Mark Cuban to Obama: "Entrepreneurs will lead us out of this mess. Talk to Them."
If we are going to solve our current economic problems, our President needs to get first hand information on the impact his proposed policies will have on real Joe the Plumbers. People who are 1 person companies living job to job, hoping they get paid on time. We need to know what the impact of his policies will be on the individually owned Chrysler Dealership in Iowa. The bodego in Manhattan. The mobile phone software startup out of Carnegie Mellon. The event planner in Dallas. The barbershop in LA. The restaurant in Boston.PE Obama’s 1st Big Mistake (Blog Maverick)Entrepreneurs that start and run small businesses will be the propellant in this economy. PE Obama needs to have the counsel of those who will take the real risk inherent in creating companies and jobs. Those who put their money and lives on the line with their business.
Without it, the rules of unintended consequences of any economic policy could hit you in the mouth in ways you never expected. Things like forcing companies from being taxpayers to the underground cash economy, or forcing new hires to be independent contractors to avoid having to pay their insurance or higher matching social security amounts. Your current group has no one with 100pct of their networth on the line. I promise you that the possibility of losing it all will provide a completely different perspective than any of the “knowledge” the esteemed, learned members of his current advisory team offer.
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Cuban is not without a point, but he does undercut his own argument with his transparent anti-intellectualism. Sorry, Mark, that was the calling card of the LAST administration. How'd that work out?
Entrepreneurs are a key to the economy, but what are the numbers? Some evidence please?
And as much as Joe the Plumber is a key to the economy, he works within larger structures designed by people hopefully more like Obama's advisory board than Bush's cronies. The point is that a good plumber doesn't necessarily have to understand the complexity of national financial architecture and regulation policy in order to succeed. If he or she had to, we'd be in trouble. The best economic policies are ones in which hard-working and creative people are able to do well even if they aren't deeply informed about policy.
We trust the bridges we cross without an engineering degree. Obama won this election because he is so much more in tune with the situation facing small businesses. He isn't about to ignore them. Cuban's suggestion is more of his uninformed Monday-morning quarterbacking.
Well said McProf. Cuban is obviously talking from a self-interested viewpoint that believes his viewpoint is as valid as somebody who has studied the world economy for fifty years.
If anything, self-serving entrepreneurs (like Mr. Cuban) need to be kept far away from governance, as they have very short term goals. The leaders of our countries need to be looking for long-term benefits, rather than immediate economic return.
why does this blurb not link directly to Cuban's entire blog post on his own site?
why does it link to Newsgang.net?
perhaps I am too old to understand the reasons.
Actually, Mark Cuban is spot-on (at least this time). Reality is reality: As a person who runs a small business, I can say that government actions can lead to unintended consequences.
Heck, look at BoingBoing, a typical a small business. What happens when they have additional costs? It might be for the greater good, but they will cut back spending, or charge higher fees, or delay hiring that extra help that they might have been planning on.
This is not some rocket science that Cuban's talking about. It's basic common sense. Not sure what the big deal is here.
The "crisis" (really: result of a long-term policy) was not caused by entrepreneurs or a lack thereof. Nothing that you do with entrepreneurs is going to alter the conditions or policy that created this mess. It's pretty obvious that this guy is just after a bigger slice of pie.
Reality is reality
Well sure but determining what is real tends to be tricky. Are you a black belt in Six Sima?
The amount of snake oil sold to businesses by "consultants" could fill a river.
Not sure what the big deal is here.
It's the intertubes. No one ever agrees on anything.
Boingboing is hiring?
McProf and Pete,
No shortage of supposedly expert advisors were present when Sarbanes-Oxley was drafted and passed. Ditto for Clinton's 1993 executive pay law. Both have had disastrous unintended consequences, and our politicians have learned very little from them.
Be careful blindly following advice from supposed experts who have no real world, first-hand experience. This includes career politicians who have never actually run a business or government agency, and it also includes academics.
Cuban's recommendation is extremely practical. If you want to help small businesses, perhaps you should find real examples to use as case studies.
McProf, with very few exceptions, all businesses can trace their roots to small, entrepreneurial endeavors.
Noen,
The amount of snake oil sold to businesses by "consultants" could fill a river.
True, but a large part of that snake oil is government-mandated stuff like Sarbanes-Oxley controls documentation. Zero value, and it's meant literally billions wasted on consultants.
