Penn Jillette gets it.
Oct. 31st, 2003 03:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
libertangoFrom a great interview with Penn Jillette:
If you could change one thing about the industry, what would it be?
I would make executives more concerned with making money. I'm serious. They get all into this "studio image" thing and they keep trying to have a blockbuster. I would like them to be very happy to make a profit and put out anything that they thought would do that. Even a modest profit. If they were run more like a grocery store, we'd have stuff that not everyone buys, but enough people buy. If entertainment ran grocery stores, we'd NEVER get oil cured olives or blue cheese, it would be JUST Coke. Coke is fine, but we need the stuff we don't all want too. If they just cared about a profit and not their image as "hit" makers we'd be fine. The only people that care what studio makes what movie is the studio execs. I wish they cared more about just running a company and putting out anything people would buy. Merchant/Ivory should do porno and horror and anything else. Who cares about image?
The reason this is so great is that it gets right to the heart of the steaming hypocrisy of Amurrican business. In most businesses, they're not really out to make a buck. They're out to feel good -- whether that means being a badder bad ass at the office, or having a bigger budget, or headcount, or "image", or what-have-you. Basically, money falls from the sky, and these guys have buckets out. Except for the ones so stupid as to not have a bucket.
To put this in a different way, one I use a lot: There's a reason Dilbert is set in the private sector, not the public one.
Laissez-faire capitalist libertarians, take note.
If you could change one thing about the industry, what would it be?
I would make executives more concerned with making money. I'm serious. They get all into this "studio image" thing and they keep trying to have a blockbuster. I would like them to be very happy to make a profit and put out anything that they thought would do that. Even a modest profit. If they were run more like a grocery store, we'd have stuff that not everyone buys, but enough people buy. If entertainment ran grocery stores, we'd NEVER get oil cured olives or blue cheese, it would be JUST Coke. Coke is fine, but we need the stuff we don't all want too. If they just cared about a profit and not their image as "hit" makers we'd be fine. The only people that care what studio makes what movie is the studio execs. I wish they cared more about just running a company and putting out anything people would buy. Merchant/Ivory should do porno and horror and anything else. Who cares about image?
The reason this is so great is that it gets right to the heart of the steaming hypocrisy of Amurrican business. In most businesses, they're not really out to make a buck. They're out to feel good -- whether that means being a badder bad ass at the office, or having a bigger budget, or headcount, or "image", or what-have-you. Basically, money falls from the sky, and these guys have buckets out. Except for the ones so stupid as to not have a bucket.
To put this in a different way, one I use a lot: There's a reason Dilbert is set in the private sector, not the public one.
Laissez-faire capitalist libertarians, take note.
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no subject
Date: 2003-10-31 04:10 am (UTC)Many years ago a friend explained to me the Chinese business model which is slightly different. If you decide, for example, you want a monthly income of $1000. Rather than building a business which brings in the $1000, you build lots of small businesses which together bring you the $1000.
People also need to learn about the problems with percentage growth and scale factors. Growing at high percentage rates is easier for a small organisation/number/country than it is for a larger one. 20% year on year growth is not a problem if you are a small business, in fact, 100% growth is sane for a small business.
Targetting your sales team for a 20% growth when you're a $20billion a year IT hardware and software company is not.
Simple ideas, which have somehow got lost.
PS: I'll be in town from next Monday (10th) - through to the week after. I'll liase with Randy to sort out the Rugby.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-31 04:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-31 05:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-31 07:39 am (UTC)Or to put it another way, there's a reason why "Yes, Minister" was set in the public sector.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-31 08:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-31 11:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-31 11:51 am (UTC)And, hey, I'm enough of a government weenie to have the dead-tree version of Yes, Minister, because it's even more canny than the TV series -- it's presented as Hacker's diaries, with documents from the other players inserted when their POV is needed. Having slogged through many such a diary in my time, I appreciate just how well it's done.
But you're missing the point.
One of the tenets of laissez-faire capitalist libertarians (for which I'm going to succumb and abbreviate as LFCLs) -- one of their tenets is that the private sector is always better at any given task because the private sector is so much more efficient, streamlined, market tough, etc.
Bullshit.
I have worked in the public sector -- for the City of Los Angeles, which has more employees than some countries. I've also worked for the World's Largest Winery (privately held); the World's #1 Manufacturer of Laptops (at the time, and publicly held in a different country than my own); the World' #1 Specialty Retailer of BBQs (a small niche, sure, but there you go -- also held in a different country though traded NYSE); and as a contract employee at the World's Largest Software Company (no comment :).
And my point -- and Penn's -- is that "making money", the alleged fount of virtue in the LFCL world, is never more than about #3 or #4 on the To-Do list.
In other words, I'm not saying, as would a democratic socialist, that the public sector has any particular privilege vis-a-vis the world... What I'm saying is that neither does the private sector. And what tends to go wrong with both are problems that have far more to do with large human institutions in general, rather than being "public" or "private".
no subject
Date: 2003-10-31 11:56 am (UTC)Now if I could just convince Ismail Merchant to use that Kendal girl-now-all-grown-up from Shakespeare Wallah...
no subject
Date: 2003-10-31 12:54 pm (UTC)Would you consider escorting me to the first possible available showing of the Merchant/Ivory porno movie?
no subject
Date: 2003-10-31 01:11 pm (UTC){twitty english voice}: Are you? Why, heavens yes, I can see it from here...
{rowr}
"Would you consider escorting me to the first possible available showing of the Merchant/Ivory porno movie?"
Sure, Ellie.
Though I am reminded of the Tom McGuane line, "The night wrote a check the morning couldn't cash."
But should such a thing occur, I can be there with you... if'n you want.
Being a boy and all.