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Any mention of the fall of Sears under Eddie Lampert should not omit Lampert's vision of running the company under Ayn Rand's Objectivist principles, and how th

Any mention of the fall of Sears under Eddie Lampert should not omit Lampert's vision of running the company under Ayn Rand's Objectivist principles, and how that completely failed: http://www.salon.com/2013/12/10/ayn_rand_loving_ceo_destroys_his_empire_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/12/10/ayn_rand_loving_ceo_destroys... http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-07-11/at-sears-eddie-lamperts-warring-divisions-model-adds-to-the-troubles http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-07-11/at-sears-edd...

briandear 11y ago
This in itself doesn't discredit Rand, it just discredits his execution of Rand. A physicist that fails even though he believes in Quantum Theory doesn't mean Quantum Theory is necessarily wrong. The Salon article is rather biased and doesn't actually analyze the specific failure points as it relates to Rand. Selling Rolexes in Sears isn't Randian -- it's just a bad business decision. The dude's personality also isn't necessarily Randian either and it would seem that was a major contributor to his failures. There are plenty of Christian business successes and failures -- and they rarely have anything to do with Christianity. Did he actually follow Rand? Selling a $4000 Rolex in Sears has nothing to do with Rand. The Salon article even states "discredited free market.." Is that so? I'm not sure many reputable microeconomists would say the free market is discredited any more than the law of supply and demand is discredited. There are distortions that happen surely, but that doesn't 'discredit' anything. Has Adam Smith been discredited? We could more easily say that Marxism has been discredited based on the fact that nearly every Marxist economy has failed while plenty of free market economies have succeeded. This failure has zero to do with Rand and everything to do with the personal failings of this CEO.
- bickfordb 11y ago
  Are there any examples of a company successfully run with Ayn Rand's principles?
  - goodside 11y ago
    It's ironic this isn't used more often to judge Objectivism's merits, though it's a bit disingenuous since it's prudent for most businesses to avoid having any polarizing opinions. E.g. Roark Capital, the owner of Cinnabon and Arby's that's named after Rand protagonist Howard Roark, doesn't seem to officially advocate the philosophy. BB&T under John Allison is the only one I can find that's indisputably both successful and guided by Objectivism -- $24B market cap, $188B assets, senior management required to read Ayn Rand, they donate to promote Objectivism in colleges, etc.
    - GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
      > they donate to promote Objectivism in colleges That doesn't sound very objectivist to me.
  - mixmastamyk 11y ago
    What did she have to say about running a business? To my knowledge she mostly commented on the dangers of govt over-reach.
  - tim333 11y ago
    Uber? I've not read Rand but apparently she was an inspiration http://www.businessinsider.com/how-ayn-rand-inspired-uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-2015-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/how-ayn-rand-inspired-uber-ce...
- true_religion 11y ago
  I think you're really jumping the gun here. No one said that this single failing business discredits the philosophies behind the running of the business. As in everything there can be implementation failure (as you have so currectly pointed out). There's also the other failure case of a mismatch between principles and the existing context. Maybe these principles work just fine in other contexts and other fields, but they're a poor match up to this one and can't be used without a lot of tweaking (e.g. Agile techniques applied to the manufacture of airplanes; it can be done but you can't just say 'we will do standups and sprints and everything will fall into place').
- analog31 11y ago
