Thus spake the master programmer:

``When the program is being tested, it is too late to make design changes.''

I've been programming too much lately.

Or have I?

Celebrities with Political Opinions

Celebrities with political opinions

Everyone is entitled to their opinion—this is the free world—and celebrities are no exception.  However, free speech aside, “the invisible hand” of free market economics does apply to everyday interactions.

Let me illustrate my point:  Donald Sutherland is saying things that I don’t agree with.  In fact, I’m certain that there are several people who are very, very peeved off at these sorts of remarks (instead of me being just peeved).  However, when people say these things we can choose not to listen or to avoid these people and the things that they do & say.  

It’s free market economics applied to personal interactions.  People have the right to say it, but you also have a right not to hear the stuff coming out of their mouths.

Phoenix

“A clever warrior is one who not only wins, but excels at winning with ease”
—Sun Tzu

Since I was 14 years old, I have been an owner in an operated three businesses; been a general manager for one; bagged groceries, baked pizzas, flipped burgers; for all practical purposes, ran a 26-soldier combat engineer detachment; been a part of a team that managed the personnel actions and records for more than 1,000 soldiers; been an office manager for a defense contractor; and been a concierge for a world-renowned resort. This doesn’t count the small lawn-mowing empire that I had while I was a kid, either.

However, the years of 2003 and 2004 were not my finest in the business world. I fell. I fell hard: Somewhat because of my own failings, somewhat because of the betrayal of those around me; somewhat because of various environmental factors. I was burned, but vowed someday to get back into the business world and once again run a company.

That time is now. Over the past several months I have been training myself in the art of programming in visual basic for applications. I have previously taught myself pretty much every other language of BASIC (since the fourth grade), have picked up smatterings of HTML and Flash over the years, and was formally trained in the basics of Ada while in my first two years of undergraduate school. A few friends/co-workers and I have determined that we will start developing a game. This is a departure from previous projects I have worked on, mostly research and development, but I feel it could very well be a profitable move.

And so, it is time for the phoenix to rise from the ashes. It is time to play the game again.

Real Life and the Movies

You ever watch TV, and then compare it against real life?  

I was watching a TV show tonight…in fact, it’s still playing in the background, and there was a heated argument.  Upon one person making a valid point, the other person broke down and told the truth about the situation.  This doesn’t happen in real life.

In real life, when I make a valid point to a person, they often don’t rationalize (or even attempt to do so); they instead get defensive or combative (one goes with the other in many cases) and throw logic or any other linear thinking out the window.

However, things can be very funny like the movies.  And the special effects are sometimes better, too.

Work Update

This week has been a cross between “business as usual” and testing the waters in an environment where it’s been determined “the big, big bosses” won’t back us up on matters where we are dealing with customers.  In fact, it’s like walking on eggshells, afraid that you will fall through at any moment.

My attitude on the phone, when taking an escalation, is not very process-oriented as it is goal-oriented.  My intent, and my behavior on calls in the past, is to find a resolution for an issue as quickly as possible while getting through the B.S. that the customer usually has to say…anything from how they hate the company…yadda yadda…to I am a bad person…yadda yadda…to, well, you get the picture.  I know better:  People like to vent, and giving them some time to vent is often a good thing to defuse a situation.  

Most of the time, however, the customer simply perceives that they have a problem.  The computer systems have automated most every routine transaction as to ensure that errors aren’t made as much as people think they are.  

Oh yeah, I had one guy tell me today that he thought we were trying to de-fraud him out of money.  This becomes funnier in the context that this is not the first time I’ve heard the argument.  However, let me assure you…there is no wrongdoing.

Regardless, most perceptions are not reality.  Most everything is remedied with proper customer education, and I attempt to do that.  People just have a problem with not wanting to hear what, well, they don’t want to hear.  They impress and project their own thoughts and feelings into a situation and no amount of rational thought or intelligent interaction will make them realize, think, or perceive otherwise.

Having a mind for theory in whichever endeavor I am in at the time, I began thinking on the topic of call handling earlier this week.  To my good friend and colleague Rick, I state something along the lines of:  “You know, back here we take 2 kinds of calls…advice calls from representatives and escalated calls from customers.  However, in both circumstances we are always doing the very same thing:  Offering resolutions.  So why don’t we change the paradigm of an escalated call and an advice call to being a paradigm of all ‘resolutions calls.’”

