07.29.07
Posted in General Management, Small Business at 15:56 by lnxwalt
In Overloaded With Gimme Gimme, I responded to a discussion currently going on about how valuable social networking sites are. Let me expand upon a few ideas here.
In the real world, people get up in the morning, rush out the door, spend an hour on the road, and are working for the next ten hours, before spending another hour on the road to get back home. In many cases, they also juggle family schedules, having to have someone home with dinner in time to feed the kids and pets. There is precious little time for juggling lists of “friends” and requests for help with some issue that does not touch their lives yet. This is because most Americans work in the physical world and have to spend their work time doing productive things (productive as in “makes more money for the company”), rather than playing with the latest social networking site.
Only the guy in the corner office of the tenth floor has time to practice his putting while he’s on the clock. The rest of us have a huge hole in our days where (no matter how much we’d like it to be different) we have to be productive.
Maybe I don’t get it because I don’t trawl Facebook and LinkedIn trying to gather employees or clients or interviewees. If I was doing Robert Scoble’s type of work, it might be advantageous to spend much of my day collecting “contacts”. There might even be some advantage for a job like the one Jason Calcanis has, although even he questions whether it is worthwhile in the light of the time it takes to manage contacts on such sites. James Robertson says it has to do with your popularity, with highly popular people having the largest number of extraneous “friendship requests”.
One thing is sure: I have enough to deal with just trying to maintain contact with people I already know without the added pressure of people wanting to add you because of what you can do for them.
Permalink
07.28.07
Posted in General Management at 22:09 by lnxwalt
For the past twenty-five or so years, ever since President Reagan was in office, the American business press has been enchanted by “entrepreneurs”. We define an entrepreneur as someone who starts a fast-growth business, especially a business that operates in a technology-related field. We get excited about speeches and articles and books, as long as the person producing the information is one of the scarce members of this exclusive club.
Is American business really about this kind of entrepreneur? An entrepreneur, according to the meaning of the word, is a risk-taker, someone who risks his or her own capital in establishing a business venture. An entrepreneur, then, is really either an owner-manager or an equity investor in a business that is either new or expecting to expand. Equity investors are very important to funding someone else’s dream, but are most often going to fund “me-too” businesses until there is no doubt that the owner-managers are on to something.
Do you disagree? Read the business section. Isn’t it amazing that the companies getting funded are usually all in the same field of business and even the same neighborhood of the same city? That’s the herd mentality. People that have funds to invest also have assets to protect, and so they are going to be more conservative about how they invest than they would have been during their years of earning the funds with their own labor.
So who is it that really builds the economy and puts people to work? It is the owner-manager. The true builders of the economy are owner-managed businesses (OMBs). Who employs more people in your local community? Who is faster to respond to the needs of customers? Is it big multi-national corporations? I think not.
In fact, MNCs are busy laying off American workers and replacing them with contracted third world workers. In the third world, these workers have few protections and fewer benefits, so companies can not only pay less, but avoid expenses for things like break periods, overtime, occupational safety requirements, medical / dental / vision insurance, workers compensation insurance, disability insurance, medical leave, pensions, the forty hour work week, and environmental protections.
Go to your locally-owned pizza joint. See all those photos of youth sports teams? That is because the owner helped pay for uniforms and equipment (and sometimes even field rentals) for those kids, so the owner gets a small plaque and a team photo to put on the wall. See that jar on the counter with the cheesy photo of someone wearing a cheap wig? Read the label–the local owner-managed business is the one helping raise a little money to help a local resident pay for cancer treatment.
Look at your local non-profits. Who is it that is giving personal time to help improve the community? Is it the manager of the local big chain store? No, it is the local business owner.
Who is it that hires your brother-in-law that has never worked in his life? Certainly not big corporations? Who is it that hires your cousin who just came out of prison and promises that he’s going to get his life together? Not big corporations.
