Pharmaceutical Evil

Ethical drug companies are anything but ethical

And of course, governments assist their villainous behavior.  Today, post Covid, we must acknowledge that the pharmaceutical industry is much worse than the tobacco industry.  If for no other reason than it affects more people.  But the truth is these firms are knowingly working against public and individual health in order to produce long term customers for their recently patented, expensive drugs.

Over the decades, I became skeptical of Big Pharma.  At first, I think it was all the creepy ads.  But later I noticed how physicians seemed to morph into little more than drug dealers.  Paid by us, their patients, and/or our insurance companies, but also handsomely paid by Big Pharma as well.

And by the time Covid came along, the grift was up.  At least for me.  But sadly not for most.  And today, the racket continues.  If during or after Covid, you were late to recognize the grift, only to do so in hindsight, welcome.  I myself did not learn about the complete lack of proper testing for any vaccines, until after Covid, and after I received a number of recommended vaccines for international travel.  But at this point, if you do not see the grift for what it is, you are recklessly naive regarding your own and your family's health.

As for the mRNA so-called vaccines, we still do not know what that was about.  What we do know absolutely is that they were not designed as a vaccine against Covid.  Are there any other vaccines that do not immunize against their target disease?  Any?  As Bret Weinstein recently pointed out, if these drugs were not designed to create immunity, perhaps they were purposefully designed to create some future vulnerability.  What other reason could there be to insist that every person on this planet receive multiple doses of this poison?

Pure evil.

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On Digital Pricing in Retail Environments

Yet another Walmart technology fail

This is not a consumer oriented website.  But I think this issue rises to the level of importance that it warrants inclusion here.  I featured Lindey Glenn in a post on McDonald's earlier this year.  Here she returns with a video on digital pricing in a Walmart retail store.

I have become a Glenn fan and she does excellent work in a usually entertaining fashion.

For those who may not know, Walmart has started using digital price displays on its shelves.  The prices shown on these displays can be changed at will by the company.  This lowers the labor cost involved and gives the company greater pricing flexibility.  But if you think this may not be as advantageous as Walmart does, you really should watch this video.

My question is:  Is Walmart acting out of malice for its customers or sheer incompetence.  I mean, hey, it's Walmart.  And Walmart's deployment of technology.  So almost assuredly, it is incompetence.

But this is what I walked alway from this video with:  In regard to digital pricing in any retail environment, whether the motivation is malice, purposeful deceit, or incompetence, the point is, shoppers should not trust it.

Even if the store does everything above board, say for example, they only change prices once a day, at midnight, the potential for abuse is high.  And further, we all know that retail businesses lust for the dynamic pricing precedent set by airlines and Uber.

Let's just imagine a future:  You push your cart past a display of Walmart toothpaste, on sale for $2.69.  But you just bought toothpaste last week, so you move along.  But somewhere around the auto parts section, you remember that you paid $3.19 for the same toothpaste last week.  So you return to the toothpaste display only to discover that now, ten minutes later, the price has changed to $2.99.

But that is not the worst of it; yes, the price changed, but only for you.  The system reads the MAC or IMEI identification number on your smartphone and says, hey, that guy was just here, let's charge him more.  Meanwhile, the next customer still gets the original $2.69 price.  And a third customer, who has never purchased this particular toothpaste before, gets a price of $2.49.

You do not have to be very creative to come up with any number of similar scenarios.  One day, the tags will only include QR codes and you have to use your phone to see the price.  So every customer will get their own unique price based on shopping history, demographics, credit score, education level, time of day, etc.

Take a date and time stamped photo of the digital price display tag (ESL, Electronic Shelf Label) of any important purchase.  Or even of any possible purchase.  And as in this video, do not put up with any bullshit.

Update, 4 July 2026

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McDonald's Update: Ice Cream Machines & Burgers

Low integrity management and low trust marketing

Let's update a post from three years ago, on McDonald's and the never-ending troubles they have with their Taylor ice cream machines.

So here I am on the other side of the world, in the Philippines.  And you often see Taylor ice cream machines here just as you do in all US McDonald's.  After that first post, I tend to notice these machines.  But yesterday I was in a Jollibee (the largest fast food chain in the country) and I noticed that they had removed their Taylor machine and replaced it with a Carpigiani, an Italian competitor.  Like the one in this photo.  Or see the actual machine, below.

So I asked the manager, Hey what's with the new machine and how long have you had it?  She said, Yeah, it's brand new, we've had it for two weeks.  Our Taylor machine was defective.  I said, Yeah, a lot of them are.

If you are wondering, machines from both companies sell for around $20,000 up to $60,0000 depending on model.  And that is before installation and setup fees, and ongoing maintenance costs. (Grok)

This was the same day that a video went viral of the McDonald's CEO, Chris Kempczinski, supposedly eating the company's newest "product," the Big Arch, with obvious distaste.  Yes, he referred to the burger as a product.  He originally posted the video in early February of this year.  Here is one reaction video:

Burger King also had a fun response.  As Lindey Glenn points out, it is practically guaranteed that Kempczinski does not eat McDonald's offerings.  Ever.  He's no Dave Thomas, or even Donald Trump.

By the way, I met Dave Thomas when I was in college; he always referred to Wendy's products as sandwiches, even the burgers.  Which I found a bit odd, but at least you never heard him refer to any of his burgers as a "product."  Kempczinski might as well be selling tube socks.