Here's a little factoid: small business as a group employs more people than any other group in in America. More than big companies, more than government.
So to get more people employed, you need small businesses to be vibrant and healthy, hiring and growing.
Cuban may be a doad, but his point is rock solid.
Deviant, talk to Iceland about how well deregulating markets and no oversight worked for them. Oh wait, their entire country is bankrupt. Luckily for them there is always whale blubber. NOM NOM NOM.
Given the MRTBW between the policy makers products -vs- the engineers (and startups by engineers) products, only someone with a large vested interest (and a short term event horizon, too boot) would choose the status quo.
The ROI of the current model (M3 input -vs- impact on GDP) shows that the current system cannot survive, despite whatever efforts (academic, legislative or threatening) are enacted.
For those that choose to grasp onto this model, despite it listing drastically to port, they will soon find out just how good those strategic policies they enacted are when the JIT, global derivative, black-scholes model drags them under the waves. (look at the 10 yr CDS for treasuries and make your own decision.)
I for one believe Mr. C. is right. I choose to hedge on the future and let the market correct what needs to be corrected.
You can't argue against providing a framework to promote small business, but the title of his blog post?
Obama's first big mistake, eh? We've lived through close to eight years of the absolute worst presidential administration in the nation's history, capped by a global economic/financial crisis brought on by the POTUS' cronies, and Obama, not having served one day in the oval office has already made a big mistake? Cripe, get some damned perspective!
I have read so much of this crap in the past week and it is outrageous. I'm not thrilled with some of the ideas floated by the Pres. Elect's policy team, but I also know they're still formulating the policy and they can't be any worse than anything that has been put in place by the current presidential team.
Everyone should really get a handle that a few policy tweaks or a return to Clinton era policies won't save the day. We are going to get BIG change, and it will be because it is needed. There is going to be a lot of pain in the next four years and everyone will feel it, including entrepreneurs. I wish it wasn't so, but there is a blight upon the global economy and Cuban's "advice", the standard line for the past twenty or so years, isn't going to cure it.
The next four years are not going to be about making the economy safe for entrepreneurship. It is going to be about saving the global system from catastrophe. He's right, you don't want to tamp down innovation in a thriving economy, but a thriving economy we ain't got. When the patient has cancer, you don't worry about his ability to run a four minute mile.
I hope Obama's policy team is set to perform miracle cures and that the Cubans of the world are going to support them. Then he can get his wishlist together and present them to the world. He can even state honestly what Obama's errors were...you know, after Obama and company actually make them.
O this is rich coming from Cuban - he benefited from superior technical knowledge during the tech boom and savvy mathematical / financial tactics using hedging to maximise profits and mitigate loss.
Fact is, markets don't lend themselves to "advisors" -- everyone you deal with you are at odds with, since to maximise your own money you must minimise your employees' and employer's and clients and competitors. Hence why the thing you are advised to buy is always the thing the 'advisor' needs to sell.
There is probably no way to unite the interests of markets (free-for-all) and governments (greater good)
what has mark cuban ever built?
sold a worthless company at the top of the market then rubs our faces in it?
You can't get away from the fact that this is an anti-intellectual argument. Sarbanes-Oxley was a mistake, and there were "experts" in the room, and therefore it was the fault of the experts?
I declare logical FAIL here. But wait, there's more.
In regards to the fact that all large businesses were once run by entrepreneurial endeavors, this is true. However, it has little affect on whether or not current entry-level capitalists are fit to judge on nation-state economics. Again, logic fail. Sorry.
We usually elect our rulers, who then chose the wisest and the smartest to help them govern. Not the most commercially viable; smart wise people might be rich as a byproduct of their intelligence (see: Bill Gates). Choosing people who are merely rich and therefore 'successful' under an understanding of the world limited by late-stage capitalism would be an error, as it could only lead to sports stars being regarded as successful entrepreneurs.
Doesn't Cuban own a sports team?
Oh, and by the way? I run my own successful business. Kthxbai!
Mark Cuban is right, in that the destruction of wealth caused by the boom-bust cycle of the Bush years can only be recovered (i.e. real growth) through what we should have been doing all along: cultivating our knowledge economy (i.e. entrepreneurship and innovation).
(Told you so.)
