To all. . . .Scams and cheating reach far beyond the stock exchanges. . .
So nobody thinks I am picking on any one area thing or person. . let's expand our minds for a sec to include the masses.
The head of a small law firm goes on a one-month cruise and leaves his practice in the hands of his newly appointed partner, his son. . fresh out of law school. First day on the job, the son takes a call from the grocer down the street that has had a liability case pending for 2 years. The son looks over the file and sees what the problem is. . .he sets up a meeting with the grocer for later that day and settles the case, thus closing the file. He feels so good for having made the company some money and made both parties happy, he takes a look in the law firm's filing cabinet and sees that there are hundreds of similar cases that could very quickly and cheaply be finished. The eager young attorney thinks to himself how proud his dad would be, if he returned to a nice clean office. . .he sets out to get dad's dirty work done. . he begins settling and closing case after case after case. . .earning the company a nice six-digit figure and making hundreds of litigants very very pleased. A month later when the dad comes home, he says "how did it go, son?" And the son replies, "dad, remember the grocer case. . .well, I settled it." The dad gives his boy a smile and says, "that's nice." The son continues, "and in fact you had a drawer full of cases that were just like that, so I knew you were too busy to concern yourself with these, because many of them had been open for as long as 5 or even 10 years. . .so I went ahead and settled them all." "And look at how much money it made us." The father, with a pale blank look on his face says, "that's nice, son, but you have just put us out of business."
And so it is with many areas of life. . .today the magazine publishers are answering tough questions on Capital hill about all those sweepstakes that say, "you have already won." How do they give away so many millions year after year after year anyways? Because it was determined that 30 percent or so of those receiving such mail ASSUMED that by actually purchasing a magazine subscription, they would increase their odds of winning. . . and this assumption is what drives this market. . .of course they cannot require a purchase for entry, due to lottery laws.
Similarly, how do some of these companies [like Office Max] give away SO much money in rebates? There have been rebates [especially by years end] that will send you more money back than the product cost. . .well, 2 things bear on this. . the obvious is the earnings picture of a worrysome quarter. . but again, it was determined that 30 percent of the population does not bother to send in the rebates at all. . . thus paying full price. The rebate stimulates enormous sales in the product, and when you count on that 30 percent paying the full price, the company gets rid of stale inventory, gets some extra publicity by the store ads and actually MAKES money over and above the cost after rebate.
My industry. . .record biz. . .the majors were also on Capital Hill explaining why a CD cost 7.98 wholesale and 15.98 retail, yet only cost .69 cents to manufacture, print and package a CD from a major artist. Funny thing is that for the past half-dozen years, cassettes have actually cost MORE to produce than CDs have. . .yet they are cheaper to buy. Why? Profits [SHHHhhhhh. . .]
Look at your medicine cabinet. . .what is the effectiveness of many of the over-the-counter drugs we take? Now what are the risks? And what is the cost? Great looking TV ads, huh? Now take a look at homeopathic medicines, which are derived from the pure effective extracts of natural products found somewhere on the planet. . .many discovered by natives, but perfected in some of the finest laboratories in Europe. Found to be far MORE effective, extremely cheap and totally safe, but no TV ads. Which makes more money?
Everytime you use your credit card online or otherwise, your purchase info is added to your marketing profile which is bought and sold on the market to companies looking to advertise to your very very specific demographic.
WHENEVER THERE IS MONEY TO BE MADE. . . SOMEONE ELSE HAS A DISTINCT ADVANTAGE.
And you cannot win another man's game.
All of this is presented to get you to expand your thinking "OUTSIDE THE BOX" and down the road and around the corner of the street you will be going down tomorrow. The better you can see the underlying reasons for WHATEVER, the easier time you will have making the CORRECT decisions.
Today, the correct decision for one of our group was to get a job, rather than waste time throwing money at pennies.
I applaud this action and am proud to have had a hand in helping this individual to come to such a conclusion.
We may not have the most popular thread on SI here. . .and after these posts it may become even LESS popular. . .but I won't stand idly by and watch good people throw good money into bad people's bad companies.
So keep your eyes open all around you and figure out the game BEFORE you spend a nickle on ANYTHING. It may take some investigation at first, but after while, it should come as second nature.
People are always amazed at how quickly I can spot bogus attribute. . but as the last post showed. . there is a method to this madness. And everyone here can and should apply these methods.
There will be some that do not like me exposing things. . .I can tell when I strike a nerve by the size of my inbox with private messages. . .but such people are not welcome here at the Fishing hole. There are plenty of threads that welcome hype, scams and crooks. . .some threads are made up mostly of crooks and criminals so go there.
As for this thread. . .now and then we must purify our streams.
Rande Is |