I have no doubt that Kempczinski is a smart guy.  But his inability to relate to McDonald's products, franchisees, and customers is concerning.  His unwillingness to correct the ice cream machine situation is disqualifying.  I do not believe this is gross incompetence; rather it appears to be gross misconduct.  Clearly he could solve the problem if he wanted.  But this is not an operational issue; it is an ethical problem.

Note, Dairy Queen also uses Taylor machines, though a different model, without issue.  Same for Wendy's, Burger King, and Chick-fil-A. (Grok)  Someone should insist on a remedy.

You gotta wonder how many Big Macs does the company have to sell in order to pay Kempczinski's daily tab at Michelin-starred brasseries?  McDonald's clearly hates their franchisees and their customers.  So the long history of questionable management continues.

Anyway, here's the Carpigiani machine I saw yesterday:



For reference, here is an older Taylor ice cream machine in a different Jollibee:

For those who do not know, Jollibee is primarily a chicken joint.  But they serve all of the fast food staples, like burgers, fries, and of course, soft serve ice cream.  And rice; nearly everything here comes with rice.  They also do a sweet spaghetti that is very popular with Filipinos.  In the US, where they have around eighty locations, they offer great looking chicken sandwiches.  But sadly, those are not available in the Philippines.

Update, 11 March 2026

Today, Lindey Glenn can explain Kempczinski's reaction to the new Big Arch.  My question is, if the burger is not ready for prime time, why did the CEO allow its market release?  Maybe it is gross incompetence after all.

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Stay Out of China

And stay away from Chinese nationals everywhere

The benefits are illusory and costs will bankrupt you.  It is a culture of corruption and cheating and short cuts.  It is not only CCP officials you have to worry about; remember Andrew Breitbart's adage:  Politics is downstream from culture.  You see this even with some Chinese-Americans who start businesses in the US.  It can be difficult for them to overcome the ingrained, native, low-trust culture.

Chinese culture is the societal embodiment of Gresham's Law.

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Email in 2025?

Is email hate justified?

Everyone seems to hate email for different reasons.  It may be 2025, but it seems like email hate has always been with us.

Here is a 2017 interview with perhaps the most famous email hater, Paul Jones.

And I really do not have any qualms with his arguments, then or now.  But my question is and has always been:  But what is better?

Is there a way to communicate universally without having to set up a Facebook page, or some type of group chat, or coordinate the various communications apps that various people and organizations use?

The answer for the last thirty years, and still today, is yes.  Email.  Only email.

The closest thing to the ease of email is SMS text messaging.  And I don't know about you, but if it is anything even slightly complex, text messaging is just more trouble than it is worth.

Even email does not lend itself to extremely complex issues.  I tell people, if it is that complex, expect a phone call.  Yes, you read that correctly.  And of course, the most complex issues still, in 2025, require...wait for it...a meeting.

My younger clients often pushed back on this, especially the phone calls.  But I would say to them:  I am not going to discuss something as complicated and nuanced as a real estate transaction via text message.  I mean the contract alone is twenty pages long.  Take my calls, or hire someone else.  And always, by the end of it, they had seen the light.

So let's take these universal communication methods in order, for dealing with complexity, from most complex to least complex.

1. Meeting
2. Phone call (here, perhaps we can add videoconferencing)
3. Email
4. SMS text

Yes, I am leaving out postal letters; also a perfectly acceptable universal communication method.  But I am assuming some element of modern urgency.  If that does not exist, letter-writing should be added to the above.  And while we are on truly outdated methods, when I started my career, one wrote memoranda.  Yes, on paper.  Does anyone still do that?  I always loved a good memo.  Maybe that explains my extended attachment to email.

But why are other apps not included?  Because they are not universal and perhaps never will be.  The closest app that might work is Signal, and that is only because most security-minded people already use it.  But if your company uses Slack, and your customer does not, what are you going to do?  Even the videoconferencing, which I have included, requires coordination on what system we will be using and what time we will be using it.  And, the associated learning curb.

In fact, there is a learning curb for all apps.  And I suppose there is a learning curb for the above four, but most of us absorb these pretty early on.

So it is the universality of email that is so valuable.  And the email haters don't seem to grasp this.

There is a second feature of email that I also believe to be valuable.  An email does not have to conform to any particular app's structure and parameters.  An email is like starting with a blank sheet of paper.

When we have an app that I can use to reach anyone with any message, we can then add a number five.  It may be 2025, but I still do not see that alternative.

Are there things we can do to make email more palatable and efficient?  Let's break it down.

• To alleviate the spam problem, use white & black lists.  As a still current email user, I will say that this works like a charm.  But it does require an initial time investment to set it up.  The upside is that I get maybe one spam email in my inbox per week.
• Treat email like a fast letter, rather than a slow phone call.  Send emails at any time, but only check your emails and/or respond when it suits you.  I think if we applied this rule to all forms of communication, we'd all be quite a bit happier.
• Only communicate with people who know how to write.  My question would be:  Do you really want to do business with someone who does not know how to write?  They will have other issues as well.
• Be prepared to mix and match communication methods.  For instance:  Yep got your text, but I'll have to respond in an email/phone call, etc.  Sure there is utility in keeping a chain of communication together.  But I would say efficiency is probably more important.  It is easy to ask a question via text; the answer may require a two-page response, not to mention any follow-up questions.  Text-only fans ignore this issue.
• In fact, it seems to me that the people most unhappy with email view it like a phone call, with lots of back and forth.  And it can be that.  But if we are trying to be efficient, would not an actual phone call be better?
• I have absolutely nothing against texts or chat apps.  But these suffer from a right now factor.  Once you accept that this is not necessary for email, its utility goes through the roof.  Respond in an hour, respond when you get back to your desk, respond after a trip to the basement archives, respond tomorrow, you get the idea.  Remember, fast letter, not slow phone call.
• If you want to text me about where we are meeting for lunch, great.  But if you seriously expect to discuss something more complicated via text, it only means that you are not serious.  Any yes, many people, perhaps most people, are not serious about anything.
• If others expect you to respond to their emails as you would to a phone call or a chat, just don't.  And see what happens.  If it is truly that urgent, you will get a call or a text.  If your boss expects immediate responses from his emails, likely he has other unreasonable expectations as well.  It is not about email.
• The overall point is that in the ecosystem of communications, email remains a useful tool.  And those who abandon it lose the use of that tool.
• We still have letters and phone calls.  And while we may have new tools in our tool belt, we still have access to these.  Why?  Because they continue to be useful.  I bet even Paul Jones takes the occasional phone call.

