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a Quora - corporate raiding / cannibalism
It is interesting,,, and depressing.

Franklin Veaux
·
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Lives in Portland, ORUpdated Tue
What happened to all the fun, free attractions on the Las Vegas Strip,
and why have they mostly disappeared?
Ayn Rand.

I’m serious. Ayn Rand.

The Vegas casinos used to be run by organized crime. Crime families
wanted something they could leave to their kids, so perhaps
paradoxically, they were invested in creating something enduring.

Today, the Strip is owned by Wall Street hedge funds, and Wall Street
hedge funds have some…bizarre ideas about how to run a business,
influenced by Ayn Rand.

The best example is this guy:

Meet Eddie Lampert of the punchable face, the hedge fund CEO and Ayn
Rand acolyte who destroyed Sears.

Eddie Lampert and people like him have this weird notion that says you
make a corporation stronger by carving it up into divisions that you
then turn against each other in a battle royale for capital, marketing,
and other resources.

You set up a system where each division operates as an independent
business unit. You make them compete for operating budgets with all the
other divisions. Every year, you rank how much profit they generate and
how much revenue growth they show. The winners get more advertising
dollars and bigger budgets. The losers get stripped of resources and
their employees fired.

Survival of the fittest! Ar ar aroo! The strong survive! Ar ar aroo! The
weak perish! Ar ar aroo! Objectivism! Ar ar aroo!

I’m serious. Wall Street managers actually believe this. I’m not making this up.

If you think that sounds incredibly, mind-bogglingly stupid…you’re right.

It’s as if you tried to make your body stronger by making all your
organs compete. No, sorry, your liver’s numbers are off, so we’re going
to stop giving blood to those lazy freeloading liver cells and give that
blood to your kidneys instead. That’ll make you strong!

In the past, mob bosses handed out free food and free attractions
because they knew that if gamblers could park their families at the show
and then hit up the baccarat tables, they’d spend more time (and money) gambling.

Since the fund managers took over the casinos, they’d spend Food
Services Division must compete with the Entertainment Division to prove
profit and revenue growth quarter after quarter. If their numbers slip, they’re punished.

So Food Services stops giving out free food. Entertainment stops
offering free shows and starts jacking up ticket prices, paying
entertainers less, and doing whatever it can to juice those numbers.

And the result is exactly what you expect.

It worked sooo well with Sears, everyone in Wall Street is like “let’s
do that again!”

That’s the thing about Wall Street hedge fund managers. They’re people
of the land. Common clay of the financial world. You know, morons.

The same people who are all like “ha ha ha, look at those socialists, socialism has never worked” are all “well, you know, this vicious dog-eat-dog internal competition bankrupted the last six businesses I
tried it on, but it will totally work this time, I just know it will.”

Morons.

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Andrew K Jacobson
· 19h
Really, Mr. Veaux—comparing hedge fund managers to morons. Surely,
morons haven’t done anything terrible to you . . .

*Cross-reference: Airplane! (1980), another classic oldie.

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