Opinions
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Food & Drug Administration
Our food and our drugs are being managed by the major corporations that sell food and drugs. The FDA just isn't doing it's job and this goes down to plain old toothpaste. The number of items that we imbibe and that are harmful to us and promoted by those corporations grew over the 1950's and 60's. Naturally we were excited to see Pepsi Co. drop High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) from their product line. This was announced April 2010. Also in the same month Starbucks dropped the same item along with trans-fats from their products. So I have to ask, why hasn't the FDA promoted this same line given that there is reasonable proof that these items are contributing to the poor health of our citizens. Obesity in our population is rampant and most noticeable in our young and our baby boomers. Instead of trumpeting the damaging character of Aspartame they talk about salt. Salt is a critical component of our food makeup. The issue with salt is quality and quantity. Whereas with Aspartame, there should be none at all as it can kill you. An interesting side affect is that it converts to formaldehyde in your system. There are more but you get the picture.
About 30 years ago Robert Townsend wrote a book called "Up the Organization". At the time Mr. Townsend had just made Avis Rent-a-Car one of the finest rent-a-car companies in the world based on being "number 2". In this wonderful book Mr. Townsend made a comment that I remember to this day. Paraphrasing, "if you enjoy getting a bonus, so will your employees". The successes of that company were repeated by many small and very successful software / hardware companies as they remember that "if they enjoy getting a bonus, so too do the employees". Recently Dell Corporation, gave each employee below the director level a 200 share stock option. The option is redeemable in 5 years at today's prices. Potentially Dell has given each employee a minimum of $12,000 and if the shares improve at Dell's current rate, the value of those shares could approach $1,000,000. Imagine how hard the Dell employees are working for Mr. Dell and themselves. Home Depot is another company that has taken the same route of making the employee a shareholder. It too has several millionaire employees. An Austin law firm, who will remain nameless, gives their employees a nice bonus each year. There is the retirement bonus, the Christmas bonus and periodically a cash reward. And their employees are leaving at an incredible rate. The turnover is not limited to one level such as only attorneys or only clerks. There are people leaving across all levels and as soon as jobs are found more will leave. And the reason is simple, Common Courtesy. The law firm's shares are not going to approach $1,000,000 in five years so something else has to take its place. Must be the equivalent of Common Courtesy . Whether or not Dell or Home Depot is a courteous company is not known, but what is known is that it is extremely successful. And Dell's shareholders are very happy with that success. The law firm is successful but not in the extreme. I guess it goes back to the old adage that money is a dissatisfier and the job itself is the satisfier. I wonder if the law firm will ever get the message. So, in our opinion if there are firms that want to make money through their employees they need to do two things; 1) share the rewards with all the employees, and 2) treat the employees well by helping them have satisfactory jobs. There are other things but today these are the big two. If you don't believe me, look at those successful companies where everyone has the opportunity to gain wealth and possibly be rich. The above opinion was written in 1999 and in 2000 the legal firm was reduced to one quarter of its size due to attorney departures. In 2003 some Home Depot employees were remarking that "in the good old day of stock options, an employee could make some money. But those days are gone. Too bad!" Why do companies use consultants in the first place? The quick answer is energy, knowledge, and expertise. It is difficult for any company to keep up with the rapid changes in our high-technology world. The difficulty of keeping up with the latest developments in languages, tools, platforms, and application offerings requires people who do this on a full-time basis. And our business contacts, seminars, and course work help to ensure that the majority of offered solutions are correct. In today's high technology world where staffing is an ongoing issue, personnel acquisition and retention is another problem. And it is expected to continue to be a problem for several years to come if not indefinitely. The energy that most consultants can bring to the client site is typically higher and more intense than the standard employee. The reasons are many but high on the list is; reward and job continuity. A bad consultant can be terminated with a single telephone call. It takes significant effort to terminate a bad employee. The consultant typically gets paid by the hour at a higher rate, but he/she doesn't get it forever. There is normally an end to the engagement. Consultants, or contract staffing, will help most companies stay abreast of all of these issues and help you protect your company's investment in technology. Your company may find consultants especially attractive if they are seeking a relationship in an area where computers, systems and program development, and the Internet can make a major contribution to your company.Why the Internet (Customer Service) Lowered cost for communicating across personal and business communities offsets postal costs (time and money) to the extent that internet e-mail is nearly free. But for me the real blessing is the gift of time. Schedules for publishing information can go out the window, if we think through the issues. Yes, publishing concerns have worries about their revenue and rightfully so. But, when you look at all the benefits I doubt that there will be any effect at all other than growth. Organizations that rely on customer service benefit largely