[lug] domain registrat recommendations

[Nate Duehr]

Michael Belanger wrote:
> dio2002 at indra.com wrote:
>>> monitored, and only Qwest (of all strange things -- which includes a 
>>> lot of domestic fiber on Anchutz's former railroad's track lines) 
>>> seems to have stood up to illegal wiretapping of customers -- costing 
>>> them a lot of money.  (Read some of the proceedings of the Naccio 
>>> trial.)  Not much 
>>
>> i found that odd too.  the crook that got busted actually did 
>> something quite admirable.  it's possible that he was trying to cover 
>> his own butt on that one and in the process, customers benefitted.
> 
> Naccio is a prick.  he was almost certainly looking out for his number 
> ones and number twos.

Many CEO's are.

There's quite a lot of evidence that many are sociopaths, and/or 
Asperger's Syndrome "sufferers", and also the usual evidence that humans 
rarely do things (even charitable things) without some form of personal 
"gain".

Lots of psych studies on that topic in the last couple of decades, 
starting in the 80's when psychologists earnestly started studying the 
"yuppie" phenomenon.  Most seem to unintentionally support the generic 
concepts of existentialism in their results, without saying so.

Not sure that Naccio being a "prick" should be much of a surprise to 
anyone.  Most folks in his position have "prickish" tendencies these days.

It takes a special kind of human being to get paid 100x what even their 
best employees make and not have any moral issues with that, and still 
show up for work expecting to make more.

Mostly it takes an ego and an entitlement mentality that are unsurpassed.

The more distrubing part of our current business system in the U.S. is 
that the people who are supposedly the checks and balances on CEO's (the 
Board of Directors) are typically peers who have the same mentality.

The final check and balance is supposed to be the shareholders, but most 
today are invested in the companies via mutual funds and completely 
disconnected from the process of corporate governance.

Most don't care unless they're not getting their 3% growth a quarter -- 
doesn't matter if growth isn't the right strategy for any particular 
company during any particular quarter -- the "Street" no longer cares, 
and perhaps never did, but large shareholders with long-term stakes used 
to.  In increasingly fewer companies, there aren't any such people, 
watching the watchers.

Lots of this is driven by the underlying problem of the Baby Boomers 
never having saved enough money in their youth to handle retirement for 
themselves, and thinking that they can make it up later via mutual fund 
investment.  Might work if you have another big market gain like the 
mid-90's, but far too many folks are trusting they'll see returns like 
that again, and it's unlikely -- at least for quite a while.  The 
cycle's not right.

Not having anyone really having a sense of "ownership" of a large 
corporation is a recipe for disaster -- all we have to do is look at the 
infamous Enron and numerous others which captured far less of our 
attention or the attention of the financial press.  It attracts the 
less-than-ideal "leadership" types who aren't true leaders, they're just 
there to drink from the Harvard Business School fountain of everlasting 
CEO jobs.

I just observe these things for fun.  I tend to stay out of the market 
where I can, and divest my investments I need to have very heavily -- 
and watch those investments for signs of this type of corruption very 
closely.

Once the Board of any company is so mentally disconnected that they're 
not governing the CEO, or worse -- they are involved in investments in 
the company (the problem with many start-ups is that the investors 
demand Board seats, and then drive the company the wrong direction 
through un-due influence on the CEO and his leadership team) -- the 
lackluster seemingly powerless shareholders these days often aren't 
influential enough to turn the ship around.

Any such company almost always starts following the primrose path to 
serious losses soon thereafter.

If I were a smarter pessimist, I'd start shorting those companies in the 
options market, that I see this happening to.  No matter the numbers, it 
still takes people of a certain caliber to run large organizations.  If 
the leadership aren't of that caliber, the company's profits will be 
hurt, sooner or later.

I would just rather bet for, rather than against companies... one of my 
personal downfalls, I suppose.  :-)

Nate WY0X