If you won’t acknowledge past errors in judgement…

barfly. Nice try. You’ll recall that I have conceded that it was wrong for conservatives to question the patriotism of progressives in the run up to war. I believe I apologized to you personally. I’ve also conceded that, in hindsight, we had more time to engage Saddam without war. I’ve also conceded that it was naive to think we could transplant democracy. And that the effort in Iraq was vastly underestimated and poorly executed. And that Bush’s hubris resulted in strained relations around the world. But, apparently, those don’t qualify as acknowledgement of ‘past errors in judgement’.

No matter.

My long journey to better understanding has maybe only just begun, but I will persist, despite your efforts.

Please feel confident that your responses provide some affirmation that I am making some progress, even if only by comparison.

You say both these in your last post:

it’s all about knowing when and how a dishonest day’s ‘work’ pays better than anything. We were too slow to realize that.

The question is, what value do middlemen provide?

Who’s responsibility is it to ferret out the middle men that add value from those that don’t? I suggest it is the owner of the business. If the owner is unwilling or unable to determine and promote those that add value to the detriment of those that don’t; they will languish.

Are the middle men that don’t provide value, ‘dishonest’. If they are not providing value, but the owners still employ them, aren’t the owners responsible for the percieved ‘dishonest’ disconnect between value and compensation?

There are many good people that fail at business. I’m not confident that those failures are mostly due to a dishonest system or dishonest people. But, when the failures occur, it promotes a better application of capital; as in the case of your switch to information technology.

what will happen to all those Sumo wrestlers?

Inquiring minds want to know.

As a small business, my business was supposedly the backbone of the US economy. We did manage to employ for about 18 months three to four others. The company grew at 50% (gross) a year,EVERY year, for 5 years. We invested $300,000 in our company when our take-home pay was $20,000 each. Then my small business folded because multimillionaires couldn’t afford to pay us at a rate of 20K each, without health benefeits or retirment plans and give our company a 10% pathetic 10% profit on no-volume service and products because all their anticipated income suddenly disappeared as a consequence of Reagan’s deficit spending and Bush41’s choice to increase taxes on the lower half of income scale.

Had our profits been higher we could have weathered the downturn, or had we become a purely service company we could have done better, but we had bills to pay and that’s the way it went. Pardon me for not buying into the right wing rhetoric about how hard work leads to the American Dream–it’s all about knowing when and how a dishonest day’s ‘work’ pays better than anything. We were too slow to realize that.

I’m sorry you think your comments have any relevance. If you won’t acknowledge past errors in judgement, don’t worry, I’m here to point them out. You should rightly feel shame, and if you don’t, you will, when I’m done.

Or, you just won’t be back.

Either’s good with me, toady.

I and my brothers and our non-familial partner were in business for ourselves. It took the four of us to eatablish the business and for some time did well with it–we all had some distinct skills that meshed very well. But as I stated in my comment we, like other small shops in the business, were very busy producing–that’s what small businesses do, produce first and build the business from there.

I wrote “It was access to the client that paid more than the workmanship and skill the product required”.

My company was NOT the best in the business, or in the Manhattan market, but we did manage to provide a very respectable balance between product price and quality and rather significantly, warranty service.

I never said that the middlemen (architects and designers) “never provided any value”, but my inference was that very few of them provided value commensurate with the fees they charged their clients (who were our company’s ultimate clients). I assert that that was true.

I wrote “It was access to the client that paid more than the workmanship and skill the product required ” and that is absolutely true.
My eldest brother was a natural salesman–he was our own ‘middleman’–at times he promised things the rest of us strongly objected-to as an ‘over-sell’ of our skills and time but in the end we did the work anyway to satisfy the agreement he’d brokered and commited the rest of us to.

Every so often we’d be able to contract with an end-client directly, e.g having completed a ‘middleman job’ in one of the client’s homes we’d get a second job on their second home by the client’s insistence, based on their experience with us. Even so we would NEVER make 100% ‘middleman-free’ profit because “the lead” deserved a “finders-fee” and that’s how the business works; BUT when we did operate directly with the clients we made more money and the client SAVED money.

A few of the middle-men did indeed ‘add value’, for the clinet and ourselves, but they were rare. In the custom-woodworking industry as a whole which is made up of very small manufacturers (4-10 employees) most are dependent on local market conditions. My company had a wealthy market it could service, but 10# profits weren’t enough to cmpensate for the national economic downturn that begun in 1991 and that hit our multi-millionaire clientele in 92-93. They had to shelve their plans to have a custom $100,000 kitchen or media-room or $70,000 home office or %50,000 kids bedroom, and as a result my company was ’shelved’ in the process, despuite hanging-on for six months with no work.

So I became unemployed and thanks to Clinton I then re-trained for a new career in IT.

