Can Companies be Too Big to Fail?
Why Companies Too Big to Fail will Fail!“OMG, there’s a man holding a gun!” After trying to get a word in edgeways for more than half an hour, my daughter interjected the remark to an ATT employee. He carried on talking – completely oblivious to what she was saying. We had been trying to get our line reconnected after cancelling it before it was activated, and the ATT employee at the other end insisted on telling us it had been activated and trying to get our router to work. Needless to say, nothing he said and did got the router to work for thirty minutes. Eventually, after the gun remark, with no response at the other end, my daughter put the phone down. Obviously, companies do get too big, and equally obvious, the saying that companies are too big to fail is nonsense.
When companies and/or corporations get to the size whereby huge percentages of the population will be negatively affected by their demise, it is a dangerous state of affairs. The old saying that one shouldn’t put all one’s eggs in one basket was a piece of folk wisdom meant to ensure that one didn’t lose everything if something went wrong with ‘one basket.’ By the same token, companies that are too big to fail pose an immense danger to communities, nations, and the world.
Time Warner, which is notorious for long wait times and poor customer service, responded back on Twitter. ‘How can we assist you?’ they asked on their help handle. But it was too late for Stewart, who replied via Twitter: ‘If that question had been asked at any time in the last 36 hours it would have been of value. But now…’
Too Big to Fail is a Deadly and Dangerous Policy
Reasons Why Companies that are Too Big to Fail ought to be ILLEGAL
Centralization: Operations of corporate mammoths are centralized in order to save costs. The larger the company, the greater the distance between the client and the management of the company. When customer service is 100,000 miles away, on another continent, and in a completely different culture, there is endless frustration for clients. Regardless of the less expensive operating costs, the service becomes less efficient and less effective for a greater number of individuals. The extra profit, incidentally, is not passed down in terms of a lower price to the consumer, or as an increase in base wage, but to multi million dollar earning CEOs and over-wealthy shareholders.
Inhumane: The larger the company or corporation, the less humane management is. People become objects. The extreme distress the slave labor wages causes in the lives of the lower echelon workers is something about which the super wealthy who own these companies know nothing about. Mitt Romney thinks earning $19,000 per annum is a middle class salary. It might have been half a century ago, but these days a middle class salary is somewhere between $65,000 and $120,000. Companies that are excessively large retain no humanity. If they did, it would have been impossible to pay wages at the same rate that feudal peasants earned in the middle ages. Humane people understand the hardships of others: inhumane people do not. Excessively large companies encourage inhumanity. Wal-Mart is a perfect example of a company that is known for its inhumanity to its rank and file staff.
Song about being too big to fail.
Internationally, too many businesses are too big to fail.
- Editorial: Too big to fail | Comment is free | The Guardian
Editorial: Two salvage jobs begin, one of a British Championship mortgage lender, the other of two American giants
No Diversity Permitted: Excessively large companies automate and make no allowances for the exceptions to the rule. For example, I was trying to get hold of ATT technical apartment to sort out my internet line. I live in Houston. I used to live in San Diego. My cell phone is a San Diego number. ATT’s automated exchange kept putting me through to California. When I got through to California, they would tell me I needed to speak to Houston. They would put me back on the automated exchange. The automated exchange would pick up my area code and put me straight back to California. After thirty days (I kid you not), I am no closer to having a DSL line. In any event, by automating everything in order to cut costs, the system becomes more and more inefficient.
Essentially, in order for a corporation to be automated, it removes more and more choices from individuals. The individual is, therefore, stuck with fewer and fewer real options. An example of this is the bicycle industry. In the 50s, bikes without gears routinely came with left hand and right hand brakes. Today it is virtually impossible. ‘Cruisers’ do not come with left hand brakes and right hand brakes.
Their Failure Affects Everybody:
Eventually, the company or corporation will fail, and when it does, it will take everyone else with them.