Many of the problems that we associate with email are not actually about email.  They are rather about unreasonable expectations and inconsiderate users.  If other users abuse the tool, that does not mean that you must.  And it does not mean that you somehow must tolerate their abuse.  Just don't.

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Proposal: Gold Bank

The benefits of cryptocurrency without all the nonsense

Here's what we do.  Let's start a bank where all deposits and withdrawals are made in gold bullion.  Each depositor's balance will be listed as gold weight on deposit.  And let us place our depository someplace safe, like Switzerland.

Before we start pondering the logistical nightmare of such an arrangement, what with delivery, assaying (verification), acceptance, etc., let us consider one other simple possibility.  How about this?  Deposits can be made in any major currency, and that currency will, immediately on deposit, be used to purchase gold at the then current market price.  So for example, if you deposit one thousand dollars, your account will then reflect not the one thousand dollars, but rather that amount in gold bullion.

The bank will issue each account holder checkbooks and debit cards, which will allow customers to spend their funds as with any bank.  Spend ten dollars at Walmart, and your account will reflect a ten-dollar reduction in your deposited gold weight.  Need cash to pay your babysitter?  Debit cards will work in the ATM.

The bank will purchase and sell gold daily on the open market to facilitate deposits and withdrawals.  Since the bank is buying and selling based on the collective needs of all depositors, the bank would receive the best possible commissions and spreads on these transactions.  Then of course, these expenses would be shared among deposit holders based on their respective transactions.  It is worth noting that to the extent that deposits and withdrawals match, the only cost to the bank would be the bookkeeping charge of moving funds from one account to another.

The bank will maintain a high percentage of gold in its depository.  Maybe 85%.  The remaining gold deposits would be holdings of various gold instruments like ETFs.  This is to insure quick and inexpensive purchases and sales.

The benefit of such an arrangement is that funds are maintained in bullion and not dollars or any other currency.  These deposits are therefore immune to the irresponsibility of modern governments and the fragility of their respective currencies.

Start your own gold bank

Individuals can limit their exposure to the dollar in a similar fashion.  Invest in gold ETFs and move investment income into these ETFs, and keep funds there, rather than in dollars.  It is the same if you get a paycheck; roll your dollars into gold ETFs.

First Bank of Blockchain

This model is deposit/withdraw/spend in dollars (or any government-sponsored currency) and store in gold.  But clearly, and perhaps more easily, this could also be done with cryptocurrency.  Why has no one has thought to do this?  If the crypto folks want to be taken seriously, they need to get rid of the Sam Bankman-Fried type grifters, and bring in some serious players.

One certain takeaway from the Trump-Musk split and the Big Beautiful Bill is that relative to the US dollar, gold is the safer store of long term value.  Sure there may be some minor fluctuations here and there.  But for now this is a political certainty:  There is zero will among US politicians to control dollar-denominated US government debt.  At this point I think it is safe to say:  The US national debt will never be paid off.  Never.  Even if, magically, the politicians develop the will, at this point they lack the ability.

What does this mean?  Three possibilities.  One, the politicians will devalue the dollar.  Think one new dollar for ten old dollars.  Two, the politicians will attempt to monetize the debt by a long term policy of increasing and sustaining inflation.  Basically it is devaluing the dollar in slow motion.  Three, at some point the bond and currency markets will force a dollar devaluation.  Since the politicians are not going to address the debt in any meaningful way, one of these three, or some combination, is inevitable.

One thing US politicians will not abide is default.  At least not in name.  But devaluation, however it comes, is a form of default.  So yes, sooner or later, the US government will default on its obligations.

Individuals can prepare for this by:  Not owning debt.  Especially not government debt, but I would add, do not own any dollar-denominated debt.  If you own dollar-denominated bonds, get rid of them.  If the state of New York owes you one thousand dollars, in the form of a bond, they will be delighted to pay you back in devalued dollars.  And this is true for any and every bond issuer.

So no bonds and no dollars.  Do own real estate, gold, common stocks.  Although I would avoid equities of businesses that own a lot of debt, that is banks and other lenders.  If you are not a believer in gold, fine.  But keep your rents and dividends in gold short term until you are able to reinvest.  In terms of which common stocks to own, I would focus on companies with an economic franchise as defined by Warren Buffett.

Speaking of Mr. Buffett, he is sitting on all this cash ($350 billion) and is, famously, no fan of gold.  Surely you are not disagreeing with the oracle of Omaha?

But how much better is cash than gold?  Cash suffers the same basic problem as gold:  A store of value without income.  Gold provides no income and cash only offers slightly more than none.  The reason Buffett maintains cash is in order to move quickly into the market at a time of his choosing.  Also this:  One might remember that the only reason cash offers any income at all is the fact that almost all cash is stored in, invested in, some form of debt.