Surprisingly enough, owner-managed businesses (OMBs) are the foundation of a strong and resilient economy. OMBs are frequently also SLOBs [Small, Locally-Owned Businesses]. An economy built upon OMBs and SLOBs survives with little apparent effect when one of the businesses closes. On the other hand, an economy built upon one or a few large businesses suffers hardship when one of those businesses closes.
Permalink
Posted in General Management at 03:05 by lnxwalt
James Robertson thinks that China has damaged its brand with its recently-reported quality problems.
There have been too many stories recently involving Chinese goods with problems – they could ask GM what that kind of inattention to detail does to a brand’s image.
China never had a reputation for quality. Their reputation has always been low-price and low-quality. All this is about is finding that the quality was lower than we led ourselves to believe, and that it is often intentionally so.
Think back to business school. There are a few major strategies for any business. One of the key decision points is whether to differentiate your products by features or to concentrate on lowering your costs of doing business. If you choose to compete based on lower costs, you have some options such as passing on lower prices to your customers in exchange for expected gains in market share or pricing similarly to your competitors so that you have higher margins on the same fraction of sales.
In general, companies buy goods from China because of the lower cost. This generally means that quality and other features are reduced, but the size of the cost cut makes it appear worthwhile. For the most part, this is an indictment of American business managers, that they are so devoted to cutting their costs that they refuse to consider the loss of quality. Think back to the 1980s, when American-owned businesses were struggling to rebuild their reputations for high-quality products. Everyone was searching for ways to be more “excellent”. They were sending delegations to Japan to learn from that nation’s companies how to make quality products.
What is the number one thing they learned about quality? Was it statistical process control? Was it pretending to accept “employee empowerment”? Was it that quality is not just the job of “QA”? How about this one: quality is best described as the variation (in performance, construction, appearance, etc) of the product output?
We spent quite a bit of time in college classes looking at statistical methods, as well as management theories and organizational adaptations. Really, as a company, you have more ability to enforce quality (by whatever measure you use) if you have two things: clear insight into the processes and ingredients being used and the authority and influence to change things that may not produce your intended level of quality.
How do you get these two things? Either (1) do it in-house, even if in-house means a company-owned and operated facility overseas; or (2) have it done for you by someone else in your own vicinity, where you can keep an eye on them and the work they do. If you go into a foreign country and have to give up control in order to be there, your future is in someone else’s hands. If you have your product made in a foreign country by a company there, you are depending upon a different set of laws, different history, different attitudes and ideas, because that company and its employees will live by whatever their society dictates, not what you expect or request. This is not in itself a bad thing, but when you voluntarily use ingredients or subassemblies from a country that is known for the low quality of its output, you shouldn’t use them in anything that is critical for your company.
If I start “Joe’s Cat Food, Inc,” then my products reflect on the image of the company. If I start buying ingredients from overseas companies that I cannot properly supervise, then those foreign suppliers have the ability to wreck my company’s reputation.
So, then, quality, or the likelihood of quality, increases when suppliers are nearby and under the same legal and social restraints. Quality likely decreases when suppliers are out of the area and under different legal and social restraints. That is, variations (as measured by statistical methods) are likely to be more frequent when your suppliers slash outsource partners are outside your own country.
I live in California. For the past three months, I have been working in New Jersey. In California, if I go out for lunch, there are certain standards for the food places (not that they all meet them, but the standard is still there). New Jersey has standards, but they are different than California’s standards. Not better, not worse, just different.
China has different standards. Labor standards. Financial reporting standards. Food standards. Drug standards. It isn’t that China is bad, just different.
SLOBs [Small, Locally-Owned Businesses] and OMBs [Owner-Managed Businesses] can reduce the variability of their output (and hence improve their quality) by looking closer to home for their suppliers. Larger businesses can still source all over the country and the world, if they select sources for their quality and features (and for the ability to oversee operations), rather than just price.
Permalink
07.27.07
Posted in General Management at 00:55 by lnxwalt
Yesterday, based on a preview of Ford’s earnings report, we discussed their situation. Now we know that Ford actually profited in the second quarter of 2007.
