G.K. Chesterton - English Author & Christian Apologist
Preface:
It must be disclosed that I don't really find G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown Stories all that great. (Why is it that I so frequently write about things, people, and situations I truly dislike? I wonder what a trained psychiatrist would say about it?) As far as the mystery writing goes, I find them... unnatural, too artificially constructed, almost illogical... For everyone, of course, but the author and his deducing reverend. But naturally, they don't count, because they are cheats, holding all the cards and the red herrings up their sleeves.
Moreover, I consider G.K. Chesterton a racist, which makes him absolutely unacceptable to me as an individual. Some of his descriptions and the choices of words simply appalled me back when I read him.
(If you feel tempted to verify yourselves that my accusations can actually be substantiated, read God of Gongs. That's why I'm sharing the link to The Complete Father Brown Stories below. [And no, I'm not an Amazon Associate - it's purely for your convenience.])
It is hard for me to imagine that any truly unprejudiced and open-minded thinker would be using such language, regardless of his/her native historical period and commonly accepted jargon of the correspondent time. And no, he is not just putting those offensive words into his characters' mouths for the sake of the conversational authenticity. He uses them as his own narrative descriptives. It's despicable and utterly inexcusable as far as I'm concerned.
But! One can find a grain of wisdom even in a truckload of manure. And this one goes straight to the heart of the main conflict suffered daily specifically by the American workers in employment of the entrepreneurial business owners - the same antagonism that cemented the foundation of my own madness ("I Built This Prison"):
"[He] made himself big by his own considerable abilities: and there's no doubt that many of those on whom he has shown his abilities would like to show theirs on him with a shotgun. [He] might easily get dropped by some man he'd never even heard of; some labourer he'd locked out, or the clerk in a business he'd busted... In this country the relations of employers and employed are considerably strained."
G.K. Chesterton, The Wisdom of Father Brown, The Mistake of the Machine
If you are a business owner and/or executive and you've used an online processor, like LegalZoom, to set up your corporate affairs; or outsource some of your in-house functions to a large service provider, like Paychex, for instance; or employ a fairly sizable CPA company to audit your books - it is most likely that these business partners of yours have notified you at some point last year that you are a subject to the new type of government reporting - the Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI), due for submission to Financial Crime Enforcement (FinCEN) bureau of the US Department of Treasury.
The rest of the business owners - those without an exposure to large business and/or professional networks - especially the ones running those small, private, neighborhood companies we supposed to cherish as a backbone of the American economy... Well, I don't really know how they are meant to find out about this new reporting obligation. FinCEN promised to roll-out a whole awareness campaign with YouTube videos and stuff - but I personally haven't seen anything like that being pushed at me. Maybe if you search for it, you'll find something... But how would you know to look in the first place?
I personally discovered it via LegalZoom's notification sent to an entrepreneur whose books I help to keep. She casually mentioned it to me - I somehow sensed it seriousness and looked into it. Mainly for the sake of the small business owners around me, but also out of the feeling of foreboding this bit of information gave me.
It turned out that FinCEN was formed in 1990 (Wow! The things that fly over our heads! Even if we are somewhat politically alert.) under the parentage of the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence with an official purpose
"to combat domestic and international money laundering, terrorism financing, and other financial crimes".
Naturally, it is a perfect agency to oversee the specific measures that have been formulated under the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) signed into power by Congress in 2021 - the federal law pushed through under the banner of
"the government's efforts to make it harder for bad actors to hide or benefit from their ill-gotten gains through shell companies or other opaque ownership structures."
fincen.gov, January 29th, 2024
(Again! What ordinary citizen paid attention to that piece of shocking legal maneuvering?!)
One such measure, formulated in March of 2023, is the BOI reporting. I don't want bore my readers with every single rule and detail pertaining to this new corporate reporting duty. Just bear with me for a few important highlights I'm providing for those who didn't dive into this issue yet.
A Beneficial Owner is a person who directly or indirectly exercises substantial control over the reporting company or owns at least 25%of its interests. Now, all senior officers - specifically: President, CFO, General Counsel, CEO, and COO; anyone with an ability to appoint or remove officers or a majority of directors; anyone who is an "important decision-maker"; and anyone (listen to this catchall) who has "any other form of substantial control" are qualified as Beneficial Owners and must be reported as such to FinCEN.
There is an interesting caveat: if a person is not a senior officer, but, nevertheless, exercises significant control over the reporting company through her employment there, that person doesn't need to be reported. I'm thinking: high-power controllers who value their privacy higher than the status, or simply don't want to expose their personal info for open access, should stop vying for CFO positions (assuming, of course, the pay is satisfactory).
Any and all corporations, LLCs, and other entities created through the filing of a document with a secretary of State or any other similar office in the US is obligated to report. I carefully studied the 23 exceptions and can vouch that I personally never dealt with an entity that would qualify for an exemption. Nevertheless, everyone who deals with corporate matters of their businesses/employers is encouraged to study the relevant material at BOI FAQ.
Anyone whom the reporting company authorizes to act on its behalf may file the BOI report. And this authorized filer, whatever their relationship with the company may be, MUST submit her full name, email address, and phone number.
