Friday, November 4, 2011

Double down doubtful fodder scraping.

Personally, I've decided the default notices rate don't mean a thing.

"Default notices drop in October." Bulletin, 11/4/11.

It's in the banks interest to keep the current 'owners' in the sweatbox as long as they can, to wring that last ounce of moisture out of their poor desiccated bodies. Besides, that way, the banks can escape liability for the property taxes.

Any time they want them, they can get them.

I think that's all that's happening.

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I can sort of tell when another blog is scraping for fodder. Takes one to know one, you know?

Anyway, there is a story over on The Beat that correlates the number of young men living in their parents basement with the strength of the entertainment industry:

"Almost one in five men between the ages of 25 to 34 are living with their parents, according to a Census Bureau report released Thursday."

What's more:

59 percent of men and 50 percent of women ages 18-24 still live at home.

As well as being somewhat insulting:

We’re not saying that all comics are purchased by nerds who live in their moms’ basements. We’re just saying that a lot of people are living in their moms’ basements. Of course, they may not have the most discretionary income in the world, either. Either way, a lack of upward mobility can be a powerful influence towards escaping into a fantasy world.

All this seems pretty dubious evidence of anything but a bad economy and coddling parents.

Of course, me talking about it is probably just doubling down on the doubtful fodder scraping.

**********

According to my math (talk about dubious!) roughly 40% of the downtown retail and restuarant spaces have folded in the last 3 years, since I started my Comings and Goings list.

Of course, even more stores have come in to take their place.

Nevertheless, 40% in 3 years.

From my perspective, it seems like hardly anyone really makes it over the long run in small business. I mean, I know that can't be right, but the more years that pass, the less long lived businesses I see.

Creative destruction, indeed.

I mean, it must benefit the economy somehow, right? Is being in business 5 years enough to be a net plus? 3 years? 1 year?

Hard to figure.

***********

"I've been giving the store everything It wants this year," I said to Linda.

She laughs. "You make it sound like it's a very demanding person."

"No. It's the Great God Pegasus, to Whom all Glorious Sacrifice Must be Made."

**********

7 comments:

H. Bruce Miller said...

"We’re not saying that all comics are purchased by nerds who live in their moms’ basements."

Of course not. Many are purchased by nerds who live over their moms' garages.

H. Bruce Miller said...

"From my perspective, it seems like hardly anyone really makes it over the long run in small business."

I suspect that many of the small businesses that fold don't "fail," per se; rather, the owners get sick and tired of the long hours, the low return and the insecurity. Or they decide to move to some other community. Or they get too old to run the business. Or they die and their kids don't want to carry on the business.

Duncan McGeary said...

"...the owners get sick and tired of the long hours, the low return and the insecurity. Or they decide to move to some other community."

I guess it's a matter of definition, because I would consider the above failure.

Not treating your time and psychic energy as "costs" is indeed why people quit. A "successful" business would mean not having to bleed all over the carpet.

Anonymous said...

I think boredom is big, but there are many reasons for failure.
Most is disillusionment, we overly romanticize biz ownership. Then once a man/woman has a biz, they know a real hell. An employee never really needs to take work home, an owner lives work 24/7.
Many a reasons why biz fail, but mostly like all things its because off money. Starting your first 3 years in austerity can prepare you for bad times, but most biz 'blow there wad' the first 1-3 years and then when the bad comes they have no ammunition left to fight the war.
Today all the rage is 'jobs', and its been said that small biz creates the jobs. The truth be told is that MOST jobs are GUBMINT, and these jobs are all based on re-distributive theft. It's almost game-over for this paradigm, but their not going down easily, lets not forget that the cops & judges have the guns and the legality to use them.
In the meantime fools will continue to come to Bend and squander their savings on a 'Pet-Biz'. Which will certainly fail.

Like I have told Dunc 1,000+ times, buy buildings and rent them out to FOOLS who want to be in the retail comic biz. That way when the game is over, you'll have some chips to take to the bank.

H. Bruce Miller said...

"I would consider the above failure."

I meant that they don't "fail" in the sense of going broke.

Duncan McGeary said...

I'm saying that the value of a business isn't strictly monetary.

Or, maybe I should say, that you have to arrive at monetary costs differently.

Time is money. I'd also say energy, space are money.

If you run out of time or energy, to me it's the same as running out of money.

It's an easy temptation to spend all you efforts to make a few more bucks to survive, but not count the cost of those efforts.

But if you close your business because of those issues -- time, energy(burnout) -- it's because you didn't manage your costs, just as if you had overspent or underearned.

This is one of the biggest mistakes I see in small business. Not understanding that all the helpful advice about piling on more and more events -- and services -- and hours --in order to earn more income, isn't factored correctly.

I've said it before, half the business that quit quit because they made their jobs too hard.

That's the same as overspending, to me.

Anonymous said...

It's MONEY dunc, MONEY is the blood of biz,

Boredom results when the hamster runs but doesn't get fed, as long as tidbits are thrown in the cage the hamster will keep running,

I'm not saying there isn't higher reasons for success, but success is ONLY SURVIVAL as we defined long ago, its a mercantilist paper money society, so when you run out of paper money to play the game, its game-over.

Yeh, the death roll of Bends 100's of failed biz have 100's of moaning storys of why they failed, but at the end of the day the plug gets pulled, because smart money never puts it down the rat hole over the long term.
That said, dumb money, eventually run's dry.
Failure always results in MEGA excuses, ... but the game of BIZ is making a BUCK, ... if you fail to make that buck you had better have a PATRON, or your fucked.