Ford does not expect to be out of its slump until 2009. Because the company is just about to begin negotiations with its employee union about employee concessions, some analysts wondered whether the profit came at a bad time.
Ford’s main business, its North American automobile operations, still lost money, even after huge cost-cutting efforts (primarily labor-related costs) and lower warranty repair costs. The overall company made money due to these factors plus special items, such as the sale of its Aston-Martin unit.
One analyst asked where the company would find other costs to cut, now that it has reduced its workforce by 30%. This signals a change–previously, analysts got excited by layoffs, because this tends to have a fairly quick effect on the bottom line. Layoffs, then, are the “white sugar” of management techniques. While they tend to spark an immediate burst of energy, it quickly burns off, leaving the company depleted. This tends to cause companies to follow with another wave of layoffs.
If you cannot run your company effectively, lay off your employees. Maybe the cost reduction will help hide the fact that you are incompetent long enough for you to retire with a large payoff.
Seriously, does anyone really still believe that American workers are the problem? Isn’t it the management that are making the boneheaded moves that harm the business? Who decided not to invest adequate resources in hybrid vehicles when gas-guzzlers were selling well? Who then jumped on the bandwagon–late–and even then waffled about it? Who had record profits by sticking to big, inefficient, light trucks and sport-utility vehicles when they could have been building for the future?
Since the managers at Ford do not seem to know what to do, I’ll make a few suggestions:
- Several years ago, Ford had the slogan “Quality is job 1.” Ford should be focusing on making problem-free, long-lasting vehicles. There should be a ten year, 120,000 mile powertrain warranty and scheduled maintenance, not because the company needs to prove itself (although it really does), but because management and labor together are confident in their work and their product.
- When consumers view commercials for auto dealerships, it is often “sale price” or “rebate” or “special financing”. Once entering the lot, the old back-and-forth of negotiating begins. Now, when two acquaintances buy the same vehicle, they should get the same price–regardless of negotiating skills. When people share what they paid, some people find that they overpaid. That person may then choose to deal only with a different dealership or automotive brand, solely because of the impression that they got cheated. Your dealer franchisees need to have effective leadership in putting the customer first, selling the vehicle that the customer needs, even if that is the lower-priced economobile rather than the higher-priced luxury vehicle. They need to focus on long-term satisfaction of their customers, rather than having the transactional get all I can right now attitude.
- Fuel prices. Draw yourself a graph. The bottom left corner should say “Today.” The top right corner should say “Next Year.” Make a heavy black line connecting the two. Now, place that graph in a place where you will see it every day. Act as though prices will double in the next year. Make your vehicles such that people who buy them will not have to park them and walk to work when prices rise again.
- When one of your managers says, “let’s make a big, gas-guzzler, so we’ll make more profit per vehicle,” assign him to read and follow number three above.
- Financing. Recognize that the reason for the finance company is to get more people into Ford-made vehicles. Run the finance company in such a way that it contributes to your sales. That should include the branch that handles lower-income buyers. Lower-income buyers and first-time buyers, if you treat them properly, represent future repeat buyers. Authorize the finance company to do all sorts of creative things to enable buyers to obtain and keep Ford-made vehicles.
- Management bonuses and benefits. Anything that you won’t give to the people who actually produce your products, don’t give it to managers either. The robber baron era was 100 years ago. Work with your employees and the communities where you have facilities to satisfy your customers.
- Suppliers. There has been a major move by North American automobile companies to squeeze their suppliers. Suppliers have to cut costs, meet quality standards, ship items based on just-in-time requirements (which often means they are holding inventory instead of the big auto makers holding it), and be quick to retool when any change is requested. In exchange, they get to sell to the big auto makers until someone else beats their pricing. Far better to have a group of suppliers that meet present requirements and make a commitment to help them remain profitable without the self-destructive anti-labor moves that have characterized recent moves by big auto makers.
