[amdx]

How do all business owners feel about Obama saying,

"If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that
happen."

http://blog.heritage.org/2012/07/16...-entrepreneurs-you-didnt-build-your-business/


Mikek

 

[amdx]

Some capitalists are also aware that innovation involves both competition and collaboration.

Selective quotation is standard way of demonising the opposition.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/oba...ess-you-didnt-build-somebody-else-made-happen

found it necessary to point out that Obama also said "The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together".

Trying building a hi-tech business in the Sudan, or Tasmania, if you've got so much faith in your own prowess.

Sloman, is that you?
Mikek

 

[[email protected]]

Consider then that Obama was raised by a single mother, while Romney
was raised by the President of the American Motors Company (including
Kelvinator appliances.)

Who accomplished more on his own?

....and who accomplished more by affirmative action?

 

[Les Cargill]

Consider then that Obama was raised by a single mother, while Romney
was raised by the President of the American Motors Company (including
Kelvinator appliances.)

Who accomplished more on his own?

Neither one.

 

[Les Cargill]

Mikek

I am going to state the obvious. It is true that successful people
rely on others. What Obama does not recognize is that successful
people engage in private deals with other people to do a certain
amount of work for them and , if the businessman is successful, he
has a track record of making private deals (without gov't help) which
are beneficial to himself and to the people he makes deals with.

Hypothetically, through the magic of the economics concept of "consumer
surplus", it *oughta* be beneficial to a lot of
other people, too.

These days, that's harder to say that categorically. It's just
my opinion, but I think a lot of people were chasing unrealistic
levels of return. That might have actually reduced output
in a way that's just now really easy to see. That led to
poor investment. A lot of deals shouldn't have been done.

It
is beyond real that Obama refuses to understand the American way of
private people making private deals in a free market system.

I don't see any evidence of that in the snippet we were shown. I
don't think Obama has much idea about that sort of thing, but the
idea that every politician should have run a business doesn't hold a lot
of water. Did Eisenhower? No. Teddy Roosevelt? No.

If anything, the main thing in surveys over the past ... ten years?
that people have been concerned about is a lack of customers. It is as
if there simply isn't enough cash sloshing around.

The
private system works because every business man has ultimate
incentive to make good deals. government deal, with taxpayer money,
the incentive to make good deals is not there

There are a lot of incentives to spend wisely in government. the
problem with government spending is that risk is harder to dissipate
when it goes wrong. Government is also prone to overbuilding
purchasing systems to where just being able to manage *that* can
run into a significant fraction of the cost.

The cyclical nature of contracting is also a big source
of waste - keeping people productive and on good contracts is
quite difficult.

I know of two companies trying to do a couple of pretty serious
military contracts - one is fairly critical - and they just
can't get the military end lined up. People get reassigned
before the cycle ends, and they're off the thing for the rest
of the year.

and that is why
government ventures in business are destined to be full of waste and
corruption.

Not always. Maybe it was just the times, but things like
Hoover Dam were under budget. The "corruption" part is also
a lot order to see. Absence of market discipline doesn't
always mean corruption.

 

[[email protected]]

Are you crazy?

You have to feed slaves even when there's no work for them to do. Who
in the world wants to own slaves?

China Inc., according to the lefties.

 

[miso]

I'd like to see the Sudanese cal shop. NIST traceable of course. Then
file your IP at the Sudanese patent office.

Alas, it must be because Obama is not an American. Just ask John Sununu.

 

[tm]

The government laid the groundwork, but the money didn't come until
after the government got out of the way.


Agreed. There was no clear transition between the government operated
research internet and the current commercial version. The closest
approximation was when NSFnet (National Science Foundation) network,
closed down, and was replaced by an assortment of privately funded
backbone providers. The big difference was that the private backbones
allowed and encouraged redistribution of bandwidth and content, while
this was forbidden by the contractors providing service to NSFnet.
That allowed the creation of thousands of mom and pop small ISP's that
could now sell internet access to the GUM (great unwashed masses). At
the time, NSFnet was on 56Kbits/sec DS0 lines and the internet was
almost entirely usenet and various BBS mutations. User access was by
slow dialup. While the commercialization of the internet followed
immediately there after, it would never have happened if the
government had continued NSFnet and redistribution continued to be
prohibited. Unfortunately the first real example of commercial
advertising on the internet were the green card spammers:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Card_spam>
Depending on your point of view, it's been down hill (or up hill) ever
since.

