One day, two events that have demonstrated the reality of life in a capitalistic society.<\/p>\n
Event #1 – Got an email first thing today with a subject along the lines of “JPG Magazine, Goodbye”. Opened it and read it, confirming what I expected. JPG Magazine is shuttering all operations in three days. They’ve not been able to sustain (probably never even attained) profitability. I had wondered how they could keep a magazine with a fairly limited distribution and almost no advertising running. I just figured there might be something beyond what I saw that could provide sustainability. Some esoteric force that my logical mind just couldn’t get hold of maybe. Didn’t much matter to me though. I was just happy to have the new issue of the magazine each month. No more, alas. It’s disappointing, but I take some comfort in knowing that business really does work the way I thought it did.<\/p>\n
Event #2 – Went to our favorite coffee house after dinner tonight. My favorite menu item (veggie burger) has been off the menu for a while now, and noticed tonight the menu has been completely revised. There was a note on the counter from the owner explaining that they’ve had to rethink their menu and even their approach to business because they can’t continue to accept a lack of profitability. No surprise I guess, but it always seemed like such a cool place that was kind of flying in the face of the mainstream. Fourteen years they’ve been doing this, but now they’ve decided they need to be confident of profits to sustain the operation. Again, Business 101 rears its logical head. Even Navin Johnson understood the concept of the profit deal.<\/p>\n
As much as I’d love to see business sustainability dependent only on cool ideas and happy wishes, I know it doesn’t work that way. But here’s my real fear. We’ve (the US) elected a new government that will move into place in just over two weeks. I’m very concerned we’ve justified the need for this new administration based on some of the same ideas, concepts, dreams, wishes, and hopes that lead to idealistic business models that don’t stand a chance, or end up mainstreaming to survive. If someone wants to try that kind of experimentation with a business model, that’s fine, but It’s more than a little scary to do that with an entire country and economy. I hope I’m wrong.<\/p>\n
Lest anyone start pumping their right fist in the air and chanting “amen”, be clear on this: I’m greatly disappointed in the so-called conservatives that have helped “lead” us to where we are. The egocentric, self-serving folks that are supposed to be showing leadership have let us down. Greatly. Consistently. Frequently.<\/p>\n
We’ll see I guess, but even though I’ll miss JPG Magazine and the veggie burgers, I understand why they’ve had to go away.<\/p>\n
Certainly my best wishes to the folks at JPG that are looking for new employment. Being unemployed is bad enough, but it’s got to be doubly tough when you’ve had to help shutter something you were a major part of.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One day, two events that have demonstrated the reality of life in a capitalistic society. Event #1 – Got an email first thing today with a subject along the lines of “JPG Magazine, Goodbye”. Opened it and read it, confirming what I expected. JPG Magazine is shuttering all operations in three days. They’ve not been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[7,8],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ramblings","tag-business","tag-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/existentialmonkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/existentialmonkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/existentialmonkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/existentialmonkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/existentialmonkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/existentialmonkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1525,"href":"http:\/\/existentialmonkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/1525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/existentialmonkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/existentialmonkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/existentialmonkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}