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> I propose that twenty thousand people ought to be enough for any company. This seems foolish. Better tell McDonalds, IBM, Target, HP, GE, Pepsi, Coke, Home

> I propose that twenty thousand people ought to be enough for any company. This seems foolish. Better tell McDonalds, IBM, Target, HP, GE, Pepsi, Coke, Home Depo, and Berkshire Hathaway they are now too big to fail. Oh and dont' forget google, they have more than 20,000 employees, better break them up. Actually why not just look down this list to see just how foolish your 20,000 person proposal would be: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2012/performers/companies/biggest/ http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2012/perfo... Note that by the time you get to company 49 they still employ more than 126,000 people. EDIT Sorry I guess my point wasn't clear. My point is that employee size is a very poor measure of a company being "too big to fail". Let me lay it out like this. Consider a fictitious burger company with 20,000 employees. With 50 states it can only employ 400 people in each state. If it went bankrupt it's very hard to see how this is "too big to fail".

nimble 13y ago
Responding to your edit: I don't think his point was that 20,000 was too big to fail. The point is that 20,000 is too big, period. Any company over a certain size (certainly way less than 20,000) institutes internal procedures for smaller groups within the company to coordinate. How would we not all be better off if those smaller groups were independent competing actors?
jzwinck 13y ago
The proposal is foolish because it would impact a substantial number of businesses? I don't understand the logic: if it impacted few or no businesses, then it would be pointless. Since it is impactful, then it is foolish? Recall that I gave a timeline of some two decades for phased implementation. Also note that a franchise model could serve many retail stores well. Subway sandwich shops are roughly as numerous as McDonalds, but the corporations themselves have nowhere near the same number of employees. A franchise model could be used for roughly half the companies in your list. Isn't it more foolish to have dozens of companies that would destroy large parts of the country if something went really wrong with them? Haven't we learned that lesson by now?
justincormack 13y ago
Don't forget the government....

nimble 13y ago

Responding to your edit: I don't think his point was that 20,000 was too big to fail. The point is that 20,000 is too big, period. Any company over a certain size (certainly way less than 20,000) institutes internal procedures for smaller groups within the company to coordinate. How would we not all be better off if those smaller groups were independent competing actors?

jzwinck 13y ago

The proposal is foolish because it would impact a substantial number of businesses? I don't understand the logic: if it impacted few or no businesses, then it would be pointless. Since it is impactful, then it is foolish? Recall that I gave a timeline of some two decades for phased implementation. Also note that a franchise model could serve many retail stores well. Subway sandwich shops are roughly as numerous as McDonalds, but the corporations themselves have nowhere near the same number of employees. A franchise model could be used for roughly half the companies in your list. Isn't it more foolish to have dozens of companies that would destroy large parts of the country if something went really wrong with them? Haven't we learned that lesson by now?

justincormack 13y ago

Don't forget the government....