from the ability to disseminate their information quickly and without awaiting the next major problem. (see FAQ's) Companies that publish on paper today need to embrace this medium in a big way. If you can understand how freeware and shareware sparked the growth of the software industry, then you can understand how a magazine like Business Week or reference catalogs from the likes of my old company SRDS, could create within their customer base a dependency on their products that would be difficult for the customer to walk away from without significant impact. The important criteria in these companies is that usage can grow in areas that do not utilize their products today. The subscriptions process could be changed to pick up many more customers on an adhoc basis. Some time ago a friend of mine sent me an e-mail asking if I knew of anyone having a copy of the October 1998 Playboy. Apparently the newsstands in his part of the United States had sold out. If Playboy had their entire October edition on-line, plus the ability for my friend to subscribe to that one issue they would have made a quick sale. As it was, my friend borrowed a copy, saw the article he wanted to see and saved himself a couple of dollars. FAQ's, or the process of Frequently Asked Questions, need some maturity before the customer service aspects are fully realized, but FAQ's are on the right path for providing information a customer needs. The day will come when FAQ's will be personalized to the individual making the inquiry. Think of a Sears Roebuck who knows that Roscoe Kendall has purchased a lawn mower, washing machine, dryer, and dishwasher from them. Roscoe inquires into their customer service area and when this area of the Sears system recognizes Roscoe, an existing customer, who has purchased the mentioned appliances, the system makes available all the known issues concerning those appliances plus any resolutions that exist. Plus, a parts inventory of all the parts that Roscoe might want to purchase over the 'net. Disposable items like filters, oil, ice trays, belts and the like would be brought up into a customized order form. More sales, more retained customers. Not only did Roscoe get the information he needed but was able to purchase disposable items and have them delivered to him at home. And it is just as likely that he could have done his shopping there too, and just as likely that he won't shop anywhere else. That is, until Wards or J.C.Penney comes up with a similar system. E-mail is wonderful. Communicating with family and friends routinely and not having to pay for that extra ounce of information is splendid. The list of important internet issues goes on, but in my mind the important aspect is "the gift of time". I wrote the above in 1998 and have watched much of this come into existence. Many, many shopping sites now exist and handle them very well. Montgomery Wards never came close and they are now completely out of business. By the year 2002 Sears and J.C. Penney had gotten it and have presentable sites. 2nd Amendment-Things I don't understand Why are so many people so paranoid about gun ownership? It would seem logical if the 200 million guns owned in the United States today were being used for terror or revolution but they aren't. The majority, and by that I mean a number in the high 99% range, are for self-defense, hunting, target shooting or collecting. Some owners have them only because the anti-gun group makes us think we had better get them before they make it impossible. Interesting that since 2009 gun sales are approaching 14,000,000 rifles & pistols per month. The methods used by anti-gunners appear rabid, illogical and often just plain stupid. I've seen groups of normal people become extremely tense at the mention of guns and relate that to the horror stories pushed on television and newspaper articles concerning some demented person shooting someone else. And I have never heard of any article demanding that kitchen knives be banned when someone is stabbed to death. The horror of a mother drowning her children in the bathtub doesn't mean we should ban bathtubs either. But we have United States Senators demanding the end of gun ownership. In my mind, these same Senators do not deserve their position and should be voted out. They are not protecting the Constitution of the United States. I also do not understand the ACLU, of which I was a member for a long time, not protecting the 2nd amendment. They tend to leave that to the NRA, which seems to be doing an admirable job. But why not both groups protecting the 2nd amendment as it seems to be the basis for protection of the others. Columbine...what a disaster. A tragedy for all the families involved. When it happened a friend of mine stated, "now what do you have to say about guns?". My response was, "guns have nothing to do with this tragedy!". He didn't get it, and a large bunch of people didn't get it. The tragedy was not created by guns but by people wanting to destroy other people. The discussions mostly left out the homemade bombs, the planning, the hatred. Just concentrated on the guns. It has been noted that 100% of the rabid shooters were on anti-depressants. Someday the anti-gun people are going to make that connection. I see the same weirdness concerning Assault Weapons. No, I don't think I need to own one, and I wonder why anyone would that wasn't a collector. But am I concerned about my neighbor owning an assault weapon? No! I would rather know he had one and if there was a reason for one it would be rather nice to know it was there. The big issue to me is that this is a beginning of gun control, not the end of the issue. Weird I think, and I don't understand it. I'm disappointed that so many intelligent people don't get it either. They tell me there are over 200,000,000 guns and over 80,000,000 gun owners in the United States. The National Rifle Association, the NRA, has about 4,000,000 members. And they work pretty darn hard to keep legislation from taking the 200+MM guns from the 80+MM owners. Why are there not more members helping the NRA? Beats me for sure.
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