Mr. Buffett was born in 1930.  His life has spanned the length of US hegemony.  And surely that affects how he sees the world.  Buffett may be old, but the man is not stupid.  My guess is that he will attempt to relieve himself of all that cash (into some hard, income-producing assets) before the coming monetary collapse (whether fast or slow).  He is betting that the stock market will collapse before the dollar.  The history of American hegemony tells him this is a good bet.

I am not so sure.

Current US national debt is $273,500 per household.  Household net worth is around $176,500.  A figure which of course does not include national debt.  You can do your own math.

Here's Grok:

As of December 2024, the U.S. national debt as a percentage of GDP is approximately 124%.  This is based on data indicating the national debt reached $36.22 trillion, with a nominal GDP of around $29.2 trillion.  At the end of World War II in 1946, the debt-to-GDP ratio was about 106%, with a public debt of $241.86 billion against a smaller GDP.

The current ratio of 124% is notably higher than the post-WWII peak of 106%.  The increase reflects significant government spending during recent events like the COVID-19 pandemic, which drove debt levels up, compared to the post-WWII period where economic growth, primary budget surpluses, and inflation helped reduce the ratio over time.

In other words, we have the highest government debt level in modern history, no political will to reduce it, and actually no will to reduce its continued growth.  For all the left-wing hate of Donald Trump, one might note that he is not, and has never been, a fiscal conservative.

Maybe Mr. Buffett is correct.  But if the stock market does collapse with this level of national debt, what are the odds that the dollar will collapse along with the stock market?

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Marketing is Not Dead

The forgotten art of an effective television commercial

Today, most British commercials are wholly uninspiring.  Like this, this, this, this, this, and this.  All currently running television campaigns and all dreadful.  I mean for the love of God:  Domin-oh-hoo-hoo.  What is that?  And notice the extremely light product focus in all of these commercials.

There is one Domino's commercial featuring a live hedgehog supposedly coming out of hibernation.  The unappetizing critter makes no sound, but the helpfully provided closed captioning offers his thoughts:  Dominos?  That's it, that's the whole commercial.  It is so bad that no one has added it to Youtube.

Then comes something else entirely.  Created by BBH (Bartle Bogle Hegarty), led by Creative Director, Felipe Serradourada Guimaraes.  Sure, it is an emotional appeal ad, but at the same time, it is entirely product focused.

Grok offers some background on the campaign.  Find the music here.

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The Banality of Academic Group Work

Back in the eighties, American businesses, large and small, were scared to death of Japan, Inc.  I am not at all sure this fear was justified, but at the time, it was all too palpable.  Consequently, business schools in the United States started studying the way business and industry worked in Japan, hoping to emulate some of their success.

Well it did not take a lot of work or intelligence to realize that Japan has a consensus culture.  And their businesses are also run by consensus.  And the only way to achieve consensus is to ask everyone for their input.  And pre-internet, the best way to do this was to bring together all the key players and discuss the situation and come to the hoped-for consensus.

However long that might take.  And however good or bad the resulting decision.

What our crack business academics saw were groups of Japanese managers coming together to achieve some desired outcome.  And they said:  Hey, we need to do that too.

To be fair, business schools were previously teaching group collaboration.  But it was Japan, Inc. that supercharged the practice.

Now it just so happened that I was in business school in the late eighties.  And we students were early test subjects for this new urgency.  So the professors started assigning group projects.  The idea, ostensibly, was for us to learn to work together to achieve the best result.  Sounds great in theory.

And while the practice was new to me, at first I did not really mind it.  Just another way of getting the work done.  But it soon became clear, that in an academic setting, even at a top-tier school, as opposed to a real, profit-driven, operating business, some group members contributed more than others.  This was always going to be the case.  It is just human nature; some people are more motivated than others.

Yet I did have the opportunity to work with groups entirely comprised of smart, highly motivated individuals.  And I certainly have over the course of my career.  These groups prove the academics' theory is true if groups are in fact so comprised.  But most often teachers assemble academic groups with a diverse mix of contributors.  Here, and without apology, the academics fully expect the strong to carry the weak.

In a business, weak performers can be fired, or otherwise removed from a collaboration.  And even if this is not done, say for political or nepotistic reasons, everyone knows.  But in an academic setting this is never done because the academics do not really understand how things truly work.  They seem to believe that one must learn to work with and appreciate weak performers.  I never have.

Two immediate problems.  One, and the professors readily acknowledged this, is that groups tend to produce results that are better than what the worst-performing members could produce on their own.  But at the same time, inferior to what the best-performing members could produce on their own.  In the aggregate, coming in slightly above average.  This is just common sense.  I guess academics believe that slightly above average is still above average and therefore worth pursuing.

But the outcome is an inferior result; certainly inferior to optimal or best.

The second immediate problem is the result takes longer than necessary because of all the time spent coming to the magical consensus.  I mean the best group members have to spend time trying to convince the worst group members of the correct direction.  And even then, because consensus is the driving force, the group will elect a suboptimal approach.

This is what happens when the real goal is not an optimal and timely result, but rather a consensus-driven result.  So groups produce suboptimal and time consuming results.

Not to pick on Japan.  Because it is really American academics who are to blame for this nonsense.  But a great example of what I am talking about was the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident, where indecision and delay led to more serious consequences.  Delay caused while they were trying to reach the Japanese cultural imperative of consensus.

