He saw about $240 million worth of stock that he personally purchased evaporate as the shares tumbled. Another $287 million that he received in compensation has all but disappeared.
... so he made $40 million?
A Billionaire’s Sears Fiasco Is Finally Nearing Its End
71–80 of 108 posts
Re: A Billionaire’s Sears Fiasco Is Finally Nearing Its End
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Financial leech? Are you arguing that without Lampert Sears would be a thriving business today?
Not OP, but yes, Sears would be a LOT better off without Lampert's engineering -- starting with his leaving a $billion in the company instead of siphoning it off to his hedge fund [1]. Lampert has done virtually everything to make the company fail, from employer actions that drove away anyone good, to screwing suppliers so that he now has no inventory, to letting the actual stores look like dingy, deserted, wasteland…
Sears was headed into the toilet long before Amazon became big.
Lambert was the final nail in the coffin.
Re: A Billionaire’s Sears Fiasco Is Finally Nearing Its End
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fundamental problem with Rand's ideology is her cartoonish categorization of everyone that isn't Galt-esque or an enthusiastic, hypercompetent support person as evil looters/parasites. Iirc, Galt is basically trying to collapse society for everyone but the former. When you realize that you can't just write off people because they didn't turn out to be brilliant entrepreneurs or perky worker bees, and that the wor…
I disagree. In the book society was already collapsing. Plenty of regular people in the novel realized something was wrong and removed themselves from the looters' economy to roam the country. Galt simply refused to be the one to prop up the looters failing economy. Interesting that you see Galt as the one collapsing society. Rand's point was that the looters collapsed society and that they were too ignorant to under…
So in the metaphor of the story's title, Atlas, whose shrugging caused the collapse of society, is the looters? Not the successful entrepeneurial giants, Galt et al., who in their collective departure from the world leave it, figuratively speaking, unsupported?
Re: A Billionaire’s Sears Fiasco Is Finally Nearing Its End
#74Hubris and an unshakable belief in Ayn Rand... http://evonomics.com/the-ceo-of-sears-jon-haidt/
There are many out there who praise Ayn Rand, but I often find it illustrative to consider their actions over their words. My reading of Objectivism as described in Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead, would value the contributions of an entrepreneur building something of value to society over financial engineering that destroys value. Rand is also often carried as a banner by those with whom I'm not convinced she wou…
Perhaps my reading was less sophisticated, but it seemed to me that she argued that we are not morally obliged to draw our circle of loyalty, or responsibility to others, any wider than we choose.
Welp I guess if we're talking about Ayn, I'll crack a beer and go start the popcorn now....
Re: A Billionaire’s Sears Fiasco Is Finally Nearing Its End
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fundamental problem with Rand's ideology is her cartoonish categorization of everyone that isn't Galt-esque or an enthusiastic, hypercompetent support person as evil looters/parasites. Iirc, Galt is basically trying to collapse society for everyone but the former. When you realize that you can't just write off people because they didn't turn out to be brilliant entrepreneurs or perky worker bees, and that the wor…
Ayn Rand's characters and storytelling is crappy. The correct response when someone asks, "Who is John Galt?" is always "WHO THE #$%^&* CARES?!" That notwithstanding, Rand understood that one can moralize without limitation in our culture as long as one does it in narrative form, and she used her platform to the extreme. The message and moral I took from her stories was essentially pro-human, where the archetypal goo…
> In any case, her brand of optimism is so rare, and that sells.
You're saying Ayn Rand is popular because of the optimism in her works?
Re: A Billionaire’s Sears Fiasco Is Finally Nearing Its End
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to get more cartoonish than Star Trek's Ferengi, a left-wing caricature of capitalists, going so far as having pointed teeth.
Star Trek is a tv show. Unlike Objectivism, it is not trying to be a philosophy.
Are you sure about that? Most ST episodes have a pretty heavy-handed moral lesson on progressive philosophy.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/06/new-star-trek-series-...
Re: A Billionaire’s Sears Fiasco Is Finally Nearing Its End
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fundamental problem with Rand's ideology is her cartoonish categorization of everyone that isn't Galt-esque or an enthusiastic, hypercompetent support person as evil looters/parasites. Iirc, Galt is basically trying to collapse society for everyone but the former. When you realize that you can't just write off people because they didn't turn out to be brilliant entrepreneurs or perky worker bees, and that the wor…
Ayn Rand's characters and storytelling is crappy. The correct response when someone asks, "Who is John Galt?" is always "WHO THE #$%^&* CARES?!" That notwithstanding, Rand understood that one can moralize without limitation in our culture as long as one does it in narrative form, and she used her platform to the extreme. The message and moral I took from her stories was essentially pro-human, where the archetypal goo…
> It's so interesting to me that your critique went to group politics and identity, though. Rand was consistently negative about groups and big government cronyism. She treated her archetypes as equally noble whether they were breaking rocks in a quarry or engineering some new miracle metal. Do you view the world through such a group identity lens that you couldn't see that in her writing? It's absolutely plain.
I’m not really sure what you’re talking about. I do have thoughts on group and identity politics, but I certainly wasn’t referencing them in my post. Not consciously or in any way that is obvious to me, at least.
Re: her archetypes being treated as “equally noble”, I didn’t suggest they weren’t? Although she certainly presents a hierarchy of value that depends on what a given character is doing / capable of. Rearden is without question the lesser man in Rand's and Dagny Taggart's eyes, compared to Galt.
Re: A Billionaire’s Sears Fiasco Is Finally Nearing Its End
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Star Trek is a tv show. Unlike Objectivism, it is not trying to be a philosophy.
Are you sure about that? Most ST episodes have a pretty heavy-handed moral lesson on progressive philosophy. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/06/new-star-trek-series-...
No one bases their lives around Star Trek moral messages besides a few nerds.
Also, you may want to read what I wrote again. I said "Star Trek is not pretending to be a moral philosophy." Ayn Rand claims that Objectivism is the basis for ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, etc. How on Earth does that compare to the Ferengi being greedy as a parable of capitalism?
Re: A Billionaire’s Sears Fiasco Is Finally Nearing Its End
#79How is it a fiasco? He wanted to gut the place and get the real estate. He gutted the place and got the real estate. It's a heist, not a fiasco
I wouldn't call that a heist.
If a company can't make money from it's valuable real estate, then maybe it doesn't deserve to be a company, and should stop wasting everyone's time and money pursue goals that will fail.
Eventually you have to learn not to throw good money after bad. If anything, the people who are trying to keep zombie corporations around are the thieves.
Re: A Billionaire’s Sears Fiasco Is Finally Nearing Its End
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. In the book society was already collapsing. Plenty of regular people in the novel realized something was wrong and removed themselves from the looters' economy to roam the country. Galt simply refused to be the one to prop up the looters failing economy. Interesting that you see Galt as the one collapsing society. Rand's point was that the looters collapsed society and that they were too ignorant to under…
So in the metaphor of the story's title, Atlas, whose shrugging caused the collapse of society, is the looters ? Not the successful entrepeneurial giants, Galt et al. , who in their collective departure from the world leave it, figuratively speaking, unsupported?
No, Atlas is people like Galt.
The point is that the looters pushed the weight of the world on to them, and that's the failure of their society.