Motive (M&C)

Created;  <2011, Changed; 02/03/2020, 30/03/2020

Old this webpage; http://ww1.andrew-lohmann.me.uk/perspective/motive-and-change/motive-m-c/

Updated

Previous page Power and excitement 

Noakes of Tunbridge Wells 1851 – December 2009

(Rotary washing line with four arms)

Many old organisations local glazing firms, Hardware stores, Department stores become very good service providers over time.You go to purchase something you return with exactly what you need, which is not necessarily what you thought you needed when you set out. Such companies, may make small profit, may have paid off any loans so there would be no outside finacial interest in them and don’t necessarily survive periodic recession. This particular shop, is reasonably priced and would get things in for you if you and provide a mail order service for low or high value items at a modest P&P charge. In this case retirement not recession was reason for the shops closure. 

http://www.thisiskent.co.uk/news/Department-store-close-150-years/article-1392370-detail/article.html

Review Old fashioned linen and home wares emporium‎

By agamemnon - Oct 27, 2007

If you cannot find what you want here, there is no chance of finding it anywhere else! Lovely linens, handy kitchen gadgets, net curtains made and fitted, towels, summer cottons, a real treasure trove.

The new growth that follows recession creates replacing profitable businesses. Higher profit must be made to repay debt, but not necessarily as good a service is provided and the competition has been largely eliminated.

 28 Motive;

There are people who get themselves into position of power and spoil things that others do in order to maintain there own position. Why this comes about may not matter, you don’t always need to confront such people. Just ask for their consent and give praise if it gets the outcome you want so what? But direct criticism is necessary sometimes, just make sure that you are fair and accurate. This type of person is often very deferential to those that they see as their betters, There betters, who may not see or chose to see that, therefore not see that undue pressure is being used because it can be seem very productive.

Bus deregulation – If many passengers on one bus route can be pressed to switch to another route operated by the same company, the combine patronage on the other route may be more profitable even if some passenger abandon bus travel. If alternatively that other route is run by a competitor, but the first operator starts running buses which are smarter and cheaper then people invariably act in a short term way and will ride on the smarter bus, knowing when the competitor has been squeezed out of business and when the two routes are operated by a monopoly operator that operator will stop running the second route.

Conex trains (Train Operating Company TOC) – if there is a track failure, and in any case there is a rail infrastructure limitation, and the TOC apologises profusely, and in writing if written to in a day or two, and in the local paper. And if after the points have failed the replacement bus alternative information is given clearly sorted quickly and you’ve had a bad day so you complain and they apologise immediately. When that operator gives up the franchise, leaving you with some of the smartest air conditioned trains in the country to the next operator who has won? Actually we were lucky in Kent and Sussex that the successor is as good and Railtrack has gone so reliability has improved. Sadly the lesson here is for companies to largely ignore complaint because people will then give up making a fuss.

When a company operating in a monopoly puts it’s design engineers under-stress gets work carried out expediently, then finds itself analysing and patching up at leisure you wonder why? Would it not be better to aim for quality work rather than quantity work? The most obvious conclusion is that customers will replacing sooner in the hope that less than best will be improved on, the simplest explanation however distasteful is often the correct one.

An economist said people live for the short term because in the long term we are all dead. Actually he was wrong altruism can be selfish, and in any case that is not the only motive that drives us and depending on cultural forces does not have to predominate. But when all the slack is taken out of the system, cuts, efficiency drives, union bashing and you can’t get what is reasonable, then litigation is the only resort. Consequently the economist seems to be correct, but mainly because people have been forced to live for the present. Litigation tries to enforce social responsibility. The American culture of suing has infected the UK.

When there is a dispute involving unions in a company, who is right? The presumption is usually the management in deference to authority. But the chairman of large companies take such a large income that there is nothing that can harm them, but the workers rely on pay. So has the biggest vested interest in the company?

USSR was a competitor with better rocket technology measure by the much higher number launched and better success rate. Everyone had a right to jobs, homes but a poorer record on surveillance and political oppression, it was said. By eliminating this competitor capitalism and social responsibility is not kept in check so well. As ordinary people it was never in our interest to allow this to happen. It was misleading to claim tanks would roll and that we would better to be dead than red, because the Soviet Union invariable did the backing down, and promises given by NATO members to the Soviet Union were not always kept.