Nevertheless, the idea that group consensus should determine our management and business direction took off in academic quarters.  Further, this idea infused other academic departments, most notably the notoriously less-than-rigorous education departments.  Education professors just loved the idea and added it to their pedagogical methods.

Over the decades since, as businesses will do, they have adapted what works and what does not work, into useful and productive business practices.  What I mean is that if a situation calls for group consensus that is what a business will do.  But if a situation would be ill-served by such a practice, they are not about to impose it to merely fulfill some academic standard.

But no matter what, top performers hate any practice which limits their, well, performance.  This is why you find the best people in entrepreneurial roles, not middle management.  Leave the corporate bureaucracy and academic claptrap to Boeing and Disney.

Now I have no idea if business schools are still teaching groups and consensus-driven decision making.  But they specialize in producing mediocre performers, so probably so.  But you know who is absolutely still pushing this?  Education departments.  The education academics in their wisdom have decided that groups produce higher quality pedagogical results.  It's nonsense of course because the same results happen in education that happen in business.  That is, the results are only better than what the worst-performing members could produce on their own.  But that seems to be perfectly okay for our educators.

So teachers, all kinds of teachers, have been taught to use groups.  Where a couple of generations ago, the teacher would have made an assignment to all individual members of a class, today they're likely to divide the class into groups and make the assignment to each group.

So has academic excellence been drilled out of our current generation of educators?  Do teachers even recognize the inherent problem of group suboptimal performance?  Do they even care?

I do not believe they do.

Why?  Because if a teacher has twenty-eight students in her class and divides them into seven groups of four students each, then the teacher has to read and grade only seven assignments instead of twenty-eight.  Yes, it is just that simple.

So this is the why; my theory anyway.  But there is one last problem.  Who pays?  Well the best, most motivated students of course.  Because they end up doing all the work.  This is not terrible; if assignments were made individually, they would be doing all of their own work anyway.  But group assignments do tend to be larger (because supposedly all members are contributing).  But naturally this is not what happens.  The lazy, unmotivated students contribute little or nothing.  And the bright, motivated students have to carry them along.

Strangely, this never seems to concern the teachers.

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* Apologies to Hannah Arendt.

The List

Corporations supporting gender ideology and the radical trans agenda

You cannot just not buy Bud Light or Jack Daniels.  No one at Bud Light made this most recent marketing decision, no matter what Alissa Heinerscheid might have you believe.  These decisions are simply not made at the brand level.  Rather, they are made higher up the corporate food chain.  So it is not just Bud Light, but all of the AB Inbev brands that we should boycott...er, reconsider.

Anyway, I think we should start a list:

AB InBev (Owner of Bud Light – All brands)

Brown-Forman (Owner of Jack Daniels – All brands)

Diageo (Owner of J&B Scotch Whiskey – All brands)

Hershey's Chocolate (All brands)

L'Oréal (Owner of Maybelline – All brands)

Nike (Owner of Nike women's wear – Also Converse)

Proctor & Gamble (Owner of Gillette – All brands)

Plus consider this:  Isn't it funny that AB Inbev chose to target the Bud Light customer base rather than, say for example, the Michelob Ultra customer base?  Surely the Ultra customer base would have been much more receptive to this advertising scheme.  So why did they choose Bud Light?  The only possible answer to that question is that this is not a beer marketing campaign.  It is rather a pro trans campaign (and lecture), which the company has decided is more important than this particular brand.  In other words, they decided to sacrifice the brand and its customers for what they believe to be the greater good.  Clearly they hold the Bud Light customer base in contempt, people in need of a good lecture.

In any case, how hard is it to choose a Heineken?  Or switch to Jeremy's Razors or pick up a Cadbury bar?  Jeremy has chocolate too.  All I can add is thank God Diageo sold Bombay Sapphire to Bacardi 25 years ago.  But will Bacardi be far behind?  I have never been a Bud Light drinker.  I'm not even a big beer drinker.  But on occasion when I have had a taste for a beer, I have quite often picked up Michelob Ultra.  I wonder if AB Inbev factored that into their analysis?  They are not stupid, so clearly they just don't care.

Of course, the decision makers are managers, not owners.  So hey, it's not their own money they're throwing away.  And the bulk of their owners are other institutions, also run by the management class.  So turns out, there is little or no accountability for these decisions.

Anyway back to the list, if you look at it in this comprehensive way, well that's a lot of products.  Too many to keep up with.  But I hope this list helps.  We all do what we can.

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Maybe it's the Hair

FTX head honcho, Sam Bankman-Fried (left) and WeWork boss, Adam Neumann (right)

Am I the only one who notices that an adult haircut might be some type of indicator of... er, financial responsibility?  I mean seriously, would you invest money with these guys?

You cannot use the same logic based on what they wear.  We've seen photos of both of these guys in business attire.  They are willing to put on a coat and tie when necessary.  But they are unwilling to get a proper haircut.  Maybe we should pay attention to that.

I have written previously about all the beards.
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McDonald's is Wasting Ray Kroc's Legacy

It is a slow motion corporate suicide

When I was a kid, I always liked McDonald's.  But I stopped patronizing them when the bad experiences became the rule, rather than the exception.  In the last, say, twenty-five years, I have only eaten at McDonald's in a pinch.  Here in the Philippines, my wife and I have been to McDonald's exactly three times.  Each time for breakfast, when it was the only available option.  Our orders were wrong every time.  It is no big deal to me.  Bad service; I just quit giving them money.