Cuban owns the MAVERICKS!
What slogan did Obama's opponent call himself? COINCIDENCE?
...I THINK NOT
Okay, that ended my /silly-conspiracy-theorists comments for the day.
Seriously though, Cuban has a small point in that Obama should receive the input from many different sources (and not solely on the economy, either). I think the biggest "failure" of the Bush era was that advisors (especially of differing viewpoints) were not consulted so the POTUS could make an intelligent (hah!) decision.
Obama needs not only the input of just "big business", but "small business" and even "local business" types to identify the impacts that actions would have. I think the article itself was inflammatory in nature though, but that's Cuban. He always likes to make a scene, and here it is in full view.
throw open the immigration doors. Let all Iraqi, Irani, Afghan and even Vietnamese that wish to come to America come. Then exploit the hell out of them until they figure out what's what. Should be enough cheap, pliable labor to get things started again. They can always be broken up for organs later.
it's bodega. no one says bodego.
First, Bush is still the president, so this post title makes no sense. Second, the very rich, like Mr. Cuban, are going to have to decide if they are patriotic enough to invest in their country's future. Genuinely middle class entrepeneurs have an excuse to be skittish, but multi-millionaires and billionaires should not be crying poverty. It's tacky. Most made their fortunes in the last decade or two, due in no small part to the openness of the American government. If they can't comprehend that now is the time to stand behind the country that helped them to acheive their dreams, they should lock themselves in their moneybins and leave the rest of us to sort this mess out. Unless Mark Cuban is willing to invest anew in America, creating new American jobs with decent hours and fair pay, he should STFU. Because if he's not willing to put his money where his mouth is, I don't care what he thinks.
Mark Cuban cheerleads the next bubble.
Wonderful.
I immediately tune out when someone is being critical of others' ideas and puts scare quotes around their "knowledge."
Yeesh.
Yes Bodeg-"a"
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bodega
http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2008/11/cory-doctorow-why-i-copyfight.html
Bear in mind when small business economic statistics are cited that a business can be classified as "small" by the federal government and have hundreds of millions in sales, even over a billion in some industries.
I'm an entrepreneur- a small business by any standards, with two employees, designing electronic instrumentation. I haven't taken a paycheck from anyone else since 1985. The last several years we have done exactly what Mark Cuban talks about- put everything we have (and a lot we don't have) into development of a new product. By that I mean something that is actually manufactured and sold.
I think the needs of entrepreneurs SHOULD be listened to. So from the front lines, here are a few of my top concerns:
1. Affordable health care. I cannot overemphasize how much of an impediment to entrepreneurial risk taking the current health insurance system is, particularly if you have a family. It's nearly an absolute barrier if you or a family member have health problems. I had to laugh at McCain's reference to $12k "gold plated" policies- as healthy non-smokers we spend nearly $10K per year for a catastrophic no frills policy with a $5,000 family deductible. Any major medical problem at this stage would wipe out our business and likely bankrupt us, even with insurance.
2. Policies that promote makers of real products One problem is that to the last current administration, entrepreneurship has been seen to mean coming up with schemes for shifting securities around, not making things. Now, financial markets are very important to grease the skids and facilitate commerce, but if these markets are too large a proportion of the total economy, and if the best and brightest are becoming investment bankers instead of engineers and scientists, then we are in danger of turning our economy into a ponzi scheme.
3. Real competition. The Current Occupant of the highest office has talked about competition. A lot. But often the actual policies the government pursues have been designed to protect established corporate interests from competition . See Telecoms, Agribusiness, media consolidation, special tax breaks, etc. I believe government must play a role- not in picking winners, but in ensuring a fair and open market. The US has one of the highest "on paper" corporate tax rates, and one of the lowest rates of corporate taxes actually paid (excepting tax havens like the Bahamas). Why? Because the large and powerful can game the system. On the federal, state, and local level we should stop rewarding corporations with special, preferential deals because we they are politically well connected. See the history of the Texas Rangers Baseball Team for an example of how GWB was able to use tax dollars and political connections to create a personal fortune.
