29 Percent

I heard a few word on American Public Media's "Marketplace" the other day (no longer available on line) about General Motors' (since-abandoned) campaign to achieve a 29 percent market share. They must have been serious; evidently they had lapel pins. The drift of the story was that it must have been a pretty stupid idea to begin with (which it certainly was). But nobody really zeroed in on he question of what would motivate presumably competent auto executives to zero in on such a daft idea in the first place.

Here's a suggestion: bureaucratic empire-building--the same thing libertarians identify as a crippling vice of big government. The more troops under your command, the bigger your personal retinue, the bigger the splash you make when you arrive at the party. The critics are probably right about the curse of empire-building in government; oddly they seem to overlook the same propensity in the private sector.

Well now wait, they say, the difference about the private sector is that they have a separate metric --profits--that insulates them against the temptation to aggrandizement. Oh, really? And where is the evidence? My guess is that seven out of 10 corporate CEOs, given the choice between a small but highly profitable company and a abig but sluggish one, would go big and sluggish every time. Sure, they'd reason, even if the shareholders suffer, still my pay & perks are likely to be larger and I will create a bigger whoosh when I go to the fancy parties in those water holes where we globe-girdling aristos like to disport ourselves (is it Davos or Darfur?--I keep forgetting).