Yes, hemp may be somewhat better for the environment that cotton, but it is rather inferior as a clothing material, altho is is Ok for jeans.
I had a $150 bottle of Pommard that was truly fantastic. But here in CA You can get very decent wine for around $10 that tastes every bit as nice as a $40 wine.
You are not a investment company that doesnt sell annuities but instead does stocks etc. They dont sell annuities thus they cant make any $ off them. A certain investment company runs lots of ads saying how horrible annuities are. I likely shoudl have said 'certain" investment companies. You can find their ads all over the interwebs with three evil looking annuity sellers cackling over how they are stealing money from their investors.
You, OTOH, do make $ off them, thus you likely dont tell your clients they are a horrible bad thing they should never invest in (I trust you give them good advice not predicated on how much you make, of course).
No, we sell all types of investments. I have my insurance and annuities licenses, Deth. I choose not to sell them because I’m more an advice guy and bogglehead.
I assure you, I am encouraged to sell them by my firm. I am occasionally asked why I don’t sell more of them. Hell, we even have a subsidiary that originates them. I’m not required to sell those - I can sell most firms annuities should I choose - but it’s easier to sell our own than someone elses.
Seriously, Deth. There’s a lot of money in annuities. I know colleagues who do nothing but.
Example of the money paid - numbers fictional but compensation is not.
$200,000 variable annuity. Someone wants income in 7-10 years locked in. Fine.
Putting it in the system I am given a choice of compensation. I can choose between money now or over time. Examples at the fringes:
- I can take about 1.5-2% of the initial purchase price each year so long as the contract is active.
- I can take 7% of the value of the contract upfront in a one-time payment with no trails.
There are several gradations in the middle, as well. Those two are just the extremes.
Again, I am not saying YOU dont make any money on them or that there isnt any money to be made on them. It is just there is a certain investment company that doesnt/cant sell annuities that runs constant ads saying how horrible bad they are.
Does your company run constant ads telling everyone how they should hate annuities?
How is that bluff and bullfeathers as per in house counsel? In fact it seems the exact opposite - the in house counsel has to study the law very carefully to instruct management where the line is. It seems management may be more bullfeathers - but even then, knowing where to be juuuust on the line of legalities can be very profitable.
About a decade ago, I worked at a “spirits boutique” (same location as a nasty corner liquo’ sto’ but the new owner spruced up the lighting/floors/shelves, started carrying single malt and Johnny Walker in all the colors for her attorney friends, etc.) and we got this a lot.
Our go-to was a Carménère (the “lost grape of Bordeaux”) from Terra Andina. It was around ten bucks a bottle, and word. got. out.
Every shift, someone would come in, glance around the wine selection and go, “Umm? So my friend got this wine? And they said they got it here? It’s really good, but I never heard of it before, and I was wondering…”
Got to where about five words in, I’d lead them to those, wordlessly hold up a bottle with the label forward - about 95% of the time, I guessed right - give 'em a minute to exclaim happily about how happy they are & what an awesome mind reader I am, and ring 'em up.
@digs if you came in to my store then, that’s what I would have sent you off with - then braced for the inevitable onslaught of new waves of people seeking the same damn thing. Good times.
A few years ago, Trader Joe’s sold a wine under the Charles Shaw label that was rated quite good, and in some places, cost only two dollars. So it acquired the nickname “two-buck Chuck”.
That’s kind of the crux of the issue right there. There isn’t a linear relationship between the price of wine and its quality, as defined as tasting good or expensive. You can spend $40 on a bottle of wine and have no reasonable expectation that it’s going to be significantly better than a $15 bottle of wine. It’s all about the marketing and product placement, not the actual product in the bottle. If it was, there would likely be some sort of grading scale based on organoleptic properties and ratios and what-not. But there’s not, and you’re stuck making the assumption that some guy charging $30 for his Chianti is doing something better than the guy with the vineyard next door charging $15.
Plant-based food. It’s all about making junk food appear to be healthy and appealing to vegetarians. You’re really eating grain, not vegetables, instead of meat. Your Impossible Whopper is really three slices of bread, and you’re paying more for it.
