The model of competitive equilibrium which has been discussed so far is set in a timeless environment. People and companies all operate in a world in which there is no future and hence no uncertainty.
With joint-stock corporations, investors can place bets on the success of many different companies, without having to play a central management role in any one of them. This allows investors to diversify their financial holdings. It also allows them to capture profits on their investments, without having to get involved in the dirty, troublesome business of actually running a company.
When private industry makes a mistake, it gets corrected and goes away. As governments make mistakes, it gets bigger, bigger and bigger and they make more, more and more because as they run out of money, they just ask for more and so they get rewarded for making mistakes. In the meantime that is exactly what we are doing by subsidizing companies which are failing, we have a reverse Darwinism, we've got survival of the unfittest, the companies and people that have made terrible mistakes are being rewarded and other people are being punished and being taxed.
The question, then, for Western companies, as much as for Western governments, is to decide whose side they are on: the Chinese officials who like to define their culture in a paternalistic, authoritarian way, or the large number of Chinese who have their own ideas about freedom.
Today, no one would dispute that information technology has become the backbone of commerce. It underpins the operations of individual companies, ties together far-flung supply chains, and, increasingly, links businesses to the customers they serve. Hardly a dollar or a euro changes hands anymore without the aid of computer systems.
In the long run, though, the greatest IT risk facing most companies is more prosaic than a catastrophe. It is, simply, overspending. IT may be a commodity, and its costs may fall rapidly enough to ensure that any new capabilities are quickly shared, but the very fact that it is entwined with so many business functions means that it will continue to consume a large portion of corporate spending.
There are many examples of companies and countries that have improved their competitiveness and efficiency by adopting open source strategies. The creation of skills through all levels is of fundamental importance to both companies and countries.
I believe that space travel will one day become as common as airline travel is today. I'm convinced, however, that the true future of space travel does not lie with government agencies -- NASA is still obsessed with the idea that the primary purpose of the space program is science -- but real progress will come from private companies competing to provide the ultimate adventure ride, and NASA will receive the trickle-down benefits.
Everybody's career is different. In this new age of being able to talk to the whole world at once, the possibilities are staggering, really, to be able to do things yourself. But I've always enjoyed my relationship with the record company.
I joke that I've never been burdened by having an actual hit. There's something to that. My records have sold enough to make the record company money to help me keep my job. But I've never had anything so firmly ingrained in the mind of the public that I'm expected to repeat it.
What kind of bank gives back 65 percent-often less-of what you deposit? Indeed, when you compare the services of a bank and an insurance company, common sense suggests something is out of whack.
The life insurance industry is filled with good people who believe in their work and their companies, but who may never have challenged the assumptions underlying their efforts.
The first American insurance company was the Friendly Society for the Mutual Insurance of Houses Against Fire, founded in Charles Town in South Carolina, in 1735.
I have been accused of being ignorant of economics (although I am the founder and Chairman of the Board of a company which publishes seven professional economic newsletters), of being ignorant of sociology (although I am trained in sociology and was C. Wright Mills' research assistant at Columbia), of being unable to use statistics (although I earned my living as a professional statistician for five years) and of ignoring political factors (although all my graduate training was in political science).
The Apple iPad is not going to be the company's next runaway best seller. Not if the industry can help it... With the iPad, Apple may have irked it's somewhat new partner Intel Corp. Intel gets spanked by nobody.
If Apple has a flaw, it's the inability of the company to crush competition using the kind of aggressive tactics that companies like Microsoft and Intel have always applied.
The key here are two little words: the word 'or' and the word 'and'. Nintendo is not an or company, with games devoted to just this group or that group. We're an and company, with games for this group and that group and for groups that don't even call themselves gamers yet.
Great fit and synergism for both companies and excellent outcome for employees, customers and shareholders.
It's hard to lose weight when you're dining on the company's money.
By going on the defensive. [...] libertarians are, inadvertently, conceding that speech should be policed for propriety, and that those who violate standards set by the PC set are somehow defective on those grounds alone and deserve to be purged from "polite" company.
It is absolutely outrageous that a spin doctor for Labor's NBN Co is being paid $450,000 per annum by Australian taxpayers to promote a company that generates no revenue, has no customers and provides no services to anybody
I've lived on my own since I was 13 and not been to school and brought a son up who's now 18 and run theatre companies and bought a butcher's shop, learnt guitar by myself, taught myself to sing and that sort of stuff.
Northleaf is delighted to have been chosen to manage the new fund. We look forward to implementing the fund's long-term strategy of constructing a portfolio of high-potential venture capital funds with the scale and resources to execute their plans, support successful high-growth companies and deliver world-class returns.
Companies are increasingly taking responsibility for the safety of the food they sell, rather than risk their brand on a large recall.
You don't need to buy a $7 billion company to penetrate maritime security. The Mafia doesn't buy FedEx to smuggle.
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