Posted on 10/17/2012 8:29:43 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Maybe they were right after all, though she could’ve killed herself without being famous I suppose.
I don’t completely disagree. You can’t compare apples to apples in this case. Throw it out if you wish, but I still think the thread’s article is short sighted as it only relates to American companies in the last 30 years. Capitalism is a relatively recent phenomenon in it’s current form so you may be hard pressed to find any examples of companies making bad business decisions before say 1850, but that does not mean bad decisions weren’t made. There was always some form of a marketplace, but the actual decisions were made by nobility, govenment, and church. Merchants and traders existed and worked the free market, but did so as individuals and not as companies and could only amass so much wealth before their lords would confiscate. Manufacturing and services existed, but weren’t competed, but instead ordered from a guild with preset wages.
In regard to sovereign purse strings, you might find this Otto Von Habsburg article interesting.
http://erhj.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/dr-otto-von-habsburg-monarchy-vs.html
“I still think the thread’s article is short sighted”
Oh, I absolutely agree. The list is ridiculously limited chronologically and territorially.
“There was always some form of a marketplace, but the actual decisions were made by nobility, government, and church”
The government has only become more entangled in the economy as time has passed, and as such it veritably impossible to distinguish business decisions uninfluenced by the law, much less teasing out relative levels of coercion. The less centralized previous form presents other problems, and it is perhaps even harder to distinguish what was and what wasn’t caused by the influence of the sort of government that was the nobility or the church. Add to that how without our modern legal system the lack of easily identifiable private property let alone clearly defined business entities and it seems impossible.
I don’t agree with your 1850 guidepost, and am not as unconfident as I sometimes seem about distinguishing business from political decisions in the olden days. In any case there is no such confusion as between business on the one hand and the Spanish armada on the other. That was definitely, definitely not a business enterprise. Attempting to invade England was certainly a political move. I have no doubt there.
I read an article saying that a long long time ago. The gist was (this was a pro-coke styled article) that coke believed (rightly or wrongly) that by acquiring pepsi it would eliminate the "the contrast of choice". The thought process was that by having a pepsi or a competitor, consumers would be free or feel free to make a choice, when the consumers have no choice or feel there is no choice, there satisfaction goes down with the sole product. The way some execs saw it, at the end of the day, coke would always have competitors like juice or other beverages, but they needed to have a soda competitor so that people could compare them to someone (the analogy was how a good movie needs a villain for the hero, or a sports team needs someone to play against, because no one wants to watch a great team just practice all the time). The other knock was about costs, with the feeling that buying pepsi would have meant that coke would now have to pay for all the soda advertising in the world, but would not get all the benefits of doing so.
Not sure if this was wise or not, or even how true it is, when I read this, years and years ago, I was skeptical that this would even have been possible with anti-trust concerns and what not.
I would add Xerox deciding not to market the PARC computer system because they were a “reproduction machine company. Would have hit the market years before Apple and Windows with an icon based, WYSIWYG, point and click system and with a laser printer.
Then it was the most expensive feint in history.
Not to many people realize this, but New Coke, was one of the most expensive and highly researched products in history. It cost a massive massive fortune, just to research and develop before even one single penny was spent on marketing.
They did numerous blind taste tests across the country, spending enormous and vast sums on this. The R and D spent on New Coke (not including marketing) makes it one of the most expensive beverage or food related projects in history.
Several executives lost their jobs in the aftermath, but the return to old classic, while being a massive success, was excessively costly.
I don’t agree with the author’s facile dismissal of the vast difference in tax burden, interference in private lives, etc. between modern democracies and the old way. The bankruptcy, total war, hypercentralization, etc. of the last century just weren’t possible before. Granted, you take the good with the bad. Before you were a serf and a pariah if the priest didn’t like you, and now you work half the year for the feds and can be drafted to die overseas with no one in particular knowing why, but at least you have computers and fast food.
Xerox invented basically everything about modern personal computers, from point and Wickard to intuitive interaction to bit mapping to ethernet to laser printers. But it’s unfair to say they blew it by not marketing their prototyp. The cost would’ve been prohibitive. It’s not a personal computer if persons can’t afford it.
IBM contrarywise got lucky. It hit at the exact optimum moment. You can’t plan that.
Xerox tried to market office printers but few bought them. They remain as a maker of large-frame reprographic gear, reprographic software and as a patent repository. I cannot remember the last time I used a Xerox made walk-up copier.
I don’t agree with it either, but found it an interesting read nonetheless. The author was also a surviving member of the Habsburg Dynasty, which ruled much of mainland Europe for about 700 years so he is obviously a bit biased. He passed away about a year or so ago. Ironically, the previously mentioned Philip II of Spain was also a Habsburg.
I meant point and click; don’t know how that happened.
FYI #66
I don’t think Xerox invented this. They developed the PARC system.
PBS did a series on the history of computing and had a guy in a video clip demonstrating a mouse, point and click, WYSIWYG, and Icons. I think he was the pre-curser (pun intended) to everybody else.
It was a compelling read. Despite his family ties, though, it was a bit abstract and read like it was from a political scientist rather than an interested party. Too much about form, not enough history. I wonder most about his insistence on comparing republics and democracies to monarchies now rather than then. Why? The damnable done broke. No monarchy in a civilized country will resemble those of centuries ago, no matter how well defined is the form.
Take Bismarckian Germany (please). Sure, it had a king. But was it a monarchy, really? It was further down the road to the modern welfare state than any government in the world. Of course, this guy says socialism and monarchy are not mutually exusive. Certainly I agree with Bastiat that socialists think they’re the vanguard but actually are 2,000 years behind the times. I seem to remember reading that nineteenth century socialists like Engels were mad for Ivanhoe; makes sense.
But what is it we mean when we talk about old timey monarchy. It’s not the empty form this author has in mind. It is certainly not anything that could stand beside mass democracy nor become a welfare state.
PARC was Xerox’s r&d department, so I don’t think it’s out of line to say Xerox invented them.
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You were saying....??
They may have invented PARC but not the features, I mentioned.
What, then, PARC was the first to put them altogether? I suppose I shouldn’t say they were all invented at Xerox without really knowing. The main thing is that the PARC prototype was the first PC to use a mouse, bitmaps, ethernet, laser printer, etc.
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