Awaking late last evening, unable to fall back to sleep I was pondering the totally inept performance of the administration in virtually all aspects of governance. And especially so regarding the economy, business and misuse of taxes already collected.
I then remembered an article I read many years ago which was focused on marketing, but I think also provides a nearly perfect example of why and how most politicians, especially leftists, have virtually no idea of how our economy works at all. And as a result of politicizing basic elements, they manufacture false enemies that could easily generate needed fiscal help immensely if befriended, thereby killing the part of the system that fiscally permits everything else to work.
Then, I got a shock this morning while Googling to find that not only is the article mentioned, but recapped by Harvard Business Review perfectly for my point as follows:
"“Marketing Myopia” is the quintessential big hit HBR piece. In it, Theodore Levitt, who was then a lecturer in business administration at the Harvard Business School, introduced the famous question, “What business are you really in?” and with it the claim that, had railroad executives seen themselves as being in the transportation business rather than the railroad business, they would have continued to grow. The article is as much about strategy as it is about marketing, but it also introduced the most influential marketing idea of the past half-century: that businesses will do better in the end if they concentrate on meeting customers’ needs rather than on selling products. “Marketing Myopia” won the McKinsey Award in 1960.
- The railroads did not stop growing because the need for passenger and freight transportation declined. That grew. The railroads are in trouble today not because that need was filled by others (cars, trucks, airplanes, and even telephones) but because it was filled by the railroads themselves. They let others take customers away from them because they assumed themselves to be in the railroad business rather than in the transportation business. The reason they defined their industry incorrectly was that they were railroad oriented instead of transportation oriented; they were product oriented instead of customer oriented.
- Hollywood barely escaped being totally ravished by television. Actually, all the established film companies went through drastic reorganizations. Some simply disappeared. All of them got into trouble not because of TV’s inroads but because of their own myopia. As with the railroads, Hollywood defined its business incorrectly. It thought it was in the movie business when it was actually in the entertainment business. “Movies” implied a specific, limited product. This produced a fatuous contentment that from the beginning led producers to view TV as a threat. Hollywood scorned and rejected TV when it should have welcomed it as an opportunity—an opportunity to expand the entertainment business."
What makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever is politicians alienating those most successful financially in our nation. Making them hated targets tax and otherwise not only forces them to hide assets, but also loses their support altogether. And in that regard, since Warren Buffet and George Soros glaringly prove that the wealthy can easily be bought by government, why not try to do that with others across the board? Then in that way the biggest financial brains in the nation come to your side instead of trying their damnest to get you out of office. And as soon as the money starts pouring in from their successes, the deficit quickly begins to melt away.
And what about the oil industry? By incenting them to think and work as “energy” providers and permitting them to drill for oil right here instead of abroad, you then get them to build the windmills, electric motors and whatever else the greenies or whoever want them to do, as well. Then when they quickly lower prices at the pump, everybody does better, providing the needed cash to get all of it done the way it should have been in the first place.
Then, as you go down the list, even for things like healthcare, education and just about all else, look for the synergies, the things that fit, and try to put them together instead of tearing them apart and creating alienation.
However, the real problem is that a guy like Theodore Levitt is very smart. And his focus was trying to get people in business to work together, thereby building something better for all involved. But politicians, unfortunately are the reverse and division is their stock and trade. Because if the system actually worked as it easily can and really should, they know we’d all figure out in a New York minute that we really don’t need them at all and likely never did.
That’s it for today folks.
Adios
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