When the banks ‘failed,’ the problem was that if they were allowed to fail, they would have taken everyone else with them. Essentially, no business should ever be permitted to grow that large. It’s simply too much power. It’s also inevitable that they will eventually fail, and when they do fail, they will either need to require that the community (tax payer) pay them to remain in business, or they will cost the community dearly.
As an example, take Wal-Mart. In growing to its mega corporate size, it bought up many small manufacturers (they were competition), then either closed down the company or forced it to produce to its own specifications. Wal-Mart, consequently, no longer has an American source to buy its products. Instead it ships in from the east. The bugbear with that is that if and when Wal-Mart fails, there will be no ready source of products for America. America will be a sitting duck in the water. There simply won’t be the products that are required for modern life. The same thing can happen, incidentally, if China suddenly refuses to trade with America. Putting all one’s eggs in one basket is insane! ‘Too big to fail’ is a deadly philosophy. There absolutely should be caps on how large a business should grow.
Loss of Client Control over purchasing best product: When dealing with an excessively large company over the phone, if you ask for a service (Internet, Landline, Wireless, TV, etc.), you will be asked many questions – your name, what you are using the product for, etc. By doing this, the company makes a choice for you. You do not get to choose. In a smaller company, it has a list of what it offers on display. You can then select the product you like without divulging your personal information. In any event, by giving away what you are looking for, you give up your power and you take what the company gives you.
- http://bestebookstories.blogspot.com/p/pag-3.html
This fictional serial (20 short ebooks) details how the people of the USA loses everything for the profit of a few international players. The books are interactive with links to videos that give examples of events.
Too big to fail makes many people angry.
Product Choice, Quality, Availability, etc.: There is less and less choice available. When companies that are too large to fail make a product, their bottom line is the purpose – not the client’s needs. Good quality products are seldom produced. An iron produced in the 50s lasted a life time; now they last a few years. Many outstanding products from the 50s and 60s have vanished from the scene. The reason is that companies that are too big to fail have bought out smaller companies that produced the wider range of products, and now a much more limited range is produced. An example of this is that in the 50s and 60s, one could get a metal rearview mirror for a bicycle. This is no longer available. Sports stores sell plastic mirrors that cannot easily be manipulated. They bounce back to their original position, thus making them all but useless.
Repairs: When companies that are too big to fail sell you something and it breaks, it’s cheaper to replace it with a new product than repair it. That’s because their manufacturing plant is a 100,000 miles away. In the old days, things were made locally and it was easier and cheaper to repair.
Left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing: A perfect example of this is AT&T. In the Galleria area of Houston, one can only get DSL internet put in if one orders on the web. If one telephones, one can only get cable (Uverse) for the web. Every AT&T employee on the phone will tell you it’s impossible to get DSL for one’s apartment as one’s apartment does not support DSL. The company is simply too big for employees to know what is going on where in the company. This is not only extremely frustrating for any client, but means that the consumer never gets the best deal. If an employee doesn’t know about something, how can they ‘sell’ it?
Ethics Increasingly Disappear:There was a time when the purpose of business was simply a means of exchanging what one had for what one wanted. Essentially it developed as a means to permit everybody in the community to get what they wanted and needed for their survival. Business, in other words, serviced the community. It was a means to an end. At a certain point, some business people prospered and business also became a way of providing even more than they needed for the home. Nevertheless, there was always a strict taboo against dishonesty in business. Up until the late 70s, business was still considered the servant of the community. In the 80s, it became an end within itself, and the larger a business became, the more any idea of serving the community vanished and lining its own pockets at the expense of the community became endemic. In the current climate, business does NOT serve the community, and if the meaning of ethics is that which provides the greater good for the greater number over the longest period of time, then business is no longer ethical. In a time when ‘too big to fail’ generally describes a business that is ‘hugely successful’ in terms of profit, the only benefactors are the CEO, members of the board, the various presidents and vice-presidents in senior positions, and the shareholders. In every other way, companies that are ‘too big to fail’ are highly destructive.
