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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   24107 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

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He’s a true believer crank, a group which has a long history of making dumb legal mistakes and hanging themselves.

I also doubt he's a money manipulator type, but I'd be cautious about dismissing him as dumb or incompetent. I've heard some throwaway comments from media people that he was running a tight ship with his company.

Running a business of that size is not difficult as an intellectual exercise, it is difficult effort wise. There are three difficult things to do:

  1. Be a boss to employees. You can't run the business hoping to make friends. Labor is always one of the largest expenses, you need to hire people, expect them to treat it like a job, and enforce that expectation. You'll have to fire people if they aren't providing value to the business. This can range from the fun yet lazy employees to sob stories where someone is down on their luck and producing inferior work for some time period. Jones is probably used to being hated so this might be easier for him.
  2. Be willing to dive into the details. Sometimes the difference between being profitable and not is just one area of the business being sloppy. Small business owners have to be willing to get involved in all of these little areas, and it will be frustrating. For media and merchandising that is going to involve a myriad of deals/contracts with online companies and shipping companies. Jones seems to be willing to dive in and read things deeply, and he is capable of making connections between disparate pieces of small details. He is probably great at this.
  3. Be willing to run the numbers. I separate this out from merely the "details" because it seems to be a different muscle and skillset. Making sure you get your money and your employees get paid is very important. The fact that Jones has not been taken down by the feds for some business related reason makes me think he is great at this. My brother makes a living helping small businesses in his area handle the money side of things.

I've known people who can do all these things, and they are still total cranks. One of them that springs to mind was probably a fan of Jones, there is video of him online being dragged out of a city council meeting screaming about his constitutional rights. (he was going on a rant about a culture war issue that the city had little control over and had run over his time limit). I'd estimate the construction business that guy ran was also in the millions, and possibly in the tens of millions. He was building a few dozen houses a year.

I've known people who can do all these things, and they are still total cranks

Yeah, but I'm arguing cranks are not (necessarily) dumb / incompetent. You're making it sound like having a business like that is like losing weight (easy, but requires constant effort, which is why most people flake out), I'm saying it's the exact opposite. Most people won't pull it off regardless of the effort they put in.

The person you responded to didn't say "dumb / incompetent" they said "dumb legal mistakes". Smart competent people can make dumb mistakes in areas where they are not competent.

You're making it sound like having a business like that is like losing weight (easy, but requires constant effort, which is why most people flake out), I'm saying it's the exact opposite. Most people won't pull it off regardless of the effort they put in.

I think losing weight is harder effort wise than running a business. Plenty of successful fat business owners.

There are about 400,000 small businesses in the US with 20-49 employees. https://www.naics.com/business-lists/counts-by-company-size/

That size of business sucks to run. Its large enough to fill 80-100 hours of time in your week to run. Usually too small to run on its own (a single key employee quitting might turn a self operating business back into a full time job for an owner). The salary / profit will probably make it well paying, but on an hourly basis your pay is still mediocre. It is very stressful.

I'd actually say running a business is one of the few ways that someone with an insane work ethic and not many highly paid skills can earn good take home pay. It really does not require advanced intellect. I'd guess that anyone capable of reading and passing highschool algebra has the mental capability to run a business of that size. Not everyone does that because again, it sucks, its a lot of work, and for the first few years it will suck even harder. Talk with some owners of lawn companies, construction companies, small shops, etc. Many of them will straight up tell you they are idiots, and even if some of that is modesty they have lots of anecdotal evidence to back it up. They will also tell you that it is a ton of work to start the business and keep it afloat.

Hiding money is a different skill set from running a business, that’s why successful shady business owners hire accountants and lawyers.

I'm not convinced he was doing anything shady

Probably not, but the ‘he can run a business, therefore he can get away with doing shady stuff’ case is the topic of the sub thread.

I think losing weight is harder effort wise than running a business. Plenty of successful fat business owners.

And plenty of fit people (I know you Yanks are all are fat, but there has to be more than 400K of you in decent shape) who can't run a business.

I'd actually say running a business is one of the few ways that someone with an insane work ethic and not many highly paid skills can earn good take home pay.

On one hand - sure, I've seen that happen too. But it seems like black magic to me, and I was able to lose weight.

More to the point - from what I can tell media people (mainstream news anchors, successful journalists, etc) have to have a pretty insane work ethic too, and they're the ones that were impressed with Jones' operation when they rubbed shoulders with him. Wish I could name names, but it's something I heard like 10 years ago.

My brother is half-owner of a small business. Most of his workers are temporary contracts rather than full time. But he regularly employees a few dozen of these contract workers at a time. So I guess I've seen it up close and its lost all the magic to me. My brother is good at details and finance, he isn't great at the "being a boss" thing so he sticks to contractors when he can.

Most industries like to think they work hard. I think some of them are objectively wrong when they think this. Media seems like one of the objectively wrong ones. You need certain knacks to succeed and get by in media, and that limits the playing field. Its a bit like basketball. Since extreme height is such a glaring requirement, there is more differentiation on other traits. Like if anyone could be made into a 7ft giant, would the current crop of NBA players remain? I doubt it. Almost all of them would be out-competed by harder working more conscientious guys. MJ is like a god to the NBA, but he wasn't anything impressive at baseball where height is not as strict of a requirement.

I listed a few reasons above why I think Alex Jones would be a good businessman for that size company. I fully believe you when he say he runs a tight ship and a successful business. I just also fully believe that such skills do not prevent you at all from making dumb legal mistakes, dumb mistakes about who to marry, or dumb lifestyle choice. Most of the guys I've seen that have tanked their businesses did so for one of those reasons, not because they messed up on the business side. My brother made a dumb mistake about who to marry, and when they get around to having a divorce she will destroy his business.

Like if anyone could be made into a 7ft giant, would the current crop of NBA players remain? I doubt it. Almost all of them would be out-competed by harder working more conscientious guys

Agreed. I got a lot further in pro sports than I should have due to being a 99th outlier in certain physical attributes, but it was always funny seeing my position being 3 or 4 guys of a potential pool of about 10, maybe 20 candidates versus the normal-sized positions where it was 3 or 4 guys of hundreds of aspirants. The normal-sized guys were a lot more skilled/generally able as a result of that filtering.

Totally possible, but he likely has incorrect beliefs about things that are relevant to hiding money even if he tries to manipulate his assets.

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