Fire and Knowledge

What do you think — do corporate lobbies subvert democracy, or are they a necessary part of our political process and economy?

There’s a difference between a corporate lobby whose clout is based on money alone, and a group of like-minded individuals—whether they be textile workers, gun aficionados, veterans, or family farmers—coming together to promote their interests; between those who use their economic power to magnify their political far beyond what their numbers might justify, and those who are simply seeking to pool their votes to sway their representatives. The former subvert the very idea of democracy. The latter are its essence.

—Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope (2006), p. 116

Here is Holiday Inn’s cancellation policy:

Canceling your reservation … will result in a charge for the entire stay per room to your credit card.

Policies like this don’t make people love your company. It makes it look greedy, impersonal, and unfair.

Plain talk will not be easily achieved in corporate America. Too much vanity is on the line. Managers at every level are prisoners of the notion that a simple style reflects a simple mind. Actually a simple style is the result of hard work and hard thinking: a muddled style reflects a muddled thinker or a person too arrogant, or too dumb, or too lazy to organize his thoughts.

—William Zinsser, On Writing Well, p. 175.

But just because people work for an institution, they don’t have to write like one.

—William Zinsser, On Writing Well, p. 167.

T-Mobile claims they own the copyright for the color magenta. How quaintly absurd.

While the growing importance of skills tended to reduce economic inequalities between the sexes, it tended to increase the inequality between those with and without skills. Moreover, rising earnings in general, growing out of a more productive economy with more skilled people, tended to increase the inequality between those who worked regularly and those who did not.

—Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics (3rd Edition, Basic Books, 2007), p. 196.

[In 2003,] Sears made more than half of its profits from its credit cards and Circuit City made all of its profits from its credit cards, while losing $17 million on its sales.

—Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics (3rd Edition, Basic Books, 2007), p. 99-100.

Like most companies, my local garbage company is getting on the “green” bandwagon. So much so that their website logo now reads “Think Green. Think Waste Management.” And they have an entire major site section called “Environmental Stewardship.” Impressive — they seem serious.

But the other day, when I drove beside a large dump truck, I had to laugh. The side of the truck read, “Our landfills provide over 6,000 acres of refuge for animals.”