4. Take the long term view. Invest in education and infrastructure that can help create future wealth. A personal story- my father was raised on a subsistence farm during the depression, ploughing behind a mule, with no great difference between his life and the life of a subsistence farmer 2,000 years ago. But because of WWII and government investment in education (the GI Bill) he got to go to college, and spent his career in the space program. As one of his last jobs he helped put in place a large government infrastructure program- launching the GPS satellites that have spawned so many innovations and industries. Both of these investments- education and the GPS system- really required government to happen. And both have repaid us many times over.
5. Try some "trickle up" economics. I worry WAY less about what my top marginal tax rate will be- if I get to that over 250K bracket- than I do about there being enough consumers that are sufficiently well off to buy the products we are going to be producing. Note that Reagan didn't so much cut taxes in the 80's (as a % of GDP) as he shifted the burden from the richer, who paid mostly income tax, to the middle class by increasing payroll taxes. A more progressive system can help the rich, too, and will certainly help entrepreneurship.
That's a quick, of the top of the head list.
As one of said entrepreneurs/independent contractors - we have a nasty little problem in having to pay all our own social security and taxes. I made ~$20k last year and paid ~$4k in taxes, as a pretty normal example. Unsurprisingly, many small businesses never get to the point of having employees; many more pay their employees as independant contractors to avoid paying even more taxes and do whatever transactions they can in cash and don't report them to avoid THOSE taxes and reduce their official income. Not because they necessarily want to cheat or abuse their employees, but because it's the only way to stay in business until you get established and begin taking advantage of economies of scale. If they want to encourage small businesses, they need to do something about the disproportionate damage taxes do to startups and their employees.
I think Socrates said it best.
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/GREECE/APOLOGY.HTM
So... Mark Cuban thinks that entrepreneurs care about taxes? Here's a quote from his own blog on October 23rd about the subject...
"Entrepreneurs live to be entrepreneurs. I have never had a discussion with anyone about starting a business that included tax rates. Ever. If anyone that wanted an investment from me made a point of discussing tax rates as an impact on their business, I wouldn't invest in them. Ever."
oceanconcepts, well said.
The neat thing about entrepeneurs is that there are some many of them that some will succeed, and few might even succeed wildly.
Common wisdom has it that 80% of new businesses fail within 5 years, although some contradict this. (See http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/418119.html .) Still, whatever the failure rate, even a "measly" 50% rate, suggests that an unblinking embrace of entrepeneurship isn't the going to be the answer.
The answer is likely to be found through a process similar to entrepeneurship - or shooting small animals buckshot. If you try hard enough, enough different ways, you'll surely make contact with the target. However, you do want to take care to avoid shooting yourself, even if the target is sitting on your boot and giving you the finger.
In short, try a bunch of different things. Don't dedicate so much to one approach that you starve all other approaches. (I.e.: don't put all your eggs in one basket.) And consider the consequences of failure - approaches where failure ends in catastrophe should be avoided.
All of this is middle-of-the-road, centrist, mealy-mouthed advice. The economy is in extreme shape, in part because of extreme methods in the past (i.e.: the abandonment of regulation and putting people in charge of government who believed that government wasn't the answer but the problem.) Good policies are going to be centrist - and they're going to be based on facts and experience, not enthusiasms.
My wife owns a campground in a town of 155 people. When she bought it in 1993 we THOUGHT the SBA and related agencies were "there to help us"
Her initial SBA loan gave her points for being a "Female sole owner." Then the bleeding began- she got hit with a $1500 sales tax bond and $3000 "pre-payment" to SBA. Then she got the stunning notification of not being to take any money out as profits for 3 years! What percentage of stillborn or failed small ventures have such startup "gotchas" killed?
And that was back in 1993. She's made 15 years so far by our sweating blood and living from crisis to crisis.
When fuel prices soared camping of course died.
The impact on our nation of those fuel prices had a inestimably devastating impact. Squarely on the backs of small ventures. The sort of small ventures America was built on. The profits of Exxon et all were literally a "redistribution" from the small folks to the stockholders of big oil. As the "big guys" merely marked everything up and passed it along to US at the bottom!
Obama needs to look at those things that impact employers of 1 to 100 persons.
Just a few thoughts from an actual, real-life entrepreneur who co-owns a business and is usually a liberal Democrat:
First, oceanconcepts wrote a great post. Reread it.
Here's something to keep in mind: OUR ENTIRE BUSINESS MODEL IS BASED ON NOT EVER HIRING EMPLOYEES. This is totally f***ed and I am the first to admit it. Why is it this way?
