The Power of Stupid

A reader sent this story about his workplace.

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“A theme from many of your previous comics came true to life for us today. Quality in the workplace.

Yesterday, a pointy-haired boss decided our meeting room needed nice motivational pictures on the wall. Twelve by eight inch, wooden frame, 1940s-style motivational tools (think 'Rosie the Riveter' in artwork, color and font). So an assistant was ordered to procure such things.

The first mistake was where the artwork was obtained from. Rather than pay $15 per picture for the real thing, it was decided to take the small JPEG images of what we wanted from a website that sold these trinkets. Cheap picture frames were bought (from a dollar store, by the look of things).

When the images were enlarged to fit into the 12 by 8 frames, the pixelation was terrible. In itself, this was funny. A picture that celebrates the idea of quality in the workplace looked cheap, and knowing it was a stolen image lessens the impact of the message slightly.”
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This story made me think about one of the great wonders of capitalism: It is driven by morons who are circling the drain, and yet. . . it works!

Think about all the people working and earning paychecks from companies that will ultimately fail. It’s a lot of people. But until those companies fail, the employees are getting paid, buying goods, and contributing to the economy. After the failure, those employees hop over to another sinking ship, and so on.

Within successful companies, a huge portion of resources are dedicated to projects and products that will ultimately fail. But in the meantime, everyone is getting paid and propping up the economy.

I once worked in a bank, making loans to small business start-ups. Our rule of thumb was that 90% of new businesses fail. The exceptions were franchisees and pizza places. But we saw no shortage of people willing to mortgage their homes to start their own sporting good stores and boutique dress shops, despite the 90% chance of failure. Without clueless optimists, the economy would grind to a halt. My own career has been a long string of failures and a few notable successes.

I understand the math of capitalism, and how the few successes are so large they pay for all the failures and then some. But at any given moment, the majority of resources in a capitalist system are being pushed over a cliff by morons. This fascinates me. And it’s clearly the reason that humans rule the earth. We found a system to harness the power of stupid.

In the rest of the animal kingdom, being a moron is nothing but bad. A moron lion, for example, who can’t catch anything to eat, is adding nothing to the lion economy. But a moron human who starts a business selling garlic flavored mittens is stimulating the economy right up until the point of going out of business.

My point is that I hope the monkeys that already know how to use sticks for tools don’t start using leaves for money. If that happens, we’re screwed.

Comments

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[Fred]

That is a great article. I would be a billionarie if leaves were money.

[Jackson]

The biggest requirement of any business, big or small, is money. There are a number of lenders who provide capital for your business in the form of loan. These are termed as business loans and are very popular in the market.Small Business Loans

[Jeff]

Actually, franchises fail every bit as often as independent businesses.

From Fortune magazine "In the early '90s Timothy Bates, a professor at Wayne State University, studied Census Bureau data on 20,000 new enterprises and found that 38% of franchise units failed over a four-year period, vs. 32% of independent startups."
Full story: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fsb/fsb_archive/2005/12/01/8365371/index.htm

[markm]

Capitalism: Most projects fail and are shut down.

Government: Most projects fail but are kept going.

[Iain]

Free Market Capitalist:

To you I say - "Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite." - John Kenneth Galbraith. I guess you are some kind of crazy system zealot or something or I am just overly cynical. But seriously, whatever.

[Jim]

"F*** me with a boogie beat."

[Jonathan]

"This is the dark secret of modern life.... As technology improves, a smaller and smaller percentage of people are needed to work to actually produce things we need. The rest is just noise. 5000 years ago, everyone had their own farm to feed and cloth themselves... 4000 years ago economies and money starting making people rich so they only bought and sold things at market that other people made... 100 years ago, most people still worked at factories building things... now that's probably about 10%. I personally don't know anybody that builds anything tangible.

