Re: OT: Software Economics was RE: Ada 95 for an ARM-based bare board?

[tatebll@aol.com (Bill Tate)]

Preben Randhol <randhol+news@pvv.org> wrote in message news:<slrnamcv5p.g58.randhol+news@kiuk0156.chembio.ntnu.no>...
> 
> This reminds of the 60 minutes program I saw two days ago. I guess it
> was aired last week or earlier in the US, but a TV station here in
> Norway sends the programs after midnight every Wednesday. Anyway it was
> about a textile mill in the US that burned down. I have forgotten the
> name but I think their products (winter clothing) are called Polytech or

Malden Mills in Massachusetts

> something like that. Now what happened was that the owner decided he
> wanted to rebuild the factory in the US and not move out of the country
> as most of this industry does apparently. He also continued to pay the
> workers full wages until the new factory was built. For this he got a
> lot of credit and recognition. And as he said (I don't remember the
> exact words) in the interview: "It doesn't look good for the state of
> USA that when you do the right thing (in terms of moral) you get all
> this attention and credit. Just for doing the right thing!"

a. Malden Mills manufactures an exceptional product called "Polartech"
(sp?) that is raved about by any customer who purchases a product made
from it, up to & including wedding dresses :>)  Consequently, the
product has quite a devoted following of customers whose demographics
indicate they don't tend to shop in the "Everything is a Dollar"
store.
b. Right thing? Sorry but you are applying YOUR notions of what is the
right thing vis.a.vis. economics and free enterprise.  Had this been a
company with inferior or poor quality products and poorly managed,
would you have expected the company's shareholders or owners to have
kept it alive in the immediate aftermath of the fire and after the
repairs were affected?  Simply because a company exists doesn't mean
it should.

> Now, why is it like this? It is because everything is about economy and
> greed. If he were to do the right thing in terms of maximizing the
> ......
> So the reality is that the rich gets richer and as a direct result of
> that the poor gets poorer.

Fact #1. Economics is not a zero sum game.  
Fact #2. Surprise surprise, there are those who engage in fraud, etc.,
and sometimes they get caught and sometimes they don't.

For me, I'm not especially inspired by Northern Europe countries who
have "aggressive" tax policies - I don't know but tax rates greatly in
excess of 50% of an individual's income seems a tad bit high....

> So I don't know what professional monopolists are doing so much
> better, but I guess some nice representatives are: 
> 
>    Enron 
>    WorldCom
>    Qwest
>    AOL
>    Andersen
>    PricewaterhouseCoopers. 
> 
> One of the Norwegian newspapers have a special section on this part of
> US bussiness headlined: "The marked of the scandals."
Ahhh, European newspapers - monuments to objective analysis of the
U.S.

BTW, former Enron employees who saw their retirement savings dwindle
to nothing did so in 401Ks invested almost exclusively in Enron stock.
 Now, you had to have lived in a cave on Easter Island for the last 50
years to have avoided hearing financial advisor after financial
investor advisor telling individual investors to diversify their
portfolios in order to manage the risk of losing money.  So if one
were to have 90% to 100% of one's retirement savings tied up in one or
two stocks, it might be reasonable to assert that said individual is
betting on a fairly risky investment strategy.

A callous individual such as myself would be further inclined to think
of reasons why these "new members" of the "poor" would do such a
thing.  Perhaps they were motivated by something other than being
inspired to do great things to help their fellow man.  Perhaps they
were motivated, only in part of course, by their own "greed" &
aspirations of "wealth."   As a card-carrying member of the
"neanderthal & mean-spirited" set, I'm somewhat inclined to believe
that the "envelop" of responsibility for these individual financial
losses goes beyond just the companies themselves.  That's just my
opinion of course without the trappings of political correctness
thrown in.