Power, money and sex – globalisation, capitalism, stock exchange assets flow, corporate strategy

“Globalisation, capitalism, stock exchange assets flow, corporate strategy” are the words to describe current business environment. That is where the real money is and who sets the rules of competitiveness on the market. We can argue about positives and negatives of this situation. Where there are strong arguments towards both ends in economical and sociological terms. This is what allowed us to open to other countries, other economies. Like India, China for example.

But I want to focus here on rather questionable impact of global capitalism on individuals.

I would dare to put the blame on failure of some of the strategies of even medium business.

It is maybe not define explanation of why we have such huge economic crash in western economies, but it is an idea that might bring you to some unexpected conclusions.

Idea standing that “cheap is expensive”. That in business we are missing few important chains. That capitalism doesn’t include some factors, which have huge impact on us in long term. Long term meaning longer the average strategic plan.

I am involved in IT sector for past 10 years. I’ve witnessed all the processes starting from basic level of manufacturing computers up to planning and implementing products/services for international client base.

And not only in IT, but generally speaking there is strong trend for last couple of years in business to outsource, outsource, outsource.

Watching some of leading Irish businessman’s last night in “Dragon’s Den” there was one sentence that brought my attention. One of them said “do you want to do this product on your own, or you want to be reach”. Story was, very hard workingman developed very “accurate” product and from day 1 he made huge sale. Filling the demand on the market. It was very simple, but smart solution for very common problem. He manufactured it himself in his shed in huge numbers. From my understanding it took him a lot of hard work and sleepless nights. He wanted “Dragon’s” to invest in him so he can hire some help and buy some machines for the manufacturing process. I would say “bingo”. Those are the people every western economy needs. This is how china made world biggest brand “made in china”. By making everything “in-house”. What is the difference? Well if our guy would outsource the production (it would be probably to china, as everything else) product would be 10-15 euro cheaper and he would have to just sit down and watch cash coming into his account.

And this is the easy way we all felled into. As history show, easy way is not always good way.

I just wanted to give a little slap on the “Dragon’s” chicks so they will wake up from that dream about quick money in business. This trend that kills our economy with mass cheap products.

Focusing for example on US. Where during the economic boom they were manufacturing everything in states. With time they moved to outsource production to countries where labour was cheaper. Running around in suits and ties, making fortunes they were all happy. We all were so proud, we were all “managers” and “directors” of paper businesses. Leaving on “paper” incomes and “paper” profits.

We were the reach one taking a long-term loan from the poor. They were working in conditions which human rights could barely call “acceptable”. To make our lives easier and more comfortable. Where they had to cycle 20km to work, work 14h a day for minimum wage, and by minimum wage I mean money, which you can buy food and that’s it. Where we were coming to offices at 10am in comfortable cars and complaining about our life’s and struggles. Visiting psychologists, just because it was trendy. Forgetting about other people. World became very self-centralized, where term “it is just business, nothing personal” is commonly acceptable excuse for any behaviour (not acceptable elsewhere). There is not talk about business ethics anymore. There are plenty of talks about profits. Magic word that dominated everything else.

Power, money and sex – magic formula. But where you think about it. We are so primitive. Where it all coming from? Going chain by chain we would discover it all comes from our prime animal instincts.

Something we can see in animal world every single day – to be number one male in the horde, to be number one female. It is nothing else but “upgraded” version of animal world. We are so blinded by this game that we don’t know when enough is enough, when to stop. So we keep going and going in eventually self-destructive path. There is no bigger pleasure; there is not greater power. But there is always something bigger of “better” you can buy. But stop here for a minute. Do you really think “stuff” and things you bought are the most important in life? Or is it people? Family, friends?

We all will come to the end of our journey, and when you will be laying down as old man or women, believe me you will look back on your life. What you would like to see? “Bold” harsh money-orientated “hunter” or happy person that can easily say – I gave my best to this world.

Just few lines about IT sector. There was huge trend back 3-5 years ago where everybody was outsourcing call centre services to India. We all know this. Whatever company you’ve rang, there was big chance you will hear Indian accent. Nothing against Indian people, they are more then great and hard working. But what difference does it make to the people where very same person is helpdesk technician for 3 different manufacturing brands? How does it make you feel?

