Capitalism, in theory, is great. #Capitalism, as currently practiced, doesn't work very well.

Many years ago I read Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" [1]. If you don't understand #economics but want to, it's the second book I recommend you read [2] to get there. He describes how all the parts of the system work together, what influences other actors in the system, how it incorporates diverse feedback, and more.

What we actually have today, though, only approximates what Smith describes. There's too many things gummed up with collusion and political and regulatory capture and a bunch of other things, so our #economies don't run very well.

Illustration:

Sears lasted longer in Canada than it did in the USA, but it still failed. At some point, #Sears #Canada shuttered its retail operations while it tried to figure out what to do. There was a large Sears warehouse in my city, visible from a busy freeway.

So the company had no #revenue, but ongoing #expenses - like property #taxes. Some bright spark #MBA realized unimproved real estate was taxed at lower rates than buildings, so they tore the warehouse down, razed it.

It was still completely full of #merchandise at the time. I watched it. Too much trouble to sell or give away, so off to the dump.

Then Sears went bankrupt, somebody bought the land, and built a warehouse on it.

[1] As was common then, its full title is ridiculously long.
[2] The first, much easier read is Henry Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson".

🎩🤡: When the data you depend on is as reliable as a politician's promise, the MIT Sloan #wizards have the solution: become a wizard yourself with one of their endless #MBA programs! 🔍📉 Because when numbers don't add up, it's time to swap #spreadsheets for #philosophy scrolls and hope for #magic. 🧙‍♂️✨
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/what-happens-when-us-economic-data-becomes-unreliable #datareliability #MITsloan #HackerNews #ngated
What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable | MIT Sloan

MIT Sloan

JETZT ANMELDEN: Info-Abend (hybrid) zum berufsbegleitenden #ExecutiveMBA-Studiengang der Gutenberg School of Business Mainz am 19.3.2026 / Studienstart im Sept. 2026 👉 https://gsb.uni-mainz.de/executive-mba-online-master/

Anmeldung per E-Mail an [email protected]

Mehr zum #MBA im #JGUMagazin unter 👉 https://www.magazin.uni-mainz.de/der-executive-mba-oeffnet-neue-horizonte-mitten-im-beruflichen-erfolg/

This really is brutal. I don't know if it has come to Canada yet, but "this implied-chocolate candy has very little or no cocoa in it" is really death-by-MBA.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/11/reeses-hersey-chocolate-candy-cocoa

#MBA #marketing #wank #chocolate

‘I took two bites and had to spit it out’: candy makers are phasing out real cocoa in chocolate

Due to the volatile cocoa market, companies like Hershey are using replacement ingredients such as sugar, oil, milk and nuts

The Guardian
Steve Jobs 當年做不到的 Apple 花 18 年用 Macbook Neo 實現了 - unwire.hk 香港

3 日推出 6 款新產品,加上整個 Studio Display 家族重組。老實說這是近年 Apple 發布密度最高的一次硬件發布週。由 4,799 港元入門 Mac 到 30,999 港元高階專業手提電腦,幾乎將整條 Mac 產品線重新整理一次。

香港 unwire.hk 玩生活.樂科技
Steve Jobs 當年做不到的 Apple 花 18 年用 Macbook Neo 實現了 - unwire.hk 香港

3 日推出 6 款新產品,加上整個 Studio Display 家族重組。老實說這是近年 Apple 發布密度最高的一次硬件發布週。由 4,799 港元入門 Mac 到 30,999 港元高階專業手提電腦,幾乎將整條 Mac 產品線重新整理一次。

香港 unwire.hk 玩生活.樂科技

New 📚 Release! Predictive Analytics for Business by Dooruj Rambaccussing

Find it on Leanpub!

Link: https://leanpub.com/Predictive

#books #data #business #mba #management

The MBA Moment is the Great Oxygenation Event of business education.

A long time ago, in some water you may have drank yesterday at the gym, a bunch of little guys got around and said "you know what, we're just going to start peeing in the pool".

And they did

And like any pool that's been visited by the great pee fair, the pool of the Earth's ecosystem was soon pretty empty.

And now all we get are those good for nothing "air heads" they call Oxygen Breathers, everything else is no longer permitted. Oxygen + ATP was too cheap and when you're mostly made of pee, you don't mind when a little bit gets in your mouth during a canon ball.

GE's management philosophy withdrew the anaerobic routes (patient capital, institutional knowledge, long-term gradient) from the global table. Replaced them with quarterly returns as the only fitness function.
and like the GOE it wasn't malicious, just limiting and a bit dumb

Same as the GOE, the difference is cyanobacteria didn't go to Stanford and call it a strategy

#mba