  We could more easily say that Marxism has been discredited based on the fact that nearly every Marxist economy has failed while plenty of free market economies have succeeded. We could say it, but in fact, it has been claimed that no Marxist state has ever correctly implemented Marxism. "No true Scotsman" is a handy fallacy. Non-falsifiability is a feature of every mature ideology.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    There has never been a state that even claimed to be unqualified Marxist, all the states that claimed something derived ultimately from Marxism have claimed descent through Leninism, which threw out the fundamental prerequisites for Marxism of a broad movement in an advanced capitalist state in favor of a system that was premised on an elite vanguard operating in a precapitalist state. Socialist movements influenced by non-Leninist Marxism (though rarely as the sole Socialist influence) have been quite successful in the developed world, though they don't tend to set up one party states even where they are influential, again, because that's something more associated with the authoritarian paternalism of Leninist vanguardism than it does with non-Leninist Marxism. So, its perhaps fair to say Leninism has been tested and failed; far less so for Marxism.
- raverbashing 11y ago
  Well, this is explained as: "Lampert took the myth that humans perform best when acting selfishly as gospel, pitting Sears company managers against each other in a kind of Lord of the Flies death match. This, he believed, would cause them to act rationally and boost performance." I would be tempted to blame Ayn Rand as well, but in the end the responsibility is of those who apply what she invented, especially when they should know better.
  - curun1r 11y ago
    > pitting Sears company managers against each other in a kind of Lord of the Flies death match From what I've heard, Google had similar battles between senior leaders and they've been wildly successful. While these policies probably didn't help the situation at Sears, I'd be very hesitant to say they were the cause of the decline. I think Salon was looking at the situation without enough objectivity in an attempt to discredit a philosophy they find distasteful. And I think people like you who are laying the blame on the implementation may also be attributing too much of the outcome to how the company was run. Sometimes a company is just destined to fail by circumstance. It's very hard for an established company to constantly maintain the fresh perspective necessary to get out in front of the game-changing trends and not be reactive. If it weren't, startups disrupting existing businesses would not be so successful. That Sears stayed at the top for 100 years seems more of an anomaly rather than their failure in the past 30 or so. Sears isn't the only company of its sort to have problems...just look at JC Penny. I'd be more willing to chalk Sears failure up to Walmart, Target, Amazon, Best Buy and the rest of the newer companies that ate their market by using newer technologies, better managing the supply chain and otherwise adapting to the changing world. Sears got big by changing the game and dominating mail order and it adapted well to the retail department store/mall eras. But they weren't able to transition to the internet, aren't able to compete on price with the lower-margin retailers and aren't considered premium enough to go up-market. There's very little they can offer right now that others can't do better and that would likely be the case no matter which principles they'd used to run their business.
    - setpatchaddress 11y ago
      Google's advertising revenue-via-search-monopoly gives them a lot of cushion. No matter how poorly (or well) managed they are, problems won't be visible unless the search advertising market starts to dry up, because no one will question their performance. It would be interesting to observe an alternate universe where Google that had to derive revenue solely from hardware sales. Yes, applying any single philosophy as a replacement for sound perspective on your business fundamentals seems like a bad idea. However, you don't typically see executives preaching communism as a solution. There is something particularly seductive about Randism to a certain class of corporative executive.
- whatYouGet 11y ago
  > zero to do with Rand and everything to do with the personal failings... Ah, and so now it all becomes clear. This is what you get, when you try to give Ayn Rand credit for anything. She only takes responsibility for success, because failures, quite simply, have nothing to do with her. The almighty Ayn Rand just never makes mistakes.