The information the reporting company must submit about itself is: full legal name, any trade names (DBAs, etc.), current street address of the principal place of business (to be updated when changes), its jurisdiction of formation or registration, and TIN. The whole kit and caboodle.
For the beneficial owners the reportable data is as follows: name, DOB, residential address, and ID# - either US passport or state driver's license - and the name of the latter's jurisdiction. And guess what? The reported ID must be uploaded into the database! Some people may feel relieved that at least they are not demanding the SSN's. But if you ask me: disclosing your picture ID and the place where you live! Seriously?
But get a load of this! In addition to the information on the entities, their beneficial owners, and those assigned to deal with this by their bosses, the financial crime fighters want to further collect the same info on the individuals they call "applicants" (starting with incorporating dates of January 1, 2024 and on), i.e. the individuals who directly file the documents that create or register the company and those who direct and control the filing. And that's pretty much any intermediary agent whose services you may engage in the process: accountants, lawyers, formation services, even the messengers delivering the application packages into the hands of the clerks.
FinCEN openly discloses that any Federal, State, local, and Tribe as well as "certain" foreign officials will be allowed the access to thus compiled database for activities broadly described as "related to national security, intelligence, and law enforcement." No consents or even notices of the inquiries' subjects are required. On the other hand, financial institutions need to obtain a reporting company's agreement before being allowed to take a peek. But who in their right mind says "no" to a bank considering granting you a credit line, for example? Especially if it's a small entrepreneurial business. Most eager CFO's and CEO's wouldn't even bother asking who exactly will be looking.
The penalties for refusing or foregoing the BOI reporting include both civil and criminal repercussions: up to $500 per day of the violation, $10,000 fine, and up to 2 years of imprisonment.
So, to summarize: millions and millions of Americans are now forced to make their personal information openly available for access by all and any domestic and international government entities as well as financial institutions, or risk criminal and civil prosecution. I absorbed all that, and I was like: Whoa! What?! George Orwell miscalculated his arrival by 40 years, for sure, but the Big Brother is definitely hear now - not in North Korea, Iran, Russia, China; but here in the United States of A as well as 30-something other "civilized" countries with similar regulations. Of course, I have to be objective about my reactions to such things: I was born and raised under the communist dictatorship of the Soviet Union. Therefore, I have a tendency of seeing things related to governmental interferences in darker lights than most American citizens. I mean, Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985) is the avant-garde realism to me, not a dystopian sci-fi as it's conventionally classified.
Moreover, I'm a libertarian in my political convictions. Thus, personal and socio-economic freedoms are paramount to me. Even more painful for a small-business crusader like myself: Do we really need another negative consideration thrown at potential entrepreneurs considering going into business? It's fucking depressing - at least to me...
But guess what? It turned out that I was not alone in my fears of the government's infringing on our democracy. On March 1, 2024, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama held the entire CTA, and BOI requirements in particular, unconstitutional. To the fundamental question of whether the Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate millions of entities and their stakeholders the moment they obtain their formal corporate status from the state, the Court has answered that not only there are no constitutional provisions supporting such excessive claims of power, but there are also no citable precedents or sufficient legal nexus.
For the time being, the Alabama Court's decision protects from CTA's enforcement only the specific plaintiffs who filed the claim. We can hope, however, that it will encourage other companies, individuals, civil rights lawyers, etc. in other states, to join the effort of protecting our corporate and individual privacy. Meanwhile, every entity incorporated before January 1, 2024 have to file before the deadline of January 1, 2025 and those incorporated during 2024 - within 90 days after the date of official creation by the state. Starting 2025, the reporting timeframe will be shortened to just 30 days.
Here comes the funny part, though: If you decide to bother yourself with episode 17 of the final (10th) season of The Blacklist, you will be able to see how utterly futile these government efforts are. The vast network the FBI special task force is trying to dismantle during that episode is engaged not only in establishing the fictitious corporate fronts to cover the diverse criminal enterprising, but also in creating flawless, unimpeachable false identities for the individuals - real or virtual - who qualify to be their "Beneficial Owners" under the CTA's definitions.
I mean, it's pretty clear to all of us, isn't it? Those who want to stay hidden - will. Meanwhile, the rest of us will expose our identities to hell knows what kind of breaches and misuses. And if you think that that particular bit of The Blacklist fancy is as phantasmagorical as the rest of the show, we can agree to disagree: I thought it was the most realistic piece of plotting of the entire series. And I watched every single of the 218 episodes and liked quite a few of them too.
It's not an easy undertaking to make me laugh nowadays. Most of the time I'm just FINE (as in Frustrated [duh!], Insecure, Nervous, and Exhausted); the rest of the time I am severely distraught... And, of course, I meditate and do my best to cheer the fuck up... The vast music library helps; so does the good literature, quality entertainment... But, laughing - that's rare, very rare... Except for the news - some news snippets make me burst out laughing! And incidentally this particular hilarious bit also had to do with Entertainment... Or rather the business of it.
