4 ms·

Intentionally destroyed to get access to its real estate. I dunno how the CEO is not behind bars for what he did.

by klipklop 10mo ago

kristopolous 10mo ago
Our obligation is to personal profit at the expense of everything else. This is empirically the default operational behavior. It should always be assumed as opposed to our current strategy of always being baffled and shocked that it happens. We could be serious about this and restructure incentives away from naked kleptocracy to avoid it. I mean we never will, but we could...
- dv_dt 10mo ago
  If the passive investor class wanted more and better options to collect profits with low long-term risk they would actually support that kind of restructure - but alas it's all very short=sighted profit taking now that actually hurts long term growth. It's no small irony that Buffet's retirement aligns with the close out as an iconic holdout of long view valuation - even his more recent moves I think showed some retreat from his previous values. Perhaps not really his direct fault, but he had fewer and fewer good investment options as time went by.
  - b00ty4breakfast 10mo ago
    the problem is that every time the shortsightedness crashes the economy, the rest of us have to bail them out and the thing keeps on chooglin. They have no incentives to behave otherwise
  - kristopolous 10mo ago
    These things continue until we criminalize it. Slavery kept going until we said that's illegal. Child labor kept going until we said that's illegal Putting heroin in baby food formula kept going until we said that's illegal. We don't defer to the free market for everything. Nobody is like, well child porn, I guess there's a market demand for it so it's right over there with the magazines It is neither strange nor unusual to value things more than the freedom of the market. We do it all the time. We should do that with societal harms and not just individual ones. Criminalizing obvious crime shouldn't be some kind of wild eyed fantasy. It should have been done 150 years ago.
  - binary132 10mo ago
    Even if vicious profiteering is actually the better long-term strategy (and it is, because outpacing your competitors leads to market dominance), if it is the more destructive strategy, it should come with consequences at the very least. Personally, I’d like to see a society structured in such a way that makes vicious profiteering a non-option in the first place, but that’s a bigger problem to solve.
  - kelseyfrog 10mo ago
    > If the passive investor class wanted more and better options to collect profits with low long-term risk they would actually support that kind of restructure How would that message be conveyed? Like, who would send it and who would receive it? Would it be more like an email or a phone call?
jbs789 10mo ago
I think it would have been hard to recover but yeah when Lampert got involved it was all about the financial engineering rather than the operations. I bought the shares around then but sold soon after, turned off by the conflicts and the lack of focus on ops. (I vaguely recall some realisation that he had made money but the public equity did not… It was a bit of an awakening for the young investor who had bought into fiduciary duty, shareholder interests, etc.)
- eesmith 10mo ago
  Also, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/column-this-is-what-happens-when-you-take-ayn-rand-seriously https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/column-this-is-what-hap... > In 2008, Sears CEO Eddie Lampert decided to restructure the company according to [Ayn] Rand's principles. > Lampert broke the company into more than 30 individual units, each with its own management and each measured separately for profit and loss. The idea was to promote competition among the units, which Lampert assumed would lead to higher profits. Instead, " ... the divisions turned against each other — and Sears and Kmart, the overarching brands, suffered." See also the 2013 Salon article "Ayn Rand-loving CEO destroys his empire" at https://www.salon.com/2013/12/10/ayn_rand_loving_ceo_destroys_his_empire_partner/ https://www.salon.com/2013/12/10/ayn_rand_loving_ceo_destroy...
  - mjhay 10mo ago
    By Ayn Rand standards, Lampert did an excellent job with Sears. He personally made over a billion in profit from his original investment. https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2bsxn8l0u5yr6zhelmhog/corner-office/eddie-lampert-shattered-sears-sullied-his-reputation-and-lost-billions-of-dollars-or-did-he https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2bsxn8l0u5yr6z...
phendrenad2 10mo ago
Why would he be behind bars? He did what the shareholders voted for - increase profits temporarily. If the shareholders voted against their own long-term interest that's on them.
UltraSane 10mo ago
Yes, Lampert very obviously violated his fiduciary duty to shareholders and did a lot of self-dealing.

