I remember this story but I can’t remember the specifics and my queries to google have maximum SEO keywords. So if someone remembers and can fill in my blanks please and thank you.
There was this CEO who was brought onto a failing US retail company. His big idea to save the company was to foster internal competition. His logic was if the free market was the most efficient way to structure a society then doing that internally in a company would make it more efficient. The company cratered for entirely predictable reasons.
Who was the CEO who was the company? Am I completely making this up?
As someone already said, Eddy Lampert brought Ayn Rand’s ideology directly into Sears corporate management and expected every department to act like an island-nation warring with every other island-nation for funding and attention from the suits. The backstabbing and other assorted features of “enlightened self-interest” caused an Objectivist™ clown car crash that lit the circus tent of Sears on fire until it burned down.
ideologically committed libertarians can be almost charmingly naive
“OH MY GOSH! This company is run like a dictatorship! The owner just relays unquestionable orders down the workers! Where’s the merit? Where’s the striving individuals showcasing their talent to innovate?”
sweety, baby, darling, your whole world-view exists as a thin veneer to justify this fact, how did you not realize…?
I’m thin on details, but I believe the con all along was transfer the holdings of sears to a private entity controlled by whoever was doing the husking, and then collapse sears such that it’s assets would all be reaped and held by the private entity. Basically moving all the assets of the public corporation into the private holding of the person running the public corporation into the ground.
From a certain point of view, its brilliant.
This was the case for sure with Toys R Us. Vulture capital firm bought it and stood to profit from it’s demise way more than it’s success, stripped it for parts and then had media stories published about how no one wants to but toys irl anymore and how they were getting undercut by online sales.
I’m fascinated by self Kool-Aid drinkers who destroy themselves with it, like that “biohacker” CEO who was found dead in a sensory deprivation tank at 28
Steve Jobs. “Smarest man in the world”, dies of an easily treatable cancer because he was too smart for cancer treatment.
I kinda want to do a podcast episode about Sears because the story is just so insane, but it’s only tangentially related to cars. I guess Sears did briefly sell cars in the '50s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allstate_(automobile)
It’s just amazing to think what may had been. Sears was like the largest catalog retailer in the world. Internet comes along and they double down on physical locations, and dropping their giant catalog. Just stubborn. Imagine if they had transfered their catalog to the internet? They could be running shit.
Eddy Lampert at Sears. Both my parents worked at corporate there. He lives on a private island off of florida, and flies into chicagoland main headquarters for work. He also was kidnapped for ransom as a child lol.