Because there are so many regulations, so many taxes, and so much paperwork that comes into effect once you have an employee, particularly in California, that we would immediately have to hire a second employee to deal with all the paperwork required to hire the first!
This is not productive work. It does not get us customers, nor does it help us engineer new products. It's a boat anchor we can't afford to drag around.
Therefore, we use independent contractors like everyone else. Once again, this is totally f***ed, but we cannot be competitive in the current legal climate and do it any other way.
Let's generalize the above issue: ANY TAX OR REGULATION THAT APPLIES TO ALL BUSINESSES IS A TAX ON SMALL BUSINESS AND A SUBSIDY TO BIG BUSINESSES. In most cases, the same laws apply to 3 employees or 1000, and in large companies, the cost of compliance is spread out over a much larger revenue stream. A 1000 person company can afford to have a compliance department, a personnel department, and a legal department. In a 3 person company, *I* am all those departments, and any time I spend on these issues is time I'm not spending on making new products or selling existing ones. This means we make no money and I don't eat or have a place to live.
Furthermore, like oceanconcepts, I'm less concerned about the tax burden than about the regulatory burden. Once again, big corporations can afford a few tax lawyers to shuffle money around and dodge the laws. Small companies, like us, do not, so we end up paying much more than they do.
Europe's WEEE laws are a great example: theoretically they exist to protect the environment, but they have no positive environmental effect whatsoever (and I say this as a strong environmentalist)...all they do is make it impossible for small businesses, European or foreign, to sell their products in the EU.
So: what do we do about this?
Once again, oceanconcepts has some great points. Universal health insurance would be the best possible spur to small business creation. Our current system assumes insurance comes through your employer.
***This means that if you've ever had a health problem, ever, you are uninsurable through an individual policy, and starting a business causes you and your family to risk losing everything you have, including the business, or dying***
Second, we can repeal corporate personhood. Corporate personhood allows large corporations to grow more powerful without limit. There is nothing equal about (for instance) Archer Daniels Midland having the same "rights" as an individual or a five-person partnership -- they simply use those "rights" to buy protection and subsidies from our government.
Most importantly, as Mark Cuban said, entrepreneurs need some voice in economic and corporate policy. So many well-meaning laws have unintended consequences that end up supporting big corporations at the expense of small business. Small businesses account for the majority of employment in this country...why are we talking about bailing out GM/Ford, and not about the needs of the people that *actually provide necessary services in your own neighborhood?*
Thanks for the positive compliments to my earlier post.
I thought of a couple more things for my entrepreneur's wish list:
6. Clean up the disaster that the patent system has become. It's a fiendishly difficult crapshoot for a small business to get patent protection, and it means damn little if the company that wants to violate your patent can afford enough lawyers to keep you tied up till you go under or give in- easy in a fast moving technology field. Meanwhile big businesses are stacking up huge numbers of patents that are primarily defensive or intended to obstruct competition. The patent system as it exists, at least in technology, is an impediment to innovation.
7. Support technical and vocational education. We need to utilize many skilled trades in bringing new designs to market- particularly fast turnaround prototyping. These skills are increasingly hard to find domestically. The highly skilled machinists, for instance, are often nearing (or past) retirement age. Suppliers tell us they have trouble finding qualified applicants. My daughter's high school has removed its metal shop facilities. They should instead be expanding and updating them to teach CNC machining basics and metallurgy. But parents demand computer training for the state mandated occupational education. So kids are learning to use Word and Excel, or a little Java for the advanced group... Qualifying them for what? To be office drones at Lehman Brothers?
Reviewing this it's striking to me how much the deck is stacked to favor big business over small- never more so than in the Bush administration, which was pretty clearly corporatist and anti-competitive. Payroll taxes hit us doubly hard, since we get to pay both sides. Income or corporate taxes, which get all the political attention, are a minor issue compared to the payroll taxes, health care tied to company plans, and the regulatory minefield you enter as soon as you hire an employee. Any plan for the future should look ahead, to an economy of freelancers and independent agents, moving skills to where they are needed- not backwards to an industrial economy of big, monolithic businesses. Not that business won't get big, but if we want to grow we need to make entrepreneurship a more viable possibility for more people.
