BootsnAll Travel Community

Question:
How would you run a corporation?

[This message was edited by Nick on 04 January 2001 at 17:35.]

Choices:
Run a tight ship and make the bastards work
Survival of the fittest, reward the best, fire the worst
Find clever people to run it for you
We are the World, give everyone a chance
Dude I'm going to Cabo with the investment capital

 

I'would run it to the ground. sabotage and let it rot.Human are originally nomads-hunter/gatherer, natural travelers. Capitalism and its corporate cronis enslaved us to agriculture(who made money off farmers' labor?) and corpo business cubicle. Farm works or office work, it's ol slavery disguised in credits and mortgages, car(gotta have'em), buy buy shop till drop junk.

Jean,

Just curious what you do for wages/job? WE are in Eugene, Oregon and their is a large contigent of Old Hippies here. Many people here might agree with you. For me...I am not really sure?

Before I get blacklisted, let me make some positive suggestions. Instead of usual two weeks off per year, six weeks for starters? Eco-friendly operation? Go non-profit corporation? Go with the Union, not union busting corporation? How about a forum on Dose corporation promote tourist industry or independent traveller?

Hi Jean,

I liked some of your comments. I wonder does independent travel itself lead to tourist travel? Its seems to in places like like Goa where the cool folks arrived 35 years ago and now its a Christmas vacation for British people.

Are corporations good? I think we all know a bunch of corporations we'd rather do without for sure, especially when they're owned by politicians. I think if a company stays private it has a chance of carrying on the 'dream' whatever that is. When it goes public the bottom line is pleasing the investors and all that idealism goes out of the window.

I think that asking 'are corporations good' is a lot like asking 'are humans good'? THE answer is the same: yes... or no. It all depends.

Just because someone incorporates, runs a business, does not make them evil. If that business is abusive, if greed becomes the sole driving force behind everything it does, then that to me is getting in to the evil realm.

Though I would like to agree that 'naturally' humans are hunters/gatherers, I can't. That's where humans started - but not everyone's talents lie in throwing spears or gathering fruit. We 'naturally' also have interests in visual art, language, figuring out how the world works - and the present quagmire of human existence is the result of people trying to do what they feel they should do.

For some, that leads to business: grouping people with common interests in a place where they can provide a service or product. How should it be run? To me, by the golden rule, and also by an understanding that no matter what, there are more important things in the world than the company. Poeple have families; people have lives that have nothing to do with the clock. A company should be run in the interests of its customers and its employees, not just for making money, but for trying to improve the quality of people's lives

one thing where I would disagree with you is how agriculture has led so directly to enslavement via cube culture and all that. Does it suck? you bet - I don't like it either, and it's one of the allures that attracted me to BootsnAll. No cubicle, flexible hours, and CEO (Sean) who I can tell to feck off (and he can tell me the same).

Credit, mortgages, cars, etc - yes, there are definitely sources and people who say up and down that you MUST have these things for your life to be complete. And if you go in too deep, yes, you are kinda screwed. However, just because someone says something, doesn't mean you have to believe it. Perhaps it's not fully the 'corporations' fault, then; after all, people get themselves into things - they are responsible for their own actions - and if they chose to buy in with nary a thought or deliberation in their heads, that's no one's fault but their own!

(cool bloody discussion, idn't it?

You bet you've got flexible hours Ant, in case you've forgotten........you're not getting paid. As for a cubicle, we can't afford one, and when we can I'm getting it so I can fall asleep without you buggers noticing.

The problem with jobs is that they rarely get better with age. And no I'm NOT gonna draw a parallel between being a network phone-monkey and fine wine.

Buyouts happen, reorgs go down, people get scared and they take on more work and you know what? That's how America conducts itself economically. We thrive on fear of being replaced and shoveled into that big old furnace of dead companies and outpaced countries...

So my plan...is to take the 3 days I have off a year, fly to Spain, find a nice office with a west-facing window, and a desk that appears unoccupied...and start working. Maybe they won't notice me.