Accounting, For Tastes

"I reclined on a sofa reading TGWKTHN for the last three hours, I am placing the piece in a place of honour (for pot-boilers)..." James Joyce. Well he said it about "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes", so there's obviously no accounting for taste, what?

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I just had to get up and come here to write this as a) I am sick of sitting on the sofa (recliner chair actually) and b) I had to pass on a bit from the book. This will not involve any spoilers (we all know Salander survived obviously or there wouldn't be a third book!) but this is about a relatively minor sub-plot (or so it seems at the moment, who can tell?).

There's this great little snippet about Erika Berger, who has left Millennium, and is now at the helm of some staid daily paper in Stockholm (known as S.M.P.) that need rejuvenation due to drastically falling revenues and circulation. It has been propped up and has maintained something like profitability by a continued and drawn out series of staff and wage cuts that have sapped the vitality of the paper and turned the journalists sour*, while the board members continue to reap their dividends and the shareholders hold their cyber fortunes. Sound familiar? She is being told by members of the board that more staff cuts are required... Instead of acquiescing, she rips them a new social democratic asshole!

"The board approved your measures [at cost-cutting], of course they did, because you guaranteed them a dividend each year. That's what has to stop, and now."

"So you're suggesting in all seriousness that the board should decide to abolish dividends and bonuses. What makes you think the shareholders will agree to that?"

"I'm proposing a zero-profit operating budget this year... If the newspaper were stable and bringing in a tremendous profit, then pay out as much as you want in bonuses. But this is no time for you to be increasing your own bonus. I propose cutting all management salaries by half."

"What you don't understand is that our shareholders bought stock in the paper because they want to make money. That's called capitalism. If you arrange that they're going to lose money, then they won't want to be shareholders any longer." [Well duh, then they could sell their shares to some other sucker. Sorry. E@L]

"I'm not suggesting that they [the shareholders] should loose money, though it may come to that. Ownership implies responsibility. As you yourself have pointed out, capitalism is what matters here. S.M.P.'s owner want to make a profit. But it is the market that decides whether you make a profit or take a loss. By your reasoning, you want the rules of capitalism to apply solely to the employees of S.M.P., while you and the shareholder will be exempt." pg272.

All I could think about was the book, The Divine Right of Capital which, I believe - so therefore am probably wrong - argues for what they call "Economic Democracy". Who said that the shareholder is the most important person in the company? Where did that come from? How has that become the last unassailable right in the world? Why did we allow The Shareholder to replace The King in such an all-powerful, all-hallowed role?

How do they suggest fixing this? Speaking of accounting (for tastes, remember?) - by placing the employees and the shareholders on the same side of the accounting equation. Just another little flip in the spreadsheet in order to a) give EQUALITY to workers and shareholders and b) to give them the FREEDOM OF SPEECH to have their say in running of the company that after all means much more to them, being often their sole source of income, than it does to those profit-hunting day-trading shareholders who'll flip their "ownership" to someone else at the beep of margin-call. Hardly any loyalty or commitment there. The idea too, is to prevent the widespread and enormous corporate corruption that has been exposed recently - SHOCK HORROR - but which of course is part of the unspoken mainstay of the capitalist system, at least once the company gets to a certain level of capitalization, and usually shrugged over as just another way to make money.

It's the "capitalism with responsibility" theme that is so important in the above quote. Corporatism and monopolisation and the inevitable exploitation that such one-sided power ushers in crush the meaning out of that phrase. No wonder people like me (and frequent commenter Mark), who have seen something of the world, balk at the damage done by the lack of freedom in the core of all unregulated free markets.

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* Which reminds me of what I was reading about in The Economist about the horrendous plague of suicides affecting French Telecom and about the tug between the demand for that overwhelming loyalty (something I never bought into at that crap-hole Philips where I worked for several years) modern companies seem to expect, and the worker's awareness the company doesn't give a flying fuck about the welfare of its employees when it comes to maxing up the Profit/Headcount Ratio (a genuine metric in Philips, I swear to Darwin) come dividend time. No wonder I was so cynical there. I spent half my time filling in forms about what I was doing, but nowhere on the forms was there a place where I could say that I had spent half my time filling in forms.

A more subtle problem lies in the mixed messages that companies send about loyalty and commitment. Many firms—particularly successful ones—demand extraordinary dedication from their employees. (Microsoft, according to an old joke, offers flexitime: “You can work any 18-hour shift that you want.”) Some provide perks that are intended to make the office feel like a second home. But companies also reserve the right to trim their workforce at the first sign of trouble. Most employees understand that their firms do not feel much responsibility to protect jobs. But they nevertheless find it wrenching to leave a post that has consumed so much of their lives

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Yes, indeed. And at the moment my previously wonderfully paperwork-free-zone company is going through a certification process due some clause about us importing medical products, even if only for demonstration, and so I spent most of today writing up my own job description, rather than doing anything that is actually ON that job description.

I was about to leap from the window with the panoramic view of the east end of Sentosa myself until I received a hint from boss-san: only put down stuff that you can actually prove with documentation... Well, that's a lot easier! Nothing!

Plus it sounds a lot like a book I am currently reading...

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Speaking of Brand Loyalty, I will give this to Philips, they make crap TVs...

But if you used to work there, or if know someone who still works there, or even someone else who USED to work there, you can get cheap deals on the ex-display stock from their Tao Payao showroom. I'm picking up a 42" LCD for SGD$600 to replace the old 42" plasma (SGD$1300 three - or was it four? - years ago), which is starting to go on the blink again - only got a pure red colour first thing this morning. Not only is old one about to kark it, it doesn't take digital signal. Might need that one day if I get a Blu-ray player. Or a game-console. When my shares dividends come in.

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Speaking of shares,etc - just want to let you know that the Hong Kong restaurant I invested in hasn't returned a cracker in the last 18 months. I'm in it for the long haul. At least that what my investment advisor keeps telling me.

OK, enough rambling, time to get back to The Book.

E@L