Nah, just that when I nail libertarianism to the wall, I want to use nails that will hold. 
Then you haven’t been paying attention, I run across it constantly from libertarians.
As others here have pointed out, there’s a lot of mischaracterization here of what exactly constitutes libertarianism. It seems to me that really what is “disproved” by the article in the OP isn’t libertarianism at all, but concepts of free-market capitalism applied within a corporation. Generally, libertarians are overwhelmingly capitalists, but that are not the same thing and it is possible to be one and not the other.
The general principles of libertarianism, in their simplest forms, are minimization of coercion of all kinds, and decentralization. Libertarians will disagree on exactly where the lines of acceptable coercion and decentralization go, but those are the basic concepts. And these principles can be applied to the running of a business in different ways. For example, a more centralized Sears might dictate that certain departments get certain amounts of floor space based upon their needs and revenue, but a more localized Sears might let regions, districts, or even individual stores make those determinations, such that perhaps a more urban area would have more floor space dedicated to clothes and a suburban one might have a somewhat larger lawn and tools section, etc. At the same time, excessive localization could be harmful to Sears, where creating and mailing regional or national catalogs in a more centralized manner could take advantage of efficiencies of scale that might offset minor profit loss from not having the highly localized catalog.
n the end, though, the concepts in the OP are about different parts of Sears competing with themselves, this makes sense in a general economic environment, but it’s generally competition between similar products and services. To some degree, Sears competes with a companies like Walmart, Home Depot, and JCPenney, because there’s some overlap in the products and services that Sears offers that those companies offer. But Sears essentially has no overlap with Safeway, Warner Bros, or Microsoft, so they don’t compete in any meaningful way. So, inside of a single company, Sears’ different departments competing is a lot more like the latter example than the former. In fact, the whole idea behind the Sears, and other department stores, business model is that the different departments are intended to cooperate because one department can help attract customers to another department. And that applies to the economy as a whole when you see something like a new movie getting promotions from products from generally non-competing brands, some people might buy that cereal because it mentions that movie they liked, some people might see that movie because they got some interest after seeing it on their favorite cereal. The only part that libertarianism has to do with any of that is that it would suggest that any competition or cooperation should be without coercion.
On this board, or elsewhere?
Is there even such a thing as a Libertarian business model? It kind of sounds like he half-assed an attempt to turn sub departments into franchises. If actually thought out well, that might be an interesting experiment.
Please, somebody, start this thread!
Actually, thinking about it, this sounds a little bit more like Federalism (?) not sure if that is the term, the idea of giving states certain leeway in experimenting with the effectiveness of different laws. The idea sounds good in principle, but there would have to be a lot more inter-store or corporate communication for it to work. There’s no point in letting stores experiment with their tactics if the unsuccessful stores aren’t getting good information about why the successful stores are doing well. And having interdepartmental competition seems like overkill, the scale is too small and the resources too shared for that to work.
It’d be a fine idea for a business that was highly diversified. The article mentions that General Electric uses a similar model, for instance. Each division would have to justify the resources it was allotted, and more resources could be shifted to more productive divisions without other divisions being able to sabotage one another. There’s not much GE’s light bulb division can do to hamstring the operations of its weapons division.
It’s a really bad idea for retail though, or at least a difficult one to implement well, because retail divisions are closely tied to one another: they share the same floor space, the same advertising, and the same overall brand. In that setting, cooperation is a wiser course. There are things the appliance division can do to sabotage the Kenmore division, and they will do those things. There’s simply too much interdependence needed to operate a retail chain.
I have to seriously question whether or not you even have a rudimentary understanding of what libertarianism is and what a free market is. The very fact that Sears is losing market share due to their inability to serve the consumer well is in fact an effect of the free market working exactly as it is intended!
Free market economics is a theory that says that free competition in prices yield the best allocation of resources and the highest level of sustainable economic growth and increased prosperity because consumer preference drives the economy. The theory argues that no force or coercion should be initiated against peaceful people and no business or economic interest should be allowed to gain any artificial advantage due to partnering with government, thus free access for competitors and no bailouts if you fail.
Free consumers sending market signals through their spending habits, yielding profits or losses to entrepreneurs is superior to central planning. This is because arbitrary decisions on how to allocate resources or injecting large sums of money into certain sectors of the economy diverts resources from other sectors and the price system is distorted. Individual consumers are very good at knowing what they need to do to improve their material well being and the lives of the family and friends. This is reflected in their spending habits and, in the absence of government intervention, entrepreneurs are forced to alter their production and investments to meet consumer demand.
To look at various CEOs of large companies and try to extrapolate the validity of libertarian theory by looking at how well their companies are doing is entirely non sensical.
So the CEO of Sears claims to be a libertarian and his company is failing. His decisions regarding how to structure his company and manage it are entirely irrelevent to the fact that consumers don’t want to shop at Sears anymore.