There is a stigma throughout my organization about my work.  We take escalated calls and draw upon obscure policy and workarounds (ahem, hocus pocus?) to make things work.  Escalated calls carry with them a certain aura that is impressed upon representatives in their first days in training.  Changing the paradigm from escalations to resolutions was such a big hit I got my supervisor to thinking about implementation.

And then there is the new application that we are working on…one to generate notes for a calls with a few clicks of a mouse.  We are close, but the included feature set increased by about a fourth this week on a whim of mine to make the program more of a policy guide than it originally was conceptualized as being.
I also learned of a new word that a colleague of mine devised this week:  Dodophobia:  The fear of stupid people.

I fear stupid people, but I need to talk to them most of the time.

Quote of the Day

You ask if I’ll grow to be a wise man, I ask if I’ll grow old; You ask me if I known love...I’ve seen love come, I’ve seen it shot down, I’ve seen it die in vain" - Bon Jovi, "Blaze of Glory"

Strategy, Part III

War is a struggle between two forces that can be formulated into discrete formulas until irrationality and human emotion enter the fray.  As such, the study of warfare can be broken down into a series of geometries that face off against each other, exerting force on one another.
Concentration:  This is a number more suited towards the density of forces on the battlefield and can be measured when the application of force is being planned against an enemy’s own concentration of forces.  From a metaphorical standpoint, where are your assets, and how are they arranged relative to those things that you must conquer prior to reaching your goal?  Concentration is the brother to Economy of force.
Economy of force:  You have an idea what the densities of your forces are, but each of your assets have economical values.  For instance, fuel trucks are more economical for logistics (fueling vehicles) than they are in mechanized combat.  In the corporate warfare sense, you need to make the same kind of assertions about what you can do, what you’re up against.  When you’re going for strategy over brute force, economy of force is a key factor in a success.
Maneuver:  In a strategy-over-brute-force battle, maneuver is the pal of force economy, which will save the day.  You may have everything else arranged correctly, but if you can’t utilize the assets properly in the heat of battle, you will lose.  Losing is bad.

Cooperation:  You have planned arrangement of assets to include density and economical considerations, and how they will move to contact their intended targets.  Now, you must ensure that all the elements of this system interact as they should.  They need to cooperate well with each other.

Security:  And, certainly, you cannot maintain initiative in any sense if your forces—your assets—aren’t protected.  This could mean anything from securing your intellectual advantage by not letting out trade secrets to making sure you or yours are not hurt.

Next, we will start to look at strategy through the eyes of the great strategic thinkers and begin to produce a grand picture of strategic thinking and winning the war.

Quote of the Day

"To subjugate the enemy's army without doing battle is the highest of excellence" - Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"

Pick Two

Almost Before We Spoke, We Swore

Yes…there are studies into people swearing.  I thought this might be an interesting piece to read, due to the profession that I am in…and even though it comes from the NYT.

The article discusses, over the course of 4 pages, a few things about bad language.  In no particular order:

1. Cursing is universal


2. Curses towards another individual are rarely random, rather they are calculated when attacking


3. Swearing elicits a biological response from individuals


4. Profanity can rid a person of stress and anger


5. Swearing is often practiced as a coping mechanism


6. If the person is too enraged for expletives, there is major cause for concern (Think:  “Going Postal” or “Going Schoolin’”)


7. The difference of swear words across cultures is due to fears and fixations in that particular culture.


8. When one person swears to another, it is a decision made and not an impulsive reflex in most cases.

Okay, so Contestant Number 1 calls in, escalates to me, and is upset about needing to fax appropriate documentation to resolve a missing payment issue.  They think that we should take their word for this or that we can otherwise perform the necessary searches to find the payment.  Our tools in this regard are limited, so they go off on a string of profanities, thinking that this will change my decision.  Is this just venting their frustration with the matter?

Let’s try Contestant Number 2.  Calling in, the customer wants an extension on making a payment on the account.  Oh yeah, I’ve been told I pretty much have to give them the moon on this one.  I guess Contestant Number 2 gets a prize.

Contestant Number 3 calls in, wanting to escalate over something stupid, say, such as collections calls.  Yes, people who owe balances on their account, and get calls about these balances will routinely ask to speak to supervisors.  Being kind and civil at first, they don’t get the answer that they like, so they attempt to elicit a different response from me by swearing a chain of profanities that would make male ranchers kicked between the legs by mad cattle proud.

So, I guess that people just generally don’t like me, so their trying to belittle me.