- Employees. Tie them into the equity side of the company, whether through stock or profit-sharing. Make sure that they get rewarded when something positive happens, such as when the company makes money on their labor or the stock price goes up. It is amazing how much they will become cost-cutters and waste-watchers and profit-pushers when these things show up in their wallets too.
Now the thing is, if Ford’s managers don’t already know these things, they should resign immediately. A high school kid learns this in his first month or two working in a local fast food joint.
Permalink
07.26.07
Posted in General Management at 01:17 by lnxwalt
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070725/bs_nm/ford_results_preview_dc_1
Ford, the longtime number 2 in the U.S. market, continues to lose money. According to the article, Ford lost $1,200,000,000.00 last year and $282,000,000.00 the first quarter of this year. Ford’s recovery plan is simple: sell off the profitable British luxury brands to get enough cash to finance closing plants and cutting employees, then stick it to whomever doesn’t leave during contract negotiations.
Ford’s problems are really not labor-related. Ford made a big bet on the SUV and light truck market. For several years, it paid off nicely. Many of the top ten selling models each year were made by Ford. I can still recall hearing Lindsay Wagner on their commercials saying “doesn’t anybody else make cars any more?”
So what happened? Two things:
- Ford missed out on the hybrid market. They then promised to bring hybrid technology to their big selling models. Meanwhile, Toyota and Honda were selling hybrids like hotcakes. I think that once Ford actually did start to bring out some hybrids, sales were not as great, so they vacillated.
- Ford’s focus on big, gas-guzzling vehicles got them caught off-base when the price of fuel rose. For a good portion of the past three years, regular unleaded gasoline has been at or above three dollars per gallon in Southern California. At certain times, the price has neared four dollars per gallon. Suddenly, many buyers were looking for hybrids and economobiles again. Ford had little to offer to those buyers.
I believe they should have anticipated these things. Way back in the late 1970s, during the original gas crisis, the OPEC oil embargo, Ford and Chrysler had been focusing on higher-margin large vehicles (remember “land yachts”?) and suddenly could not even give their huge and thirsty vehicles away. After that time of hardship, no automobile manufacturer should ever cease to have a ready supply of economical vehicles available for just such an occurrence. Oil prices rise and fall based on events in a very unstable part of the world. What kind of executive fails to account for the risks that oil price increases will stall sales of the largest and most profitable vehicles?
Ford acts as though its only problem is its labor costs, after its executives made such a critical error. Granted, the UAW contracts may raise its costs above those of its Japanese-owned competition. In that case, Ford’s leaders should have openly advocated for federally-required employer-paid health insurance and pension plans at some standardized level–imagine how their labor relations would be right now if they had done this–which would have placed those competitors in exactly the same position.
Ford is in an industry where there is a tremendous capital investment necessary to begin or to continue to compete. There are possibly even greater investments necessary to exit the business, with all of the potentially toxic metals and compounds that are used. This makes it a field where smaller, locally-owned, owner-managed businesses are not going to enter and could not be viable competitors if they did enter. This gives the choices that are made by a few people in a small number of boardrooms an enormous impact on American competitiveness.
It is important for Ford, Chrysler (are they still DaimlerChrysler?), and GM to recognize that the rules have changed. It may have been management against labor years ago, but if American-owned automobile manufacturing is to continue, labor and management are going to have to unite around what is best for the company and its employees, even at the cost of getting rid of executive dining rooms, company-supplied vehicles, special parking areas, anti-fraternization policies, and bonus packages.
Tax policies affect the weighted average cost of capital. If American companies have a significantly higher WACC than their foreign counterparts, such as return on equity needing to be higher because dividend payments are taxed first at the corporate level and then at the individual stockholders’ level, then Ford and other companies that are affected by the issue need to make it clear to citizens and congressional representatives that this is a problem. This could, if true, cause companies to seek riskier capital structures based on leverage.
If these were tiny companies, they would see that you can only go so far by laying off productive employees. You eventually have to keep the people who make your product or service and the people who sell it to customers, while trimming down and lowering the pay of those whose only contribution is telling productives what to do. Because these companies are so large, we see wave after wave of the same failed strategies: layoffs and plant closings, with rebates and other financial incentives to try to stimulate sales from people who would not otherwise buy at the time.