Return of the Feudal Guilds: While we’re not quite there yet, the time is rapidly coming when each industry will only have one big behemoth corporation. Corporations will increasingly, in order to prevent others from profiting in the same business, prevent others from ‘learning the trade.’ Those who have seen the similarity between feudalism and today’s ‘capitalist’ system are not remiss in labeling today’s system ‘neo feudalism.’ Remove technology and those at the bottom of the rung earn barely enough to pay the rent and their food. They have no discretionary income for medical expenses, education, creativity, etc. In short, they perpetuate the poverty cycle; they were born in poverty and their children, and their children’s children will die in poverty.
At the heart of Occupy is too big to fail
Responsibility: Capitalism and Super Capitalism Business schools are, at least, partially responsible for the emergence of big business. By teaching students that profit is the end motive of business, and that business provides certain services to the community by, for instance, getting a product from one geographical location to another geographical location, they have ensured that, at least, three generations of people now assume that business is an end within itself, and that, in its quest for increasingly mega profits, anything goes. The truth is that business is the servant of the community; the community is NOT the servant of business. Capitalism worked; super capitalism does not. Whenever there are no caps on competition, then only one or two players will be left in the playing field. That is the end result of all competition. Far from ensuring that prices are kept down, and that there is a huge variety of products, once corporations reach their ‘too big to fail’ status, they begin to control the market and take actions that suit only their bottom line. Their bottom line does NOT serve humanity. It is, in fact, highly destructive, in the medium to longer term, to humanity.
The Power of Business and Corporate Propaganda:
When the human brain hears the same thing over and over again, it believes it. That’s biology. All advertising and PR uses the little known fact to ‘influence’ people to believe things that they would never have believed otherwise. Entrepreneurialship is seen as the Holy Grail. Business must be protected at all costs – even from the community. As such, there are certain clichés that have become dominant in society. They are endlessly repeated. Few examine the fallacies they perpetuate. Examples are that the market will correct itself (presumably without harming humanity), pricing what the market will bear (regardless of the fact that nutritious food, education, shelter, and medical care are now out of reach for most), that business provides the trickle down effect (only if it pays its workers generously and charges the least it can for its products), that competition means that everybody will work harder - actually, a) human beings are only capable of about four hours focused work per day and when they are exhausted, they are NOT creative or inventive), and b) science shows that cooperation works better than competition. The only people who thrive on competition are sociopaths.
All these business school and capitalism myths are so deeply ingrained in the average mind that if one even remotely begins to question them, one is called a socialist or a communist. Independent, objective thought, when examining how ‘too big to fail’ business is harming humanity, is dismissed with the same attitude that a challenge to any religion is.
Many Economists and Academics tell us that Neo Feudalism has Arrived
Greg Smith Exposes Goldman Sachs 'too big to fail' Culture
- Greg Smith resignation letter: Goldman Sachs exec quits over firm's 'toxic' culture | Mail Online
In a resignation letter published in the New York Times, Greg Smith, an executive director, lambasted the firm as more interested in making money for itself than its clients. In short, the stock market is only for insiders.
Too Big to Fail?
Most people are venting their frustration and focusing their attention on political leaders; that is a mistake. Currently, big business has become so large that it is swallowing up government. It is also destroying humanity (endless brainwashing through advertising), polluting the earth with billions of unneeded products that they convince people that they need, and slowly and insidiously destroying any chance of a solid education that actually teaches skills. Instead of universities and colleges inventing and creating, business goes to universities and colleges and tells them what to teach. Yet another example of completely destructive business is that of private prisons and private weapons companies. Both these type of corporations have vested interests that run contrary to the well being of humanity; the former has a vested interest in getting as many citizens imprisoned as possible; the latter has vested interests in keeping countries warring. There are simply some services that should not be run for profit.
All companies and corporations that are ‘too big to fail’ eventually will. When they fail, they will reek destruction on the masses. It is time that the love affair with super capitalism was dropped, and it is way past time that legislation forbidding companies to expand beyond a certain point is seriously considered, and then made part of law.
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