What’s With Business Today?

Am I the only one who has noticed that American businesses in recent years have gone precipitously down hill? With notable exceptions here and there, they seem to have abandoned even a pretense of trying to satisfy their customers with decent goods and services. I have no doubt that the onus of excessive government regulation, confiscatory taxation at all levels, and the general lack of work ethic, ambition, or even functional literacy among much of the population all are contributing factors. Still, I have to ask: Have we so completely evolved into a society of socialists with a sense of entitlement that we no longer feel obligated to succeed?

As just one example, I ordered some flowers the other day from a well-known on-line florist to send to a friend whose mother passed away this week. At times like these we certainly want a product that will bring good cheer to the bereaved and we also want them delivered on time and to the correct location. In this case I wanted the flowers delivered in the name of my friend’s deceased mother, care of the funeral home, and in time for an 11:00 AM service today. Suffice it to say that the flowers did not arrive on time, were not fresh, were not contained in a vase (despite the florist’s on-line advertisement), and contained fewer flowers than advertised.

I’ve noticed with this industry in particular that nearly all of the major florists have become averse to delivering anything anywhere on weekends. Those that do tend to charge outrageous weekend delivery fees on top of the standard delivery fees they already impose on weekday orders (steep delivery fees are understandable in light of current gas prices). I find this most bizarre for a business that caters largely to events such as weddings, funerals, and holidays, the bulk of which take place on weekends. Call me naïve, but logic would seem to dictate that if I were a florist I would realize that a sizeable portion, if not the bulk of my business centers around weekend commerce and I would organize my business hours and services accordingly. To not deliver flowers on weekends makes about as much sense to me from a business perspective as Domino’s Pizza not delivering on Friday or Saturday night, the two most profitable nights of the week. One would think that at least one of the major on-line florists would want to get ahead of its competition by boldly advertising that they deliver anywhere, at any time.

Alas, this seems not to be the practice in today’s business world of flavorless oligopolies with indistinguishable products and services. Particularly among large corporations there seems to be goal to make each industry’s product or service indistinguishable from that of its competitors. One can almost adopt the attitude that it doesn’t matter who or where you buy from; you’re going to get the same mediocre or lousy, overpriced product or service whether you buy it from the Acme Corporation or Ace Industries. Neither one is particularly concerned with quality. The attitude seems to be “hey, if you don’t like what we have to offer, go somewhere else, but don’t count on getting a better deal. You’ll be back!” They’re probably right; where the hell else are you going to go, and if you really need the product or service, ya gotta get it from somewhere, right? Having gone back to the website of the florist I ordered from and submitted a complaint about the floral delivery, I got back an email saying “Your concern has been received by our customer service department. We value your business and will respond to your request within four working days.” I’m not holding my breath on getting a response to my complaint or a real resolution.

Since the malaise is affecting small mom-and-pop businesses as much as giant corporations, I can only surmise that the culprit is the artificially and unnecessarily high cost of doing business in today’s America. By the time businesses get through paying protection tribute to and complying with the counterproductive regulations imposed by all three levels of government, there is little working capital and even less incentive left to invest in quality products or services. Because each “hidden” cost induced by government regulation cuts into the company’s profit margin, the incentive to produce is further reduced with each added burden. Add to this the fact that “good help is hard to find”, particularly at entry-level wage rates (try getting a teenager in your yuppified suburban neighborhood to mow your lawn on a Saturday for twenty bucks. Why earn your money when Mom and Dad give you all the allowance you want?), and what you have is a system that rewards mediocrity while making quality next to impossible.

I’m not sure what can be done about this in the near future, other than to start by getting the State off the back of business as quickly and as fully as possible and let the market sort the wheat from the chaff. Since that’s not about to happen any time in the immediate future, I suppose the next best thing is to do is: 1) reward good service and value with repeat business; 2) complain loudly and often when bad service happens, and 3) do without those goods or services that you don’t absolutely need if no one will provide them with quality and value.

A Hit Tune That I Somehow Missed

Maybe I've been living in a remote rain forest somewhere for the past three years. Up until a couple of weeks ago, I had never heard the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers song The Last DJ until it was played on a local FM station in the D.C. area. For those who aren't familiar with the song, it's a ballad about a radio DJ who refuses to surrender to the dictates of corporate radio, which is unfortunately taking control over more and more of the airwaves, with hideous results in terms of product (a small selection of cheesy Top-40 songs, played endlessly). He's a man who does his own thing, plays his own music, and won't give up his ideals or betray his fans.