You see, Disney is in trouble... I don't need to regurgitate to you the whole stock-market mumbo-jumbo everyone else and their mothers write about, primarily focusing on the share prices, which are now below the level they were 10 years ago. Because the bottom line is fairly simple: The original Walt Disney Pictures isn't pumping out winners annually as they used to do. All those astronomical investments into hoarding the big-name franchises like Stars Wars (Lucasfilm) and Marvel - in spite of the high profits per hit, don't really turn themselves into returns fast enough... And - most painfully in terms of the contemporary state of the entertainment marketing - the streaming arm Disney+ is not profitable at all.
Or, as I prefer to define it: Netflix it ain't.
What to do? What to do? In a typical far-removed-from-reality only-in-corporate-boardrooms turn of events, the self-proclaimed "activist" investor billionaire Nelson Peltz (who started his "business-building" career - and this is very important - by inheriting his grandfather wholesale food company and then turning himself into a prominent private-equity mogul by buying and selling such fully-fledged companies as Snapple and Quaker Oats) challenged Disney's BOD to commence the corrective actions by dismissing the company's current CEO Bob (Why Bob, god dammit?! The man is 71! Time to grow up into your full name!) Iger (not a businessman at all - a career media executive, aka glorified mountain-top administrator with an outrageous compensation package of nearly $30 mil per year). In his haste for coup d'état, Peltz forgot to do his homework - he came into the fight empty-handed: no constructive plan, no corrective suggestions, no panoramic view of Disney's new and improved future... Just the hope that, without Iger in the picture and with him on the board, things will get better... How? By Disney Magic? (If you didn't hear: Peltz's coup failed and Iger is still up there - on Disney's very top, I mean).
You get why this is so funny to me, don't you?
The very idea of two people with no entrepreneurial experience in their respective portfolios fighting over who's better fit to shake up the conglomerated mastodon (in case you forgot your primary-school lessons: mastodons were prehistoric, extinct cousins of the contemporary elephants - very large creatures) and expediently reshape it into an agile operational gazelle able to conquer the most difficult, most contemporary, most innovative trails - it seems inconceivable to me. Moreover, it's so desperately naive to believe (assuming, of course, that anyone actually believes it) that changing one (or ten! or all!) person sitting on the head of the mastodon - very far away from its vital organs and moving limbs - would trigger the company's rejuvenation.
Do you think that the OG business-builders Walt and Roy Disney, if faced with a similar situation, would be concerning themselves with the BOD changes? I don't think so. They would dig deep into the causes of the business's slowdown, think outside of all boxes, and try to come up with absolutely new, never-explored-before solutions. Because they were the trailblazers and truly good fathers to their corporate child. The current executive foster parents, on the other hand, are the worst: all they do is measure their child's failures against their peers' successes.
You see, aspiring to someone else's model that happens to work for them for the time being is nothing but a short-term bandaid. The key is in the entrepreneurial intuition, the managerial flexibility and the structural mobility; the integral ability to adapt, to change fast - with every single shift of the market demand and technological leap. And can we expect that from a giant who cannot be anything but rigid and slow simply because its too large for its own good? Pure fantasy, of course (who's going to stop me, though? it's my blog!), but the best thing for Disney's Jenga-tower now would be to disassemble into individual blocks and let them operate as separate business units, without the burden of the astronomical executive packages. Let them compete within their own enterprising markets, against their specific peers - not against the fickle stock-market trends. I wonder what would happen then?
And since commentators keep bringing it up as a benchmark, let me note this: Netflix Inc., God bless them - in spite of their global presence, publicly trading stock, and nineteen subsidiaries - is still a very much agile, 27-year-old (the most beautiful age) baby. With one of its shrewd co-founders still serving as an Executive Chairman of the board.
I was a member of Blockbuster when my then pre-teen daughter first told me about Netflix DVD subscription. On my way to work I would drop the red envelopes into the mailbox and get the new ones shipped to us as soon as they were scanned into the USPS system at our local P.O. By the standards of those times: extraordinary expediency and incomparable efficiency of the entertainment-delivery operations. And that is still their main focus. Now, by means of what David Foster Wallace predicted (a few years before Netflix DVD was born, actually) would be the main form of delivering content into people's screens - the dissemination into "teleputers" as he defined it, which we now known as streaming. In between, all of their transitions, developments, enhancements, and additions have been seamless precisely because they keep to their core, pursuing their mission.
And I hope they continue being spry, fluid, and easy to adapt. To whatever the future brings. I don't know about the rest of you, but I owe them so much! No, for real, I have no clue how I would manage without them...
"It's not just your basic human rights that get clipped. You know the inherent copyright rule that everything you create is yours? Not if you created it within your employment framework. As hired help, we lose any and all forms of authorship. Whatever we develop, design, formulate, innovate, write in a normal course of our paid work responsibilities belongs to the compensator. The re-using or duplicating your own prior achievements in any other business can be subject to litigations, which, at best, is throwing money into the wind and, at worst, will ruin your life.