Yep.

I’ve made a determination with a lot of people.  They have a tendency of being:

1. Stupid


2. Lazy


3. Irresponsible

Pick at least two.

Pick Two

Almost Before We Spoke, We Swore

Yes…there are studies into people swearing. I thought this might be an interesting piece to read, due to the profession that I am in…and even though it comes from the NYT.

The article discusses, over the course of 4 pages, a few things about bad language. In no particular order:

1. Cursing is universal


2. Curses towards another individual are rarely random, rather they are calculated when attacking


3. Swearing elicits a biological response from individuals


4. Profanity can rid a person of stress and anger


5. Swearing is often practiced as a coping mechanism


6. If the person is too enraged for expletives, there is major cause for concern (Think: “Going Postal” or “Going Schoolin’”)


7. The difference of swear words across cultures is due to fears and fixations in that particular culture.


8. When one person swears to another, it is a decision made and not an impulsive reflex in most cases.

Okay, so Contestant Number 1 calls in, escalates to me, and is upset about needing to fax appropriate documentation to resolve a missing payment issue. They think that we should take their word for this or that we can otherwise perform the necessary searches to find the payment. Our tools in this regard are limited, so they go off on a string of profanities, thinking that this will change my decision. Is this just venting their frustration with the matter?

Let’s try Contestant Number 2. Calling in, the customer wants an extension on making a payment on the account. Oh yeah, I’ve been told I pretty much have to give them the moon on this one. I guess Contestant Number 2 gets a prize.

Contestant Number 3 calls in, wanting to escalate over something stupid, say, such as collections calls. Yes, people who owe balances on their account, and get calls about these balances will routinely ask to speak to supervisors. Being kind and civil at first, they don’t get the answer that they like, so they attempt to elicit a different response from me by swearing a chain of profanities that would make male ranchers kicked between the legs by mad cattle proud.

So, I guess that people just generally don’t like me, so their trying to belittle me.

Yep.

I’ve made a determination with a lot of people. They have a tendency of being:

1. Stupid


2. Lazy


3. Irresponsible

Pick at least two.

Strategy, Part II

The study of strategy originally, as discussed above, was the art of a general in the framing of a war; historically, in most societies (eastern and western civilizations), this fell upon the monarch or other ruler of the sovereignty.  This began to change in the early 1800s (the Napoleonic Era) when great military thinkers like Karl von Clauswitz and Antoine-Henri Jomini began to construct the way that modern thinkers work with strategy.   In about a century—from the times of Napoleon and his campaign to conquer Europe to Pershing’s execution of World War I—strategy shifted into two components:  National strategy (including posturing of national defense and the political elements) and operational strategy, practiced primarily at corps and division levels.

This great shift rose during a period when scholars of strategy began realizing that one of the change constants in strategy is technology:  Certain concepts of strategy may remain constant, however it must be adapted to the changing technology in the world.  Even though technology may play a part in warfare (with rifles or otherwise), Colonel John R. Boyd, American military strategist reminds:  “Machines don’t fight wars.  People do, and they use their minds.”

And so, over the years, each great strategist usually develops a number of principles in order to portray their beliefs on the subject to the rest of the world and to the rest of history.  These range from the almost-poetic discussion on strategy in warfare by Sun Tzu in The Art of War through U.S. Air Force Colonel John R. Boyd’s A Discourse on Winning and Losing.  One of the first things that an acute strategist is going to look at is the environment.  In the history of warfare this has equated to the terrain:  Take the high ground, don’t get caught on the low ground, etc.  In “everyday strategy” or corporate warfare, one needs to ascertain the environment that they are currently in.  Situational awareness is paramount for a leader, but useful for anybody; it is absolutely necessary to be able to see your life from the hilltop.  Be able to see the bigger picture.  But, perhaps, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Microsoft once ran an advertising campaign with the slogan “Where do you want to go today?”  You must ask yourself this.  What is your objective?  Okay, now that you’ve asked yourself this, let’s give it a litmus test:  Is the objective more complex than it should or needs to be?  It must be well-defined in order to be workable in the long run.  How, using the situational awareness that you should have developed as a leader by now, take a look at your environment.  You are going to be, throughout the course of achieving you goals, applying forces and other stimuli to your environment, the land around your current vantage point atop the hill.  How is your environment going to potentially react to the stimuli that you are going to introduce?  Do you need to re-think your objective at all yet?  Take into account chaos theory heavily:  If any errors are introduced into your courses of action throughout obtaining your objective, they will cause for much chaos later on.  This is why you must keep things as simple as possible: Introduce as few variables to the mix as possible.  This is, of course, you are comfortable with the complex systems that may result from more intricate plans.