It’s not necessarily about health, but more about environmental impact. And, I don’t know about you, but an Impossible Whopper tastes far better than an extra slice of bread (tbh, I prefer it over a regular Whopper).
Six Sigma - came here to say this.
There was once a contest to see who had the best 16 bit CPU for the next gen IBM PC
Motorola - applied six sigma to the 16 bit microprocessor 68000
Intel - did not x286
I like to repeat this story often.
I was once the leader of an outsourcing team at Moto.
They hammered me with Six Sigma.
They acted all snooty about it.
They applied it to their Iridium Project
They applied it to all of their consumer goods
Guess what, morons?
IT.
IS.
NOT.
WORKING.
YOU.
ARE.
LOSING.
MONEY.
AND.
BEING.
BANKRUPTED.
Just because something is profitable doesn’t mean it isn’t “bullfeathers”. Just from my own experience, when you look at the sheer cost of entire industries that do nothing but lobby for/against regulation, enforce those regulations, ensure compliance, litigate, negotiate deals, hold conferences and training on those regulations, provide related technology and services for those regulations, we are talking billions of dollars spent on something that provides questionable economic value beyond perhaps providing a jobs program for lawyers, compliance professionals, consultants, accountants, and so on.
Do you remember scraping the roll of caps on the pavement with a rock or a brick? Did you ever wonder at some point why you bought a plastic gun to do that originally? That may be where jtur88: was going with it.
I’m no lawyer. But trying to educate myself a little, it occurs to me the law is both sensible but not really up to date in some cases. it is by no means assured businesses taking advantage of untested law are just on the side of legality though I am sure the lawyers know the law better than anyone. Lawyers are forbidden from counselling clients to break the law, or doing the same themselves, no? I suspect many lawyers enter their profession hoping to make a difference in the world and occasionally have to settle for making a difference in the balance sheet. That said, lawyers really do a lot of good and must be frustrated by the limitations of practice. I’m sure this also applies to in house counsel.
The way I imagine it, a corporate lawyer examines the law with a loupe in order to tell management something to the effect of “Section 3 says clearly that you are not allowed to shit in the river; however in section 7 Paragraph 2, it says that you are allowed to pour water in the river, which means that you can fill a bucket, take a dump in it, and then pour the water from the bucket into the river – there is no requirement for you to inspect the water in the bucket for turds.” It seems as though a business lawyer focuses on figuring out how a company can stay within the law while doing what they are not supposed to do.
It is not "bluff and bull feathers, per se, it is mere being legally dishonorable.
But being something you think is questionable economic value is not bullfeathers, as per the OP, “more sizzle than steak”. These law firms actually do quite significant work for their clients regardless of what one thinks about the client’s goals. Meaning they provide “the steak” and then some for their clients - which generally are hiring them to find legal loopholes so that the client can make more money.
One of the reasons I had no desire to go into corporate law is that I had no desire to work 60-80 hour weeks as an associate. Granted in house counsel have far better hours.
I suspect that the educational testing industry qualifies. Your kids need to raise their scores? We’ll sell you test prep materials. I’m not totally against standardized testing for students, but as the system is it’s making people plenty of money.
For perspective, I’ve worked with five of the top 10 companies on this list on extended projects, and eight of the top 20. What I would note is they all have the potential to start bullshitting up a project, because an inevitable part of their job is creating more revenue by identifying more opportunities (looking at you in particular, McKinsey, and your frequent mention of longer-term strategic plans), but if you exercise control over them you can get very good work out of them.
Reading the comments upthread, part of the problem seems to be that some companies bring these guys in for generic trouble fixing, like “make me more efficient“, and you’re just begging for trouble when you do something like that. But if you have a targeted problem – we’re implementing a new IT platform, and we don’t want to rely on just the vendor; we’re standIng up a fairly complicated predictive model, and we need a bunch of data scientists for short term work; - etc - they can be pretty useful.
I hear hemp clothing is kind of scratchy. Is this true?