Big companies, with their overpaid big-egoed CxOs, are failing because they are still living in the late 19th century. Those days are long gone, thank God, and American businesses need to be smaller, locally-owned, owner-managed, and closely associated with their employees and their communities. SLOBs and OMBs are the future of American business in most industries.
Permalink
07.23.07
Posted in General Management, Political, Small Business at 10:07 by lnxwalt
I am currently working out of state, over 2700 miles from home. On my daily phone call home, the kid says that he wants his best friend to go to an out-of-area college.
“Why?”, I asked.
“Because I don’t want him to get stuck here.”
That is a telling indictment of our local economy. This year’s high school graduates are making each other promise to leave the area and never return. They see what our elected leaders (and most businesses with locations in the area) do not see. Until we find a way to offer a decent living to substantially all of our local residents, this remote area we call home is toxic waste.
I resolve the situation by working mostly out of the area–locations like Reno, NV; Albany, NY; Binghamton, NY; and the unforgettable Pasadena, CA–but it is getting old. I would certainly take a look at an opportunity that put me in one place (such as the Atlanta area) that gave me the ability to truly launch my business because I’m actually going to be around to run things.
The sad thing is, this is not a bad place. It has its positives and its negatives like any other. But our leaders have consistently used taxpayer funds to try to attract large, out-of-area businesses to relocate or expand into the area. These corporations are not full of fools. They realize that they can play one area against another and win tax breaks, payroll subsidies, financing help, and even free land (well, $1 land). Then, these companies often pay their employees so little that it does not really even help the local economic situation.
If our local governments would only support (and not just with their lips) SLOBs, a lot of this could be reversed.
Use Local Governmental Funding
Our local governments spend thousands of dollars per year on brochures, trade show materials, and the annual “High Desert Opportunity” show. The problem is, the targeted companies are getting the same pitches from other areas all around the nation. If it makes financial sense for a large company to come to the area, they will come without a lot of dollar-waving. If it does not make financial sense, they may come anyway, but your cities and residents will have to absorb the difference.
Instead, we need to devote most of that funding to training and establishing small, locally-owned businesses (SLOBs) that already have an incentive to remain in the area. This might entail providing both technical (that is, industry-specific) and business (that is, general to any business) training and advice. It could also involve providing space in an incubator program to get businesses started.
Another way to help is to provide grants and loan guarantees to SLOBs for the formation & establishment or expansion of their businesses.
Leadership
Follow-Through
The most important factor, after the funding mentioned above, is follow-through.
In the early 1990s, I used to work for Carl’s Jr Restaurants. The best (most effective) manager I ever had was there. He came in one night at 1AM, while we were cleaning up the restaurant, then bent down and cleaned out a floor drain. If you don’t know it, a floor drain collects fluids so that they do not pool on the floor. However, a floor drain also collects solids, which must be removed so they do not clog the drain and pipes, and so they do not decay and fill the kitchen with foul odors. Because the solids have been soaking in fluids all day, cleaning floor drains is an unpleasant experience, so most employees avoid it.
When Vince, the manager, cleaned the floor drains himself, none of us could make any excuse. By cleaning the floor drain that one night, he assured that we would keep them clean afterward. A fantastic lesson. I later worked for a competitor where the philosophy was “I’m not paying a manager $20 per hour to sweep the floor.” Not surprisingly, only a very few employees would put much effort into cleaning the place.
If our cities really want to reap the benefits of SLOBs, they need to follow-through. When purchasing, seek small, locally-owned vendors. Ensure that they are selling you locally-produced products and services whenever possible. It does not really help the local economy when you buy software from a local vendor who forwards most of the revenue to an out-of-area company. Neither does it benefit your community when you hire an out-of-area contractor to build your roads if someone in your community can do the work at an acceptable level of quality and within an acceptable time frame.
