"This is silly, socialist nonsense. I know some of the book buyers at the "Borders" store in Santa Cruz (the very one that the "anti-bigness" lefties tried to ban from opening in Santa Cruz). Not only do they have a "local authors" section which is larger than the similar section at the "local" bookstore, but they have a sophisticated system for re-ordering books based on sales. If a title sells, they know it. And can order replacements."
Nothing particularly socialist about my original statement. I was trying to point out how the knee-jerk mimicry of top-down structures prevented even big companies from making as much money as they could, by awarding and leveraging local talent and information. It would be nice to think that part of Border's success is from doing some of this. As for the small, independent bookstores, I personally helped trounce one in particular...the owner was not only a know-it-all DICK he really wasn't a very good businessman. He tried to tell his customers that they should want what he was selling and it didn't work. (Every now and then I'd try to send a customer or two his way to get the kind of books the Central Office wouldn't let us carry, and on several occasions the reply was "No thank you, I'm never shopping THERE again...").
So I'm not advocating 'requiring' big retail companies to get smarter, nor am I advocating non-shopping at the big Borders and Barnes and Nobles. My point was that a lot of corporate cultures blindly mimic hierarchies even when that's not appropriate, because it just about the only social model anyone's ever experienced.
And being a shareholder in a bunch of non-Silicon Valley companies, I can also assure you that their 'high-level strategic decisons" are NOT "made almost entirely in the vacuum of power."
Well, I'm thinking of the Lucents, Nortels and Alcatels of the world. Oh, and all the big old financial houses as well. Those two sectors I can claim some decent familiarity with (I too am a shareholder in various companies). When Lucent bought Chromatis, or when Sandy Weil told Jack Grubman to uppe his rating on AT&T or...well, these major, corporation-shaking decisions were pretty much made in a vacuum of power. There's no way shareholders could give the thumbs-down to those absurd deals, or even (really) chuck out those responsible.
Of course, you'll argue that the shareholders could vote with their feet until something was done, but that's besides the point. The point here is that shareholders, Boardmembers, and upper management alike are so used to an environment where little or no feedback is possible that something like this happens so often. I'm not saying "there should be a law"...it's a cultural thing, and the culture sucks, because we're used to being told what to do by somebody else who's "in charge".
You silly Bolshies are obviously on the wrong list if you think strong crypto is going to help your cause.
Not so fast my fine, crypto-fascist friend. Let's look at Grubman. At the time Sandy Weil gave him his marching orders he probably had (at least) 10s of millions of dollars-worth of immature Citigroup options. You can also bet he was paying out the friggin WAZOO for whatever upper-east-side space he had (as well as whatever East Hampton 'bungalo' he had). So in a way, he was on the hook, and stood to make a hell of a lot more on the AT&T deal. So he probably didn't really WANT to put lipstick on that pig, but he didn't have a lot of choice. (OK, he had plenty of choice, but that's a different matter...)
Now let's say some kind of really sophisticated blacknet were available, able to support even short-selling and whatnot. In that case Grubman might have secretly shorted the AT&T deal and then given Sandy the finger, all the while preserving his tattered (but then still-salvagable) reputation as at least an "honest" pump-and-dump analyst, while being able to keep himself afloat in high-end hookers and other goodies (that's what I would have done!).
From this perspective, crypto would have allowed enough holes to be punchedin the deal so that real market forces could tear it apart like pirana, which is what should have happened.
-TD
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