IS CAPITALISM BROKEN?

IS CAPITALISM BROKEN?

16 May 2023

Ever since the Global Financial Crash of 2008/9, some commentators have worried that there are too many “zombie” companies that are unable to make a profit or even a self-sustaining cash flow, but which are being kept alive by the availability of cheap credit. The argument goes that in a truly capitalist world, the unviable would die and their market share would be swallowed up by companies more deserving of success.   It must be said that in today’s world, where the political centre is so far left of where it used to be, many people would approve of the use of public money to help struggling businesses. Let’s face it, there is no use of public money incapable of attracting support from someone.  UBER But the extent to which “zombie” businesses have become established household names is quite astonishing. The Oscar arguably goes to Uber which most people would regard as the epitome of a disruptive (a horribly overused word) success. Uber’s IPO price in 2019 was $45 and today it trades at $38. In the last five years it has made operating losses of $22.2 billion on revenues of $85.9 billion. In aggregate it has lost 25 cents for every dollar of fare.  The fact that the share price is still as high as $38 tells us that Uber is well funded. Its fixed borrowings mature from 2025 to 2029 and it pays an interest rate of c.7% on average. Maybe that’s all fine. Many, many people are happy and trusting customers and have no doubt been delighted to be subsidised at the expense of Uber shareholders and creditors.  Yet, how about the taxi drivers and cab companies that have been forced out of business by Uber’s comprehensive yet (so far) financially unsustainable service? This disruption of the taxi world  is not an unmitigated boon.   OCADO  Back in the UK, how lucky we were during Covid lockdowns to have Ocado bringing groceries to the doors of the sheltering furloughed classes. Householders pinned notes to their front doors saying “Dear delivery driver. Please leave the package in the porch, ring the front door bell for five seconds and then retreat back to the world...

CHANGE AND THE SEDUCTIVE PROMISE OF CONTROL

CHANGE AND THE SEDUCTIVE PROMISE OF CONTROL

24 Jan 2021

Change is inevitable and continuous. It is the journey of human life. We can try to preserve what matters to us – our fitness, for instance – but change has an unbeatable ally – time. In the end, change is both inevitable and fatal. For that reason, the promise that change can be controlled is very seductive. Convincing us that this promise is deliverable attracts those who would exercise political or financial power over us.  POLITICS AND CHANGE Some politicians and campaigners pledge to deliver change as an improvement – others to block or reverse it where they see it as bad for us. In each case they are almost certainly over promising by implying that controlling change is in their power.  Nonetheless, at times the public has an appetite for the idea that a government can deliver destiny. Then, perhaps, disillusion sets in. There certainly appears to be a cycle by which the message of change becomes more and then less popular. In the UK 1959 election the incumbent Conservatives campaigned on the slogan “Life is better with the Conservatives, don’t let Labour ruin it”, often summarised as “You’ve never had it so good!”. The voters agreed. But the change hounds, who can come from left or right, were back in the game in 1964. The Labour manifesto was titled “The New Britain” and its leader Harold Wilson became associated with the phrase “The white heat of technology”. In 1970 Labour was expected to win for the third time in a row and was by now warning against change. “Now Britain’s Strong – Let’s Make it Great to Live In” failed to make the grade, even against a pretty bland Conservative party (slogan “A better tomorrow”). In 1979 the Conservatives were undeniably the party of change with the famous “Labour isn’t working” poster.  Fast forward to 1997 and the Conservative were in full change denial again. Their slogan was “New Labour, New Danger” and they were obliterated by Tony Blair and his campaign song “Things Can Only Get Better”. For a while politicians like Blair and Barack Obama sold change as something progressive. The implicit message was that we are all sinners who...

Turning a good idea into an investment

Turning a good idea into an investment

29 Oct 2014

This is the transcript of a speech I made this week at the smartfuturelondon conference How to turn a good idea into an investment What makes a good idea?  If everyone agrees that change is inevitable and ‘it’s only a matter of time’, it always seems to take a very long time. Having heard yesterday’s presentation on smart energy – hands up if anyone thinks that’s a bad idea – I suspect that a common drag on the development of really good ideas is that everyone wants a piece. I was watching The Man With The Golden Gun on TV the other day. It was made in 1974 when the world was suffering the first OPEC oil shock. So in the tradition of the James Bond series to be topical, they shoved in a sub-plot in which the Golden Gun Guy steals the Solex Agitator, a device that turns the sun’s rays into energy.  What a great idea. Someone should try that. When mobile payments were agreed to be a good idea in 1997, there were more than 100 companies represented in the first mobile forum. That year, Coca Cola built a vending machine that accepted payment from a Nokia phone. Around 2005 I attended a presentation about mobile payment at which someone said that there was a Coca Cola vending machine in Helsinki. Everybody was trying to get a piece of mobile payments – and it was all taking a very long time. Sometimes, great ideas are just too early. Twenty years ago, Larry Ellison of Oracle thought that the PC was an absurd device, being limited by its own processing power and memory. “Put it on the internet” he said. So Oracle launched what we would now call the first netbook. Unfortunately, the internet was too slow at the time. The Oracle NC failed. But one of Ellison’s managers thought it was a great idea. He was Marc Benioff and he left to found Salesforce.com in 1999. It is now the reference business cloud computing company and has a market cap of $37 billion or 7x forecast revenues. The best and most valuable ideas seem to come from nowhere and often evolve...