29 Inconvenient Truths and Self Interest; 

It is inconvenient that you need science and engineering to make many of the things we use daily. The stage prop. communicator used on Star Trek might be just a piece of painted wood, but no matter how hard you believe it won’t ever operate like a mobile phone. Some things are technically not possible, there is no technical fix however much you wish it were so. The only machine that can change the laws of physics exists in science fiction such as Dr. Who’s T.A.R.D.I.S. William Hartnell, as far as I remember, helped the Trojans, who wanted a machine like his Tardis, make a wooden horse that they rode in – thereby changing the cause of history – on other occasions such as “The Time Meddler” he stepped in to stop interference in the cause of history. Even in fiction time lords are fallible, but that is another point.

The adverse consequences of; Driving at speed, Climate change, Airmiles, Over Eating and relentless growth are all unavoidable issues.

I observe that the consequence of having a labour government is that what had become conventional acceptability or acquiescence of war, gluttony in banking, and MPs expenses is being broken and may be overturned. What had been forgotten, to some extent, is being recalled.

Some would have us believe the amount the wealthy own is trivial and it has to be that way. Does it? I supposes it does if enough people believe it. I don’t!

* In USA 1% of the population earn 25% of the income and own 40% of the Wealth.

* UK was 0.6% of the population own 69% of the the land 

According to BBC Radio 4 talking to Joseph Signets.

BBC – BBC Radio 4 Programmes – Americana, 17/04/2011 www.bbc.co.uk

As US companies celebrate record growth, Matt Frei examines the gap between rich and poor.

See http://www.josephstiglitz.com/

According to New Statesman – Property scandal, Jason Cowley. Published 20 September 2004 (link does not work)

“The United Kingdom is 60 million acres in size, of which 41 million are designated “agricultural” land, 15 million are “waste” (forests, rivers, mountains and so on) and owned mainly by the Ministry of Defence and the Forestry Commission, and four million are “urban plot”, the land on which most of the 60 million people of these islands live. In sum, 69 per cent of the acreage of Britain is owned by 0.6 per cent of the population. Or, more pertinently, 158,000 families own 41 million acres of land while 24 million families live on four million acres.

How to kickstart the UK economy – at zero cost to 99% of us

By imposing a capital gains tax charge at 28% on the seriously rich 0.003% we could create 1.5m jobs over the next two years

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/31/how-to-kickstart-uk-economy

So many people work for money but aspire to have money work for them but for that aspiration can only ever be true for a few for it to work.

30 Learnt Helplessness

Notting Hill Carnival in 1989 when it was a giant street party, and 2004 when it had become an event that you watched.

Notice the restrictive barriers in the second picture which were absent in the first picture. The first picture shows that it really was a street party by comparison. More Notting Hill Carnival pictures

Utopian dream of minimal work and maximum leisure, whilst the third world produces things we consume, has turned in to a trap of running faster and faster in the wheel debt, like the rate-race feared. Sanitation of activity such as watching the Notting Hill Carnival from behind police barriers rather than join in with it that was the case 25 years ago when it was at its largest. Built to last replace by built in ware-out, which has subsequently been replace by planned obsolescence. Excessive fashionably, and the wish to buy new worn-out looking clothing rather than re-use. These are a distortion of pack or group behaviour found in the animal kingdom. A state of learnt helplessness is cultivated which maintains things in this counter natural way.

A way of keeping people in nursing homes and hospitals from demanding too much is to give them nothing so that they give up. Place the food and drink out of reach, is a quite effective method exposed in the 1990′s by journalists. Another I have observed in local politics is that whatever it is “can’t be done”. It is easy to predict that something can’t be done because if people go along with the negative, then that prediction becomes true, But if you don’t accept can’t then anything reasonable is possible.

There is a limit to how much government can do to overcome learnt helplessness. Regulation can be misapplied by law, custom, and peoples expectations. We have to as people make things better for ourselves and apply law appropriately. Not be trapped by self defeating attitude to government and people power. Helplessness can be a convenient excuse, because if you blame someone else, usually politicians, it detracts from your own hypocrisy. 

Doing things for people, for example, by spending grant money or constructing things that people have not asked for, and may not want takes away power. But if people have the slack to do other than work to pay of loans, to bring about things this is empowerment. This second aspect is sadly often missing from modern first world culture. Grants are good when applied on things people have pursued and won.

 

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