Here's a classic pop-culture example that can make it clear for everyone. In 1982, Tim Burton, then employed by Walt Disney Feature Animation (a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios), wrote a poem titled The Nightmare Before Christmas. Being who he is - I mean, an incredibly talented visual storyteller - he considered various possibilities of translating it into images: a TV special, a children book... He created the concept art, the storyboards, and even got Rick Heinrichs (a production designer on many subsequent Tim Burton's projects, as well as both Ghostbusters, all Pirates of the Caribbeans, etc.) to sculpt the character models... But Disney of the time (CEO E. Cardon Walker) deemed the project too "weird" and stalled it... Then, in his two-year stint as Disney's CEO (1983-1984), Ron Miller was more interested in creating the Touchstone, which allowed Disney to develop "grown-up" movies, than in Tim Burton's beautifully morbid ideas - he fired the auteur in 1984.
Thank God for that, because in the next eight years, Tim Burton went on creating Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Batman (all for WB), and Edward Scissorhands (for 20th Century Fox). Yet, the quasi-autobiographical turmoil and conflict between the strangeness of character and the desire to fit into the spirit of a "happy holiday" (never mind that it's Halloween) that he conceptualize for Jack Skellington have never really left Burton's creative horizons. Around 1990 he checked... And guess what? Disney still owned it. And by then it was already a Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg's domain with the turf fertile for producing a full-feature Nightmare.
Oh, of course, they gave Tim Burton the creative credit - as the story and characters' developer. And they listed him as a producer... Why wouldn't they? His movies were already commercial and critical successes - the instant cult classics that, nevertheless, generated box office numbers in multiples of their budgets. Who wouldn't want to smack Tim Burton's name on a billboard? But it's not like he could take this child he conceived and labored to birth - his creation, and take it away to some place where he could nurture it. No... It was fostered now by people with no blood relations. They even didn't want to wait until the birth parent was free to play with it (he was committed now to Batman Returns at WB).... They hired their own nannies from within - a screen writer (Caroline Thompson) and a director (Henry Selick)...
Don't get me wrong: I love The Nightmare Before Christmas the way it ended up to be - the stop-motion animated musical with genius music and voice of Danny Elfman. Still, for 30 years now, I've been wondering: What it might've been if Tim Burton's parental rights were not terminated by the fact that he was paid a salary by Disney at the time of the authorship...
And as I said, the same rules apply to all achievements attained by a paid employee under the constriction of employment. Whether it's a product - either creative or physical, a formula, a solution, a process, a recipe, a construct, a logarithm, a program, an optimization matrix, an analytical macro, or a KPI dashboard - it does not belong to you just because you created it. It's in the possession of the people who paid you your wages. They are the ones who get to use and reuse it, whether you are still attached or separated from them."
Deleted from Chapter 4 - Bucket of Tears... and Blood
Two blond lawyers wearing pantsuits with deep pockets walk into a bar.
"God, this joint is a mess!" complains the one with $60 million in her pocket.
"Don't worry," replies the one with $20 million in hers, "My Dad was a janitor. I'll clean this place out in no time. First, we will raise everyone's wages to $22/hours; and when the establishment goes belly up, I'll represent them in bankruptcy hearings, blaming everything on the banks."
Let's face it, NYC cab rides are not what they used be. And it's not about credit card processing and the built-in monitors - those were inevitable. And it's not about the signature-yellow black-checkered SUV's and vans either (though, only God knows how many pairs of pantyhose I've ruined getting into them). The main difference are the drivers.
Back in the day your taxi driver talked to you; whether you wanted him to or not. They were the ones who invited the conversation. I mean, hairdressers and cabbies were people's confidants. A cabby is even better than the hairdresser - most likely you will never see him again. Nowadays, however... Let me put it this way - Taxicab Confessions (1995) would not happen today.
Of course, just 15 years ago, when the medallions were around $250K, cab-driving was still a viable self-employment option for enterprising individual drivers. And a taxi owner-operator cared for the success of his business-on-wheels. Moreover, he felt at home there, ready to chat with his paying customer about this and that. But as soon as the medallions' prices went over $500K (hitting $1 mil landmark in 2011), the ownership shifted to investment groups, who lease the cabs to drivers known as "hacks." This resulted in a fundamental attitude transformation. To draw a parallel, it's like the difference between the treatment you get from some outsourced customer service representative and the care displayed by a business owner whose livelihood depends on the customer's satisfaction.
Generally speaking, we now get into a cab with an indifferent and dissatisfied employee at the wheel. And most of the time we actually want him to stop talking, because he is blabbering non-stop and not with you - he's got his earpiece in and he is doing his share of "connecting" to his friends and families at full volume in the language you most likely don't understand. Sometimes you are not even sure that he heard your destination; and you have to be really insistent if you want him to pay attention to your route instructions.
And me personally? At this point I am simply weary of cab drivers wanting to talk to me and actually prefer when they are preoccupied with their own telecommunications or whatever. I don't know whether this is because weirdos feel comfortable with me or there are just more weirdos everywhere now, but recently I've been having some uncanny cab experiences: Scientology propaganda session; sex proposals (this actually happens regularly, which is unbelievable for many reasons I will not discuss on this blog); self-righteous preaching (also pretty common); pushy sales pitching of the driver's childishly executed art; a reverse taxicab confession of a middle-aged driver stunning me with graphic details of his affair with a 78-year-old woman (sorry, people, but it's the honest truth), etc., etc. So, trust me, a quiet ride is fine by me.
But I guess there is indeed a reward through suffering, because sometimes you get lucky!
