Whatever happened to the entrepreneur? It used to be, if you had an idea, you could build a company around it. Henry Ford did it. Preston Tucker tried to do the very same thing in 1948, but he was squashed by the big auto makers. (If you haven't already, you should see the Francis Ford Coppola film staring Jeff Bridges.) Microsoft started out as a guy selling programming languages on paper tape. Apple was born in a garage. But today, it's getting real tough to start something new without big bucks behind you, and after the dot-com disaster, the big bucks aren't flowing as freely.
The real concern, as I see it, is the growing multi-company corporations. How many big companies have folded in this economy? If it were simply survival of the fittest, I wouldn't have a problem, but it's survival of the strongest. The strongest have grown big enough to force bad things to happen to their competitors. What percentage of advertising purely sells their own product without bad-mouthing someone else's?
What are we going to do if all the companies keep merging until there is only one left? Instead of comrade chairman, it will be comrade chairman of the board.
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