My post on bringing down the evil empire of "intellectual property rights" occasioned a comment which led me to a delightful retail site, called sparkfun.com.
The comments were as follows:
We are entering a phase of slow destruction in our economy. It was unsustainable, and now it is over, except for the going hungry part. That is later. But what I see is retailers that are working on a more anarchic, cooperative structure are doing fine, like REI and PCC.
Things are changing. An economy that borrows credit from the Chinese, obliging the Chinese to work harder to support our system, in order that we may have a system in which pay too much for snake oil masquerading as medicine and then "giving it away for 'free'" is unsustainable. Especially when the Chinese must forgo goods and services themselves as we go ever deeper in debt for "free" stuff. Now we all love a system that works for us, and so far, for about 94% of the USA voters, this is a great idea. But what cannot go on will eventually stop.
And that is just medicine. This is not only the "free-cell phone" Obama supporters, but the welfare queens at Boeing who are Romney supporters. Or the NFL welfare queens who play their games in taxpayer-provided stadiums. It's the same for the other industries that need unregulation: banking, medicine, transportation, education, etc.
Romney promises to name China as a currency manipulator as his first act his first day in office. So, blame the Chinese for extremely stupid USA policy? Sheesh. I wonder how that will work out.
If you are starting up a retail business, and it is a good time to do so, think of the structure in which your owners are your customers. It sounds like an internal contradiction, as sparkfun.com says:
We like to think that we exist in the same group as our customers - curious students, engineers, prototypers, and hobbyists who love to create.
Right, and the people who own PCC are its customers, and the people who own REI are its customers.
I am forming Seattle Teachers' College where the owner are the customers. When conceiving of your business, try tho reflect along these lines and see if you do not set a stronger base from which to grow.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
The comments were as follows:
I forgot to mention, that company (Sparkfun) was created in 2003, and it now has 143 employees, 75 million dollars of sales, 600,000 customers and makes 431 unpatented products. on Patent Assault Starts Thursday
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Anonymous
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at 5:55 AM
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John, I found a very nice blog post for introducing your students to the idea of competing without patents: http://www.sparkfun.com/news/963 The comments are also nice. on Patent Assault Starts Thursday
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We are entering a phase of slow destruction in our economy. It was unsustainable, and now it is over, except for the going hungry part. That is later. But what I see is retailers that are working on a more anarchic, cooperative structure are doing fine, like REI and PCC.
Things are changing. An economy that borrows credit from the Chinese, obliging the Chinese to work harder to support our system, in order that we may have a system in which pay too much for snake oil masquerading as medicine and then "giving it away for 'free'" is unsustainable. Especially when the Chinese must forgo goods and services themselves as we go ever deeper in debt for "free" stuff. Now we all love a system that works for us, and so far, for about 94% of the USA voters, this is a great idea. But what cannot go on will eventually stop.
And that is just medicine. This is not only the "free-cell phone" Obama supporters, but the welfare queens at Boeing who are Romney supporters. Or the NFL welfare queens who play their games in taxpayer-provided stadiums. It's the same for the other industries that need unregulation: banking, medicine, transportation, education, etc.
Romney promises to name China as a currency manipulator as his first act his first day in office. So, blame the Chinese for extremely stupid USA policy? Sheesh. I wonder how that will work out.
If you are starting up a retail business, and it is a good time to do so, think of the structure in which your owners are your customers. It sounds like an internal contradiction, as sparkfun.com says:
We like to think that we exist in the same group as our customers - curious students, engineers, prototypers, and hobbyists who love to create.
Right, and the people who own PCC are its customers, and the people who own REI are its customers.
I am forming Seattle Teachers' College where the owner are the customers. When conceiving of your business, try tho reflect along these lines and see if you do not set a stronger base from which to grow.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
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