BTW backup… having distorted my words in your response, you didn;t deserve any of the above information, and my aploigies to my fellow TP commenters for the indulgence.

“A small manufacturer is often too busy manufacturing the goods to work on sales–a return on production and investment is the largest priority.”

But, if the small manufacturer takes the responsibility for running the business (initial investments, taxes, payroll, etc) and the risks of failure; they could hire those architects and designers that provide little value for much more reasonable wages. The resulting savings would be put back into the enterprise or pocketed by the manufacturer/owner as a reward for taking on the responsibility and the risk.

We made on average 10% profit. The designers and architects made 35-50% profit with minimal or no effort of their own, and sometimes much more.

5th estate is lamenting that he/she made only 10% of the profit when designers and architects made 35-50% with little effort.

I don’t think it’s a question of ethics or conscience. If the architects and designers don’t provide value, what is preventing 5th estate from running the business and righting the perceived misapplication of the rewards of the effort?

I’ll bet the rich people would rather not pay for a service that provides no value. And I also suggest that 5th estate would rather have the profit that the architects and designers enjoy.

I’m only asking, if the architects and designers really provide little or no value, why wouldn’t 5th estate run a competing enterprise and pocket all (and not only 10%) of the profit?

Bush has one of the most perverse administrations in presidential history!

There, I corrected your post for you.

5th Estate. If the middle men didn’t provide any value, what kept you from going into business on your own and keeping 100% of the profits for yourself?

Ethics perhaps, maybe a conscience?
(If you’re unfamiliar with those words, you’ll just have to Google them…)

backup – most of those well-off enough to buy custom furniture do not want to bother with dealing directly with the suppliers. They hire designers and architects to take care of all that for them.

mary. I assume designers serve a purpose like a general contractor that oversees the construction of a home.

you could do the work yourself (and employ the individual subcontractors) but, you may not do as good a job, and it may end up costing you more money and hastle.

I suggest that if designers didn’t provide any value, they wouldn’t make any money.

Good luck with that. Apparently, you’ve learned well from intolerant partisans of the past. In your mind, it’s a much more productive endeavor to build a wall than extend a hand.

You’re not here for progress, you’re here for a sad, unproductive payback.

When you change your mind, I’ll be here.

In the true spirit of progressivism , I’ll offer you a deal (let’s call it the barfly compromise): if you (or any other conservative/republican) wants to offer serious comment on any issue that Bush and the republicans in power have demonstrably bungled,unchallenged, you first must preface your opening comment with “as a conservative (/republican), I know that in the past, my judgement has been terribly wrong, on this and many other issues, and that I have no right to speak on this topic, because of that past bad judgement, but still…”

It’s the virtual dead-chicken that you must wear, to attone for your past anti-American, pro-party synchophancy.

just look at the Britsh Empire, 1845 to 1945. It abolished British involvement in the slave trade in 1807 and declared slavery immoralin the 1830’s. As the world’s super-power it then attempted to eliminate slavery globally through its naval supremacey and imperial influence. Nonetheless the US as policy maintained the slave-trade, and then slavery which was allowed to continue because Britain was busing fighting the ‘Hitler’ of that time, Napoleon Bonaparte.
At the same time as ’slavery’ was being abolished indentured servitude was being introduced (or rather re-introduced) during the Industrial Revolution of the mid to late 1800’s. By 1900 whilst Britain controlled and influenced over 1/4 of the world and exploited much that that entailed the vast majority of its own citizens were slaves by any other name, servants of an industrial machine controlled by an elite who reaped all the profits and gove none to those who made their wealth and power possible.

Being a superpower does not make a nation super-good. Try reading something other than GOP Action Alert e-mails, would you? “Information is power”–that’s a fact, regardless of politcal proclivies. Verifiable information is more power, and aren;t you feeling a little powerless these days? That’s because the information you subscribe-to is bad, false, unverifiable information, on every count. You don;t have to agree with every opinion espressed here, but at least start your arguments based on reason derived from facts, and then accept when your reason is challenged by other facts. Jeez! I only bother lecturing you because you insist on showing up here, so I assume you want to be challenged.

IMHO you’re batting about .0001. But don’t give up slugger! Any monoment now you’ll hit one out of the ballpark! Any moment now…maybe now…okay maybe now….no, apparently not…maybe if you change your approach somehow…well, too late for this innings at any rate, maybe in the next game!

As an added bonus, they can them drop phrases like, “My designer” or “my architect” at the club…

And I hope progress is more than just more of the same, only in the opposite direction.

But, I’m still out here hoping to engage you in some substance. And I’ll still be here when you’re ready. Take your time.

Still sifting through the broken shards of your ideology, looking for any last bit of relevance that hasn’t yet evaporated, I see.

Found any?