But for many years it has been obvious to me that there is something very wrong with McDonald's.  It is a management problem.  Without caring enough to do some research, that's about all I knew about it.  But their bad behavior stretches back to the early 1970's when they ripped-off their whole McDonaldland ad campaign.  More recently, McDonald's managers failed to warn franchisees about abusive hoax phone calls.  Courts ruled against McDonald's in both of these cases.  But for McDonald's, the judgments were peanuts.  What kind of people act this way? 

Well, people who figure it will be cheaper to pay a judgment rather than act in a responsible manner.  Nevertheless, over the years, I have known many people who have bought McDonald's stock, and swear by it.  I never joined them.

The video above is almost two years old, but it only popped up on my YouTube home page today.  Now "broken" ice cream machines are a well-known and longstanding problem with McDonald's.  And like many people, I always assumed that the problem was that McDonald's employees just did not want the hassle of cleaning the machines.  So they would tell everyone that the machine is out-of-order.  But it turns out, the problem is much more systemic.  This is yet another corporate management problem.  And I suspect, at its core, this is another ethical problem.

The video confirms what I have long suspected about McDonald's management and management attitude.  While I am rather leery of franchising in general, it is worth noting that McDonald's corporate managers do not work for the franchisees.  No franchisor does.  To my mind, it's just a bad business model for the franchisees.  But I am not even convinced that McDonald's managers know they work for the shareholders.  And they sure-as-hell don't work for the customers.

After World War Two, it took forty years for Montgomery Ward to go out-of-business.  Sear's utterly incompetent management followed, but somewhat faster.  I do wonder if McDonald's is going down the same path.  These corporate fat cats become complacent.  And entrenched.  And deaf.

That is what this story is really about.  Broken ice cream machines are not the problem; they are a symptom.  The root problem is bad, unresponsive management.  They are, at best, incompetent.  At worst, they're still the unethical management organization that they were fifty years ago.  Judge for yourself.

You see, after a management team goes bad, they tend to perpetuate their problems, however they manifest.  At upper levels of an organization, it is almost impossible for a bad manager to hire and/or retain a good manager.  It just doesn't happen.  Gresham's Law kicks in:  The bad drive out the good.  There is just no way a bad manager, incompetent or dishonest, can keep a competent, honest manager around.  So what do they do?  They hire people as bad or worse than themselves.  This can go on for years.

I mean what are the odds that the CEO of McDonald's is unaware of their ice cream problem?  One can only speculate why he has not fixed it.  And make no mistake, this is a fixable problem.  Just ask Wendys, or Chick-fil-A, or even Burger King.  Ask Dairy Queen.  The current CEO has been with the company since 2015.  He was appointed CEO in 2019 after the board fired the previous CEO.  No surprise there.  It is also worth noting that the company has had three CEOs in the last ten years.

This whole thing is an unmitigated disaster for McDonald's.  That video has over eleven million views.  And just think about it.  To watch a half hour video on something as esoteric as McDonald's ice cream machine problem.  Who would do that?  Well, perhaps the millions of frustrated customers.  Perhaps all of their competitors.

At this very hour, two years later, twelve percent of McDonald's machines are down.  Note, that is two years since the video came out; the problem was around for years before that.  So where is the CEO?  My guess?  He's out playing golf with the Taylor (ice cream machine) CEO.  Also, I would not be surprised if he hasn't spent a good part of the last two years bullying Google to take down that video:  Take that video down or McDonald's will pull all advertising off YouTube.  Though, I am surprised he has failed (so far).  I'd be willing to bet that he has spent more time on the PR aspects of this problem than on the actual, fixable, problem itself.  Actually, we know this is true because otherwise, the problem would be fixed.

In any case, at some point it becomes impossible to turn around an organization without outside intervention.  And I don't mean bankruptcy; I mean a Carl Icahn type intervention.  Someone who will come in and fire everyone.

The franchisees can only hope.  They're pretty much stuck with the bad McDonald's management.  Though yes, they did volunteer.

The customers can only hope.  But they might just eventually decamp to Wendy's and Dairy Queen.

And, the shareholder's?  Well so far the management problem has not had a major impact on the company's performance.  But how long will that last?

And Taylor?  I cannot end without some comment on their role in all this.  Evidently Taylor does make ice cream machines that work.  So they make a number of machines that work, plus they make the McDonald's machine which does not work.  So clearly they are intentionally selling McDonald's franchisees defective machines in order to juice their repair business.  And that is bad and also unethical.  But here's the thing.  McDonald's knows about this problem and yet they have forced their franchisees to buy the machines anyway.  Taylor is not forcing them to buy the defective product; McDonald's is.  As bad as Taylor's role in this fiasco may be, McDonald's is so much worse.

Again, no surprise.

Now almost six years ago, there was a report (behind paywall) in the The Wall Street Journal that McDonald's would allow franchisees to purchase a machine from a Taylor competitor.  I have no idea what happened with this.  You would think that would have been the end of it.  But clearly not – when twelve percent of their machines are still down.  Could the franchisees not also buy other model Taylor machines?  You know, the ones that work?  If an alternative has been available for so long, why is there still a problem?  One suspects the answer to that question points back to McDonald's management.

In any case, what would be the "worst case fix" for this problem?  Well, McDonald's could pull out all the defective Taylor machines.  Sure, sue Taylor if you like.  But first get rid of the machines.  One wonders why they don't do this?  Cost?  In a cost versus reputation contest, what wins?  But my guess is that it is not cost or reputation that really matters.

No something stinks.  There's an ethical problem here somewhere.

Update, 7 March 2026

Find an update to this story here.

