have free market health care. Get that in your head. You can't attack free market health care based on the current American health care system because it isn't free market at all.
We don't need any more socialist "solutions," and health care is one of them. Food is very important for living; do you suggest that we have socialized food and socialized beverages straight from the federal government? Socialist economics doesn't work; period. Read the history of the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Cuba, Western Europe, and other socialist/communist places before you spew out anti-market crap. I don't understand why so many people want the government's hand involved in so many things. They wouldn't trust the government to look at phone records, or to provide food for its citizens, but they want government involvement in health care. The last thing that this country needs is the overhead, bureaucracy, and taxation of socialist medicine. I wouldn't trust the government to watch my things for a few minutes; I definately don't trust the government with my life.
Then again, I see that you made me a foe, so I did the exact same to you. It's one thing to disagree, but it is another thing to call the entire post "absolute complete idiocy" and make me a foe. Very well; I did the same to you.
I happened to be listening to Evan Davis, the BBC's economics editor on the TV a couple of nights back. His explanation for the high market values (in part) was cash flooding out of China in search of a place to lodge due to a) restrictions on investment in factories and equipment to prevent the economy overheating any more and b) a wish to spread their risk.
I have surpassed all of you! I have no product, no service, and no selling! IT'S PURE PROFIT!