Boldness.  Speed.  Simplicity.  These are the things that you are aiming for in developing an offense; this, and trying to develop an offense that does not require much of a defense:  The more that you defend ground, the more time is lost, and you may dig your own grave (metaphorically speaking, outside of the military context).  A good offense applies just the right amount of force to just the right places at just the right times.  If you have planned things exceptionally well, your offense can be quick, as to harness the element of surprise in attaining your objective.  Oftentimes, the quickest victory is the best because it is the least costly.  Always on the offense, if possible; and take heed of the geometries of your environment and make them work to your advantage.

Why surprise?  Again, surprise can make victories less costly for friendly assets and it often catches opponents off-guard, entrenched or otherwise.  In certain schools of thought (Sun Tzu, for example) provides that deception is a critical element in surprise; whether deception is used in the accomplishment of your objective or objectives, I will leave to you as may cross the boundaries of proper moral behaviors and is tied to an individual’s belief system.  I will say, however, that with or without the element of deception, using surprise as a tool for a successful operation can be achieved.

Tomorrow I will discuss the next topics:  Concentration and economy of forces.

Interesting News Stories, At a Glance

Space Elevator Gets FAA Clearance

This is very cool:  In the future, instead of sending up a space shuttle for routine missions for low earth orbit, we can just get on the space elevator and set it to go to the top floor, leaving the space program having more resources for exploration and not getting the next satellite dish satellite into space.

Clinton Turns on President Bush

Ask again why I don’t like this man:  Because he has no sense of tradition and can’t keep his mouth shut about politics and…well.  If you can’t guess, I’m not too much of a Democrat.

Microsoft Turns 30

…And it needs to determine how it can still grow.  A good read on business strategy once you wade through the usual fluff.

Pornography:  The Next Cell Phone Revolution

You know all those annoying things that people do with cell phones?  Get ready for another one…

Strategy

Derived from the ancient Greek “strategos,” strategy was seen at the time as the art that is practiced by a general. As time passed, this discipline that works to pair tactics with the meeting of an objective through a number of different principles, developed into a field of “grand plans” in the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Whereas some texts will place strategy in a triumvirate with tactics and logistics, I feel that proper tactics and logistics are inclusive of a good strategy.

In my view, strategy formulation is the epitome of all great feats, as it perfectly pairs the science of any particular branch of study with the art form of creative resolutions and applications of specific tactics. The ability to harness the power of strategy empowers an individual—whether they are the lowliest “private on the battlefield” or a CEO in a boardroom—to control the fate of any given situation to their liking.

The formulation of strategy is going to be formulated greatly based on one’s continuing interactions with their environment: Observations, predispositions, traditions, cultures, and any number of other influences acting on the system that you are in. In this respect, a foundation of knowledge in the study of systems from science and mathematics is a strong ally. For instance, military strategy has been closely related to the field of game theory since it’s inception in the past decades: A field of applied mathematics which attempts to predict and control the outcome of serious interactions between intelligent parties.

Aside from environment, schools of thought regarding strategy seem to agree on a finite number of principles that make for a good strategy. These are, listed in no particular order, are:

1. Objective


2. Offense


3. Simplicity


4. Surprise


5. Concentration


6. Economy of force


7. Maneuver


8. Cooperation


9. Security

1. Objective: The objective is what a strategist must always keep in sight. Regardless of anything else, this is the entire reason for everything else. In extreme circumstances, the situation might even call for “the ends justifying the means,” in the words of Machiavelli. We’ll get to him later, though.

2. Offense: General George S. Patton was made famous, in part by his maxim that an
army is always on the offense—that is, to be on the attack and moving towards the
objective. This differs from the defense which is the prevention of one’s opponent
conquering land or other assets over you.

3. Simplicity: Another maxim from Patton’s playbook, the General liked to play by three
simple rules: Speed, simplicity, boldness. Simple plans are easier to execute throughout
the ranks, and even with one’s own self. The ability to achieve success in a given
situation may be directly proportional to the complexity of a plan—the simpler, the
better.

4. Surprise: The ability to catch an opponent off-guard, when they’re not looking, when
and where they least expect it…this is the element of surprise. Although the enemy may
have strong points and weak points, the element of surprise will add a positive coefficient
to the success potential of any offensive measure taken.