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How We Got Here

Big pharma, a complicit medical establishment, corrupt & incompetent governments, a subversive & irredeemable education system, and a credulous populace with no faculty for critical thought

I have just finished watching the Netflix docuseries, Don't Pick Up the Phone.  It is just amazing to me how many people are willing to blindly follow authority.  Even if the authority is untrustworthy or incompetent or completely fake.  Yes, I am aware that there was a 2012 movie, Compliance, on the same subject.  But I never saw it.  I'm guessing not many people saw it.

Compliance is a choice.  And regarding Covid, most of us chose poorly.  Not all of us.  With much difficulty and some legal risk, my family and I completely eschewed the so-called vaccines.  I wish good luck to the rest of you.  But many of you will never pay for your recklessness.  However, there seems to be an increasing number of people who are paying dearly.

And yet, the mandates continue.  I realize that the world has always known and experienced evil.  Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, the Soviet Union, Jim Crow, etc.  Just to name a few cases from the last century.  But the list is endless.

However, the Covid lockdowns and mandates set a new and disturbing precedent for the breadth of evil.  I think you would be hard-pressed to find a previous example of evil on a scale this broad.  I mean, from the United Nations, to national governments, to state and local governments, to employers and schools, right down to the squawking Karens at the grocery stores.  That is, virtually all of our leadership class, and so many of our friends and family and neighbors and colleagues.  It's widely understood that we have the worst leadership class in generations.  But it turns out, we are surrounded by blind, unthinking, sequacious sheep.

Sure, I blame Biden and Fauci, and the governors, and the medical establishment, and the teachers.  But dear reader, those of you who have shown unquestioning compliance, are every bit as evil as Fauci's capricious pronouncements.  Especially if you have given these untested drugs to your children.

Who does that?

What is that?

Evil is the only word to describe it.

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The Complete Hypocrisy of the Left

Every time I encounter some lefty-type preaching their sanctimonious drivel, I compliment them on some article of clothing they happen to be wearing.  They are always completely oblivious to the irony.

Better yet, tell them how much you like their Volvo.  Or their Subaru.  Or even their Prius.  They'll eat it up.

What?  You got a new Tesla?  It's lovely!

Yes comrades, you too, benefit from capitalism.  Otherwise, you'd be driving a Lada-like contraption with faulty brakes and dressing like a North Korean.

Now I'm sure the good folks at North Face are not socialists.  Rather, no doubt, they consider themselves to be responsible capitalists.  Right?  The problem is they are complete hypocrites.  As are almost all left-of-center types.

What?  You don't like three-dollar-a-gallon gasoline?  Well, you voted for it.

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New York City is Begging Businesses to Leave

Louis Rossmann asks Why am I still here?

Make no mistake about it, government does not work for you.  You work for government.  NYC just does not care to hide it any longer.  Not that Bill de Blasio's city government cares, but this video has over 1.1 million views, making it one of Rossmann's most popular videos in a mere two weeks.

Good job New York City!

Anyone thinking of moving to New York City, or God forbid starting a business there, should watch some of his videos.

Michael Goodwin has more:  The possibility of permanent decline and the ultimate destruction of the New York we know is unmatched in modern memory.

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On Integrity

For the last twenty years I have worked in the real estate business.  It is a business with a well deserved reputation for low integrity.  The way I have dealt with this is that, from the beginning, I set a zero tolerance policy for dishonesty or any type of low integrity behavior.  I could not and cannot control what other brokers do.  And I certainly have no control over Realtor organizational policy.  But I can control my behavior and of the conduct of the brokers working for me.  That's not quite right.  I do not control their conduct.  Rather, I am very choosy about who works with me.  This policy has served us well.

When Covid struck in early 2020, I spent the first months of the crisis completing a long-planned book on competence and integrity in the real estate business.  And why these qualities are so rare in this business.  Clearly, this is a subject dear to my heart.  But as the pandemic stretched on through 2020, I had to find something other than real estate to pay the bills.

The path of least resistance led me to Amazon.  I have long admired the company as a customer and more recently as a writer.  It seemed like an ideal solution for me.  And I talked about their hiring process here; it is ridiculously easy to get a job there.  So off I went, hoping to ride out the storm.

But after working at Amazon for only a few weeks, imagine my surprise when I discover that the company's managers have no more integrity than your typical real estate broker.  My surprise and my disappointment.  Because while I can choose who surrounds me in the real estate business, there was very little I could do about it at Amazon.

Perhaps if I had come from some other field, I would have been more accepting of the managerial deficiencies.  I know you find this everywhere.  But I have spent twenty years making damn sure that our firm operates with the highest possible level of integrity.

At this point, I just cannot tolerate anything less.

I couldn't do it.

One final point.  We encounter low integrity brokers all the time.  I have learned that it is a waste of time to try to reason with them.  You are certainly not going to change them.  And it is not your job to do so.  You can't and won't make them better people.  Also, don't explain yourself.  Explaining high integrity decisions and actions to a low integrity individual is a complete waste of time.  But there is good news:  I assure you, high integrity plus smart always trumps low integrity.  Always.  Because low integrity is never smart.  I have never run across a low integrity individual who is especially clever.  They are never as smart as they think they are.  The best you can do is first act how you think best, and then remove yourself from their environment.

There you have it:  Life lessons from a low integrity business.

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Leaving the Chocolate Factory

Chased Off

I wrote back in January about going to work in an Amazon fulfillment center.  I have been sort of languishing in the role for a while.  Tonight was my last shift.

My managers liked me well enough; they certainly liked my work ethic.  But I’m not sure they knew what to do with me.  Plus in retrospect, I think I was a bit too observant for their tastes.