What I wonder, is what do we do when we get to the point that machines are producing 100% of everything we need... will everyone wake up and suddenly say "I don't need to work anymore!" ??? That's my dream... the machines will be producing everything, and the only "work" people will need to do is entertainment and recreational. Of course, distributing the money and resources becomes the real problem when nobody produces anything tangible anymore :)"

There's always making better and better machines to do those things. Unless we make intelligent, self-improving machines. At that point, I'd say we're not much further from welcoming our new AI overlords.

Then there's distribution of wealth as an occupation. That's all Wall Street is. You can argue that it wouldn't exist if there weren't actually companies out there producing things but really, that idea is really just an abstract. It's gambling, pure and simple. People speculate on whether a company will do well or not, and they, en mass, buy and sell and stocks become more or less valuable. The *actual* value of the company is only connected to the value of its stock by the mentality of the buyers and sellers. In reality, that stock could be anything. It could be how much a horse who runs in a race is worth, or what number a dice will roll on to. So all of the jobs involved in the stock market is completely separate from the world of tangible production and is only related to it due to some mass cognitive dissonance.

Considering how much of today's "jobs" revolve around the stock market, I don't think we'll have anything to worry about in terms of creating trivial, useless things for people to occupy their time with. There will always be something that you could argue humans do better than a machine (note, I said argue) even if it is something as trivial as how much money the same mass of people are willing to pay for part ownership in an abstract entity. And there will always be a mass acceptance of this and mass employment of those people.

[Mark]

I worked for a publishing company about 7 years ago or so. They wanted their new quality-centric slogan printed on all the boxes being sent out from their warehouse (you know, book orders, etc).

They had thousands of these printed, each with the words "Comitted to Quality" :) Even the editorial department had cleared it!

[Robert Roaldi]

You might be interested in this blog piece I wrote nearly 2 years ago on motivational posters.

http://roberts-rants.blogspot.com/2006/02/motivation-posters.html

Robert

[le Big MAC]

I will read every post, I just wanted to get this in early. RE:
"Our rule of thumb was that 90% of new businesses fail. The exceptions were franchisees and pizza places. But we saw no shortage of people willing to mortgage their homes to start their own sporting good stores and boutique dress shops, despite the 90% chance of failure. Without clueless optimists, the economy would grind to a halt."

The overly optimistic entrepreneurs and the brain-dead office drones are quite often the same people. There are many exceptions, but generally I find many small business owners get into it because no company would hire them. And you Dilbert fans know how DUMB you have to be to not at least get temp work.

Seriously though, there are also just idealistic people who just KNOW that a DIY pottery shop would be the greatest gig ever. And what do you know, it worked! We enjoy low-budget movies, rent DVDs (*ahemDilbert, the TV Series-ahem) and hang out in restaurants, cafes or bars because some very idealistic, driven and probably desperate person just KNEW that it was a good idea. And that creating yet another Starbucks wasn't where it's at for them. And guess what, it works! Sometimes.
At the very least, it beats what you do at work.

[adora]

Thanks for this post. I now understand the importance of solar-powered torch.

[Sondra]

But nor everybody is useless.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070825/ap_on_hi_te/iphone_unlocked

[kgotthardt]

Garlic flavored mittens??????? ROTFL

I just love that. What a freaking riot.

I have some counter-arguments, but they need to wait until I discuss animals on my blog.

Small and medium businesses going out of business are never a good thing for employees or otherwise. My quick 2 cents. (Where the heck is the cent sign on this keyboard anyway? Cents don't count? Sense don't count?)

[Olli Lindholm]

That is brilliant

[Arturo]

"Says the man who decided to try to start up a restaurant."

Says the man who decided to try to start up a restaurant .... and then asks us for advice on how to attract more customers.

- Fixed it for ya.

[Joel]

Spend a couple of bucks for the company.

http://www.despair.com/viewall.html

This one seems to apply: http://www.despair.com/dysfunction.html

[Tom Gao]

Just a suggestion for boosting office morale:

1. Write a bunch of fictitious compliments and praise letters from "customers". Use a random name generator or a phone directory if you have any trouble.