5. Concentration: This is linked strongly to economy of force, but differs enough to be
considered a separate measure in strategy formulation. Concentration of force,
generally speaking, is having the right forces in the right places. As (U.S.) Civil War
General Nathan Bedford Forrest once said, “get there the firstest with the
mostest.” This statement illustrates the importance of the previous two portions of
strategy formulation: Surprise and concentration.

6. Economy of force: When determining the full value of the forces to be utilized in an
operation, the strategist must realize that not all types of resources are created
equal: From a military standpoint, artillery and infantry—both combat arms
forces—have different effects, and therefore different values, on the battlefield. To this
same end, they are best utilized against different aspects of the opponent’s forces. The
value of a particular asset is one value at rest, and varying values in different situations.

7. Maneuver: As forces have different economic values based on situation, this factor is
also influenced by how they are maneuvered—utilized as an offensive or defensive
asset—against the opponent. Maneuvering takes terrain (actually or metaphorically)
and other environmental variables into great account in their formulation.

8. Cooperation: As assets are being maneuvered about the battlefield, the interactions that
they have with each other should be taken into account. As another military example
would indicate: If you have infantry in a firefight and in direct contact with an enemy,
you will not want to utilize a Multiple-Launched Rocket System (MLRS) that could have
devastating effects against the enemy—and the friendly infantry.

9. Security: Militarily termed “force protection,” this also includes intelligence &
counter-intelligence activities. Security aims to protect and maintain friendly
assets—forces and otherwise—as well as any competitive advantages that the
strategist has against their enemy.

Strategy is what wins a war. Wars are a series of battles which are won by tactics. Tactics are comprised of a series of drills. Drills are a discrete series of repetitive movements that can be mastered by an individual or a team thereof: This where tactics fall into the continuum of the individual fighting towards an objective.

Finally, then, one must look at the support functions necessary to win a war. I will break this down as the U.S. Army has for several years:

1. Human resources and administration


2. Security and intelligence


3. Operations and training


4. Logistics and maintenance


5. Civil (and political) affairs


6. Communications and information management


7. Joint operations


8. Resource management

Next I’ll start piecing everything together in order to formulate a successful strategy.

Lingering Thoughts

I can’t help but linger on the current political climate of my workplace.  Amongst the escalated calls and exceptions that my colleagues and I make with customers, we are to be much, much, much more lenient:  The Company has decided that we should do pretty much whatever we can to keep a customer.

Mind you, I work in the receivables management department:  And, typically, many people who call this department aren’t exactly the happiest customers, let alone the occasional batch of kooks or dinks that we get calls from.  

As business textbooks will tell you, and my current supervisor’s intent, the job of a supervisor—even a quasi-supervisor such as myself—is to add value to an organization.  My supervisor most equated this to our ability to have customers who give us high ratings in industry-wide surveys and our company’s stock price.  Knowing full well that stock prices are an irrational element in economics, I have a couple conflicting thoughts about this.

Stock price can be tied to earnings or otherwise just how a particular group of investors are feeling on a given day.  This wonderful dynamic has been studied by many disciplines.  Regardless…if we are making as many exceptions as we have been ordered to make, isn’t that going to have a direct effect on profits?  This, in turn, will have an effect on the stock price when we report lower earnings.  Or will the cost of customers purchase enough good reputation to offset what it is costing us?  Will there be economic spillover that hasn’t been foreseen?

However, on the other side…history has been known to repeat itself.  This, I have been told, happened once upon a time, in a different incarnation of the business.  But maybe, just maybe, one should start counting their blessings and begin thinking about implementation of a “Plan B.”

Through the Fire

Today I walked through the fires of “Hell with Fluorescent Lighting” and came out on the other side. Let’s see how high that I bounce. I’ll get back to that.

For those of you who have been reading my blog for any amount of time know what I do for a living: I take advice calls from representatives and escalated calls from customers in the receivables management department of a major wireless carrier as a quasi-supervisor. In a normal week every person in one like mine will take good calls, bad calls, and, if you’re lucky enough, you’ll run into something that gets you into trouble.

