Precisely. You can pitch Sears as "Lampert lined his own pockets with buybacks, then tried to salvage the damage done" or "Lampert was a moron who implemented b

Precisely. You can pitch Sears as "Lampert lined his own pockets with buybacks, then tried to salvage the damage done" or "Lampert was a moron who implemented bad policies". The truth appears to be some combination - he seemed to genuinely think stock buybacks were better than capital investment, and thought his lean-and-mean interbranch competition would produce savings. What you can't do is argue that Sears is the product of actually efficient markets. Lampert selected for brutal, Randian techniques even when they were far less rewarding than taking a decent, eusocial approach. It's like cargo cult capitalism - he saw that sometimes successful businesses harm people, and decided that if he just harmed enough people he'd have a successful business.