I was in a cab a few days ago. The driver had an old-Brooklyn accent and was middle-aged. The cab wasn't new either, but most remarkably it was already lacking the bulletproof divider (TLC announced in April that it can be removed). This is actually very important, because, even though he had the radio on at a low volume, without the glass barrier I could hear it very well (I have no idea what channel it was).
The topic of some political broadcast was the GOP's opposition to their own likely nominee, Donald J. Trump. One of the guests was commenting on how silly it was and questioning the possibility of some last-moment aspirant's attempting to steal the nomination in Cleveland from a candidate who won the most Republican primary votes in history - 13.4 million. And both the driver and I laughed out loud at the same time.
For the next 15 minutes I enjoyed the most amicable and satisfying political exchange with a person outside of my very close and very immediate circle, a complete stranger for that matter. And I would like my readers to share some of that experience. So, here you go, ladies and gentlemen, from my cab driver's mouth to your ears (or rather eyes) - a few bits of pure common sense:
"...He [The Donald] may not say it right, but he says the right things."
"...Professional politicians didn't work as the country's leaders. We've got to try something new. If he fails, we will not vote for him [The Donald] again."
"...Trump is the only one who has full intention to do what he says and actually take care of things."
"...I may not like Trump as a person and don't what to be his friend, but he is the only one right now I trust to be my President."
"...I used to be a big Clinton supporter, but she is a typical political weasel: talks how it's dangerous to trust Trump with the 'nuclear button,' while 20,000 of her emails with government secrets are about to be publicly released by the Russians."
"...How can she [Hillary Clinton] talk about War on Terrorism, when she is chummy with the Saudis? And how can she claim that she will protect women's interest when she takes millions from the kings of Oman and such."
Look, of course I don't know about all of the 13.4 million of Trump supporters - I'm sure, like in any other group of people, there are plenty of bastards and idiots among them. Yet, every one of those who I met personally, heard talking or read their opinions in various media strikes me as exceptionally reasonable, very informed, logical person, free of fanaticism. Without any bias, in a true objective spirit I so vehemently cultivate on this blog, I cannot say the same about the followers of either of the still-running Democratic candidates. And it makes me wonder: maybe, just maybe, it has something to do with the compelling rationality of Donald Trump's presidential platform.
Like many hiring execs, I still have an employer account with Monster.com, even though the time when they dominated the job-hunting market has passed. Nowadays, they are not even at the top of the industry leaders list. Still, we got used to them in the 17 years they've been around. And they do try their best to provide the paying clients with value-added bells and whistles beyond the standard ad posting: resume matching, database searching, description writing, HR Resource Center, and whatnot.
One of these add-ons is the email service that blasts recruitment articles to all registered users. I usually ignore these emails, but the last one had an article with an enticing title The Real Reason Millennials are Leaving Your Company.
The first thing that caught my eye was the singular "Reason." I thought, "The author was able to identify a single, most fundamental cause of what appears to be a case of chronic pins and needles in the millennial butts? That's remarkable!"
I got even more curious reading the logline. It talked about an abundance of options, "a plethora of jobs" that allow millennials to be "super selective" in their career choices. Moreover, it promised expert advice to employers on how to keep the "valuable millennials" in the work seats. I was like: This must be one of those sci-fi imagine-if humorous thingies, because these statements, if not drenched in undiluted sarcasm, can only refer to some remote planet in an unknown universe. Here on Earth, right now, most of the millennials you and I know are either unemployed, or work jobs that have nothing to do with their chosen professions (let alone vocations), or stretch their schooling to avoid facing the bleakness of the job market. I mean, there are premium cable shows and broadcast sitcoms about it.
And, "valuable millennials?" Yes, they exist, in small numbers and tiny clusters, and you ought to be very lucky to have them around. But generally speaking: the state of our arts and entertainment is a testimony of young people's value and their values. And when it comes to hiring, you need to go through 800 entry-level resumes to find 3 candidates who can write a coherent sentence, even though (I'm talking to you, senator Sanders!), all of the applicants have college degrees.
Opening the article immediately dispelled all enthusiasm. Firstly, no pinnacle reasoning was crystallized. The piece was divided into subsections addressing different causes for millennials' job mobility. Since the author is not a Canadian afflicted by the national inability to pluralize words, I can only attribute the use of the single form in the title to writing and editing sloppiness. And, of course, there was not a single whiff of alien or any other humor.
In fact, the self-branded Talent Maximizer® Roberta Matuson, who wrote the article,takes herself and her "advisory" role very seriously. In complete solemnity she lists the following as the reasons why the millennials don't want to hold on to their jobs (with my commentaries):
Millennials want to work for companies that help to improve society. Ms. Matuson suggests that those employers who want to retain Millennial workers should "take a closer look at the organizational purpose," assess how the company's mission impacts society, and redefine its purpose.
To paraphrase Woody Allen, "What's wrong with this? Everything!"
First of all, what does the lame formula "improved society" mean? What's a "better society" for one person, is hell for another. The massive support of Bernie Sanders by young voters clearly shows that they want to live in a welfare state. I, on the other hand, have been preaching no government interference and market economy my whole life. I would understand if the focus was more specific - let's say on environmental issues. If employees of different ages boycotted the fracking industry, for example, our society would seriously benefit in the long run. But I doubt we are talking about future impact here. I'm pretty sure that if the fracking industry started providing free daily lunches to local people, the millennials would think of them as employers with a positive mission! Never mind the explosions and the fiery faucets.
