Apr

4

We need a systematic ranking of companies by the flexionism of their CEO's and then we can quantify and look at future performance which of course in the past is highly correlated positively, but with our baedecker maybe the situation will change.

Gary Rogan writes:

Flexionism is a two-edged sword. As much as it helps companies, it also hurts some in a similar way that "low-income" welfare eventually ruins its recipients. I've never researched this statistically, but I concluded for myself early into the current flexionic golden age that sheer size matters more than before. A company has to have critical size to be able to protect itself against the government by fighting back, bribing, or pure flexionic behavior, and in a less significant way amortize the cost of compliance with regulations over a larger productive base. In the good old days size helped too by making the company stronger in many ways, but also hurt by making it a target and also reducing it's ability to react to change. All these things remain, but the necessity to deal with the aggressive, totalitarian-lite government is shifting the balance, in my opinion, towards very large companies. 

Russ Sears writes:

When your worth is built on your political contribution, you can quickly be thrown under the bus when the winds change directions. Size brings more internal enemies and jealous and greater chance of collapse from within.

Gary Rogan replies: 

True. My point really was that size is less fleeting than flexionism when the winds suddenly change. From this perspective I prefer Pepsi to GE: both are large and quite flexionic, but Pepsi will not collapse when the government turns away from wind turbines and financial bailouts.

I strongly agree that a large multinational has a lot of advantages these days, being able to escape the reach of the US government and not as exposed to its collectivist policies are more important than ever. Those who use flexionism as a defense strategy are preferable to those who are actually living the flexionic life at the core of their business. He who lives by flexionism will eventually die by it, but simply saying the right things in the right places is likely to be less traumatic long term, when things change, they'll start saying something else. 


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