Industrial Recruiting

When a woman has an affair with a married man, and finally convinces him to leave his wife and marry her, she never realizes that when she becomes the new wife, he will eventually cheat on her. "But he loves me. He never loved her." Adultery is rarely based on finding someone you love more. It is based on an illness or character flaw.

As a community leader, you might think you are so attractive with your low wages and educated work force that convincing a corporation to love you more than the current host community is a great idea. But eventually you will be the old wife, and another community with lower wages will woo them away again. Your town will be ex-wife #2. Or #3.

Every professional in the economic development realm seems to now agree that any effort spent recruiting factories to your community is a waste. 

Further, other problems exist with choosing the future of your local economy by 

How can you choose which industry is best suited for your region?

How can you decide which industry will be best situated for coming macro-economic changes?

How can you use taxpayer money to bribe corporations to relocate?

If recruiting factories is dumb, then trying to recruit a low-wage call-center operation is even dumber.  

I Like Pie

Do you view the pie as finite?  If someone gets a larger slice, does that mean your piece will be smaller? Or do you believe that by cooperating with other pie-eaters, you can increase the size of the pie?

This topic has been discussed by several commentators, but it really is a philosophical difference that divides humanity.

If a tourist visit a neighboring town, does that mean you have missed out on that revenue? Or could you work together, multiplying the tourist stream by many times what you could by yourself?

In tourism, the key to community development might be regional development.

Scapegoats

When the Black Death swept across Europe, the scale of death and suffering was so great, and the cause so invisible, that people could not cope with the horror. They needed a scapegoat.

So Jews were often rounded up and killed. It was not rational, but when you need to direct anger away from yourself, a scapegoat can be very convenient. Governments have used Jews for centuries to deflect blame for incompetent governing.

We still do it. The U.S. government created a ginormous credit bubble, then told investment banks they would be protected if they made stupid investment decisions. Those are the two main causes of our current crisis. Of course the people who control the microphones blame deregulation, corporate greed, or other sideline issues. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," the White House yells.

But we also see this problem even in small communities. Local economies are being ripped apart by unstoppable global forces, but unfortunately we often look for local scapegoats to blame. Immigrants, city councils, mayors, racial or religious minorities, infrastructure, brain drain, school principals, climate....

Blame is easier than solvency.

Ebay and Socialism

Dar eBay: you are not a monopoly.

Your company continues to act the part of a socialist government, envious of any citizen who turns a profit.

The company learned that some of their sellers are earning profits, and seek to harvest them. So you again raise your rates. Your announcement was couched in doublespeak. More sellers will flee to competitors. And you will raise them again in the future. And lose more sellers that time as well.

Your base might be growing as the market grows, but your share of the market is shrinking. Someday you'll be Chrysler, a company still probably atop the minivan market.

Branding and Socialism

Our community's entrepreneurship committee is working on a project to help local artist's sell their wares. We have been working on a way to help them market their products by combining efforts. Here are some relevant issues:

 - Artist co-ops rarely work. Asking predominantly right-brained people
   to agree on marketing could be difficult.
 - Artists can't imagine that their products are unwanted by consumers.
   Who will tell them and hurt their feelings? The other artists?
 - How can you keep the brand consistent? Various types of art may not
   be compatible within the same brand. Example: will you sell children's
   lullaby collection books alongside pornographic works?

The Animal Farm model is difficult and usually breaks down. The way to succeed is not to sell things that artists want to sell, but to sell things that people want to buy.

The best method is for an independent team to establish a firm, create a brand, then source products from the artists, and sell them. This is the Henry and David model. Pottery Barn would never tell everyone that they can sell anything they want through their store channels. Pottery Barn has buyers, who are expert at understanding consumer wants and buying behaviors, procure what they know will sell.

We plan also to form a "farm club," a group of students and artist hopefuls who can sell their wares through a separate brand as they learn how to respond to customer tastes. That way we respond to the need to help people become self-employed artists without diluting the exclusive brand.

Dear parochial seller

Dear Entrepreneur on the Prairie successfully selling your wares on the internet. We congratulate you.

Here are some numbers that will obviously surprise you: two billion people now use the internet. The U.S. population is 300 million (including infants and the infirm). It seems a lot of people outside the U.S. can buy online. Why are you so afraid to sell to them? So afraid of being scammed by Nigerian mobsters that you lump everyone outside the U.S. together, calling them all mobsters?

Buck up, keep a stiff upper lip, and learn how to lower your scam risk. And make money.

Roll the dice on disaster

I recently perused a body of research which indicates that people who look forward to the end of the world are those who feel unsuccessful in the current world. The End will not crush them, but will turn the tables. It will put them on top. "I might be a failure now, but you won't be laughing at me then."

History does not uphold the idea that huge upheavals bring the bottom people to the top. Some mixing up does occur, some people are brought low, but rarely is anyone switched to the top spot in the new order, simply because they were at the bottom before.

The current recession will probably get worse before it gets better. And natural disasters will probably increase in frequency, continuing the trend. But hoping for despair is a gamble of the worst kind. Punishing yourself further now, in the hopes that you will be chosen as a leader in the post-Zombie Apocalypse, is a scenario of such incredible odds that you should not ever consider it. Instead, gamble that the world will get better eventually.

And don't let anyone take advantage of your despair-wish.