-by Michael P. Murphy
How much can you tolerate? This has been discussed and measured in corporate board rooms since their inception. At what point do you quit buying their products?
Meanwhile, the public tends to look at supply and demand in simpler terms. The product is only worth what we are willing to pay for it. In a materialistic society, we tend to think of enterprises only in terms of dollars. Business capitalizes on creating demand as naturally as we capitalize on a good sale when there is too much supply like the current glut of automobiles since Black Tuesday.
Traditionally, oil companies try to figure how much the public will be willing to pay for gas in the summer. How high of a price will customers tolerate and yet still pay for the gas? Will our cartel stick together and force the public to pay a high price for gas?
Corporate Earth has been selling to us for a long time and has, over the years, acquired quite a bag of tricks to get us to part with our hard earned money. Unfortunately, we've come to expect dishonest and misleading ads, sales interruptions at dinner time and various degrading sales techniques that actually work.
One example is the giant promotional pictures of hamburgers, that when brought to the dinner table, look like someone had sat on them.
What about "99 cent" pricing where $4.99 is thought of by the public as "four something" rather than the more realistic "five dollars"? I am embarrassed to say that American Business has proven that we consumers are not too bright and further, that we have accepted that we are not too bright.
Some industries that are not nearly as monopolized as the oil & gas industry have learned to sacrifice service and support to accommodate consumers' hasty demand for lower prices. Sure, we grumble about long hold times and poor quality. Regardless, we still target our dollars at the lower ticket prices.
Let's take a look at the computer industry. Say you pay $35. Verses $135. for an accounting program. Built into the cheaper program is nonexistent service and support or a support package that costs a small fortune. In your frustration, to figure out the complicated software bugs and lack of clairvoyance that comes with such a program, you find yourself spending hours or even days to fix the program and to learn how to use it's awkward interface. One day you decide to return an item to the store and you need to find out the date you bought the item so you can go to the appropriate month to find the receipt. It should have been a simple 20 second task in your accounting program, but somehow it takes 20 minutes instead. Because you forgot how to find specific transactions and because you never got a hard copy of the manual, you had to go online to read the 200 plus pages. Finding the online version to be hard to read and lacking the ability to highlight important notes, you next decided to download the whole thing to the computer or, if your printer is working, God forbid, print the stupid thing!
The accounting program never really worked like you anticipated, but you feel trapped in it now. As though the software company has no compassion for your plight, they add the coup de grace and as a necessity to keep themselves in business, they added built in obsolescence to the program. You'll pay repeatedly for more speed, less bugs and some over hyped new bells and whistles.
Software obsolescence makes 70's automobiles look indestructible. I have to ask, are we that powerless? Need we tolerate all of this?
When the ludicrous program Linux started gaining strength to the extent it has today, corporations noted its progress was telling them something. The techies were leading the pack in creating an alternative to the unreliable software and the subsequent dependence on the Wintel monopoly. The dominant OS providers, Microsoft and Apple Computer saw the threat and while the former tried the bullying techniques that had worked so well in the past, the latter actually adopted UNIX, an older but similar platform, into it's new OS X. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. It's my belief that because Microsft has set the computer industry back 20 years something like Linux had to evolve in response. When as poor an operating system as Linux can gain ground on shear passion alone, you know something's very wrong in that industry. Due to our tolerance of Microsoft over the past 20 years, not to mention our love of the stock if we have some, we now find ourselves in a world built on "programming" quick sand. The code red worm is just a taste of a future by Microsoft, one that will undoubtedly be exploited as corporations and governments collide during World War III. I might offend some, but I say nail the coffin shut on Microsoft. Take Bill Gates house, give him a few nights in jail and let's get on with the business of healthy programming in a free and honest market place.
Despite my impassioned desires for the software industry, it is not alone in it's tyranny. Most heavy hitters in all industries weigh in what I call the tolerance factor. How much abuse will customers put up with before discontinuing the business relationship. Now that we as a society have been trained to accept tons of deceptions from corporate earth, corporations find themselves in an even safer environment for deception, and hype. Worn out, we consumers continue to promote them. We continue to reward errant behavior. We feel we have no alternatives.