Relentless Commitment To SLOBs
Just as selling your community to out-of-area businesses takes complete commitment (you just wait until a new sewer bond is about to be passed that will affect them!), so you have to be completely committed to supporting smaller, locally-owned businesses.
One fast food chain, for example, used to put large banners on the side of their buildings to promote the monthly special. The local inspector would come and issue a take-down order and sometimes a fine. One of the largest supermarkets continually had large banners on their building. (In either case, it was a local branch of an out-of-area corporation, so it is difficult to feel sorry for them.) However, it does show a curious problem: big corporations seem to buy laws to suit their desires, which somehow seem to have the most impact on smaller businesses.
If you want to heal our local economy, you’re going to have to stop spreading the city’s butt-cheeks to large corporate interests. If a SLOB cannot have a banner (or paint advertising on their windows), then neither should a big, out-of-area corporation be allowed to have a banner or paint advertising on their windows.
Meeting and talking with your local chambers of commerce is also important, as you are likely to find areas of concern. However, the very smallest and most financially vulnerable businesses are not likely to be members. You have to go out of your way to find them and to involve them in policy discussions both at the mayor-and-council level and at the city enforcement bureaucracy level. And that means modifying some policies that would otherwise appear to have general support, so that they are less harsh on SLOBs.
Summing Up
If we want the Victor Valley area to be attractive to the brightest and most ambitious individuals, we have to stop kowtowing to large out-of-area corporations and instead cater to the home-grown enterprises that will stick with the area through the hardships of life. We need to assist these locally-owned businesses with formation, with finances, and with regulation. We need to buy from these businesses and promote these businesses. We need to encourage these businesses to produce locally, with local labor and materials.
The crudeness was unavoidable. Sometimes it seems like our cities give corporations everything that they want while penalizing the smaller, locally-owned businesses that actually provide most jobs. If this makes you change your behavior, it was a good thing.
Permalink
Posted in Political, Small Business at 08:46 by lnxwalt
In CSUSB Needs To Lead Us, I proposed a regional economic development effort.
Ever since the late 1980s and early 1990s, there have been mild efforts to bring a genuine branch campus of California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB) to the area. While we continue to discuss this, the Coachella Valley has not only proposed such a thing, but has gotten together and paid for it, and as a result of strong local interest, succeeded in reaching its goal: The former Coachella Valley Center of CSUSB is now officially the Palm Desert Campus of CSUSB. Meanwhile, residents of the Victor Valley and Barstow areas continue to drive thirty miles or more to get to the nearest state university campus.
I propose that the Town of Apple Valley make available some land in the vicinity of the Apple Valley Airport, preferably along Dale Evans Parkway, for such a campus. Closer to the I-15 freeway is better in this case, and the location is fairly central once the Barstow area enters consideration. Since this will definitely increase traffic, DEPkwy should be widened to a four-lane road (two in each direction), with turning lanes added for sites such as the Wal-Mart distribution center where a relatively large number of commuters need to turn. In fact, a traffic light may even be justified at the High Desert Campus.
The CSUSB College of Business and Public Administration is accredited by the NASPAA. Public administration is not unlike administration of non-profits, so how about a practicum, a hands-on component in which students help manage and raise funding for non-profits that are assisting in the effort to build up the community the university’s High Desert Campus?
One major add-on. In keeping with the grand vision in the earlier article, I propose that the State of California admits that the present petroleum-based economy cannot continue indefinitely and therefore slap a twenty percent tax on the retail price of petroleum products to be spent designing, developing, constructing, and operating alternative energy generation facilities and high-speed rail lines between residential areas and employment, commerce, and entertainment centers. On top of that, add another 5% tax for CSU and community college research, education, and training programs related to this development.
These taxes will hurt–a lot–but continued inaction will bring even more intense pain in the near future. If we act now, our pain will be diminishing when other areas first start to recognize that a forced change is at hand.
