[pure-silver] Re: Kodak Discontinuing All Black and White Paper
- From: "Richard Knoppow" <dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2005 14:19:42 -0700
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joseph O'Neil" <joneil@xxxxxxxx>
To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 5:30 AM
Subject: [pure-silver] Re: Kodak Discontinuing All Black and
White Paper
At 07:43 AM 6/20/2005, you wrote:
Kodak are quetly committing suicide.
-snip-
A few companies are. The economy of scale is
ruinign many things.
The bottom line is this - it isn't that B&W
products are not profitable - they are. You have an
established product, an established consumer base, little
or no R&D, and away you go.
The real problem is large companies look for how
profitable. As a small business owner/operator, I am
happy at the end of the day to turn a 5% profit overall as
long as I have enough money to pay the staff, pay all my
bills,a nd still put a roof over my head, have a decent -
but not extravagant - car, etc, etc.
Lots of snipping...
I think the real problem is in our economic system. This
is world wide, not just in the US. The investment market has
always driven corporate policy but ability to make rapid
trades based on computer analysis of short term trends has
removed some of the rationale from investing. The logic is
simple: put the capital where it will earn the most profit
NOW. There is some logic to this since long term investment
requires a lot more and much deeper knowledge than
predicting the very short term outlook. There are other
factors, such as the tying of top managment compensation to
short term stock performance. Directors are likely to make
moves that maximise their own take rather than decisions
that will be good for the company over the long haul. I am
not at all sure that this is true of the Kodak management.
The current chairman has worked for Kodak for some 35 years.
I think they are attempting to prune the operations to
prevent the company from being destroyed by its investors
leaving.
Companies who are privately held do not have the pressure
of having to meet some quarterly stock performance criteria.
They can even choose to loose money for a time if that seems
necessary to improve the long term performance.
I think we need to modify the way investment works in
this country at least to encourage long term investment.
Changing some stock market regulations is one way, changing
investment and corporate taxation is another. IMO none of
this will happen unless the economy becomes completely
paralyzed, perhaps in a way even worse than in 1929. I
suppose this is possible but is unlikely. Meanwhile, the
concentration on short term stock value and current tax
structure is benifiting about one half of one percent of the
population in the US and is destroying working class
economy, which forms the basis of the US market.
I don't know that if the rules were different that Kodak
would have made other choices; I think they are in a
difficult position beause the market for what has
historically been their main products is disappearing.
IMO, there is an optimum size for everything. Most large
businesses are probably too large right now. That makes them
hard to manage however attractive the "efficiency" of large
size seems to be. I think that "efficiency" is something of
an illusion because businesses are not judged by their
effect on the overall economy.
I could go on with this but it would soon become just
ranting (but if you get good enough at that you can get a
good job in talk radio).
---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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