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Checking Costs

Started by TLF · 7 months ago

Another great essay from Paul Graham:
Checks on purchases [at large companies] will always be expensive, because the harder it is to sell something to you, the more it has to cost. And not merely linearly, either. If you’re hard enough to sell to, the people who are best ... Continue reading »

3 comments

  • Don Marti

    7 months ago

    Maybe the problem with selling software at a price between $1000 and $50,000 why open source software is so successful in the markets for development tools, web servers, and small server OSs. Proprietary alternatives for Linux or Apache would have to cost more than $1000 but are clearly worth less than $50,000.
    reply
  • MikeRT

    7 months ago

    You're not kidding, Tim, about the state of the federal government. Anyone who has worked as a government contractor at some point has experienced this first hand. In fact, one of the things that people don't tend to understand is how much worse things like affirmative action are in the federal government than they are in the private sector. One of the reasons why there are so many contractors is because government managers cannot fire employees who are pathologically lazy and insubordinate in most cases. A corporation could literally not operate if it had to run its affairs according to the way that the federal government is forced to work.
    reply
  • Steve R.

    7 months ago

    A corporation could literally not operate if it had to run its affairs according to the way that the federal government is forced to work.. Incompetence is really an EEO employer and not limited to the government.

    Have you read the news lately?. Currently the list of private companies that cannot operate because of self-serving management is exploding. Regretfully, none of these executives seem to be being held accountable for running their corporations into the ground. Few CEOs are even making an attempt to appear remorseful by giving up their so-called bonuses, They are essentially milking their companies dry.

    What is distressing is that that these executives, to maximize their compensation,have been oblivious to the fact that they are destroying our economic system. I don't think the free-market is supposed to operate that way.
    reply

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