Permalink
07.21.07
Posted in Local News, Political, Small Business at 16:48 by lnxwalt
I am a proud graduate of our nearby campus of the California State University. I took Business Administration at CSU San Bernardino (CSUSB). I was there when the University’s College of Business and Public Administration received AACSB acreditation. It was a good school then, and it is a good school now.
CSUSB has its main campus at the foot of the San Bernardino mountains, near the intersection of the I-15 and I-215 freeways (the I-210/CA-30 is also nearby). It also has a branch campus in Palm Desert, funded through a unique partnership between local Coachella Valley businesses and governments with the state of California.
In the Victor Valley and Barstow areas, there are large numbers of people coming into the area, but relatively few employment opportunities for those residents. As a consequence, motivated residents tend to take a lot of classes at our local community colleges (Victor Valley Community College and Barstow Community College). Those who can afford the commute then wind up driving up and down the Cajon Pass to complete their Bachelor Degrees at the CSUSB main campus.
I propose that local government, local businesses, and the two community colleges sit down with the administration of CSUSB and work out a solution. Here are my ideas:
- Create the High Desert Campus (or campuses) on land near Southern California Logistics Airport (SCLA), Apple Valley Airport, or Barstow-Daggett Airport. This campus should include branch campuses of the two community colleges as well. Another interesting option is to get other state-owned universities (University of California-Riverside [UCR] and California State Polytechnic University-Pomona [CSPUP] come to mind) to also join in the effort.
- Research–the community needs research into alternative energy, conservation, recycling, mass transit, information technology & robotics, and low environmental-impact production processes. Let that be a focus of this campus, combining technology, business, and the sciences into a blended program that is both theoretical and practical. For example, developing residential (home/apartment-based) power generation systems that can then be installed throughout the area would both advance our understanding of the challenges of such systems and have practical effects of lowering the utility costs of local residents. Research into mass transportation systems to connect areas like ours to regional employment and recreation centers is another area of need. Research into ways to get more use out of the water we have (and ways to get more water into the area) would also be helpful.
- Technology–The community needs research and development of reproducible, BSD/MIT/GNU-licensed technologies for improved business processes. For example, programmable robots would be an option. Technologies that are developed with public funds should always be licensed under open-source licenses and be freely usable by taxpayers (at least those of said jurisdiction). This will enable the development of a zone for seeding low environmental-impact technology SLOBs. The best thing would be for the County of San Bernardino and the local cities & town to provide managerial and financial assistance in exchange for an agreement to stay in the area for up to ten years (if the business is still open by that time), hiring local residents for any open positions. This isn’t much more than what is already given to large out-of-area companies, except that those out-of-area companies tend to leave when things get rough.
- Vocational training–This would be applied technology taught in conjunction with the two community colleges. Since SCLA is just North of a large federal corrections complex, there would probably be some federal funding available for “rehabilitating” some of their inmates. Apple Valley airport is not too far from large retail chain’s area distribution center and I also believe the County of San Bernardino has a small correctional facility (or maybe youth correctional facility) a couple of miles North of the airport.
- Military re-entry & vocational rehabilitation–with so many of our young people going overseas to fight in wars, there is a large group of people that are or will be returning to this country without any usable civilian job skills. Many of them will have physical or emotional damage from their tours of duty. Building a large re-entry facility and offering to help the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs re-acclimate these individuals into society can only help our locality as well as the whole of American society.
- Foreign Languages–Assuming that the military re-entry program flies, there would be a pool of people who have been exposed to foreign languages and cultures. The area could utilize that to build competencies in international cultural understanding in partnership with local school systems. In addition to Middle Eastern languages and cultures (Arabic, Kurdish, Hebrew, Farsi, and so on), it would be great, for example, to bring in real Japanese residents to come and instruct high school and college students in Japanese language and culture. Ideally, each class would be a yearlong immersion, including a two-week trip to said country.
There is a reason why so many local graduates leave the area. However, with some serious effort by CSUSB, SB County, and the local town+cities & educational institutions, this can be a place that attracts ambitious people.