One night our Area Manager (the boss) asks me what the problem is.  I had been rather cool towards him for a couple of weeks.  I mean I worked hard, I did my job, but I’d pretty much nod and get on with it.

He noticed:  “Okay, what’s going on?”

“Not to worry Chase, I’m leaving.”

“Really?  Why is that?”

“Well, I feel manipulated.”

I saw it in his expression, he knew exactly what I meant.  See, he had given me a highly unusual year end bonus.  Tiny.  So small that it could only be seen as a symbolic gesture.  He did not even call it a bonus; he called it a thank you.  But it worked.  I felt like my hard work was appreciated.

A week later, he asked a few people to apply for promotion.  I was not among them.

Complete mea culpa.  “You’re absolutely right, I meant to ask you.  But then I was out for two weeks.”

I never learned why.

“I’ll fix it.”

By this point, I did not know if he could be trusted.  And as I mentioned in my original piece, I had noticed some things about how the department was run that made me wonder.

A couple of days went by.  Then, low and behold, he moves me.

“I want you to do this a couple of nights a week and water spider a couple of nights.”

Water spider is the Amazon term for the guy who delivers unmade boxes and other supplies to the packers.  I had been doing this job practically since I started.  It's easily the worst job in the building, but I never complained.  I worked my ass off and he knew it.

“Great.”

So he moves me to the label printers.  Ten industrial printers that print the address labels for the now packed boxes and envelopes.  They are pretty amazing:  The boxes and envelopes are of all different shapes and sizes, and these machines apply the labels to them while they are moving.  They need quite a bit of tending.

It’s not that it is a step up.  But to get ahead at Amazon, you need to have exposure to as many different roles as possible.  A few days later, he moves me again, to the main sort router, keeping product inventory flowing to the packers.

His Process Assistant, T.J., tells me:  “We are moving you to vital roles that keep the business running.”  So for the first time in over a month, I actually felt good about what I was doing.  But it was fleeting because I spent less than one full shift in each of these roles.  Evidently Chase did not believe me when I told him I was leaving.  Or more likely, didn't care.  I don't think he had any intention of moving me.  This was just further manipulation.

And hey I understand, a good box guy is almost impossible to find!  Seriously, for a few bucks and a few insincere promises, he got the hardest working water spider he could imagine for, well, as long as he could sucker me into staying.  I guess he thought that was a pretty good trade-off.  But I can only allow myself to be played for so long.

Twenty years in the real estate business and thirty years as an entrepreneur have taught me to be a pretty decent judge of character.  The guy's a bit shady, and I just don't want to work for someone I cannot trust.  I'll happily do the least desirable job.  And do it well.  But don't lie to me.  I gave Chase every opportunity to prove me wrong.  But once I was convinced of his inherent dishonesty, I left.

I am rather glum about it.  I loved the idea of working for Amazon.  The actual experience...not so much.

Oompa Loompa doompedee doo...

I need some boxes...I’m looking for you.

Oompa Loompa doompedee dee...

I’ll find a dupe who will fetch them for me!

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Just Getting Some Exercise

Working in the Chocolate Factory

I’m a box guy.

At Amazon, they call us water spiders.  It’s a Japanese term derived from the principles of lean manufacturing.  I personally think the term is ridiculous.  I bring boxes and other supplies to the packers.  The packers do just that; they pack customer orders.

Amazon has an amazing system for delivering product inventory to the packers.  But when setting up this system, I don’t believe they gave any thought whatsoever to the boxes.  Box delivery can only be described as chaotic.

So be it.  Whatever.  Someone has to deliver unmade boxes to the packers, and for some reason the managers have given me that job.  Because we water spiders get to move around freely, I would say it is a slightly better position than packer.  But that is totally subjective because, if done well, the job is completely exhausting.

In any case, the way it works is each box guy is assigned a certain number of packers.  And we spend our shift carting boxes to them.

We don’t get the same packers every shift.  The packers are moved around from shift to shift.  And so, with every shift I get a new set of packers.  At any one time, there are up to 84 packers and four box guys.  So I have twenty or so packers to serve.

The point is, sooner or later, I meet all the packers.  Some are very nice; some not so much.  I don’t mind if a packer is not nice, but for me to properly serve them, they do need to be civil.  If not, well, they just don’t get boxes.  That’s a problem for them because Amazon is constantly monitoring their pack rate, how many items and boxes they are packing per hour.  And if I do not bring them boxes, they have to go get them themselves, eating time and lowering their rate.  I should get in trouble for this.  But I don’t.  The managers know fully well how hard I work.

A packer can call a box guy at any time by turning on a light.  But more typically, I just go down the line getting them whatever they need.  So sooner or later, I get to know all the packers and all the packers get to know me.

Am I boring you yet?  I tell you all this to sort of paint the picture.

Like almost everyone, when I started working at Amazon, I was a packer.  But after a couple of weeks, they moved me into the water spider role.  Like I said, it’s exhausting.  But on the bright side, it is like going to the gym for ten to twelve hours, and getting paid for it.

Before I started working at Amazon, I had no expectations about what I would be doing.  Then after I started packing boxes, I did wonder if I could do that for four nights a week.  Four ten-hour shifts a week.  Five eleven-hour shifts during the holiday season.  Then after they made me a water spider, I wondered if I could do that.  They made me a box guy just in time for the holidays.  So five eleven-hour shifts of carting boxes around.

I promptly lost thirty pounds.

After working at the company for about three months, my de facto supervisor, Cohnson, asks me:  “Reuben, what the hell are you doing here?”

“Me?  Hey, I’m just getting some exercise."

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