To illustrate the free market working as it is supposed to and somehow think that this invalidates libertarian theory is nonsensical.
All a libertarian agrees to is to not initiate force against another peaceful human being. Beyond that, businessmen can run their companies any way they see fit.
What you fail to understand is that in a free market economy, it is the consumers who are king, not the individual CEOs and companies. It can be tough to predict consumer preferences and how spending habits will change. Being an entrepreneur entails a lot of risk. You might be a purist libertarian, but if you are managing a company with an outdated method of doing business then you will still lose market share and you might even go bankrupt.
Even so, given the article you posted, I have to doubt that Mr Labert is honestly a libertarian. You quote a passage that says: “Creation of a board of directors for each unit, keeping executives mired in monthly meetings as they serve on up to six different boards…Bonus evaluations based on unit performance only, which led to turf wars over store displays or cuts in retail labor from one division–apparel–knowing that floor salespersons in neighboring departments would inevitably pick up the slack…marketing meetings where the various units would fight over space in the weekly circular, leading to a “Frankenstein” publication with incoherent product combinations (think screwdrivers being advertised next to lingerie) or a cover ad for minibikes on Mother’s day (because the sporting goods division bid higher for the cover that week).”
What does any of this have to do with libertarianism? He obviously made a series of dumb decisions and now he is being punished by the free market, which is an example of the free market working, not a refutation of it!
Perhaps you could elaborate on why exactly you think this article “does serious damage to the libertarian philosophy of free markets”. I will gladly take you up on your offer and try to refute your logic.
Implementing what those who call themselves libertarians want on a national level would likewise be a dumb decision, and would cause our nation to suffer relative to other nations.
I challenge any self-described libertarian to provide two pieces of information: First, just what exactly “libertarian” means. And second, just what that means in terms of specific political goals. I’d be surprised if anyone gives answers to those two questions which are consistent with each other.
Who are you Der Trihs? I have visited these forums many times and I have almost never seen you say anything intelligent or substantial. You don’t argue a position, use facts and sources. You aren’t even intellectually honest about what your opponents believe.
You generally type one or two sentance responses to generally well thought out and carefully presented arguments (whether they are right or wrong). You use extreme hyperbole and mischaracterize the argument being presented. From what I gather you start out with the following statement which you believe is so obviously correct as to not need defending: Libertianism is inherently evil and we need larger and larger government (the larger the better) to force all us peons to not savagely murder each other, or have society collapse into subsistence living and all the benefits of modern society would crumble and we would be left as slaves to corporations, working 80 hours a week, being poisoned by our farmers with no recourse.
It doesn’t matter that I can (and have) pointed to overwhelming historical data that proves otherwise. Logic and economic theory does not seem to persuade you. I might also note that the above characterization of your argument is not your objection to anarchism but also your objection to even a modest limitation in government power!
I don’t mind disagreement and healthy debate. What I do mind is purposeful deceit and disrespect that you show when you distort the argument, mischaracterize your opponents position and trot out unsubstantiated hyperbole and don’t even bother to attempt to defend your wild statements.
This response is a good example. It has been clearly stated that libertarian theory has absolutely NOTHING to say about how to effective run a business. None. Yet that does not matter to you. So still say that this case shows that libertarianism has been tried and has failed in this instance and it is just us blind libertarians who are excusing an obvious blow to our ideology. An honest individual would never say something like this. They would at least attempt to understand the ideology they are trying to refute.
There are plenty of radical leftists and neo conservatives who are great at running businesses and plenty of libertarians that are lousy at it. But as long as it is the consumers who are dictating which businesses succeed and which fail, this is completely consistant with libertarian economic theory.
Der Trihs, if you are honest, you will admit your mistake and change your debating tactics from hence forth. The repeated style of your responses and purposeful ignoring of facts and your seeming inability to compose a thoughtful argument in a couple paragraphs in defense of your views leads me to ask other questions about you. I could easily give you a pass if you are very young, even high school aged. At that stage it is reasonable that you would have not yet learned how to write, form arguments and defend a position. And immaturity would account for the rest.
If this is NOT the case, then you don’t have much of an excuse. I would love to challenge you to a one on one debate to see how much you really do know. But I am tired of writing four or five paragraphs outlining my thesis, a logical progression of linear thought culminating in links to sources defending my argument and have you respond with a series of one or two sentance responses like:
“Under libertarianism, we’d all be forced into cannibalism! Big corporations would all be murdering our babies and our life expectancy would be cut in half!”
Obvious exaggeration aside, never have you ventured to offer anything in the way of thoughtful critique or providing sources to back up your views. So I wonder why you even bother. I hope you do bother to respond to this post however.