briandear 11y ago

This in itself doesn't discredit Rand, it just discredits his execution of Rand. A physicist that fails even though he believes in Quantum Theory doesn't mean Quantum Theory is necessarily wrong. The Salon article is rather biased and doesn't actually analyze the specific failure points as it relates to Rand. Selling Rolexes in Sears isn't Randian -- it's just a bad business decision. The dude's personality also isn't necessarily Randian either and it would seem that was a major contributor to his failures. There are plenty of Christian business successes and failures -- and they rarely have anything to do with Christianity. Did he actually follow Rand? Selling a $4000 Rolex in Sears has nothing to do with Rand. The Salon article even states "discredited free market.." Is that so? I'm not sure many reputable microeconomists would say the free market is discredited any more than the law of supply and demand is discredited. There are distortions that happen surely, but that doesn't 'discredit' anything. Has Adam Smith been discredited? We could more easily say that Marxism has been discredited based on the fact that nearly every Marxist economy has failed while plenty of free market economies have succeeded. This failure has zero to do with Rand and everything to do with the personal failings of this CEO.

bickfordb 11y ago
Are there any examples of a company successfully run with Ayn Rand's principles?
- goodside 11y ago
  It's ironic this isn't used more often to judge Objectivism's merits, though it's a bit disingenuous since it's prudent for most businesses to avoid having any polarizing opinions. E.g. Roark Capital, the owner of Cinnabon and Arby's that's named after Rand protagonist Howard Roark, doesn't seem to officially advocate the philosophy. BB&T under John Allison is the only one I can find that's indisputably both successful and guided by Objectivism -- $24B market cap, $188B assets, senior management required to read Ayn Rand, they donate to promote Objectivism in colleges, etc.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
    > they donate to promote Objectivism in colleges That doesn't sound very objectivist to me.
- mixmastamyk 11y ago
  What did she have to say about running a business? To my knowledge she mostly commented on the dangers of govt over-reach.
- tim333 11y ago
  Uber? I've not read Rand but apparently she was an inspiration http://www.businessinsider.com/how-ayn-rand-inspired-uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-2015-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/how-ayn-rand-inspired-uber-ce...
true_religion 11y ago
I think you're really jumping the gun here. No one said that this single failing business discredits the philosophies behind the running of the business. As in everything there can be implementation failure (as you have so currectly pointed out). There's also the other failure case of a mismatch between principles and the existing context. Maybe these principles work just fine in other contexts and other fields, but they're a poor match up to this one and can't be used without a lot of tweaking (e.g. Agile techniques applied to the manufacture of airplanes; it can be done but you can't just say 'we will do standups and sprints and everything will fall into place').
analog31 11y ago
We could more easily say that Marxism has been discredited based on the fact that nearly every Marxist economy has failed while plenty of free market economies have succeeded. We could say it, but in fact, it has been claimed that no Marxist state has ever correctly implemented Marxism. "No true Scotsman" is a handy fallacy. Non-falsifiability is a feature of every mature ideology.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  There has never been a state that even claimed to be unqualified Marxist, all the states that claimed something derived ultimately from Marxism have claimed descent through Leninism, which threw out the fundamental prerequisites for Marxism of a broad movement in an advanced capitalist state in favor of a system that was premised on an elite vanguard operating in a precapitalist state. Socialist movements influenced by non-Leninist Marxism (though rarely as the sole Socialist influence) have been quite successful in the developed world, though they don't tend to set up one party states even where they are influential, again, because that's something more associated with the authoritarian paternalism of Leninist vanguardism than it does with non-Leninist Marxism. So, its perhaps fair to say Leninism has been tested and failed; far less so for Marxism.
raverbashing 11y ago
Well, this is explained as: "Lampert took the myth that humans perform best when acting selfishly as gospel, pitting Sears company managers against each other in a kind of Lord of the Flies death match. This, he believed, would cause them to act rationally and boost performance." I would be tempted to blame Ayn Rand as well, but in the end the responsibility is of those who apply what she invented, especially when they should know better.
- curun1r 11y ago
  > pitting Sears company managers against each other in a kind of Lord of the Flies death match From what I've heard, Google had similar battles between senior leaders and they've been wildly successful. While these policies probably didn't help the situation at Sears, I'd be very hesitant to say they were the cause of the decline. I think Salon was looking at the situation without enough objectivity in an attempt to discredit a philosophy they find distasteful. And I think people like you who are laying the blame on the implementation may also be attributing too much of the outcome to how the company was run. Sometimes a company is just destined to fail by circumstance. It's very hard for an established company to constantly maintain the fresh perspective necessary to get out in front of the game-changing trends and not be reactive. If it weren't, startups disrupting existing businesses would not be so successful. That Sears stayed at the top for 100 years seems more of an anomaly rather than their failure in the past 30 or so. Sears isn't the only company of its sort to have problems...just look at JC Penny. I'd be more willing to chalk Sears failure up to Walmart, Target, Amazon, Best Buy and the rest of the newer companies that ate their market by using newer technologies, better managing the supply chain and otherwise adapting to the changing world. Sears got big by changing the game and dominating mail order and it adapted well to the retail department store/mall eras. But they weren't able to transition to the internet, aren't able to compete on price with the lower-margin retailers and aren't considered premium enough to go up-market. There's very little they can offer right now that others can't do better and that would likely be the case no matter which principles they'd used to run their business.
  - setpatchaddress 11y ago
    Google's advertising revenue-via-search-monopoly gives them a lot of cushion. No matter how poorly (or well) managed they are, problems won't be visible unless the search advertising market starts to dry up, because no one will question their performance. It would be interesting to observe an alternate universe where Google that had to derive revenue solely from hardware sales. Yes, applying any single philosophy as a replacement for sound perspective on your business fundamentals seems like a bad idea. However, you don't typically see executives preaching communism as a solution. There is something particularly seductive about Randism to a certain class of corporative executive.
whatYouGet 11y ago
> zero to do with Rand and everything to do with the personal failings... Ah, and so now it all becomes clear. This is what you get, when you try to give Ayn Rand credit for anything. She only takes responsibility for success, because failures, quite simply, have nothing to do with her. The almighty Ayn Rand just never makes mistakes.