--

If anyone should get credit for the early Internet, it would be Hays for
their modems.

Remember ATDT ?

 

[tm]

If anyone should get credit for the early Internet, it would be Hays for
their modems.

Remember ATDT ?

And yes, it is Hayes. Fat fingers again.

 

[Chieftain of the Carpet Crawlers]

And yes, it is Hayes. Fat fingers again.

Hayes, US Robotics, Motorola... there were several major modem makers
back then, and none are relevant to "getting credit for the early
Internet" whatever that is.

 

[[email protected]]

When you have more demand than you can keep up with, what do you do?
Turn down orders? Work 20 hours a day? Go through a temp agency?

Do only the most interesting work for the most interesting customers who pay
the most?

IME, customer demand creates jobs. Not employers. Not the government.

Nonsense. Entrepreneurs drive innovation which drives customers. How many
customers were there for PCs forty years ago?

 

[amdx]

He didn't make that cave. The government did.


Right. The sub-text is: the rabble is entitled to loot.

Curiously, we've all got the same roads, yet not everyone
own and manages a successful company. Education is "the
answer," but a lot of our most celebrated innovators dropped
out of school. It's all so confusing.

The people who risk it all working double-time on great ideas
seem to do better than the ones who grab a paycheck and head
home. Or the ones whose EBT cards come in the mail.

Speaking of EBT, I want a bumper sticker that says;

EBT is not a way of life
Get off it!

Mikek

 

[Les Cargill]

As gov't makes it progressively more expensive to hire, fewer people
get hired. When it gets too burdensome to hire here, they leave.

That wasn't true in, say 1960. I know my comment is full of deadly
levels of nostalgia, but it's offered as a compare
contrast thing. What's changed? There were more government
workers, more defense contractors, the draft was on... so it's
hard to say it was government spending as the sole problem.

best answer - financialization. 6% ROI on direct business
investment doesn't cut it any more. I note that self-storage units
run about 7-10% annual ROI, and they're still for sale, so
that's a rough estimate of the break point for ROI for a
zero-effort business.

It's pretty simple, really. Outsourcing is just capital, fleeing
oppression.

No, it's more likely declining marginal value.

China is just a stop
on the way to full automation. It's like "If you let me
invest $100,000 in your company, I'll hire your kid for the summer."

Let's say that a textile worker hit saturation of marginal
value in around 1955. Then wages in textiles will be stuck at 1955
while other stuff gets more expensive.

Just a plug for Arnold Kling - he calls this "Patterns of Sustainable
Specialization and Trade".

 

[[email protected]]

The "build it and the customers will come" theory?

A fact.

Realize that 40 years ago, entrepreneurs had come up with the Altair
and the Imsai. Two guys in a garage were already building PCs named
for a fruit. One guy was peddling a TTY tape that interpreted Basic.
Not many of those innovations drove customers - at least at that time.
It took IBM to make PCs respectable. IBM's production of PCs took
them out of the hobby realm.

....and they didn't come. I wonder why?

There are whole graveyards crammed with innovations that drove no one.

Well, duh! You must be blond.

Places where Cartrivision rests next to the Elcaset. Where Digital
Audio Tape lies near AM Stereo.Then some tombstones record the
moderately successful: quadrophonic sound, laser video discs, etc.

What an idiot.

 

[Gib Bogle]

How do all business owners feel about Obama saying,

"If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that
happen."

http://blog.heritage.org/2012/07/16...-entrepreneurs-you-didnt-build-your-business/


Mikek

Who built the infrastructure that the business depends on? You can do it!

 

[[email protected]]

If you expect innovation alone to draw customers you'll go bankrupt.

Good Lord, you're an idiot.

Thus endeth the lesson.

Since your content was zero, the wonder is why you bothered to draw a breath.
....or could.

 

[[email protected]]

what?
Inadequate But Marketable?

Too bad you're not even marketable, Maynard.

 

[Jamie]

Remember the slogan IBM used to have. THINK.

Dan

what?
Inadequate But Marketable?

Jamie

 

[[email protected]]

Too bad you don't know who I am, "MT"s pet. Is that
leash getting a little tight?

I forgot to ask, how is DimBulb in bed? Is he better than your sheep?

 

[Jamie]

Too bad you're not even marketable, Maynard.

Too bad you don't know who I am, "MT"s pet. Is that
leash getting a little tight?


Jamie