In case you don’t, I am curious about the other members of this forum that have been on here a lot longer than me. Do Der Trihs’ posts bother anyone else as much as they do me? Even if you are in general agreement politically speaking with Der Trihs, his simplistic style of argumentation, ignoring of facts and even purposefully mischaracterizing the entire discussion (as he has done here) must be challenged.
If someone is to honestly challenge the views of an intellectual opponent, it is important to be respectful enough to actually understand the argument your opponent is making. I mean, if I was making the case for Austrian economics over Keynesian economics, it would be critical that I actually understand what Keynes actually said and believed. Fortunately, I have read Keynes and understand his arguments, at least to the degree necessary to have a productive conversation with a Keynesian.
Does anyone have any comment to this post? I didn’t mean to go off like this, but Der Trihs posts have been pissing me off for a while and I felt I had to say something.
Here in Melbourne, a Sears equivilant called ‘Myer’ is slowly going downhill and loosing business. They have a couple of problems:
1)Competing with on-line shopping.
2)They traditionally depended on print/newspaper advertising.
3)The shopping malls are stealing their business.
The last reason is particularly interesting. The ‘department store’ model is derived from the shopping mall, which descends from strip shopping. Real-estate developers had the bright idea of providing shopping centres to house small specialty shops.
Then people had the bright idea of owning all the shops in the mall. They operated the specialty shops as separate departments with the managers on commision.
That turned into the department store like walmart, where it’s not really run as separate departments at all. All the buying is centralised. All the staffing is centralised. Department ‘managers’ are shop clerks.
Here in Aus, when the real-estate developers developed shopping centres, they invited in the big department stores to ‘anchor’ their development. The developers didn’t know much about retail, but they knew nobody would come to their shopping centre if they didn’t have a big department store to bring people in.
Over the last 40 years, some of the landlords have learned a lot about retail. “Westfields” is now clearly a better retail manager than “Myers”.
Westfields is managing their shopping centres with a bunch of independent competing retail businesses. Myers is trying to compete as a large store, but is failing. If I go into a Westfields shopping centre, I can get mensware from Myers, or from a small shop. I can get ladiesware from Myers, or from a small shop. I can get books from Myers, or from a small shop. etc
And here is the thing: Myers is loosing market share, but Westfields is not. Westfields is a much bigger more successful company than Myers is.
I never thought to call the Westfields model a ‘libertarian’ model. To me, it is just one of the range of historically successful retail models.
Yeah, Trihs, be more gold-standardy!
Both.
Agent #19593 of the Lizard People Secret Service.
Really, what kind of answer did you expect for a question like that?
As demonstrated by history. Look up the “Gilded Age”.
Alright then. You’ve been here a lot longer than I, so I’m not in a position to know if you’re mistaken. Certainly libertarians might well differ you on what exactly constitutes “coercion”, but the idea that only the actions of government can be coercive, or that coercive acts undertaken by entities other than the government are perfectly acceptable, seems entirely contrary to any conception of libertarianism I’ve ever encountered. In those conceptions, opposition to coercion by anyone is a fundamental tenet, and either the government is seen as the only legitimate bulwark against coercion by others, or something to be avoided and replaced with private institutions that would provide the same services.
It’s akin to hearing that a consistent feature of democrats, one which you encounter constantly, is that the people are best ruled by a cloistered group of monks whose supreme powers pass from father to son.
I have patiently read every post in this thread, and appreciate those who lay out a general definition of libertarian principles (I like John Mace’s brief “Do whatever you want, but don’t physically hurt anyone else”) . However, IMO a few clarifications are in order
First, it’s pretty disingenuous to argue that libertarianism “worked” because Sears failed. The article made the point that Mr. Lambert was “An outspoken advocate of free-market economics and fan of the novelist Ayn Rand” who “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.” It’s pretty clear from the results that he was wrong. Maybe he mis-applied those principles, or maybe they couldn’t be applied in this context, but to say his failure “proves” the free market works is to go outside the model of Sears as a real-world example of libertarian economic principles.
Second, I think some libertarian defenders want to characterize Mr. Lambert’s decisions about how to run the company as a form of coercion–that the various divisions of Sears wouldn’t have engaged in a counterproductive competition if Lambert hadn’t gamed the system. From the article, lets look at the specifics of his business model:
I don’t see any way to read this other than Lambert trying to model within his company the natural laws of the free market (the comparison to Greenwich Avenue–a real-world shopping district–is the clincher). He even notes that the divisions are free to make agreements with each other (i.e. they don’t have to remain strict competitors). But…that didn’t happen. The autonomous groups didn’t cooperate, and IMO they rarely will in the so-called libertarian paradise. That’s the reason I call this a case-study: Decentralization and market forces (within Sears) did not produce the kind of result libertarianism might have predicted. IMO they never do; libertarianism is exceedingly vague on how economic actors actually decide and cooperate in a “fair” way, and from my brush with human experience, the people with the money and the guns will always seek to dominate those without, and I for one prefer that be a central government checked by democracy that whichever tin-pot dictator happens to win the market free-for-all.