And what happened to the old-fashioned purpose of being profitable, staying in business, and continuously providing jobs? It's not good enough? Do all millennials want to work for non-profits spending grants, or public companies depleting investors' pension and college funds?
Millennials need constant external motivation: nurture, praise, repeat. A shout-out here, a lunch with a boss there, or an invite to an off-site event, Ms. Matuson suggests, will help to demonstrate that the employers care. Otherwise, the millennials will leave, because "the recession is over."
Well, this is not the first time I am confronted with the suggestion that what I call "hugging motivation" is more important to younger people than fairness, objectivity, professional growth, adequate compensation, etc. Don't get me wrong, the acknowledgement of one's achievement is incredibly important, but only if it's deserved. Constantly patting on the back some unimpressive, low-value jackass out of fear that they will leave - that would be a betrayal of my work ethics and a violation of my fiduciary duty as a CFO. Merit-based rewards, people! That's what made America great in the first place and that's what will bring the greatness back!
And here she goes again with the sci-fi twist: the recession is over! Where? In Alpha Centauri? Oh, wait - on the front page of The Wall Street Journal and in government reports. In real life, we are in the permanently recessive stage of economic decline with no prospects for upward turn. This slow sliding may feel to the uninitiated as a flat plateau, but just you wait - we are bound to experience some dramatic crashes as well.
(Brace yourself for this one, cause contrary to the previous statement:)Compensation is important to millennials, especially if they have student loans. "If you don't pay the millennial whatever he or she thinks they are worth," they will leave.
So, no matter how much you praise them, and hug them, and take them to lunch, the old-school paycheck still matters! Except there is nothing old-school about it either. Back in the day, wages were determined by clear and tangible factors: the sophistication of the job, the level of expertise, the scarcity of QUALIFIED professionals on the market. But apparently it doesn't work like that with the generation of people who were born after The Breakfast Club and Back to the Future came out. The key to their adequate compensation is their own self-worth. We must pay them whatever they think we must pay them. And don't forget, the employers need to account for the student loans! Essentially the implication is that we have to pay them what they NEED and not what they earn. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" maybe sounds right to Sanders's supporters, but it is not the principle that lies in the American foundation. You know whose principle that is? Marxists-communists!
Millennials require work-life balance.
Just the millennials? Is that what the article's author actually believes? That millennials should be treated preferentially when it comes to working hours, paid time-off, etc.? That there should be two different HR policies in every company, one for millennials and another for the rest of us chickens? That's age-based discrimination, isn't it?
I've always believed in the importance of work-life balance and regularly wrestle with the owners to ensure that every employee has access to the same set of benefits and perks. And what my experience shows is that the millennials take the full advantage of these packages like no one else; sometimes to the point of abuse. 90% run out of the office the minute the clock strikes the official end time, no matter what's happening with the work. Many don't even spare a few seconds to shut down their computers (yet all of them fancy themselves "environmentalists"). Just last year, I had a millennial employee who was out for 15 working days in the 5 months I tolerated her bullshit. I've never had to deal with that kind of attitude before the millennials entered the workforce.
The truth is that you don't need to be an HR expert to formulate your ideas about the reasons behind the millennials' prevalent job discontent. Any experienced manager with a keen eye and some human insight can draw up a comprehensive list. And here is mine (in no particular order):
Many millennials, especially liberal arts majors, have a hard time defining their purpose and developing a sense of belonging at a job. This is primarily because they go to college to learn... nothing. I'm not even talking about slacking and partying. There are so many narrow-niche bullshit "liberal arts" degrees out there, most bachelor graduates acquire no practical knowledge. And it makes thinking of a career path very difficult.
Much scarier, they are not equipped with any basic learning skills. They can neither study on their own, nor operate with minimal supervision. Not able to absorb new knowledge, they feel like failures and will eventually leave for an "easier" job.
Turns out that the damned phone is a millennial Achilles heel. The millennials are so used to texting, tweeting, and posting, 85% of them are afraid of talking on the phone. When confronted with a job that entails constant voice-to-voice interactions, which are a plenty, they opt to quit.
Aside from athletes and health freaks, young people nowadays live incredibly passive lives. Some people say that the abundance of streaming content is to blame, but we all know that way before YouTube (2005) and Netflix's streaming (2008), young people were already glued to their computers and game consoles. Thus, they suffer terribly on the jobs that require them to be out of the office most of the time - selling, pitching, servicing, etc. According to some HR professionals, this is one of the millennials' biggest complains.
The bulk of this generation grew up with no discipline or structure, both at home and at school. While being a non-conformist is an invaluable quality when it comes to independent thinking and artistic expression, in a survival-driven business environment the lack of self-control, inability to follow rules of conduct, and disregard for subordination can make one's life pretty unbearable.
They want to be hugged and cuddled all the time. Many of them crumble under pressure and cannot deal with reprimands.