Blogged with Flock
Tags: economicdevelopment, education, high desert, victor valley, csusb, vvc
Permalink
Posted in Political, Small Business at 16:21 by lnxwalt
Definition: A SLOB is a Small, Locally-Owned Business.
SLOBs are the cure for many of the ills that America is currently experiencing. For example, the distortions caused by letting big companies take over the entertainment industries are behind the DMCA. As smaller companies that have fewer resources for “undue influence” of the political process take over the field, such anti-consumer legislation can be overturned.
SLOBs tend to employ local staff members, support local education and non-profits, and pay taxes to local governments.
SLOBs are closely tied to the local economy, so their owners tend to be in favor of things that they see as strengthening that local economy in the near and medium time frame. SLOBs are often family-owned businesses (FOBs), too.
We support SLOBs. We wonder why our government agencies, funded by taxes that SLOBs pay, do not support SLOBs. Perhaps big tax-evading corporations have too much influence in our political process.
Blogged with Flock
Tags: smallbusiness
Permalink
Posted in Uncategorized at 00:27 by lnxwalt
With all of the new emphasis on DRM, otherwise known as Technological Usage Restrictions, in Windows Vista, how can Microsoft claim the product is more secure? If you swap out your hard drive, for example, you could fail “activation” and show up as “stolen software” on Microsoft’s radar. Once that happens, Windows will limit your use of the system.
One important question to ask yourself: Since we know that Vista is designed to enable “content providers” to remotely disable the use of said content, and we know that it is also designed to enable Microsoft to remotely disable functionality of Vista (which could be understood as retroactively canceling your purchase without refunding your money), why doesn’t anyone think that one of the bad guys (crackers) out there will discover how to usurp that built-in functionality to limit or stop computer users from enjoying what they bought? I’m guessing that some of the highly-skilled and financially-motivated gangs in Russia or China are hard at work on the problem now.
If they succeed, watch for widespread attacks that trigger Microsoft’s anti-theft TUR.
This is brought to us by the same kind of situation that made OPEC so damaging to Western economies: concentration of economic power in a key industry into the hands of an “opoly”. With oil, it was an oligopoly, in which a small number of large petroleum companies controlled the world market for extraction, refining, distribution, and marketing of oil products. In the client computer operating systems market, it is a monopoly, in which a single company controls the world market for creation, sales, and distribution of client operating systems for both consumer and business markets.
With oil, once the countries where the extraction took place rose up and choked off the supply for the existing oil cartel, OPEC was able to do substantial damage to the economy. Ask your nearest 45 year-old (or older) about the gas lines and the odd / even days. We can only imagine the horrible consequences if Vista is widely deployed and China decides to shut down our information technology systems.
Radio station chains rely upon computers to select their playlists–this gives them a distinct cost advantage over “mom & pop” stations that have to pay someone to be there on the air at all times–suddenly, radio stations may be off the air. And that is just the beginning. Computerization has enabled companies to do more with fewer employees. Can you imagine a scenario in which every company in America was trying to hire people with the skills to compose business documents by hand (or using the old typewriter in the basement) and do math without reliance upon (Windows-powered) cash registers? Can you imagine banks having to hire and train tellers again and extend their hours because the (Windows-powered) ATMs don’t work?
Most of us do not grow any substantial portion of our food supply, so any large-scale disruption can quickly affect us. Vista’s focus on anti-theft technological usage restrictions presents a very inviting target for bad guys like the foreign Internet criminal gangs that use networks of “bots” (compromised computers) for such nefarious purposes as filling our inboxes with spam messages and obtaining bank and credit card information.
I contend that Windows Vista is inherently insecure and unfit for deployment by the majority of American consumers, businesses, and government agencies. Instead, get a Mac or even better, get a Linux computer. Above all, avoid allowing any single company or small group of companies in any industry to become an “opoly” and gain enough market share to control the market. Buying the products and services produced by smaller, locally-owned businesses is the way to do that in most industries.
Blogged with Flock
Tags: tur, drm, vista, mac, linux
Permalink
« Previous entries Next Page » Next Page »