@#34 anon:
I totally agree with you when you stated both 'Corporate personhood allows large corporations to grow more powerful without limit' and 'So many well-meaning laws have unintended consequences that end up supporting big corporations at the expense of small business'
BUT you also said.
"any time I spend on these issues is time I'm not spending on making new products or selling existing ones. This means we make no money and I don't eat or have a place to live."
so with x being an unknown number from seconds to years, the equation goes like 'x time doing paper work = -x time selling and/or inventing = ZERO cash moneys for fuds! oh nos.
stop generalizing geez thats quite the over simplification.
@#17 Zuzu: you said, "Economics is not zero-sum. Your (legitimate) gain doesn't come from someone else's expense. In fact, excepting use of force or fraud, all trade is both-benefit."
Ontario(Canada) can decide to sell it's great lake waters to america by the truckload, in exchange for paper money.
I agree that is not zero-sum but that does not mean in any way that The water purchaser's legitimate gain doesn't come from someone else's expense, in this case my country Canada - I can't drink money and what in a free market stops them from selling it all. nothing
in free market capitalism the chinese recycling setup, mentioned in a news piece here on boing boing just recently (a '60 minutes' piece) is fair game, legal and free of force. nobody forces china to take the waste.
The laws in place in hong kong and in america to prevent the off loading of toxins on 3rd world countries are an acceptable hinderence to true free market capitalism.
walmart under pricing competition till they die then raising prices when they are the only one in town. never mind sweat shop work around the world.
so to sum up,
Economics is not zero-sum - correct
gain, when not forced, does not come from someone else's expense - wrongful generalization too
get small business opinion on things.. great idea.
@Oceanconcepts:
6. oh my god yes the patent system is toasted. I whole heartedly agree about a revamp.
7. I agree we need more labour intensive training instead of the corprate pushed idea that all labour will move overseas and we will become a service industry and IT industry supported country. Part of the problem is that a world wide equalization of cost of living and wage earning must be forced by around the world nationalistic policies. Without those, americans can not afford to work at chinese or indian prices.
well.. except I guess we still need prototypers like you were originally talking about. But once you invent it unless things change you'd be shipping that prototype to china to be mass produced.
Same old "right wingery has f****ed up because it was not right wing enough" BS.
Obama should not try to be Ronald Reagan.
Isn't this the same old "small bizniz runes the world" rhetoric we've been hearing for years? I'm pretty sure that the small amount of research that has been done on this subject indicates that individuals and small groups are often terrible at assessing (local) market benefits and risks. And if we think that jobs are a first priority we should look to the largest corporations. In the G8 countries the largest employers are the largest companies.
We should support those shops and bodegas in our neighbourhoods and cities because it makes those neighbourhoods and cities more liveable. Yes, a thriving local economy is good. If we are going to acknowledge the bad as well as the good in a global economy, mom and pop stores are not where we should be getting our policies and advice.
Just one small quibble with this idea. A lot of those one-person businesses, such as "event planner," are going to go the way of the SUV and other dinosaurs. They are luxury services that very few people are going to be able to afford in the coming months and years.
Although I am not a huge Mark Cuban fan, he does happen to be an excellent business man, and he does make for a good point in regard to the economic crisis. Like I said in a different thread that was about Obama, change isn't going to happen just because we elected Barack Obama. He is really going to have to make some wise decisions on fiscal policy in the future for us to get back on track to where we were.
This is actually a government failure in disguise.
* Regulatory capture
* Coase theorem
* Free-market environmentalism
The only bullshit is the argument by analogy of invoking left-right politics. Both "wings" are coalitions, and neither reconciles their belief systems into a coherent philosophy. So you can't legitimately take an ideological stand on anything based on "the Left" or "the Right". It's nonsense.@ Ugly Canuck
Folks- this thread has elements that should be fed back to Obama.
At one time regulations were somewhat reviewed for cause and effect. Many of the current rules®s seem to defy logic. When logic could allow America to thrive.
Each plainly stupid regulation we spotlight has a chance of being revised. Each one we overlook is comparable to missing one egg of something deadly to Freedom.
Immigrant labor laws arguably need to be rewritten from a blank sheet of paper level.
From there?
Contrast a water policy demanding arbitrary standards Vs one merely dictating your fresh water intake be from your discharge pipe's flow zone. Or think on the fact of patents used to reward production and not block whole industries.