I know it sounds like a cliche at this point, but it is true - they do want trophies just for showing up, because that's what they are used to. As a result, they develop a clinical deficiency of self-motivation for achieving merit-based recognition. They shy away from competitive environments where hard work and achievement translates into tangible rewards of raises, bonuses, and promotions.
Celebrity-saturated social media made the majority of millennials into unsettled zombies who are preoccupied with fantasies of becoming instantaneously rich and famous. I guarantee that the star-struck ones will continue moving from one job to another, feeling extremely discontent.
The majority of the millennials are not prepared to be self-reliant. The livelihood of many a chronic quitter usually doesn't depend on their own paychecks; they expect to be continuously supported by their parents.
And some young people, just like in every generation before them, are restless because they want to be adventurers; they are afraid that Life will pass them by. The boring job can wait; while they pursue their dreams. And, of course, sadly, most of them are confused, and don't know what they want, and don't have any ideas, or talents, or clues. But let me tell you: that is the only good reason to quit your job (assuming you can afford it). All the others are just weaknesses and incompetence.
By the end of last Friday, the Dow Industrial dropped 400 points and the market is now down cumulative 8% in 15 days of the new year! Oil teeters at $28 and it looks to me that it is inclined to slide down, not climb up. Just as expected by some, and say it with me, please, "It's only going to get worth!"
But people (again) are like, "Oh, my God! My Apple stock! I should've sold at $139!" (FYI, it's at $97 as of Friday). And the media is all like, "Market crash robs $2.3 trillion from investors!"
Seriously? It's the market's fault??? Hello, people, can't you read?! They state it plain and simple on every trading site and in every market investment document: "May lose principal value." It's in smallish, but not invisible, print - if you care to see it, you will. How can anybody possibly blame the stock market for being what it's meant to be: the gambling boiler fueled by unsubstantiated rumors, false promises, illogical hopes of overnight wealth, and herd mentality? The chances of losing all your money there are pretty much the same as those in pressing the slot machine's button for days and days in a row.
In fact, casinos are far more honest about it - when you walk in, you know that the odds of setting yourself for life by winning there are very low. And nobody blames the casino. You blame the Fortune. The reality is that the stock market is not much different.
The only people who manage to generate gains there are the most shrewd, the most intuitive, the luckiest, and, most importantly, active traders; those who understand the slightest nuances of the market's moves; who sit in front of their computers for 8 hours a day and follow their gut feelings when they personally manage their portfolios. But those are one in a million. The rest of the "investors" - from an average Joe to large pension funds are bound to lose. Remember all those brokers and fund managers who handed over their investors' money to Bernie Madoff? You don't expect them to start actively trading for you, do you?
And let's not forget the simple arithmetic fact that it is the mass public participation in the security exchange that drives the market value up and down in the first place. We've already discussed the supply and demand laws on multiple occasions. The more people buy the stocks, the higher their prices are. And it's the mass panic that results in selloffs and crashes.
Even if you don't understand the detailed dynamics of what happened on Friday, you can grasp the essence of the participation impact in the perfect example of Apple shares: There were tons of companies that lost far more than Apple's 2.4% of their stock prices (Disney, for example, lost 5.3%), yet it was Apple that led the list of "wealth destroyers" (as some media geniuses labeled them) with a loss of $218 billion (26%) of their market value. The reason for that is the astounding number the company's outstanding shares. Everyone and their mother chooses Apple as their favorite high-tech investment.
So, it's not an abstract "market's" fault; it's the investors' own undoing. Nobody forced them to trust their pension and college funds to a gambling outfit. And now, between the mass hysteria of people in fear of losing their last dime and the financial strains caused by the economic downturn, the selloff will accelerate. 400 points is nothing - there is a real crash ahead.
From an actual email exchange that took place this morning (quoted as was written):
From a Customer to Operations Department of A_C Company:
Hi John,
Please deliver the second truckload from our current order on Monday 12/21. Please confirm.
Customer
From the Operations Department to the Customer, copying A_C Company's CEO as per protocol:
Good morning Bob,
Thanks for providing the delivery date! We will begin to secure trucking.
Best regards,
John
From the CEO to the entire Operations Department, copying The Frustrated CFO and Managing Partners:
Please find a trucker who will not spill the product, drive into the customer's gardens, or drive recklessly through their parking lot damaging their employee's car, which all happened to this valuable customer in the recent past.
I've been predicting that crude oil prices will eventually drop below $30 per barrel for nearly two years. When I first started talking about it oil futures were trading on NYMEX at $108. Everyone thought I was too radical in my predictions. Even those interested in my reasoning refused to believe that such a drastic adjustment was possible.
Then, on Friday, September 11, 2015, many industry insiders have received a MarketWatch alert letting them know that Goldman Sachs underbid my forecast, warning that "oil prices could sink to $20 a barrel." I personally don't pay much attention to big-firm analysts (they are most likely low-balling because they have some shorting game in the works), but a few of my acquaintances thought I should've felt justified. The only thing I can say is "What took them so long?"
Human myopia doesn't shock me anymore. However, the level of denial exhibited by those in and around the business of oil and its derivatives borders on blindness. I mean, it's not like I have some special connections or access to secret information, nor do I spent any time on extensive research. The same self-evident facts were always right under everyone's noses, not just mine own.
