Losers Magazine (tm) Article No. 8 (10/5/95) by Carl E. Person
Losers Unite for Prosperity!
Uniting for specific purposes has been one of the main activities of the wealthy and powerful. Health maintenance organizations are doing this currently, gobbling up various medical practices and hospital, to obtain massive accumulations of capital in the process. Disney's acquisition of ABC is another example. Hasbro's acquisition of numerous board game companies is another example. And there are hundreds of other acquisition programs which have taken place, to create a concentration of capital which ha s traditionally created more profits per dollar than existed before the acquisitions. The reasons for these higher profits include the greater availability of capital (with the persons who don't need capital usually being able to obtain more capital); gr eater political prominence with resulting political favoritism such as tax breaks, relaxation of enforcement of law, larger market share to drive small competitors out of business and increase share even further as a result.
How can losers unit to achieve greater prosperity?
This question might well be a critical question which will enable the country's economy to improve. It presupposes that the existing system for having losers sell their goods and services is not working out for them, and that some other way of organizati on could do better.
What different ways are possible? Let me try to think of a few.
National Securities Firm Owned by Losers
First of all, I want to relate this question to one of the deals I have lurking in the back of my mind. I would like to set up a national system for distribution of securities, and don't have the financing for it. If persons who are unemployed could gat her together in some meaningful fashion to create a national company to distribute securities, it just might work out.
Ideally, each person should contribute should contribute some cash and himself/herself. The amount of money per person would probably be somewhere between $2,500 and $10,000, but I haven't priced it out yet.
The organization would be kept together via a website on internet and e-mail.
The organization would provide the corporate organization for the licensing and training of its members, all of whom would be shareholders (or possibly partners) in the enterprise, working for a commission as well as a percentage of the overall profits.
The organization would provide the securities to be sold through the organization's members, and arrange for a market to be developed if the securities were being offered pursuant to a public offering.
The largest Japanese securities firm was successful in selling securities with a similar sales force on a door-to-door basis, and this could be done in the United States as well, with a special twist of offering securities of small business to investors w ith appropriate guaranties or protections which are warranted.
One of the problems of major corporations is that they tend to forget the customer, and one of the main sales points of this envisioned organization is that it is an organization of small people for small people.
Just one such organization could provide an excellent living for 10,000 loser members, I am sure.
Network of Home Handipersons
Another way for losers to unite would be for a website to offer the services of handipersons in every community throughout the United States and possibly beyond. This would enable persons like myself to obtain needed services at reasonable prices. At thi s time, it is difficult to find anyone, mainly because of the high cost of advertising in media not designed for small sales. Internet websites, however, are ideal for this purpose, involving no long-distance telephone charges in most cases; 24-hour serv ice without humans involved; possibility of faxback responses; capability of having yellow-page type listings for specialized work; ease of advertising and changing prices, and so on.
I like the idea a lot, and think of it as a self-employment opportunity of last resort for persons who are handy, hard-working, honest and willing to work for $20 or $25 per hour cash only.
Do you get the idea? What other ways are there of organizing losers to become winners?
I would like to see a specialized website develop which would be of assistance to any small business in the U.S. wanting to do business in any one or more foreign countries.
Every foreign country in the world targets its business for the U.S. because we have the largest market in the world (dollarwise), and because there are more than 150 countries in the world the typical small businessperson in the U.S. has very little sale s to foreign countries, which is one of the economic problems which needs to be addressed. My solution is that if education is freed from the various restraints, educational programs will develop which will create foreign trade specialists (similar to tr avel agents), who would then gather together through one or more competing websites and make their services available to small businesses, to help them market their goods and services to many or all foreign countries.
I (Carl Person) invite interested persons to comment, by fax to 212-307-4444, telephone call to 212-307-4444 or by e-mail to carlpers@ix.netcom.com.
Copyright © 1995 by Carl E. Person. Permission is given for non-commercial users to send a copy of the data processing file for this work by electronic means to a specific individual for his or her own use, and then only if the entire file is sent, including this copyright notice, but no permission is given for anyone to copy or transmit this file for or to any person for public viewing or downloading. It is intended by the author of this work that the work shall be made available in electronic fo rm only through LawMall (tm).