George is an example of the personality of the modern consumer. He lives in the country and is reluctantly willing to drive 50 miles to Home Depot for a pound of nails at two cents. Ironically, he could have saved himself the drive and paid three cents at his local True Value. But George is programmed! If he judiciously considered the cost of the extra gas and the value of his time used up in the two hour drive, his trip to Home Depot wouldn't make sense.
Modern consumers have become so price conscience that they have "tolerated" the loss of time and gas. This has not escaped corporate and government mentalities. As more and more products are introduced in the market place, the public has to buy only the cheapest products in order to afford ALL of the products. This philosophy doesn't seem to be the exclusive philosophy of the poor. The rich seem to be playing the same game as well.
The above facts have terrified small businessmen His niche was traditionally based on quality and service. It seems that no amount of that quality or service is relevant any more. Who would have thought?
Large chain stores have really got away with murder to the extent that they have discontinued carrying the small part that the guy drove 50 miles for assuming the big store would carry it. The large chain has had the gall to assume that George would still make the drive anyway. And they're right! George probably could have called around first. But George won't tolerate long hold times and poor phone service that has marked the turn of the century. He simply doesn't bother calling any more. These days companies might as well post the following on their web sites."Don't call us, we'll call you." And they will....at six o'clock at night with a sales call. The really crafty ones will have someone call ahead, make sure you answer and hang up so that the professional seller doesn't waste his time calling machines and "marks" that are not home.
I recently spoke with the owner, Jim Hatton, of Juice Etc. in Rocklin, Calif. They deal in very healthy wraps and juice drinks. Despite quality products, excellent service and even discount pricing, he noticed that when a corporate chain called Jamba Juice opened across the street, the public flocked there. Lines, lower quality and higher prices didn't seem to matter. The public had been trained to gravitate towards chain operations and to "tolerate" all that may be missing from them. Despite a loyal following at Juice, Esc, with a huge advertising budget, Jamba Juice looks like the area winner. Unless Jim can somehow get the public to notice his very principled small business, he may have to make some serious decisions.
Often, industry leaders make stupid decisions. Unfortunately, they have alternative methods to keep themselves entrenched during these lapses in judgment. The small competitors barely have time to take advantage of the leaders' momentary lapses in judgment.
For example, the oil industry has been putting the screws to consumers over the last few years and their stocks have shown the profits. Almost like peanut farmers, they have been legislatively protected from competition to the extent they thought they were safe enough to really sock it to customers. Then, the power of the internet hit them right between the eyes. An intolerant public's boycott of Exxon-Mobil products forced them to lower its pricing and the rest of the market had to follow suit or lose those same customers. Typical of such boycotts, the boycotters forgot about the topic and focused on the evening sitcoms. The oil industry took advantage for awhile and prices started to rise again. They never did drop to the proposed $1.17 per gallon that the boycott hoped to force Exxon-Mobil to charge for their gas.
The amoral of the story is that Corporations never sleep. To sleep is to die. Of course the oil companies will never admit to the huge impact the internet played. They will make as many fictitious excuses as possible before they do that. If we ever thought we'd won, their record breaking profit days would be over. How easy do you think it is for competition to enter that market? Right!
Now keep a stiff upper lip as we look at our government at play. Lately, I have been very successful at promoting Libertarian causes. Republicans, Democrats and Reformists have looked at their parties and noticed that they look pretty ridiculous to their kids. They have to constantly make excuses and stand up for their guys. No wonder kids attitude is "whatever!" Nixon, Clinton, Bush, Bush and Bush have all betrayed their constituencies beyond alien belief. They have been testing the voters' willingness to tolerate their abuses. By reelecting them, we have essentially said that all is forgiven. However, the Republicans and Democrats almost blew it as some angry Americans formed the Reform party. Corporate America was beside itself. "Now we'll have to bribe three parties!!! Fortunately for the Republican and Democratic caucuses, the two parties were able to nip the reform party in the bud. It was almost too easy.
