#1 Failed Businesses Thread

[Alex Linder]

Originally Posted by Sam Emerson

I did point and laugh, but I also pointed out why Blockbuster failed.

I didn't mean you, I was just conveying that I am not being disrespectful in calling these failed companieses. It should be acknowledged that they only failed at the end - for a long time they succeeded. It's interesting and often instructive as to why things changed, that's what this thread is about more than anything.

Treating customers like enemies to be tricked and cheated isn't a long term business model unless you're a state mandated monopoly. Which video rental wasn't.

Quite true. I do miss the old days of the independent video stores, seeing odd things they had. I remember recoiling in horror going into a blockbuster in St. Louis and seeing a wall literally covered with Adam Sandler movies. How in the world could there possibly be that much demand? The fact is, his perpetual-eighth-grader (or is seventh?) shtick is popular with a large class of people.

Netflix and Redbox were killing them even before internet streaming took off. If Blockbuster had any customer goodwill it might have transitioned to streaming video the way Netfix did. The original Netflix model was mail order rental DVDs. Video stores had become so awful that people preferred waiting for DVDs to arrive in the mail to dealing with the ever rising rental fees and late fees.

True...and was it this thread someone posted that Blockbuster could have bought Netflix for 50m. Netflix appears to be the big winner, but I don't know who owns it.

[/quote]
One of Netflix's features was no late fees. You just had a limit on how many DVDs you could have out at once, so people returned them fast so they could rent more. It was a pretty brilliant and not obvious business model, and when internet streaming became technically feasible Netflix had the money to make the jump.[/QUOTE]

It's clever, reminds me of Aldi's .25-cart rental.

[Sam Emerson]

The first successful videogame company founded by Nolan Bushnell, the inventor of the first arcade videogame, was bought up and run into the ground by Warner Communications.

Among many idiotic mistakes this Hollywood (translation: Jew) company made managing their hot acquisition:

After their first cartridge system became a hit they ignored Bushnell's urgent request that they start work on a next-generation successor to the system. Warner didn't want to make a new system that would cut into sales of their existing one. Hollywood has always had difficulty understanding technology, despite being in what is very much a technology based business.

They forced Bushnell out, along with most of their best game programmers.

What programmers they retained they treated like crap, paying the creators of millions in sales a pitiful 30k a year.

The programmers hit back by founding Activision and selling Atari compatible games that were superior to Atari's in house product.

Atari lost all their lawsuits trying to shut down the competition.

After their programmers were decimated many of Atari's own games were awful, including the notorious E.T. game they paid Spielberg $25 million up front to license and then rushed out in a few months for Christmas.

The last straw was when Atari was approached by Nintendo with an offer to distribute their Famicom system everywhere except Japan. Negotiations failed, Atari lost the next big thing and was eventually sold off by Warner, after losing over $500 million in 1983.

http://www.neatorama.com/2008/05/05/...fall-of-atari/

[Sam Emerson]

Originally Posted by Alex Linder

I didn't mean you, I was just conveying that I am not being disrespectful in calling these failed companieses. It should be acknowledged that they only failed at the end - for a long time they succeeded. It's interesting and often instructive as to why things changed, that's what this thread is about more than anything.

Quite true. I do miss the old days of the independent video stores, seeing odd things they had. I remember recoiling in horror going into a blockbuster in St. Louis and seeing a wall literally covered with Adam Sandler movies. How in the world could there possibly be that much demand? The fact is, his perpetual-eighth-grader (or is seventh?) shtick is popular with a large class of people.

True...and was it this thread someone posted that Blockbuster could have bought Netflix for 50m. Netflix appears to be the big winner, but I don't know who owns it.

I did say Blockbuster burn in Hell, which could be construed as pointing and laughing...

The wall of Adam Sandler was Blockbuster's one and only unique value. When Happy Gilmore was released on DVD your best chance of renting it that night was a Blockbuster membership. The majority of renters must have wanted that more than variety because the smaller stores that had a moderate stock of new titles and a good back catalog all went out of business. Well, except for the ones whose main business was renting porn. But their stock of real movies wasn't that great either.

