Link: https://garryslist.org/posts/red-robin-died-by-spreadsheet-don-t-make-the-same-mistake

Comments

Each one of those failed CEOs probably made more in their short failed tenures than any competent line cook would in a decade

I hope these people taste good with ketchup.

line cook would in a decade lifetime

Good insight to the mistake of trying to save your way into prosperity.

But way too much implication in this article m that AI is the answer. The title of the piece is “boil the oceans.” Is that way he means, that AI and its negative environmental concerns be damned? If so, he’s lost whatever good insight with which he had to start.

The title of the piece is “boil the oceans.” Is that way he means, that AI and its negative environmental concerns be damned? If so, he’s lost whatever good insight with which he had to start.

The term "boil the ocean" means trying to accomplish too much at once. In the corporate world, we're usually encouraged to commit to smaller, achievable goals. In this case, the author seems to be suggesting that companies need to take big, bold, risky moves. A phrase with better connotations would probably be "swing for the fences".

It is way easier and quicker to make money by destroying a business than by building one up. It has negative societal value, so the people should prevent that from happening. It's also easy to do: introduce a sales tax on stocks held less than a specific amount of time, like two or five years. That forces stock owners to think about the need to keep the company floating for years or pay taxes.

It's not an untested theory: taxes on stock sales have existed forever, until the Reagan administration abolished them. We could see the results immediately in a huge wave of junk bond hostile takeovers that almost defined the 80s, financially.