Doug

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>
>Very cool. However, I doubt that businesses are out to make you feel like a second class citizen.

I don't know how things go in the States, Doug, but here I would say that there are plenty of occasions where a startup or small business is treated as if it's 'second class'. The banks are the obvious one. But suppliers often fit too. Some simply won't come-a-callin, even if invited. Most demand cash up front. The concept of discounts often doesn't exist. If your business is to produce something for sale in grocery stores, look out! You not only face the entrenchment of existing suppliers at the grocery stores, but you face suppliers of comparable products bad-mouthing yours and/or offering the store bigger discounts (for a period, while you are a threat), and/or paying extra for the premium exposure spots in the store, often with the condition that the start-up product is kept out of the store. It's not like the old days where you could convince the store manager to take a chance with your product. This evolution of 'make a profit for their owners' is a sad one in my mind.

>Their 'mission' in life is to make a profit for their owners.
First let me say that I know and agree that profit is essential for any business to survive. Even "non-profits" actually make a profit. It's just called something else because it all has to go back into the 'business'.
My complaint is the (growing fast) number of executives who use that as the justification for all manner of action, much of it criminal or at least morally bankrupt. Some simple examples:
1) Back in the early-80s a company called Continental Can Company had an unpublished policy known only by a handful of senior executives. The policy was to eliminate employees from the payroll before they became vested in the pension plan. There was an elaborate scheme to accomplish this and they were largely successful. They saved the company millions (possibly billions). They were caught after they had operated this way for a decade or more and thousands of employees had been "laid off".
2) Hilton Head Island was, at one time, inhabited by subsistence farmers who had lived there for generations. I think they even had their own particular dialect of English. Along came a hotel chain and, after some court action, got it's hands on a tract of land. It built a fancy hotel, promoted it, and got quite a clientele fairly quickly. Not wanting to miss out on this gravy train, other chains wanted in too. But the farmers weren't anxious to sell - they were happy there, were mainly illiterate, and would have no where else to go to. So it was made certain that the lands adjacent to the single fancy hotel went way way up in value, reflecting the potential for the property and all nice and legal because actual offers had been tendered. The farmers owning that land couldn't pay the new and higher taxes so they lost their land. This continued until all of the farmers were gone.
3) The provincial teacher's pension fund here (Ontario Canada) is huge, with ove $40 bilion to invest. The folks caring for the plan are acknowledged as being superlatives in the field of investing and the teachers enjoy a very enviable pension.
Now the administrators bought into a newspaper called "The Sun Publishing Corp" a few years back when the paper's management decided to buy out existing ownership. Within a few months all teachers here went on strike and the Sun newspaper chain sided totally against the teachers. A few weeks later the teachers saw this link with its pension plan and demanded that the fund managers dump the stock they held in the Sun. There was big concensus on this by the teachers, present and pensioned. The fund managers countered that there was nothing illegal about their holdings, that it was a good investment, so they would not comply. Period.
4) A large medical testing company in the states had the bilking of the Medicare system built right into their computer systems. They would never have been caught if it wasn't for an eagle-eyed Dr. (or Dr.'s administrator) looking over the shoulder of a Medicare auditor during a visit. Seeing the auditor skip over several pages of similar line items, that person asked the auditor why those were being skipped and was told that there was no problem with those items. The person said that seemed funny because they didn't recognizes all those charges. Turned out that they were billings for blood tests. But the Dr. knew that the tests regularly specified costed (say) $32. each yet all of these lines said $210. The testing company's system was programmed to bill medicare for comprehensive blood testing regardless of what Drs specified, which was typically a small sub-set of tests.
5) Look at banks and service charges. Here (Canada) the banks argue that these charges are hardly a money maker, contributing to less than 1% of their annual profit. Yet they will not drop them, saying that it is not in the interest of the shareholders to do so.
Now they obviously don't 'ask' their shareholders, they can ASSUME. And while the numerous people-type shareholders probably pay more in service charges than they collect in dividends (for those stocks) in any given year, these people wouldn't have a chance if it came up for a vote anyway. Funds managers have far more votes and they don't pay service charges! So they would vote to keep them.
By the way, ask yourself why it is that, whenever a BIG bank swallows up another little one, service charges GO UP. One would think they'd go down, given the economies of scale enjoyed by the monster bank. The reason is simple - they really don't want the business of "the little people". They want the big accounts and they don't pay service charges but have other huge profitability factors.
6) The recent electricity "crisis" in California is another clear case, as is now coming to light.
7) Most people will agree that we really didn't "need" Office 2000 or Office XP but MS did need the cashflow that such 'new' products generate. Of course none of us are 'forced' to buy them, but MS slowly makes it more and more difficult
to live without them.
And look at the favour they did us with WinME. Now ther's a winner. And it is the first time that I know about that MS dropped support for specific things without making that abundantly clear in the sales literature (I found that PWS was no longer supported and I bet there are others).

I'm afraid that "making a profit for their owner's" has become the license to try to get away with whatever one can. And it is clear to me that the demise of the Communist block has changed the situation for the worse. Whereas before it was necessary to keep the brakes on much of the MBA's finaglings in order to show that our system is far more advantageous to it's citizens than communism, now it is a free-for-all. Wherever big business can exploit, it will.

Apologies for the length, but then you've had some long ones too.

JimN
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