Audacity of Speculation

Last night I attended a dinner party where one of the guests was a dot.com CEO. Since leaving one of the behemoths of the software business, he has created two "start-ups," selling one to Google and his current project is being groomed for another large corporation to purchase for, presumably, a bazillion dollars.

I thoroughly enjoy this young, smart, erudite young man. Particularly, I love engaging his mind. So last night's dinner table discussion, as it always does when we're together, became dominated by the two of us. I wondered why it is that companies are no longer developed to be owned or managed by the developers. I talked about Ford, Boeing, Weyerhaeuser, Goodyear, even IBM (where the Watson family still owns a large amount of stock). Now it seems, in the Silicon Valley or dot.com era, companies created to "flip" them to even larger companies. Think MySpace. Tech journalists constantly speculate about the latest start-up's chances of being acquired by Google, Microsoft, Murdoch, or Barry Diller. My friend's comment was that he was not that interested in viewing his work as his life. In other words, work was a means for him to have the money to do what he wants (and he has a lot of money).

And I bemoaned the days of work and identity. The loggers who viewed their world as being out doors, of having significant risk, and feeling challenged. That now days we merely quantify that work, we pay people like loggers and fishermen to leave what they love. It's all about money.

We buy houses, fix them up and flip them (or we used to), we start businesses with the intent of flipping them to? And relationships...well, that's a whole other matter...

We are, I think, a society of speculators. No staying power. And despite the economy, that isn't changing. The geniuses of Wall Street have merely moved on to other "houses" doing the same swaps and derivatives that they did before. The dot.com folks whose balloons popped in the early part of this decade merely went on to other start-ups. It's other people's money, so who cares? Goldman Sachs, Bank of America are back in the saddle, posting profits, while foreclosing on homes and taking federal bail-out money. It's insane.

Perhaps our economy will not heal, will not be on sound footing, until we learn that speculating on the grand scales that we idealize, is not good. More is lost than money. In this most recent boom and bust, people lost homes, families have split up, parents lost jobs. We need to figure out not only how to build businesses that create value and meaning for the people who work there, but also intend to make something of value and meaning to the consumer.

Think of how audacious a Henry Ford would be in the current corporate culture, wanting to manufacture a product that will last and will be affordable? Where he employs people who have an opportunity to make a decent wage? And where the Ford family remains a part of that company long past the founders death? The idea would be laughed at by today's Lords of Wall Street. The cash would not come fast enough for their taste.

Until we change from speculators to owners, our economy will continue to slide.