Your Mama, Your Company, and Your Fighting Kitten

A warning to protectors of gene pools everywhere as our “Month of Eugenics” finale: Kennedy (not the presidential one, nor the cute ex-VJ one), doing “Your Mama.”

Markets, like biological evolution (and philosophy, science, tradition, journalistic fact-checking...) are a constant weeding-out process, and it’s important to reaffirm once in a while that we free-marketeers are not giving our blessing to everything done by any and every existing company.  On the contrary, we look forward to the day when every single one of them will be a thing of the past, succeeded by even better companies.

I was particularly happy to hear about a thieving store called Computer World in the East 20s going out of business years ago, and similar con artistry, disturbingly, was the order of the day at a more-established CompUSA outlet in Manhattan.  I am also pleased to see Consumer Research (more market-savvy than the lefty Cosumer Reports) slam the crappy-printer-selling HP.

The piece also informs me I could have gotten a $25 check for my very similar (known, built-in, ignored) problem with a piece-of-shit Epson Stylus C86 printer had I made my claim by 2006 (I was receiving unsolicited occasional notices in the mail about the progress of that class action suit – up until about the time the rules for the settlement were decided upon, at which point I stopped receiving information, alas).  For a while, it appeared the resolution would be a coupon for additional products from Epson, which is not encouraging, needless to say.

Lest people ever make the mistake of thinking that my belief in markets means a servility to particular existing companies, rest assured I’d be happy to see people at companies who knowingly defraud customers go to jail instead of just paying fines and lawyer fees and moving on to the next project.  Government isn’t the only institution that steals, just the only one that does nothing else. 

But perhaps one last note on biological evolution is in order before moving on to my “Month of Political Conflict” starting tomorrow: I think this kitten has discovered a surprisingly effective new fighting style.