Sell, Sell, Sell strategy. This is it, nobody cares about end user, and everybody cares about profits. And it all comes up to the surface with time. Even though it seems it is not that important in small scale of time, after 10 years of global capitalism we finding that eastern hard working economies learned how to use that global capitalism to gain assets. The same way as we slowly forgetting it in our cosy lives.

As I was mentioning it coupe of times, when I was talking about “Company Man” movie in the post Profitability will destroy Facebook. Why “corporate capitalism” kills its own creations?, or post about “Where the money are….. big brands 2011”.

Bringing Psychological and sociological aspects of manufacturing “in-house”. All outsourcing has huge impact on our society and us. Starting from fact that we not eye-witnessing hard working people anymore, loosing motivation and sense on creating something by our own hands. We struggle to motivate ourselves, graphs from psychologists shows spike of depression and related issues.

I like the sentence from the movie “Bruce Almighty” “man do not appreciate benefit of hard work”. We are all in that sense felling so “almighty” that we forgetting that we are just human beings. We need each other’s, we need to work, and we need to be passionate. The same things that drives us – power, money and sex – also allows us to awake our passions. Whatever it is painting, being accountant or builder. If you love what you are doing that is all that matters.  But where we went wrong, we allowed couple of completely lost personalities to gain too much power. To fulfil their own desires. Wrong desires, empty desires, self-cantered and destructive desires. It is not criticism towards them, but everyone makes mistakes, and if higher it goes then more difficult it becomes as all environment up there is like that.

As old Polish saying goes: “If you have to go between the crows caw as they”.

But if you a lion, you cane make your own rules, don’t you? And it is time to be wise and carefull in making those rules.

Don’t get me wrong, I am strongly towards globalisation, but not in the shape it goes currently. Not the globalisation which takes from poor and gives to rich. Which economicaly enslaves working class. Yes to globalisation which enrich each others, mutual understanding, benefits to both sides, healty “equal-rules” based competition.

For now I would say start making things happen “In-house”. Stop developing businesses that outsource productions. Bring that feeling of accomplishment to people. Give jobs. Buy local rather then in supermarket. That is the way I would like to see globalisation going. At the same time open for small businesses from abroad. Learn from them. Build valuable relationships with people (from other countries as well) not profits.  I know it is like going back in time. But maybe this is exactly what we need right now? We all have right tool and abilities. Don’t be afraid to use them. Start new trend in business of “in-house” development.

Related post:  Quo Vadis (written by mankind)

Gino Tiefenbrun

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5 May 11 at 20:39

Julissa

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19 August 11 at 16:29

The number of ‘socially-engineered hacking technique’ incidents will increase rapidly this xmas!

The number of “social-engineering hacking technique” incidents will increase rapidly this christmas.

Social-engineering hacking technique is the act of manipulating people into performing actions or divulging confidential information, rather than by breaking in or using technical cracking techniques.

This is best season for cyber intruders to target their victims. Their actions will induce users to open on links on affected websites and email messages. Popularity and number of xmas e-cards send by companies and people is uncontrollable. So hackers will use it to put one or two e-cards and send it to your email. So called “call to action” button will direct users to affected file or website.

This warning message was issued by AVG Technologies, well known anty-virus and Internet security software developer.

Double check before you will open any attachments or follow link on your email message. Most of those scam messages will look very professional so they will not awake your suspision.

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People with narcissistic tendencies and people with lower self-esteem are more likely to become facebook-addicts!

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20 January 11 at 04:52

Zbigniew Gargasz

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21 January 11 at 11:20

Zuckerberg's (Facebook) portends one that is all thumbs and no brains! – theory saying that Facebook will make us stupid!

America’s favorite boy genius, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, has announced a new form of messaging. E-mail, the last Internet link to traditional, epistolary, interpersonal communication, is, he said, outmoded. Young people, by which he meant younger than his own 26 years, desired something more nimble for their iPads, mobile phones and other devices. What he proposed was a “social inbox” where users could readily access messages from friends and then sort them — sort of a cross between instant messaging and Twitter.

We are so accustomed by now to declarations of new technological revolutions that another one hardly gets noticed, especially when it comes to finding new ways of minimizing how we communicate with each other. And it is entirely possible that this proposed geological change will be no more geological than all those other alleged game-changers. But whether his messaging system really transforms how people communicate or not, Zuckerberg issued what amounts to a manifesto that in its own terse way conveys what is already altering our lives — not only how we interact but also how we think and feel. It may even challenge the very idea of serious ideas. Call it Zuckerberg’s Revolution.

