Thursday, October 14, 2010

Hail big business, the miners are safe!

All 33 Chilean miners have been pulled to the surface. I wonder when P-BO will begin slamming big business for the landslide that trapped the miners. But the fact is, were it not for big business, the miner would have died of starvation and dehydration long ago.


What mom and pop company had the resources, technical know how and equipment to save the miners? It took big business to come to the rescue here. It was the hated American mining industry that had the know how to bore down half a mile to affect the rescue. UPS flew the necessary equipment in from the US in less than 48 hours.

The next time P-BO and the Demo-Dopes slam big business, try to imagine your life without it. Own a TV? Gone. A refrigerator? Gone. A furnace or air conditioner? Gone. Planning to fly off for some nice vacation? Don’t. Need a quart of milk after 8 pm? Too bad. Need to drive to work? Better get a bike, uh wait that’s big business as well, better leave early or take up long distance running.

So why is big business the #1 least respected group in America today? Well we have a president who has never worked a day in his life bashing big business for political gain. It’s class warfare. It’s an attempt to pit the big thinkers and risk takers against the rest of us. How many pols in Washington today have ever done one thing of substance outside of politics? Too damn few that’s for sure. Theirs is the life of a self-licking ice cream cone. Get elected, then spend every waking moment pitting one group of Americans against another to get re-elected. And big business is an easy target. Because it’s so big and touches every aspect of our live.

Try to imagine your life without big business. It isn’t pretty. It pushes us back centuries. Yeah sure we all complain when our flight is delayed or stranded on the runway for hours. Some of the stuff that occurs on occasion is downright criminal. But where would we be without it? And is big business really out to screw us and endanger its employees? I do not think there is a single business plan out there among the fortune 500 that has as its goal drawing in first time customers and screwing them so completely that they will never again use the companies product or service.

Quite the opposite. It’s usually the small time business that shows up reeks havoc on the customer and is off to the next town before the cops can catch up with them. You hear about it all of the time. Joe pays a little “front money” to the local shade tree mechanic to get his car fixed. Ten weeks later the car the car isn’t fixed. His front money is gone and the mechanic is in jail. Had Joe gone to the Ford Motor Company, he’d have paid a bit more, ok a whole lot more, but the car would be fixed.

I try to use the little guy as much as possible, but on certain things I like to be able to go back and say. “Hey something’s not right here.” Every business has its ups and downs. Businesses big and small sometimes come up short. But I submit that unless it’s some fly by night scam company or fly by night scam manager, no business sets out to screw its customers or workers.

So the next time you hear someone complaining about “big business” because the manager at McDonald’s was rude to her, reminder her that it was the manager not McDonald’s that was rude. The next time some know-it-all talks about putting all of the CEOs in jail, ask him if thinks he could go a week without the goods and services that those CEOs provide.

Yeah, I get frustrated sometimes with business, but I thank God that people are willing to take the risks and invest the way that they do because it makes my life on the whole soooo much easier.

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