Corporations and Governments work pretty nicely together despite their pretense of adversity. So what about our tolerance of Government?
Let's look at the women's powerful voting block. Women were getting pretty intolerant of their lack of representation with Corporate and Government power brokers and so they were beginning to make some headway. In response, the caucuses looked for a dividing factor that would pit woman against woman. They found that there was at least one angle that could break'em up. That angle would become known as the "abortion rights" debate. Today, women are divided once more and no longer the potential threat to the corporate and government status quo.
Can third parties break the strangle hold?
The Libertarians have been getting steadily stronger over the year as more and more people see the principles and the common sense that the party makes. This has been proven by their prolific ballot discussions which win most overwhelmingly. However, they have always had one serious PR problem in getting their people into office, not to mention a real funding shortage. This problem revolves around the legalization of drugs and the end of the so-called "drug-war." Too many people in general, when they took the time to learn about the Libertarian Party liked it, but just couldn't see giving up the war on drugs. They could not see a society tolerating the legal use of drugs. That is understandable. However, it is that war that set the foundation of what can now best be called World War III. It is the source of funding for almost all groups fighting the western world and its "New World Order" as described by President George Bush SR during the war against Iraq.
As a result, recent reports have come out incriminating our Government saying that it has been using the drug war as an excuse to dominate third world governments as seen on MSNBC's Dateline program narrated by Giraldo Rivera. I guess it's better late than never! This will probably be the greatest recruitment year ever for the Libertarians and finally, the public is seeing the truth about the drug wars effectiveness and impact on what were our friends in Central and South America, the middle east and of course China is sitting back and watching America pay for its sins on "the come around." After all, it wasn't that long ago that America and Great Britain were the drug cartels forcing China to accept drugs by creating colonies on the Chinese mainland won during the Opium wars. Americans are probably too late in realizing that you can't vote for the same people and expect different results. It's just not logical. Now we have a new World War and rather than a "New World Order," it looks like we will have something far more anarchistic.
I'm banking that people's tolerance level is getting pretty low these days. I see it on the roads. I see their lack of self esteem. I see them doing more and more things that are tension relieving rather than goal achieving. The Taliban has not been shy to point out the errors in our ways. Unfortunately, most Americans will only act when we pry the VCR from our cold dead hands, to steal a line from the Gun lobby. However, there are role models from our past, like Sam and John Adams, Thomas Paine and Jefferson, whose example may lead the way back to a freer more self respecting world.
I wrote about it all in The Greens in the event you haven't had the chance to read it. Originally available at Barnes & Noble, I-Unverse, Borders and Amazon.com, the adult book has become a real eye opener for those that want to explore inner America and what's really going on down under.
Issues are coming to a head and as we throw more tax dollars at them and all around the world, we run the risk that this time, technology might not bail us out of our depression, nor even give us the short Iraqi style war we so desire. In that regard, just as I was about to cash in on the predictable power outages that shut down peoples VCRs, our California government went to the aid of the power companies with our tax dollars. PG&E is still with us and sleeps even tighter with our corrupt California legislature. I believe that we have spent three times last year's National budget already. In California, I believe we will run close to doubling it, making the crunch here even greater.
Take back control of the market place by practicing the following as both a merchant and as an American!
I have written this in hopes that we can dust the soot from our Statue of Liberty and refresh its meaning. If we stop tolerating our own abuses of each other and those we come into contact with, eventually we will experience less abuse to us from others, even others that don't live in America. Join me in my crusade to clean up the market place and make America once again a shining beacon of hope and prosperity. We can reach the stars if we choose to take the first small steps ourselves.
Written to those that can think outside the box!
Michael P. Murphy 9/1/01
Author - The Greens
Watch for the upcoming novel - The Corporation
Send comments to the author: mmurphy@smallbusinessman.com
* errors: my spell checker thinks words like organization are spelled organization, so watch out for "s" and "z" replacements in all my articles. I try to check the checker, but????