Human history presents to us an account of people learning how to work together to overcome
nature's hostility. Toward that end, we see that humans organized themselves, erecting along the way great institutions of government
and culture. We associate the history of past institutions with the names of
leaders who founded them--Alexander, Caesar, Napolean. Magnanimous leaders rise
up to forge empires or institutions from the fragmented resources of previous
ages. Years later, those institutions are slowly dismantled and/or necessarily reconstructed by their
descendants.
In the context of our western world, for instance, we read that the disarray of
Alexander's Greek empire eventually furnished
a rubble of culture and knowledge upon which a Roman empire could later be
erected. With the passing of more centuries, the Catholic Church replaced the
Roman empire as an organizing structure for further civilizing development.
Later still, the papal dominance was decimated by Protestant reforms and
restructuring. Then came the nation-states projecting their varied hegemonies--Germany,
Austro-Hungary, France, Great Britain.
This dynamic of growth and decline is seen throughout the
history of the world in kingdoms, empires, nations. We can see similar patterns
in business.
In the United States, we saw Rockefeller blasting his way
through the American hinterlands, building an empire of oil and railroads along
the way. We saw Carnegie forging a great institution of steel. We saw Edison
providing the spark for an energized era of electrical empowerment.
Then as sure as you're born, along came enterprising innovators
and aggregators to capitalize upon the industrializing tracks that had been
laid in previous years. Ford, GM, Chrysler all carved out, over the course of
the twentieth century, their slices of our burgeoning prosperity. That prosperity was founded upon the potential energy of hydrocarbons being kineticisezed into economic dynamism.
It's a similar scenario in this era, the age of information.
Consider a great company called IBM. There's an innovative giant that made a big impact on the way American business was conducted in the latter half of
the twentieth century. IBM, through profit-seeking
creativity, converted the record-keeping practice of business in this country
from traditional hand-scribed accounting procedures to computerized data
management. Their resourcefulness produced a string of new developments
that changed forever the way business is done, and generated huge profits for its investors and employees along the way.
For a while, IBM didn't just change with the times; IBM changed the
times.
For twenty years or so.
Then along came Microsoft and Apple. The rise of software-enabled personal
computing effectively dismantled IBM's mainframe empire.
Now Microsoft is where IBM was twenty years ago--too big to
adapt, too cumbersome to think out of the pc box. Microsoft's empire of
software and personal computing power is being overshadowed in a networking
cloud that will leave their twenty-year windows of opportunity quaintly
obsolete. Their expensive proprietary packages will go the way of the
punchcard, lying in the chads of business history.
Could IBM have foreseen the rise of Microsoft and Apple and
made adjustments to ensure its own position of primacy in the computing
world? No way. That's not the way it
works. Innovations are made by new entities that are not confined
by thinking inside institutional boxes.
Could Microsoft have foreseen the rise of Google and Cisco
and made adjustments to ensure their position of primacy in the computing world?
They did not. Now Microsoft's dominance is fading into a cloud. Does Microsoft
have within its programming loins the resourcefulness to, twenty years from now,
evolve with the times and emerge, as IBM has, with a new role? We shall see.
In times such as these great leaders make things happen differently from the way they did before.
Thomas J. Watson and Bill Gates were both legendary icons in the
history of business, but neither of them could build an empire that would be
immune from the abrasive grinding of the sands of time and competition.
Just as IBM had to be downsized, restructured as a new
entity in order to function effectively in the competitive world of business,
and just as Microsoft is now being, or must be, similarly rearranged if it to
survive, so must be the strategy of every working person in these United States.
The sun is setting on America, and we can't go west, young man young woman, any more. California's broke. Now the westward march of American industry has screeched to a great,
grinding halt. Will the working stiffs of this country wither to welfare atrophy
while cyber-savvy credit swappers securitize their way to gated-community
opulence?
Working people of the USA, we better figure out a way to get
through these cataclysmic times--a way that goes beyond making demands upon the diminishing
resources of a waning American business empire--a way that goes beyond sucking
the dregs of a failing insurance system--a way that surpasses the passing of greenback
reserve notes issued by an insolvent government.
And that way will surely involve an old-fashion thing called
work. Time to get off our asses; that includes you democrats.
I'm asking you, the working people of America, because,
although I worked for twenty-five years as a carpenter in North Carolina, I've
never been a union guy. From my southern, right-to-work perspective, the unions'
demands on corporate resources were appropriate and constructive in past ages
of expansion when there was plenty of work to go around. But now those demands
are incongruous with our present predicament of scarcity. And what are we going
to do about it?
Where are the true labor leaders of our age?
Let's face it folks. The
American labor movement, in its present incarnation, has outlived its
usefulness. What must it do to morph to something useful again?
What would Eugene V. Debs do? What would John L. Lewis do?
What would Cesar Chavez do? Try to write new contracts with dinosauric car
companies that have, by their failure to make fuel-economizing innovations,
painted themselves into a corner of stylish obsolescence?
The "organizing" for our next phase of the American
experiment must be even more innovative than any previous expressions of it. We'll have to get back to our roots,
literally.
Got veggies?