See the NiMh battery patents for example.
We allegedly had a "Paperwork reduction act" What we need is a paper ELIMINATION act. We already accept electronic journals from POS systems as legal records for tax audits. So why could not we accept electronic compliance with 100% of everything?
Each of the pieces where someone turns a rock over. Knowing the systemic dysfunctions exist is no shocking revelation. Enumerating them and outlining their impacts may be the sobering reality check. As reality bats last- or was that Darwin?
I lost him at "not a single entrepreneur"
Warren Buffett and Eric Schmidt are two of the most successful entrepreneurs of the century.
Is he sore because Obama didn't call *him*? Sounds like it.
Apart from that, the article is full of generalities about the advantages of free market and small goverment, which the Bush administration applied to the extreme for eight years already and we all know how that ended.
Bail out poor hungry people not Bankers.
Stop spending all the public's free cash on War.
Too left wing?
Oh right-wing only cash needs to speak...
But it's not about "wings", it's about value-free analysis.
I cannot agree that opinions from -any- business subtype can lead us out of the woods; Business did not solve these problems before, and cannot. The issues at hand are simply more fundamental.
Is health, food, clean air a right? Do some people have more rights to basic human needs like health care, maybe because they are rich or have a baseball team, or simply desire to be in business and make money? Who has a right to expensive treatments? Do they then lose their home and retirement?
When we solve the very issues of our humanity can we then to address how business fits into all of this.
@ KANEDAJONES
Not necessarily- it depends a lot on scale. If you're making iPods or some large volume consumer item, then yes. But there are thousands of small designers/ producers of medical devices, energy devices, scientific instruments, parts for aviation, and so on where the volume of sales and, importantly, the pace of change and innovation makes going overseas not such a great option. There are significant costs associated with offshore production- communication, lead times, inability to make on-the-fly changes, and quality control. And transport is no longer as cheap as it was. These are quite easily borne and worthwhile if you are making huge volumes, but can be significant barriers for small, innovative businesses.
We still need domestic manufacturing capabilities. There are a surprising number of innovative business catering to the need for quick, high quality domestic production. There will be working opportunities for that part of the population not destined to become engineers or scientists- IF they have the education. These are not all drone jobs.
I think we lose if we don't foster the ability to actually make- hands on- real stuff. I don't accept the idea that we should all become bit jockeys, designing in the abstract while actual making takes place elsewhere. I am often stunned by the creativity and innovative thinking that comes from direct, real world contact with making physical things. We can't afford to lose that.
It's not like we started out ok, but then started doing business and things went bad. We started out awful and business makes alot of things better -- but still not ideal.
There's good reason why economic analogies begin with the shipwreck of Robinson Crusoe.
My ECON101 textbook had the 'desert island' story -- it ended with the economist saying "Let's assume we have a can opener"
This seems like just so much FUD to me. Any debate about the impact of an action that uses isolated and unrepresentative cases as the debating point is just going to confuse.
I've had two companies that I closed in the black at a profit. Both of them were candidates for Obama's increased taxes. The impact on my company would have been a very slight rate increase that was passed on to my customers as my costs of doing business increased. I don't think this would have cost me any customers at all (although this economy certainly would have).
I can't seem to find any information on how much of a tax increase a $250-500 business will see, but all of the articles I read seem to assume it will be some crazy amount like 10-15% I expect that in reality, the effect to Joe the Plumber will be much less noticeable than the cost of gas was this year.
"...or forcing new hires to be independent contractors to avoid having to pay their insurance or higher matching social security amounts."
I'm trying to find a better job and a good majority of them are pulling crap like this. If we want to get the message across we have to start from the ground up with local politicians. If we make our concerns heard by them, they will tell the next guy up on the chain of command and so on. :)
Kelly
@ZUZU; Thank you for your comments. I do not see any scarcity in the core issues(yet); any scarcity is artificial, a choice that we make as a society. If we always start by being crashed on to a beach, the story must play out the same. But if we change the rules, we get something maybe different; that is, we are in a localized minimum. There is no economic anything that can cover the broad debilitating issues we are dealing with (extended globally), especially those proven when resources were cheap, exploitable, and elastic; that is less the case every day. We may be reaching another disruption in our human history, one that the old model cannot address (human starvation, for example, or even the economics of serious space travel) and where a new one is needed (as to bring us out of the dark ages). Being certain there is only one way that things can be done, especially after the rules have changed so much and such obvious failure to address large issues, is not so assuring to me.
