
The economic environment is becoming less favorable for large Western companies - Oatseller
https://hbr.org/2015/10/the-future-and-how-to-survive-it
======
Animats
What's so striking is the high percentage of family-owned large companies in
emerging economies. Arguably, this is also happening in the US, with two-tier
stock schemes keeping founders in control. 80 people now own half the world's
net worth. Here's the list.[1] The 20th century was the century of the big,
publicly held corporation. The 21st century may be the century of the
oligarch.

This is new. Only four years ago, it was 388 people, not just 80.

The top 10:

    
    
        1   Bill Gates	$76B	USA		Tech
    
        2	Carlos Slim	$72B	Mexico		Telecom
    
        3	Amancio Ortega	$64B	Spain		Retail
    
        4	Warren Buffett	$58B	USA		Finance
    
        5	Larry Ellison	$48B	USA		Tech
    
        6	Charles Koch	$40B	USA	 	Diversified
    
        7	David Koch	$40B	USA	 	Diversified
    
        8	Sheldon Adelson	$38B	USA		Entertainment
    
        9	Christy Walton	$37B	USA	 	Retail
    
        10	Jim Walton      $35B	USA	 	Retail
    

In the 1960s, there was one billionaire in the world - John Paul Getty, of
Getty Oil. We've come a long way.

[1] [http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/meet-the-80-people-who-
ar...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/meet-the-80-people-who-are-as-rich-
as-half-the-world/)

~~~
deciplex
One nice thing about having such outsized concentration of wealth is that once
the rest of us get totally fed up with this shit, it is much easier to
confiscate.

~~~
TheLogothete
So you don't care that all of humanity is living objectively better now vs.
the rest of history. You just care that some people are filthy rich and you
don't like them one bit. So, lynch them, take their money, made mostly through
their labor and inovation and let the proletariat rule! Nice. Very nice
actually, except for the fact that this idea already played out and crashed
and burned as the biggest mistake in history.

~~~
wpietri
Do you know any filthy rich people? Their money is made mostly through other
people's labor and innovation. What they're good at is business, which is
organizing and capturing the value of other people's labor and innovation.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I've started a number of
businesses, after all. But let's not worship people whose talent happens to be
particular sorts of commerce.

~~~
TheLogothete
Depends on what you mean by filthy rich. By my definition (worth >$1bn), I
don't know any.

I do know several people worth several hudrends of millions tho. They are CEOs
of their own companies or companies they helped grow. I don't think anyone
works harder than them in their companies. If there is someone, it probably is
someone from the upper management.

>What they're good at is business, which is organizing and capturing the value
of other people's labor and innovation.

You say that like it's easy-peasy. Everyone can do it, right?

~~~
wpietri
> They are CEOs of their own companies or companies they helped grow. I don't
> think anyone works harder than them in their companies.

I also know people in that bracket. None of them work significantly harder
than some of the house cleaners and construction workers I've met. And even if
they did, it's not like they work 10 million times harder. There are only so
many hours in the week.

> You say that like it's easy-peasy. Everyone can do it, right?

It's not easier than anything else. But it's not appreciably harder. Read
Warren Buffet on this. He's one of the best in the world, and he describes his
success as coming from talent and luck. E.g.: "I happen to have a talent for
allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent
on the society I was born into. If I’d been born into a tribe of hunters, this
talent of mine would be pretty worthless."

I note also that he was born into a family with business experience. His
grandfather ran a store; his father, a stock brokerage. That sort of early
education is of enormous help. (I know myself; my dad started programming
computers in the late '60s.)

~~~
TheLogothete
It's not how much you sweat, it's how hard your work is.

Managing a firm with 1200 employees for sure is 10 million times harder than
moving boxes around.

But be my guest. Go to North Korea or Cuba. I'm sure people are very happy
there. Everybody is equal. Just some are more equal than others.

~~~
wpietri
Come now. I've started 5 companies at this point. I volunteer a fair bit
helping entrepreneurs. If you can't tell the difference between critique of
managerialist tropes and wholesale rejection of capitalism, you aren't trying
very hard.

You seem to have shifted your metric from working hard to the work being
complicated. But again, plenty of people do complicated work without getting
zillions of dollars for it. I know math PhDs who do amazing technical work;
it's far more complex than the workaday accounting done by executives. I know
organizational consultants and senior HR people who are way better at
designing organizations than your average executive. I know plenty of front-
line managers who have much more complex managerial problems than senior
execs.

What you're missing is that as with Cuba and North Korea, the people on top
get disproportionate rewards _solely because they are on top of a large power
structure_. They all "deserve" those rewards for the same reason: they won at
the musical-chairs game of hierarchy. Were Fidel Castro and Mao Zedong smarter
or harder working than their competitors? Maybe. Or maybe they were just lucky
in either the talent lottery or in how things played out.

The only difference here is that our game is built around competing entities
that, on average, create economic value, so there's possibly more social
utility that results from the hierarchy games. But the people creating the
economic value are mostly the ones doing the actual work.

I generally don't begrudge people the money they collected. The game is the
game. But let's not confuse winning the game with "deserving" the winnings in
some moral sense. That's the just world fallacy:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-
world_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis)

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stevetrewick
Misleading (and not original) title. The 'economic environment' has not
changed, the prevailing economic environment is that if you're an incumbent,
sooner or later someone fitter comes along and eats your lunch. Which is also
pretty much the tl;dr of TFA.

~~~
throwaway13337
From the perspective of large multinational companies, the environment has
changed.

Tech and emerging market companies create low margin competition that
incumbents can't compete with.

The rate at this happening is higher than ever before and has recently sort of
exploded.

~~~
stevetrewick
While I'll certainly agree that the rate is variable, the underlying mechanism
seems fundamental to how trade/markets/capitalism function. Perhaps my
definition of 'environment' is wonky.

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1971genocide
>"Moreover, our analysis suggests that rising labor costs could reduce profits
by a further $800 billion."

Outrageous ! So you are saying we need to give the peasants MORE money ?? How
am I supposed to live !