I made a mistake in a judgment call I made on a call yesterday regarding transferring to another supervisor, possibly one with a clearer head for the situation than I apparently had. A customer escalated on a representative and, as the fates would have it, it got to me twice. A string of things that could have—should have—gone differently added up to ensure that the customer contacted the company back and the boss of my boss of my boss of my boss (boss x 4) received enough word of this that I was suspended today pending an investigation of the activities that took place. The management team, in proper stead, took my story and examined the notations made to the account. I was advised that I should type a letter to the investigating officials from the company dictating my side of the story and selling myself to them as being (still) a valuable asset.

Although I’m never too confident in anything, as I know how the universe sometimes unfolds, I knew that my supervisor, the managers over him, and my colleagues would stand up for my integrity as a professional and my value to the team. As things would have it, I came through the fire, knowing that I had made mistakes, still able to retain my badge and keep my job.

General George S. Patton, always one to be audacious, was quoted as saying “Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom." I’ve been standing inside the fire for about 6 or 7 months in my current position now, never on the outside looking in. I’ve been a change agent, a team forger, a task force leader. I have helped establish a new paradigm in my department, and if you think for a moment that I’m going to slow down…you’ve chosen the wrong answer.

So, how high should I bounce next?

Yeah, I know. Another quote. I probably should be putting something more in tomorrow.

"Out of every 100 men, ten shouldn't even be there, Eighty are just targets,
Nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle.
Ah, but the one, One is a warrior, and he will bring the others back." - Heraclitus

No regular blog entry tonight, however I will leave you with this quote:

"In critical and baffling situations, it is always best to return to first principle and simple action"
- Sir Winston S. Churchill

The Coming Corporacy: Part II

Originally formed in 1885, American Telephone & Telegraph—AT&T coins itself these days as the “world’s networking company.” In over 100 years of operation they have established themselves as a company that is highly aggressive in their practices to the point where the federal government decided that they were too large.

As early as 1949 the U.S. Government sued AT&T for monopolistic practices regarding their capitalization of technologies produced by the famous Bell Labs. Their attempt for AT&T to divest Western Electric caused AT&T to stay out of the business of selling computers, among other things.

Although AT&T was able to escape a larger divestiture at the time, the nails in their coffin were finally sealed after the U.S. Department of Justice finally won an antitrust lawsuit in 1982, after 8 years in the courts. This caused the affectionately-known “Ma Bell” to spawn 7 “Baby Bell” Regional Bell Operating Companies. Technically, the local exchange service operations of AT&T were divested with the agreement that AT&T could go into the computer business—a reversal of the earlier 1949 lawsuit.

The resulting companies, sans the parent company AT&T:

• Ameritech
• Bell Atlantic
• BellSouth Telecommunications
• NYNEX
• Pacific Telesis Group
• Southwestern Bell Corporation
• US West

(Note: AT&T also had investments in two independent companies: Cincinnati Bell and Southern New England Bell, or SNET)

Remember the list of babies created by the breakup of Standard Oil from earlier? Let’s go through and see what the disposition of the Regional Bells have been since the divestiture:

1. Ameritech: Acquired by Bell Atlantic in 1997.
2. Bell Atlantic: Merged with GTE in 2000 to form Verizon which, in turn, is currently in negotiations to purchase MCI.
3. BellSouth: No changes.
4. NYNEX: Acquired by Bell Atlantic in 1997.
5. Pacific Telesis Group: Acquired by SBC Communications.
6. US West: Acquired by Denver-based Qwest.
7. Southwestern Bell Corporation: Changing its name to SBC Communications in 1998, SBC acquired 3 of the Baby Bells and has announced plans to purchase their parent company AT&T.

AT&T, through the 1990’s and until 2001, made several investments into media and VoIP (voice over IP) technologies. Running into debt issues, AT&T spun off AT&T Wireless in 2001 as (at the time) the largest IPO in history. Renowned for it’s business accounts, AT&T Wireless was acquired by Cingular Wireless (owned 60-40 by SBC and BellSouth, respectively), causing Cingular Wireless to become the largest wireless company in the world with over 50 million customers.

The trend that I want to point out is that, with the exception of Cincinnati Bell, the companies formed by the forced breakup of AT&T are larger and more successful than their parent. Compared with 2004 revenues of $30.5 billion; SBC alone reported revenues $40.7 billion for the same time period.

Regardless of government regulation and interference, market forces have ultimately created a handful of behemoths.

In the next post I will briefly discuss a final case study and delve further into the corpocracy form of government.

