Life shall always prevail

Gömböc

If you fall down, just pick yourself up.

[newshelton.com]

Fascism and capitalism get along very nicely

Democracy conflicts with both because what is best for citizens is frequently not optimal for profiteers.

Democratic rights exist 24/7 for 100% of flesh-and-blood human beings. Or they exist in no time for 0%.

You should never trade your fundamental rights (speech, association) for a dollar.

[Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

I don’t know much about money

But I do know about getting work done.

I’m a franchisee power worker.

[Winsor McCay]

Peddling franchises is easy if you know human weaknesses

We are influenced much more than we ever imagine by the selling situation.

We still believe in the Choice Myth.

[InterATrial]

Your eyes transmit: your brain interpretes (imperfectly at times) based on experience

Do you see “A B C” horizontally or “12 13 14″ vertically?

Notice how the central image (B or 13) doesn’t change?

Notice that, even when you know the trick, your brain can’t help but still be tricked?

You thought you were buying a real business but you didn’t, after all.

Thanks to Mighty Optical Illusions

Is Blue MauMau a social media propaganda system?

Does Blue MauMau provide just a cynical illusion of debate?

One of the ways you control what people think is by creating the illusion that there’s a debate going on, but making sure that that debate stays within very narrow margins. Namely, you have to make sure that both sides in the debate accept certain assumptions, and those assumptions turn out to be the propaganda system. As long as everyone accepts the propaganda system, then you can have a debate.

– Noam Chomsky

Three or four people talking at each other does not constitute much of a community.

Corporatism v. Democracy: What concept really won WWII?

Franchising degrades humans.

I use World War II images for a reason.

I think democratic societies won the battles but lost the war against totalitarianism. The tyrants wear business casual.

John Ralston Saul has made an important contribution to my thinking by writing The Doubter’s Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense.

One of his key definitions:

CORPORATISM

Among the most important yet most rarely used words. Better than any other it describes the organization of modern society.

Corporatism is the persistent rival school of representative government. In place of the democratic idea of individual citizens who vote, confer legitimacy and participate to the best of their ability, individuals in the corporatist state are reduced to the role of secondary participants. They belong to their professional or expert groups – their corporations – and the state is run by ongoing negotiations between those various interests. This is the natural way of organizing things in a civilization based on expertise and devoted to the exercise of power through bureaucratic structures…

The surface argument of corporatism has always been that democracy is inefficient, ineffective, corrupting, subject to whims and emotions. Corporatism, on the other hand, presents itself as professional and responsible. It promises to deliver prosperity by helping those who know how to do their jobs properly and in concert…

Note:

The Second World War was about many things, but at its heart is was a battle between two concepts of civilization - the one based on individualism and democracy, and the other one corporatist authoritarianism. Theoretically the democratic individualists won.

Yet since 1945 corporatism has advanced with even greater strength and now has a real hold on day-to-day power.

Somehow we seem to have lost World War II after all…

What makes modern franchising most offensive (to me) is its corruption of mom-and-pops’ individual labour and basic human rights (speech, association). It produces serious and long-lasting physical, mental, spiritual and ethical disease (dis-ease).

Franchising is not alone and may not even the most severe but this but this is an area I know about, so this is why I write.

Price as a false obstacle

Everybody uses money as an excuse for their actions or inactions.

Salespeople learn this early and should never forget it.

They are skilled in looking at the meaning  beneath the obstacle that is thrown at them.

Almost 95% of the time, cost or expense is not the real reason for not buying a good or service. It’s an easy way to brush off some person, or in franchising’s case, the threat that the franchisee wants to deny.

Leaders sell themselves first and then their goods and services 2nd.

That’s the challenge and the reward.

Self-fulfilling prophecy: Franchisees are a skittish, easily spooked & dull beast-of-burden

Common observations about women a few decades ago.

Franchisors often make the same ignorant assumptions about franchisees.

If the words “Jews”, “blacks”, “indigenous peoples” were switched with franchisee, this rhetoric would be seen for what it is: hate mongering toward an identifiable, at-risk population.

Self-fulfilling prophecies are the primary barrier in modern franchising.

Self -fulfilling prophecy:

a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behavior. Although examples of such prophecies can be found in literature as far back as ancient Greece and ancient India, it is 20th-century sociologist Robert K. Merton who is credited with coining the expression “self-fulfilling prophecy” and formalizing its structure and consequences.

As I observe franchisors closely, it is breathtakingly apparent that they haven’t cracked a management or social science textbook in 40 years.

Franchisors can’t see the solution because they don’t get the fucking problem.

Their paternalism blinds them to the reality that franchisees’ want: 1% to do with $ and 99 per cent acknowledgement that families have a right to a decent level of material security.

Hint: It’s about freedom, missy.

Freedom from your over-reaching which causes financial ruin.

Debt creates slaves and slaves are indeed revolting. In ways that you will cause from your willful adherence to an authoritarian ideology.

Why do more franchise laws leads to => investment failure rate?

Simply put: Risk compensation.

People adjust their behaviour when they feel they are in a “safer” environment. They take more chances.

Over time and when studied as groups, the “accident” rate stays constant, if not increases.

This concept has been proven with anti-lock brakes, bicycle and downhill ski helmets, seat belts and sky diving. Source

Winter Driving: Strap on those winter tires, put the flares and blankets in the trunk and clean the windows at the 1st snowfall. Congratulations: You will unintentionally drive just as fast, follow just as closely and brake just as late  (when compared to good road conditions) than if you were “unprepared”.

Paradoxically, the more and better pre-sale due diligence you do, this increases your risk of financial failure.

Blaming individuals doesn’t work. This is a very complex field of psychology and risk compensation is just one factor. Mercifully, these human factors are getting much more understood, proven and manageable.

The challenge in the future will be to design an investment evaluation regime that “nudges” people into legitimate franchised business opportunity “vehicles”.

Without this innovation, the carnage will continue at the same rate.

Or get worse.