Look, having been one of the largest importer of oil in the world for decades, the United States used to limit supplies to other regions of the globe by consuming the majority of Saudi, Algerian, and Nigerian output, thus keeping everyone hungry and bidding. Up to a certain price level it was considered more practical to buy foreign oil than to invest into domestic production by pretty much every branch of US energy and petrochemical sectors. But as soon as the prices hit an attractive spot, everyone and their mothers started pumping more oil and throw it into the market. The US production doubled; the same happened in Russia, Iraq, Canada.
Meanwhile on demand side, the oil consumption is slowly (too slow for my taste) diminishes. Tapping into shale formations made natural gas a cheaper energy alternative. Furthermore, the idea that switching to renewable energy (solar and wind) may offer a chance of survival seems to take a stronger hold in more reasonable heads worldwide. Even in our country, in spite of all that protectionist auto lobbying in Washington, vehicular fuel-efficiency finally became a reality. And those of us who travel to Europe and Japan have seen the itsy-bitsy cars most people had been driving there for the past 25 years.
More significantly, the economies are weakening all over the globe. EU is barely holding itself together. China has finally admitted that the country has "problems," which is probably a tight-lipped way of describing a complete disaster. This means shrinking consumption of everything, but especially of oil and oil-derivative products.
As I said, it's self-evident. As far as I was concerned, expecting the downward turn of the oil market was the only sensible conclusion. But everyone seemed to have gone stupid. Seriously, what's wrong with people? You don't need a PhD in Economics to understand this! What happens when you have a product surplus in the market of diminishing demand? Does the price goes up or down?
Of course, ever since the oil has become THE most important commodity on the market, it's been associated with that very special cardinal sin - Greed. (If you search Amazon for books on oil, you will find the word "greed" on at least half of the covers.) And greed is blinding. It makes people reckless. They refuse to consider a possibility that making a profit of $60 per barrel today can turn into a $20 loss tomorrow.
Greed always goes hand in hand with opportunism. As I said above, higher prices attract more suppliers - it's hard for people to resist the opportunity to make an extra buck, regardless of the consequences. All considerations of important values, including the planet's survival, are cast away in the pursuit of hot dollars. They pump more and more. They create new nightmare technologies like fracking. They invest billions of dollars into new facilities, raping the Earth and turning household water into flammable liquids. And then, these blind people have the audacity to look surprised when overproduction manifests itself in rapidly falling prices.
And it's not just oil - prices for every single product on the petrochemical flowchart (kerosene, polypropylene, PVC, polyethylene, etc.) are dictated by the prime material's behavior. When the prices were high, the greedy piggies cranked up the production capacities of those products as well, with exactly the same result - massive overproduction followed by the drastic price drops. What was selling at $1500-$1900 per metric ton a year a ago is now sold for $900.
In theory, the only logical response should be to seize the output. Yet, it's not easy to hit the breaks. When in the fourth quarter of 2014 oil prices sharply adjusted from $93 to $45 per barrel, one CEO of a petrochemical trading company asked me, "Why those Russians and OPEC aren't doing anything to stop it?" And I had to explain to her that for Russians oil is like payroll wages for an ordinary person - they need continuous oil income for sustenance. They will not stop pumping no matter what. What else can we possibly expect from a dictatorship where a handful of usurpers hold national property for personal gain? And OPEC? The cartel's members refused to cut their oil productions for an opposite reason: They are already so rich, they cannot be hurt by falling prices. On the other hand, impoverishing the competition will benefit them in the long run.
Here in the States, though, we still have some shreds of the free-market economy left: shrinking markets and overflowing storage capacities inevitably result in industrial contraction. So far 50% of rigs got decommissioned; research and investments are halted, over 200,000 workers have been laid off.
(Insider tidbit: The other day, in casual banter over lunch, my commercial insurance broker told me that one of her Chinese clients is currently buying oil rigs and related equipment out of the US bankruptcy courts at about 15 cents on a dollar and shipping it to the homeland for resale. Way to enrich our foreign creditors, you guys!)
For the sake of clarity let me fiscally connect the sharp price drops to shutdowns and layoffs. Let's say your product's market price was $1800 per unit, but it's now $900. Even if you are a very shrewd business person capable to quickly adjust your costs to the changing market, avoid operating losses, and maintain your healthy 10% gross margin, in absolute dollars you are now making only $90 gross profit per unit instead of $180. In other words, you have only 50% of cash available to pay salaries, benefits, rents, leases, bank interests, etc. - all those overhead items that have either fixed or increasing values.
And so, the steady stream of insiders' news that comes to me is not surprising at all: Nippon is closing their propylene unit, and Formosa shutting down its Delaware productions, and Exxon is halting their alcohol output, and Sterling Chemicals is running on the negative cash flow, etc., etc.
Meanwhile, our state economists continue telling us that everything is okay and will be even better. Well, I'm saying that it's only going to get worse (especially if voters will be fooled by phony, skin-deep feminism or silly, unattainable promises). And you don't even have to take my "radical" word for it - listen to you trusted "friends," the Goldman Sachs's analysts.