Netflix is still independent of Hollywood and I think it's a gentile founded company.

[Joe_Smith]

Originally Posted by Alex Linder

Every communist is an expert on executive compensation, among many other things.
How do you possibly know what executives should paid? Do you divine that from the ether, or consult with pope?

I judge by the standard in nations economically healthier and with a higher quality of life (from an economic perspective) for the average person than the United States.

The CEO-to-worker pay ratio in Germany is 12-1. In Switzerland its capped, by law, at 12-1. In Japan it's 11:1. In America, it's 475:1.

I won't say exactly how much an executive should make, but I sure don't trust the CEO himself to make that decision. Legal checks and balances such as caps, or at the very least allowing shareholders to decide how much the CEO should get based on performance, is hardly "communist".

The workers aren't making a living wage? Are they zombies, then? Why do they work, if they can't live on it?

Because they don't have a choice. Neo-liberal capitalism has led to the destruction of decently paid manufacturing jobs, and replaced them with service jobs meant for teenagers. What does an engineer or a Physicist do when his unemployment runs out and all the jobs in his field were outsourced to India? He's got no choice but to work at Wal-Mart. If you think this is a productive or intelligent allocation of Aryan talent, then what's your gripe with the system we have?

Entrenched capitalists no longer want to innovate, instead they want obedient little darkies to pull levers for them in third world wages and not ask any questions, all while having the chutzpah of selling their iPhone 12 in the "first world" for first world prices.

I won't even go into the millions who have dropped out of the work force for good, because living off of welfare and food stamps provides about the same standard of living as working. Of course, the "Austrian" (Jew) school says that this is because of the existence of government programs, but what about the fact that so many jobs don't pay enough to provide basic subsistence?

Why do you not blame your holy central government for taxing them at ridiculous rates - along with their insurer?

Reaganomics are the religion. Aside from the fact that I am anti-taxes in the USA because it goes to...ZOG, the theory itself is a failure. It's been proven beyond reasonable doubt that most of these holy "job creators" end up putting their tax breaks in their own bank, instead of increasing pay or hiring new workers. With all the loopholes big jew corporations take advantage of, they don't even pay as many taxes as people like you pretend they do.

Why do you never consider how much money the feds are sucking away from these corporations that could go into higher wages?

What reason does a CEO have to pay out higher wages? Out of the generosity of their heart? Those who argue for plutocracy are always adamant to point out government greed, but how do you not see the same issue popping up in the hierarchy of big business when they have even less of an incentive to act ethically?

You don't mention these things because your views religious, and the economics is merely a pseudo-rational cover.

The religious view is one that thinks if you stop taxing St. Don Thompson or Jim Skinner (PBUH), they're going to magically transform into George Bailey and start spreading generous Christmas cheer to their army of indentured servants.

That's McDonald's internal business. Why are you worried about how much money other people make? That's not your business. McDonald's provides food that the people you seem to think you speak for just plain love, and it provides millions of jobs for those people too. All without taxing the rest of us the way your Holy Central Government Empire does - hell, in spite of all the huge taxes it's forced to pay by the parasitic empire.

It's my business when 52% of all fast food workers are forced onto government aid, and cost the tax payer (me) 7 billion dollars a year in food stamps and welfare. Why should the state have to subsidize the livelihood of employed Mcdonalds workers?

See, for all your stomach turning hero worship, Mcdonalds likes big government (as long as its plutocratic), because it lets them in the short-term get away with vicious exploitation. Were it not for big government, the workers of Wal-Mart, Mcdonalds, and all the other multi-national businesses would rise up and destroy their companies, or outright kill them.

A truly Aryan society is not one where white working families are living one paycheck away from homelessness, having to resort to food stamps, church pantries, and welfare despite being employed, all while your Kike big business heroes like Mark Cuban whine about getting taxed on their second private jet plane.