Third, some have said it’s inappropriate to test libertarian philosophy in this way, because the rules can’t really be applied in this case. This seems to be the heart of Labrador Receiver’s sarcastic quips “I debunked libertarianism by using it as a model for child-rearing,” and “We threw out all the rules associated with football, and used a libertarian model instead - a philosophic criticism.” That’s fine, but IMO you need to explain why Sears was an inappropriate test, especially given (1) this was Lambert’s stated intention, and (2) it isn’t obvious that the operations of Sears were unlike a competition (for company resources) between autonomous economic actors (the various divisions) in a free market (the various board meetings)–something that can fairly be extrapolated to a real-world economy.
And if we concede that libertarianism doesn’t always work as an organizing principle, what can we learn from these exceptions? Why, for example, can’t a libertarian model work in football when it comes to, say, competition for player services? Can that same logic be applied in other examples? Perhaps libertarians can learn something from Lambert’s failed experiment, rather than dismiss it as worthless and doubting (like jayarod7) whether Mr Lambert is “honestly a libertarian”. I certainly don’t claim to know his heart, but his goals seemed pretty clear.
I don’t think this really debunks libertarian philosophy as a whole, necessarily. I think instead it attacks the right-wing article of faith that competition and free market action are always preferable, as well as the trend toward introducing free market concepts and competition to situations where they don’t necessarily belong.
For instance, a little while back the state of Kentucky turned its perfectly adequate Medicaid system over to a trio of privately-run Managed Care Organizations. The idea was that the MCOs would compete and keep costs low and service quality high, but in reality everyone is doing three times the paperwork and dealing with at least three times the bullshit for the same money, if that. Also, twice so far our hospital has stopped taking one of the MCOs due to contract disputes, meaning that we’ve had to switch everyone from one plan to another multiple times. It’s a nightmare, and the promised cost savings aren’t even looking that likely.
Another example: I’m clinical faculty for a large university, which means that I spend most of my time teaching medical residents and seeing patients with them as well as seeing a few on my own. Of course, seeing the patients generates revenue. Last year the University decided to base part of everyone’s salary on how much revenue they generate individually.
When we pointed out to the higher-ups that this would mean competing with our direct colleagues for patients they said, “Yes, that’s the whole point.” When we asked if our salaries could instead be based on our performance as a department as a whole, they said (and I swear I’m not making this up) “Communism didn’t work.”
There are times for competition and times for cooperation. There are times for central planning and times for letting the invisible hand do its thing. Maybe it’s just my proximity to the above examples that makes me think of this as a trend, but if I’m not wrong I hope the Sears fiasco makes everyone question this bit of dogma.
Libertarians don’t care whether Sears succeeded or failed. All they care about is whether they used the government to coerce other parties into doing something they wouldn’t have otherwise done. Whether one company fails or not has nothing to do with whether Libertarianism works or not.
Sp what? There are lots of outspoken advocates of things who have no idea about how “things” actually work. The question is, was he actually a good businessman who knew how to run the day-to-day operations of a retail company? I might understand all the principles that go into writing good poetry, and I might even be a great critic of poetry, but that doesn’t make me a good poet. That doesn’t mean that in that crucial moment when I’m choosing one word over another or one allusion over another that I’m going to make the choice that creates great poetry vs something a computer could come up with if programmed with all the key attributes of good poetry.
But even beyond that, Libertarianism does not promise a great economy or sound businesses. It promises maximum freedom, which includes the freedom to fail or succeed regardless if you’re a HS dropout who wouldn’t know Howard Roark from Christopher Wren or a fan of Ayn Rand who can give lectures on the History of Architecture.
Missed the edit window. Think of it this way: How many “outspoken advocates of Cubism” can create good Cubist art? How many “outspoken advocates of the game of football” can play professional football?
You say the arguments against your thesis are weak. But your argument is weak. It has no substance other than a vague appeal to authority without establishing that the person in question is an actual authority.
I, myself, am an outspoken advocate of the wonders of Pinto Noir from the Santa Lucia Highlands. However, if I attempted to make a Pinot from that appellation, I doubt that even Sears would agree to market it.
I’ve just refuted the theory of evolution…
What I did was, instead of just deciding what items to put on my weekly shopping list based on past need, I would use a genetic algorithm. I’d buy 10 random sets of shopping, see which 2 I liked best, and combine them, plus “mutations” to decide next week’s 10 sets of shopping.
I did this experiment, and quickly ran out of money, time, patience and sanity.
Take that Darwin!
btw IANA Libertarian
It seems to me that you’ve figured him out.