Without the state

Why should Wall Street complain when a company is doing well?

I thought market forces were about just that - if you do well in the market you are presumably doing something right. However it seems that it isn't enough to be doing well, to have a better P/E ration than your competitors and to have a higher share price. Oh no...

Emme Kozloff, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, faulted Mr. Sinegal as being too generous to employees, noting that when analysts complained that Costco's workers were paying just 4 percent toward their health costs, he raised that percentage only to 8 percent, when the retail average is 25 percent.

"He has been too benevolent," she said. "He's right that a happy employee is a productive long-term employee, but he could force employees to pick up a little more of the burden."

The owner of Costco has a nice riposte however...

"On Wall Street, they're in the business of making money between now and next Thursday"

And heaven forbid that companies should look after their customers...

One analyst, Bill Dreher of  Deutsche Bank, complained last year that at Costco "it's better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder."

[via City Comforts]

The Moirae (Fates)

The Moirae (Fates), originally uploaded by ibanda.

One of my own images this time, developed out of a photograph of three inoffensive old ladies in fur coats!

Wise words...

Quoted on Ken MacLeod's blog -  The Early Days of a Better Nation.

To understand is not to forgive. It is simply better than the alternative, which is not to understand.

Soething which should probably be e-mailed every day to some inhabitants of Blogistan until they finally  get the bloody point!

New link on Blog roll

I've added a new (to me) link to the Politics blog roll (via Kevin Carson) - The Uncapitalist Journal. It looks like an interesting one to follow.

within the fabric of then or later

within the fabric of then or later, originally uploaded by mseidman.

Flickr

If you have problems seeing any of the pictures blogged from Flickr thsi is because they are haveing some problems. It should on past practice be sorted soon.

Changes to Blog roll

My reader may not have noticed, but I have made some changes to the blog roll under the politics heading. I don't pretend to have an exhaustive list of sites, limiting myself to those which are a 'good read' and have something interesting to say. Of course things change so I've done a bit of updating.

I've deleted the Adam Smith Institute blog. It turns out the link was broken anyway, but by and large it has deteriorated into vanity publishing for a group of pompous windbags and despite its pretense at allowing comments it is, as many others have pointed out, notorious for only allowing its supportersa voice.

I've also deleted Samizdata. That was much harder. When I first discovered blogging, Samizdata was a breath of fresh air. I was never happy with their comparison with the underground publishers of teh Soviet Union - after all you can't get much more open than the Web - but generally the posts were thought provoking and the discussion stimulating. Good examples for example were its promotion of private sector approaches to space exploration.

Lately however things have changed. Much of the discussion is downright disturbing. Recent examples include:

• gloating over the fact that a suspect in the London bombing was arrested in Egypt and therefore likely to suffer torture
• a strong streak of racism
• a disturbing willingness to accept the power of the state to detain without trial
• a rising level of personal abuse directed towards dissenters

I'm not going to link explicitly to this - if you want a feel just read the discussion on anything to do with the recent terrorism in London.

I'm not sure why this change has happened. I've commented on it already a couple of times, but it has reached such nauseating levels that I don't think I can link anymore. What is disturbing is that the main posts never seem to descend to these levels but the posters nevertheless seem happy to allow it to happen.

Sad.

dedicated to John Ashcroft and the Patriot Act

dedicated to John Ashcroft and the Patriot Act, originally uploaded by btezra.

From Flickr

all day long, originally uploaded by mseidman.

Fatwa issued after London bombs

For those ignorant and arrogant people who insist on treating Islam as indivisible read this.

Islam strictly, strongly and severely condemns the use of violence and the destruction of innocent lives.

There is neither place nor justification in Islam for extremism, fanaticism or terrorism. Suicide bombings, which killed and injured innocent people in London, are haram - vehemently prohibited in Islam, and those who committed these barbaric acts in London are criminals not martyrs.