The Coming Corpocracy: Part I

In the future the type of nation-state that most people can identify with today will no longer exist. It will, instead, be replaced with a form of government that has evolved from the previous tyrannies, monarchies, republics, and democracies. No longer will senators, presidents, prime ministers, or even the occasional monarch rule over the land. Instead, shareholders will elect board members who will, in turn, select top executives to run multinational vertically- and horizontally- integrated conglomerates. Maybe shareholders will even have a say in choosing these top executives. As distant as it may seem, this world isn’t very far away. To an extent, a skeleton form of the corpocracy exists today; however, this is only the beginnings of a brave new world.

The most overt act of this can be seen in a recent move by Wal-Mart to take over a 60-acre property in Inglewood, California, outside of San Diego. This is part of their ongoing strategy to open 40 grocery stores that would also have the traditional discount merchandise that the firm is known for. The Inglewood site would have consisted of a larger shopping experience for the consumer, being something of a mall a la Wal-Mart. In and of itself, this is a remarkable feat; however this is not what worries most people involved in the fray—neither is it what will necessarily bring the Bentonville, Arkansas-based company into the corpocratic status that will riddle the global landscape in the future. The fact that the word “sovereignty” has came up multiple times is what makes this different.

Reportedly, the space that the corporate giant was looking to establish it’s sovereignty on is the size of 14 football fields. I have lived in towns the size or smaller than this. It is a nice foothold: Today, sovereignty; tomorrow, establishing embassies in countries around the world. Even though Wal-Mart may be paving the road for the actual land-owning aspect of sovereignty, corporations have been exhibiting sovereign traits for a long time. Between the times of the Industrial Revolution and now, though, significant gains have been made by global firms to this end.

The the original “bad boy” of corporate monopolies: Standard Oil. Formed in 1870 by forming his business concerns into a single entity, John D. Rockefeller borrowed heavily in order to acquire 90 percent of the United States’ oil refining capacity. This move to become the largest monopoly that the world has ever known was a bolder organization than even AT&T or Microsoft. After becoming the wealthiest man in the world, the United States Congress, led by the Ohio senator John Sherman, passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890. This law, citing that any corporate front for a combination of firms or corporations who agree not to lower prices below a certain rate (“price fixing”) for the purpose of reducing competition and controlling prices throughout a business or an industry was illegal, was used two years later by the Ohio Attorney General in 1892 to win a lawsuit again the company.

Standard Oil had developed several core competencies that have been adapted to many a playbook for current corporations: Aggressive competitive practices by offering their product for less price because they could produce & supply more of it than smaller competitors (“economies of scale”), and taking control of various aspects of producing oil, such as distribution or marketing (“economies of scope”). They also developed strategies in which they negotiated with various stakeholders to get them better deals for their business.

In the end, the same court of public opinion that businesses today must succeed with sealed the fate of Standard Oil. The Supreme Court ordered their breakup in 1911 into 34 smaller companies. Among these companies:

• Standard Oil of Ohio (now part of BP, “British Petroleum”)
• Standard Oil of Indiana (now part of BP)
• Standard Oil of New York (now part of ExxonMobil)
• Standard Oil of New Jersey (now part of ExxonMobil)
• Standard Oil of California (better known as Chevron)
• Atlantic and Richfield – (now Sunoco and part of BP, respectively)
• Standard Oil of Kentucky – (part of Chevron)
• Continental Oil Company - (now part of ConocoPhillips)

Other Standard Oils:

• Standard Oil of Iowa - pre 1911 - became Standard Oil of California
• Standard Oil of Minnesota - pre 1911 - bought by Standard Oil of Indiana
• Standard Oil of Illinois - pre 1911 - bought by Standard Oil of Indiana
• Standard Oil of Kansas - refining only, eventually bought by Indiana Standard
• Standard Oil of Missouri - pre 1911 - dissolved
• Standard Oil of Nebraska - eventually bought by Indiana Standard
• Standard Oil of Louisiana - always owned by Standard Oil of New Jersey (Esso)
• Standard Oil of Brazil - always owned by Standard Oil of New Jersey (now Esso)

See a pattern above? Regardless of regulation by the government, in the end the effect is still the same.

Tomorrow we’ll look into a couple of other examples of this trend from an historical perspective.

9-11-2001

I abstain on producing a blog entry today on this subject, as my good friend S.J. Christ has written a piece on this very subject that sums up my feelings on it this year very well.

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-CJf8Lc4zeqWQaStFd3SFw1Wmay036ds-?l=6&u=10&mx=10&lmt=5&p=5