It qualifies as a revolution because how we communicate largely defines what we communicate. You know: “The medium is the message.” When Johannes Gutenberg invented the first movable-type printing press, it was rightly considered one of the signal moments in human history. By allowing books to be mass produced, Gutenberg’s press had the immediate effect of disseminating ideas far and wide, but it also had the more powerful and less immediate effect of changing the very construction of thought — through typography.

The social theorist Marshall McLuhan, in his book “The Gutenberg Galaxy,” posited that the printing press resulted in what he called “typographic man” — humans with a new consciousness shaped by the non-visual, non-auditory culture of print. He felt that print’s uniformity, its immutability, its rigidity, its logic led to a number of social transformations, among which were the rise of rationalism and of the scientific method. In facilitating reason, print also facilitated complex ideas. It was no accident that it coincided with the Renaissance. Print made us think better or, at least, with greater discipline. In effect, the printing press created the modern mind.

Writing scarcely 20 years after McLuhan, in 1985, Neil Postman, in his path-breaking book “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” saw the handwriting — or rather the images — on the wall. He lamented the demise of print under the onslaught of the visual, thanks largely to television. Like McLuhan, Postman felt that print culture helped create thought that was rational, ordered and engaging, and he blamed TV for making us mindless. Print not only welcomed ideas, it was essential to them. Television not only repelled ideas, it was inimical to them.

One wonders what Postman — who died the same year Facebook’s precursor went online — would have thought of Zuckerberg’s Revolution. Facebook is still typographically dependent. Its messages are basically printed notes. But contradicting Postman, these bits of print are no more hospitable to real ideas than the television culture Postman reviled. Indeed, in making his “social inbox” announcement, Zuckerberg introduced seven principles that he said were the basis of communication 2.0. Messages have to be seamless, informal, immediate, personal, simple, minimal and short.

As Zuckerberg no doubt recognizes, these principles are all of a piece. The seamless, informal, immediate, personal, simple, minimal and short communication is not one that is likely to convey, let alone work out, ideas, great or not. Facebook, Twitter, Habbo, MyLife and just about every other social networking site pare everything down to noun and verb and not much more. The sites, and the information on them, billboard our personal blathering, the effluvium of our lives, and they wind up not expanding the world but shrinking it to our own dimensions. You could call this a metaphor for modern life, increasingly narcissistic and trivial, except that the sites and the posts are modern life for hundreds of millions of people.

Which is where the revolutionary aspect comes in. Gutenberg’s Revolution transformed the world by broadening it, by proliferating ideas. Zuckerberg’s Revolution also may change consciousness, only this time by razing what Gutenberg had helped erect. The more we text and Twitter and “friend,” abiding by the haiku-like demands of social networking, the less likely we are to have the habit of mind or the means of expressing ourselves in interesting and complex ways.

That makes Zuckerberg the anti-Gutenberg. He has facilitated a typography in which complexity is all but impossible and meaninglessness reigns supreme. To the extent that ideas matter, we are no longer amusing ourselves to death. We are texting ourselves to death.

Ideas, of course, will survive, but more and more they will live at the margins of culture; more and more they will be a private reserve rather than a general fund. Meanwhile, everything at the cultural center militates against the sort of serious engagement that McLuhan described and that Postman celebrated.

McLuhan understood that print would eventually give way to electronic media, and that these new media would create his famous “global village,” though it is nevertheless ironic that typography, which he thought engendered isolation, would in digital form lead to tens of millions of people calling themselves “friends.”

Postman was more apocalyptic. He believed that a reading society was also a thinking society. No real reading, no real thought. Still, he couldn’t have foreseen that a reading society in which print that was overwhelmingly seamless, informal, personal, short et al would be a society in which that kind of reading would force thought out — a society in which tens of millions of people feel compelled to tell tens of millions of other people that they are eating a sandwich or going to a movie or watching a TV show. So Zuckerberg’s Revolution has a corollary that one might call Zuckerberg’s Law: Empty communications drive out significant ones.

Gutenberg’s Revolution left us with a world that was intellectually rich. Zuckerberg’s portends one that is all thumbs and no brains.

Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gabler-zuckerberg-20101128,0,7889675.story

Daniel

great post, thanks for sharing

17 December 10 at 20:21