The song came out in 2002 as part of Tom Petty's album of the same name. You can download and listen to it, among other places, at Yahoo Music (just look under Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers). The song was reportedly widely banned by the very corporate radio stations it satirizes, which probably explains why I had not heard it (the lesson I've learned here is that I need to stop relying on cruddy FM radio for my music).

Tom Petty has always been one of my favorite performers and a hero, due in large part to his ongoing battles against the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and its ceaseless attemtps to gouge, censor, control, and shortchange. Like the State itself, this organization is a dinosaur that sucks the lifeblood out of productive people (composers and musicians) while rendering nothing of value in return. I really owe it to Tom and the Heartbreakers to make sure that I buy as many of their CDs as possible (between my wife and me we already have most of them anyway), not only as a sign of support, but because I consider Tom to be one of the most creative recording artists in contemporary America.

At any rate, give The Last DJ a listen and make the RIAA squirm!

Displaced Anger

Someone posed an interesting question to me yesterday, one that is probably relevant to all of us at some point in our lives, but one which we probably don’t often think about. A marriage and family therapist friend of mine to whom I was explaining libertarian philosophy and my own positions on current American politics and events asked me: Do you think that your hostility toward government is displaced anger that is really aimed at some other part of your life?

Talk about being thrown a wicked curve ball!

The short answer that I gave her was, yes and no. To be sure, I have some issues in my life that I’m now dealing with that involve a great deal of anger and frustration. It is possible, at least subconsciously, that some of that anger is crossing over into my general disgust at American political culture in general. However, I think the truth is that my anger at what America has mutated into in the post-9/11 world is more a parallel extension of my overall anger than a projection of it. It’s a bit too complex of an issue to address with a simple single-word response.

As a libertarian I believe that my anger, while certainly a normal emotion felt by other humans of every political persuasion, should ideally be focused constructively on the proper target; my anger at the government’s misconduct should not translate into a reaction against someone or something else. To illustrate, if congress passes an enhancement of the Patriot Abomination, I don’t react by spanking my grandson. Similarly, if my grandson decides to practice his best Van Gogh imitation on the living room wall in crayon, I don’t respond by huffing my way upstairs to my office, sitting down at the computer, and banging out an angry editorial excoriating the federal tax code. The target of one’s anger must be that person or object which is clearly the root cause of said anger. To react vicariously in frustration or anger against a third party is to compel that person to suffer unjustly for something for which they are not at fault. This represents the very essence of the modern nation-state, in which punitive laws are enacted against everyone due to the (alleged) misconduct of one or a few members of society.

The current Sudofed™ panic is an excellent example of this practice in action. It just so happens that I’ve developed the first late-summer cold in living memory and went to the supermarket this morning on my way to work to buy a simple remedy. Sudofed has always been my drug of choice, due mostly to the non-drowsiness factor. After searching the supermarket’s pharmacy section in vain, I saw a piece of paper folded over some empty shelf space. After unfolding the paper I saw in big, bold letters the announcement: SUDOFED PRODUCTS ARE NOW AVAILABLE AT THE CUSTOMER SERVICE DESK. The clear implication is that we as consumers are now criminals in the eyes of the State, which compelled said supermarket under penalty of law to remove a perfectly legal non-prescription product from its shelves, because a handful among us have chosen to use this perfectly legal product to produce a substance (methamphetamine) that is harmful only to those who voluntarily ingest it into their own bodies, but that causes no harm to anyone else.

Because the puppeteers of the State do not approve of this practice (methamphetamine is produced by individuals in their own homes, not by one of the State’s legally-sanctioned manufacturers of pharmaceutical poison who have purchased an indulgence through their beltway lobbyists), they have decided that we are all errant children who must submit to their paternalistic control. We are no longer considered mature adults capable of reading a label and using a legal, over-the-counter substance in the way it was intended, or to deciding for ourselves how much of that substance our bodies need. No, the Nanny State, through its coerced proxy (in this case the supermarket, in other cases, a pharmacy) is going to decide for us how much of the substance we will be allowed to purchase with what little or our own earnings it has allowed us to keep. In this way the Nanny State is projecting its own anger at the conduct of a few (conduct that is none of its business in the first place) onto the mass of its subjects as a whole. While I am not a methamphetamine manufacturer, I am being treated as if I were and am suffering a needless and unjust penalty as a result.

So next time anyone asks you about “displaced anger” at government, just respond that there are too many easy and deserving targets for any anger to displace itself.