2. Collate these into a commendation album and make several copies.

3. Place these artifacts in strategic locations around the office for staff and customers to see.

4. Sit back and let the business run itself.

Note: I haven't actually put this theory to practice. If someone out there is stupid and daring enough to pull this off, please let me know the outcome. Don't forget to treat me dinner when you're rich.

[Noah Vaile]

I protest, sir!! It is not the power of "stupid" but the strength of human will to achieve. Every one of those little start-ups representedan individual's dream of being a success. And if the bank did not believe that it least it (the bank) wouldn't make money on the venture then the loan would not have been made. Yes, 90% may fail (seems high) but that is not due to the 'stupidity' of the entrepreneur but rather to the vagaries of the market or a lacking in the business model. Sometimes, certainly it is stupidity, but perhaps as often cupidity or even felony contribute to the demise.

Nor does the ul;timate failure of a business indicate a lack of success. The old "iceman" was a successful business model. I can still remember the 'iceman coningth'. No one would consider taking up that business/profession today, but in it's time it was quite successful. And of course the freezer full of ice is still a staple at most markets and 7-11s. Today's equivalent of the iceman.

Finally the fact that a business "failed" does not mean that it was not a success for a period of time. The Saber-tooth Tiger and T-Rex are fine examples of "failed" animals yet both had runs that lasted longer than man's has as yet. And the saber-tooths keep coming back- they're just not here right now.

Want to buy an electric glass? Battery operated it can heat or cool your drink with a flip of a switch.

[DEC]

That story reminded me of a visit to a major customer a few years ago. They had a number of plaques in the hallway, and one of them espoused the virtues of the company's quality program. This company was in China, and the English translation apparently lacked quality since they had hastily covered up a misspelled word. We waited until the hallway was empty and snapped a picture. I still laugh about that.

Oh, and I'm also afraid of monkeys with leaf money.

[Free Market Capitalist]

What make capitalism infinitely better than socialism or communism is simple: A stupid capitalist wastes all of his money, but a stupid communist wastes all of yours.

[Lee]

Scott,

See #69 on the following list and you will be proud that you have influenced a generation that sees office work only through Dilbert's eyes.

http://www.beloit.edu/~pubaff/mindset/2011.php

[Eric]

A few weeks ago, my non-PHB manager said something funny, in mockery of upper management: "We're building programmers, not programs!"

I think that is actually rather true, in the bigger picture. Who cares if a company fails? Most of the companies I've worked for have failed, but I just obtained the skills I wanted, got paid for my time, and abandoned ship when the time was ripe.

People are really what matter, not products or corporations. Failing companies tend to be educational to all involved, and hopefully no lives are ruined in the process.

Just my $0.02.

[Okgenuine]

I read if you throw money at a problem in business, that always works. That posters' story is classic anti-psychology management. Which I call super capitalism. What, you're merely a capitalist? Why be that when you can become rich, and people who don't make the super-capitalist cut can be bet on like horses! It's wonderful! Eh, this is probably one post too many for me. I couldn't help myself.

[D. Mented]

I worked temp for a company that was VERY badly run by an egotistical control freak who puts most pointy haired bosses to shame before she gets her morning coffee, and gets worse with the stimulants.
A year later I worked temp for them again, this time run by a good manager, and the difference was night and day...We worked a regular schedule instead of Bitchy-Poo's whim of the day, got materials in when we needed them, and did our work.Morale was high, and the pay was better than average for that type of work. I was invited to come back in 6 months to work there permanently when they moved to their bigger location.
I checked back in 6 months, but the proffessional manager had quit to run a print shop (because that was his true love) and the owner had decided to just go back to Bitchy-Poo rather than pay the expense of hiring another trained manager.
I did not go to work there.
The company was out of business before the end of the year.
The owner wasn't a bad guy - he just didn't want to believe the worst about his heaving, slobbering she-devil supervisor.
One more business shot down by bad management.
(not the worst I've seen just the only one short enough to post)
D. Mented