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Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

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Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#111

Post by Double_Cast »

aeorgnoieang wrote: post #101
Double_Cast wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might wanna check out the story of Edward Lampert (the CEO of Sears). Ayn Rand inspired him to pit departments against one another. Sears devolved into a battle royale and profits dropped like a rock.

That's a really weird inspiration to take from Ayn Rand. Any source with more details about this?

I don't remember my personal source. Wikipedia citation [15] seems pretty comprehensive.

[15] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-07-11/at-sears-...

> Plagued by the realities threatening many retail stores, Sears also faces a unique problem: Lampert. Many of its troubles can be traced to an organizational model the chairman implemented five years ago, an idea he has said will save the company. Lampert runs Sears like a hedge fund portfolio, with dozens of autonomous businesses competing for his attention and money. An outspoken advocate of free-market economics and fan of the novelist Ayn Rand, he created the model because he expected the invisible hand of the market to drive better results. If the company’s leaders were told to act selfishly, he argued, they would run their divisions in a rational manner, boosting overall performance.

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#112

Post by zwieback »

strictnein wrote: post #19
zwieback wrote: post #4

Is the herring they use as bait the same fish I buy in cans or jars in the supermarket? I'd rather eat that than lobster most days.

Plain herring or pickled herring?

Both pickled and the canned German varieties I grew up with, e.g. with cream, mustard or tomato sauce.

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#113

Post by geon »

pjc50 wrote: post #94
geon wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to have the departments of a company interact based on capitalism. Sales would invest in RnD, and buy services from IT. HR would would need to focus on high quality services, not dictating unwanted routines. Profit could be extracted as a tax, and all departments could be required to just break even (with an allowed buffer for investments spanning multiple years).

By "interesting" you mean "failure"? OK, so it's not automatically a disaster, but companies have attempted to do this with "virtual org" and clouds of freelancers. It only works for certain types of piecework and small organisations. For larger things it's simply impossible to write the required contracts. This is part of why the London Underground privatisation failed: contract documents were heading into the milli…

Failure is often more interesting.

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#114

Post by narrowrail »

Double_Cast wrote: post #64
51stpage wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really appreciate your insight that different political structures work better for different scales and different situations. I suppose that's intuitively obvious but I hadn't ever considered it.

You might wanna check out the story of Edward Lampert (the CEO of Sears). Ayn Rand inspired him to pit departments against one another. Sears devolved into a battle royale and profits dropped like a rock.

I listened to the first earnings call when Lampert took the helm at Sears, and he said to think of Sears as a real estate company. In other words, I don't think he thought a lot about Sears potential as a retailer.

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#115

Post by narrowrail »

Double_Cast wrote: post #111
aeorgnoieang wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really weird inspiration to take from Ayn Rand. Any source with more details about this?

I don't remember my personal source. Wikipedia citation [15] seems pretty comprehensive. [15] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-07-11/at-sears-... > Plagued by the realities threatening many retail stores, Sears also faces a unique problem: Lampert. Many of its troubles can be traced to an organizational model the chairman implemented five years ago, an idea he has said will save the company. Lampert runs…

Which is odd since he only became CEO in 2013, "In January 2013, it was announced that Lampert would take over as chief executive officer at Sears after Louis D'Ambrosio stepped down due to family health matters, which took effect in May 2013."

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#116

Post by MandieD »

zwieback wrote: post #112
strictnein wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plain herring or pickled herring?

Both pickled and the canned German varieties I grew up with, e.g. with cream, mustard or tomato sauce.

According to my husband, canned herring in tomato sauce or cream is delicious but I can't bring myself to even try it due to the smell.

He's only allowed to eat it indoors if I'm not home, and the cans have to be thrown in the outside trash immediately.

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#117

Post by zwieback »

MandieD wrote: post #116
zwieback wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both pickled and the canned German varieties I grew up with, e.g. with cream, mustard or tomato sauce.

According to my husband, canned herring in tomato sauce or cream is delicious but I can't bring myself to even try it due to the smell. He's only allowed to eat it indoors if I'm not home, and the cans have to be thrown in the outside trash immediately.

Same situation at my house - outside consumption and disposal only.

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#118

Post by alarat2001 »

Goronmon wrote: post #31
clashmoore wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, I am in the North East and I do recall a year (probably 2012ish) where every local restaurant had exploded with lobster specials. Not necessarily whole lobsters for sale, but their meat used as a choice of protein along side chicken, beef, etc. The price at that time dropped to like $9 per pound in the super markets. Since that year, I haven't seen the same offerings where this Bloomberg article would su…

A few years ago you could get lobsters from Market Basket for $3.99 a pound. And they would steam them for you at no charge. My wife and I would go to the beach in the morning and pick up a couple decent size lobsters on the way home for around $10. That was a fun summer.

In 2012, early warming of the Gulf of Maine precipitated an early and voluminous lobster molt. (The summer lobster are soft shell, meaning they have just molted). This glutted the market, creating dock prices near $2/ lb. During this summer, someone in Maine could buy a lobster for ~4-5 dollars.

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#119

Post by [deleted] »

bdr wrote: post #51
jredwards wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the right to make a living comes before the right to make a killing That's a hell of a sentence. Clever use of two idioms which are probably unrelated in origin but share imagery.

Lil Wayne did it first: https://genius.com/Lil-wayne-the-sky-is-the-limit-lyrics

[deleted]
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