Intentionally destroyed to get access to its real estate. I dunno how the CEO is not behind bars for what he did.

Our obligation is to personal profit at the expense of everything else. This is empirically the default operational behavior. It should always be assumed as opposed to our current strategy of always being baffled and shocked that it happens. We could be serious about this and restructure incentives away from naked kleptocracy to avoid it. I mean we never will, but we could...

dv_dt 10mo ago
If the passive investor class wanted more and better options to collect profits with low long-term risk they would actually support that kind of restructure - but alas it's all very short=sighted profit taking now that actually hurts long term growth. It's no small irony that Buffet's retirement aligns with the close out as an iconic holdout of long view valuation - even his more recent moves I think showed some retreat from his previous values. Perhaps not really his direct fault, but he had fewer and fewer good investment options as time went by.
- b00ty4breakfast 10mo ago
  the problem is that every time the shortsightedness crashes the economy, the rest of us have to bail them out and the thing keeps on chooglin. They have no incentives to behave otherwise
- kristopolous 10mo ago
  These things continue until we criminalize it. Slavery kept going until we said that's illegal. Child labor kept going until we said that's illegal Putting heroin in baby food formula kept going until we said that's illegal. We don't defer to the free market for everything. Nobody is like, well child porn, I guess there's a market demand for it so it's right over there with the magazines It is neither strange nor unusual to value things more than the freedom of the market. We do it all the time. We should do that with societal harms and not just individual ones. Criminalizing obvious crime shouldn't be some kind of wild eyed fantasy. It should have been done 150 years ago.
- binary132 10mo ago
  Even if vicious profiteering is actually the better long-term strategy (and it is, because outpacing your competitors leads to market dominance), if it is the more destructive strategy, it should come with consequences at the very least. Personally, I’d like to see a society structured in such a way that makes vicious profiteering a non-option in the first place, but that’s a bigger problem to solve.
- kelseyfrog 10mo ago
  > If the passive investor class wanted more and better options to collect profits with low long-term risk they would actually support that kind of restructure How would that message be conveyed? Like, who would send it and who would receive it? Would it be more like an email or a phone call?

jbs789 10mo ago

I think it would have been hard to recover but yeah when Lampert got involved it was all about the financial engineering rather than the operations. I bought the shares around then but sold soon after, turned off by the conflicts and the lack of focus on ops. (I vaguely recall some realisation that he had made money but the public equity did not… It was a bit of an awakening for the young investor who had bought into fiduciary duty, shareholder interests, etc.)

eesmith 10mo ago
Also, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/column-this-is-what-happens-when-you-take-ayn-rand-seriously https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/column-this-is-what-hap... > In 2008, Sears CEO Eddie Lampert decided to restructure the company according to [Ayn] Rand's principles. > Lampert broke the company into more than 30 individual units, each with its own management and each measured separately for profit and loss. The idea was to promote competition among the units, which Lampert assumed would lead to higher profits. Instead, " ... the divisions turned against each other — and Sears and Kmart, the overarching brands, suffered." See also the 2013 Salon article "Ayn Rand-loving CEO destroys his empire" at https://www.salon.com/2013/12/10/ayn_rand_loving_ceo_destroys_his_empire_partner/ https://www.salon.com/2013/12/10/ayn_rand_loving_ceo_destroy...
- mjhay 10mo ago
  By Ayn Rand standards, Lampert did an excellent job with Sears. He personally made over a billion in profit from his original investment. https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2bsxn8l0u5yr6zhelmhog/corner-office/eddie-lampert-shattered-sears-sullied-his-reputation-and-lost-billions-of-dollars-or-did-he https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2bsxn8l0u5yr6z...

phendrenad2 10mo ago

Why would he be behind bars? He did what the shareholders voted for - increase profits temporarily. If the shareholders voted against their own long-term interest that's on them.

UltraSane 10mo ago

Yes, Lampert very obviously violated his fiduciary duty to shareholders and did a lot of self-dealing.