It's a material problem. Society only enters into it when we trade with each other, because we both value what the other has more than what we already have.
I don't really follow anything you said after that. Explain your case causally please.
@ZUZU,
I understand you are a libertarian and as such feel that capital has equal rights to human beings
Scarcity exists, in oil, in land, but in data or energy? Oh wait, everything will be resolved by lawsuit! American CRTs killing Chinese kids is not the failure of ourselves, or Walmart, but of the Chinese government!
Blame has lots of places to go -- it is probably never unilateral. Most failures of modern society, which can and often does address singular failures well, are attributable to a "division of labor" that separates some costs from others. As a Canadian (why can't we all just get along? :) ) I firmly believe in International strategies to deal with international problems.
So yes, stealing my computer is akin to cutting off a finger.
Data, no. "Intellectual property" is a sham, and has nothing to do with common law property. Copyrights and patents are government-granted monopolies, and their role as "incentives" are highly dubious due to a complete lack of frame of reference from which to compare.Energy, yes. Unless, again, you've invented a sustainable nuclear fusion reactor that uses natural deuterium harvested from water as a fuel source, and I just haven't yet heard about it.
I don't understand how you're attributing moral hazard to division of labor. While I appreciate attention to scale (since socialism commits the fallacy of division), this is also a vague cosmic statement unless you can contextualize it here.So yes, stealing my computer is akin to cutting off a finger.
Yeah, if you could buy a new finger and stick it on in twenty minutes, with no pain in any part of the process. That statement goes beyond philosophical argument into the realm of inability to distinguish fantasy from reality.
Fine, Zuzu. Walmart paying Chinese factories for $50 CRTs, is this Walmart's fault or the Chinese government or someone else's? If it's moral hazard or division of labor or whatever, the point is that as long as everyone points at everyone else, nothing gets done and disaster continues unabated.
Walmart or ChinaCO's "right" to property impinges on the environment -- what's the solution? Not whose fault, but what would be better for everyone in your "non-zero-sum both-benefit" equation?
You could afford to buy a new one 20 minutes later? Even restoring a backup (assuming you have one) would take longer than that.
BFD...so Mark Cuban reads Ayn Rand. Haven't we heard the glories of an trickle-down, entrepenuer-led, frat boy economic model oh, about a million times before?
hey Zuzu still worried about inflation?
I told you, deflation is the killer, one which boomers have never seen before...
Some points that I think some people are missing about entrepreneurship:
Entrepreneurs, almost by definition, do not have short term goals. These are the people who know that their business will run at a loss for the first 3 years. These are the guys who, rather than investing $0 to take a job as a greeter at Wal-Mart, invets their whole life savings to try something unprovent. You can NOT be an entrepreneur and only have the short-term in sight. Even if you are thinking more along the lines of venture capitalists, they still recognize the fact that a large portion of their investments will never make money, and the ones that do will usually take time.
Warren Buffett is an investor, and the only company he's really started was an investment company. Eric Schmidt is notable for becoming a billionaire off of a company that he didn't start.
It is worth noting, though, that both of those individuals personify the other 2 parts of the triangle that Cuban is missing (or maybe more accurately that are already represented in Obama's group of advisors). The 3 things that are key to economic growth are 1) Startups. New innovative businesses started by entrepreneurs. High risk, low yield. 2) Growth. Companies led by people like Eric Schmidt to maximize their potential earnings. 3) Safety. Long term safe investment of capital in existing well-established businesses. Which is what Warren Buffet does.
You need all 3 of these things to sustain overall economic growth. Getting them out of whack causes problems. Notice that none of those 3 things necessarily involves overextending debt, which is what our current economic issues are about.
OK, Zuzu, I appreciate your brevity, but how does "sufficient" property rights address the specific issue of, say, CRT disposal? That's the question you are not answering!
Do as I say...
http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2008/2008-273.htm
hey Joel beat me to it...I remember Mr. Cuban describing the Stock market as a "Ponzi scheme" years ago....on some TV celeb-worship show. He had done very well by it too, shuffling paper around.
isn't insider trading why the market exists?