Stores Folding

I almost titled this "customers folding" but if they are folding, they were never customers to begin with, given the etymology of the word "customer.". Reading Dennis' list below, I see stores from which people would have been delighted to receive orders five years ago. If you ship to these stores now, you can likely kiss your money goodbye.

There are many suppliers who organized their operations and lives around serving these businesses. Those suppliers will now go out of business.

The problem is debt...if on one hand you refused to take on more debt than was sound, you would naturally avoid customers who were themselves taking on too much debt. Your sensibility in your own business would cause you to eschew foolish, unsustainable customer base.

The entire problem is excess debt... the government is working to ignore the problem, and make the productive subsidize the unproductive. Neither will happen. The productive will merely quit working, and the poor will not have toothbrushes.

The problem is with the inherent instability in their system. (They keep calling it "the" system, as though there are no alternatives). The solution is freedom. Note no plan to save "the" system involves freedom or responsibility. I am hiring right now, just not in USA. There are countless avenues of employment available right here and now, but compliance with rules and regulations would overwhelm my management capacity. Since workers are free to contract in any way they wish overseas, they can make themselves useful. USA workers are not free to contract in any way they wish.

On the other hand, no one is taking responsibility for the harm done to the USA economy, and what contributed to it.

I can produced needful things, but the rules and regulations added to the mix make the proposition not pencil out. Those who make the rules have ruined the economy, but they will not be held accountable. If they were to allow freedom, or take responsibility, their system would fail, and the free market would emerge in which a constant flow of innovation would be introduced, and those natural conservators companies would be applying economies of scale to lower the cost and widen the access to products and services. They cannot have that.

Most people believe in the current system very much. Their failure will come as a shock to them. They certainly have it within themselves to succeed in a free market, but they have no idea what that is.

I've seen all this before, now only today it is much worse. And the bad part is yet to come. One point to keep in mind is the debt was taken to gain capacity. Say you are a paint designer and your competitor bought a ten million dollar paint blending machine. With the bust, he cannot make the payments. Busted, disoriented, and in denial, he cannot believe it is worth less than ten million. Since your are stuill in business, contract to use his machine hourly, or perhaps pay ten cents for each can of paint the machine produces. The busted owner, still miscalculating, will believe you're business volume will save him. Pay him $500 for an option of the right of first refusal if the machine ever goes up for sale (it will in bankruptcy). In this way you will have the use of the machine until the owner goes bankrupt, and when the assets go for sale, you'll have the right to buy it instead of any other buyers best price. When there is plenty of excess capacity, that price is dirt cheap.

In the last depression countless businesses were built when ten million dollar machines were bought for $100. On such bases, it was quite possible to turn a profit.

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