Do Big Companies Depend too much on Marketing, Finance, Lobbying and Tax Rules?
In his book Antifragile, Taleb stated that
the core of business is offering an honest and decent product or service that gives your customers value for money.
If this is not the case, then it's likely that we're dealing with a
fragile organization, because of:
1. FINANCE (leverage, debt). If companies spend more time on financial constructions than on a decent product, probably that makes them fragile in the end; see the
summary of Taleb's Black Swan Theory.
2. MARKETING / ADVERTISING. Taleb says on marketing:
- Companies mess with your
cognitive biases and that's sneaky;
- Marketing is basically bragging and that's bad manners;
- A good product will sell itself. Anything one needs to market heavily is necessarily either an inferior product or an evil one;
- Marketing (beyond conveying information) should not be needed and is a sign of insecurity;
- Marketing is meant to maximally confuse the consumer. For example soft drink companies that (implicitly) promise happiness to their drinkers in advertisements.
3. LOBBYING. Lobby machines of large companies spend more and more on lobbies, because they feel fragile without them. Because they are dependent on finance (low interest rates), big companies friendly regulation and marketing.
These lobby machines of big companies are successful because they can hijack the State or Country they're in, because if they go broke it would cost a lot of people their jobs.
4. TAX RULES. Buy leveraging all kinds of complex financial products, etc.
What do you think, do big companies have products that are good enough, or do they depend too much on marketing, finance, lobbying and tax rules?
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