A local fellow was changing oil and fixing tires for a living. Then they bought the old gas station next door, cleaned out the twin service bays and turned it into a basic convenience store. Today they have nearly 50 convenience stores in three states. The Casey's chain of stores has been unsuccessfully attempting to put them out of business.
MathTeacher, post: 443505, member: 7674 wrote: While I don't put much value in the distinction between billionaires minted by family-owned businesses and those minted by owners taking their companies public, HEB is obviously a huge success and one that has become so by serving its customers well. Either group is capable of both outstanding and deplorable behavior.
The distinction is that when a company goes public, the direction of the company is primarily determined by profits and predicted increases in the stock value. That is the nature of the marketplace. Managment that doesn't toe the line disappears.
In the case of privately held companies, such as HEB and the German grocery giant Aldi, the owners can adopt long-term strategies that align with their own ethos without worrying very much about shareholder pressure for shorter-term profits.
Obviously, since privately held companies are significantly shape by the personalities of their owners, when stone-cold sociopaths like the Koch brothers run the show, the results reflect the lack of morals and ethics of the owners.
It ??s possible to buy a 6-pack of wine in aluminum cans at our local Whole Foods.
Kent McMillan, post: 443515, member: 3 wrote: ...Obviously, since privately held companies are significantly shape by the personalities of their owners, when stone-cold sociopaths like the Koch brothers run the show, the results reflect the lack of morals and ethics of the owners.
Oh Jesus Kent...so now grocery stores in the PLSS states are inferior also to your obviously superior metes and bounds grocers?!
I guess I'm just a simpleton, but I buy my groceries with the criteria of location convenience, price and quality; not necessarily in that order. The pedigree and morals of the organization's owners is rarely a factor. You got me on that one...buying a can of chicken noodle soup made in Paris is far more complex in Texas than up here....
Paden. Next thing you know Kent will be telling us that only Texas-grown okra is edible.
Kent McMillan, post: 443515, member: 3 wrote:
In the case of privately held companies, such as HEB and the German grocery giant Aldi, the owners can adopt long-term strategies that align with their own ethos without worrying very much about shareholder pressure for shorter-term profits.
I agree with you in principle. When you look at Elon Musk with Tesla on the public side and Barry Cadden with the New England Compounding Center on the private side, though, the generality of that argument is seriously dented. Undoubtedly, there are other examples on both sides, but Musk's view is decidedly long-term and Cadden's view was decidedly short-term.
It's also not unusual for family members to disagree over the management of the company, whether it's over its long-term/short-term focus or something else. Those fights can rip companies apart as surely as corporate raiders can rip apart public companies.
One thing that is certainly common to both groups is the enormous amount of work that goes into amassing a billion dollars. There is some luck involved, for sure, but most of us aren't willing to put in that much time.
HEB is a shining example of family focus and hard work.
And here I thought this thread was about Hurricane Harvey and the devastation it has/is bringing to the Great State of Texas, not a morality play on which grocery store one should buy their low-tannin pinot noir from. [SARCASM]Who knew.[/SARCASM]
[USER=9850]@Gene Kooper[/USER] As you probably know, Eastern North Carolina is still recovering from Hurricane Matthew last fall. Harvey surely will be more devastating and may have much more national effect depending on how long the refineries are closed. My heart goes out to everyone who is affected.
We can all donate money to help. FEMA may or may not come through, so Red Cross support will be important. They've been key to resuming normal life on our coast for decades.
Meanwhile, Google the term "internet troll." I'm often the last person on earth to understand current jargon or happenings, but after Googling that term, I, too, know what's going on here.
I would not want to be in one of the WalMart stores in the path of this storm.
When a moderate rain falls upon the local stores, the noise of the rain on the roof creates an echoing roar inside and drowns all other noise out.
I would imagine that it would be necessary to wear earplugs during a storm of this magnitude.
Everyone I've checked on in the Houston area are in bed under some influence or another and have decided to dream thru whatever happens outside.
I was told not to look directly into the hurricane.
edit: or any of Kent's remarks about SE Texas 🙂
This was on the local news this morning. Look at the legend across the top.
But it is still not breaking the record for 24 hour rainfall of 43 inches, which is held by Alvin in 1979, tropical storm Claudette.
On this map, Alvin would be between Galveston and Iowa Colony. My wife was raised in Alvin, her sister and several others still live there.
An interesting fact of unknown relevance. The last eclipse that was viewable in Texas was 1979.
Another interesting fact for those not familiar with SE Texas: It ALWAYS rains in Alvin, whether there are clouds around or not.
R.J. Schneider, post: 443550, member: 409 wrote: Another interesting fact for those not familiar with SE Texas: It ALWAYS rains in Alvin, whether there are clouds around or not.
It's not very far "south", but De Kalb, Tx. is pretty far "east".
I worked on a toll cable route years ago between De Kalb and Texarkana. It was June. It was hot. It was humid. I remarked to a gas station attendant one afternoon that "I wished it would rain."
He told me, "you don't want it to rain".
We got a thundershower the next day about 3 PM. That gas station attendant was right. It was hard to even breath when sun came back out.
paden cash, post: 443520, member: 20 wrote: I guess I'm just a simpleton, but I buy my groceries with the criteria of location convenience, price and quality; not necessarily in that order. The pedigree and morals of the organization's owners is rarely a factor.
Well, if you're another Whole Foods Market shopper, I'm sure that the stockholders thank you for your contribution.
MathTeacher, post: 443527, member: 7674 wrote: I agree with you in principle. When you look at Elon Musk with Tesla on the public side and Barry Cadden with the New England Compounding Center on the private side, though, the generality of that argument is seriously dented.
The dynamic intrinsic to both has to have time to play out. The downhill slide of Whole Foods Market is a pretty good case study.
As for Elon Musk, I think it's a mistake to detach Tesla from his other ventures that have probably been bankrolling Tesla in the early stages as a sort of corporate shell game.
Perhaps it's a shell game, but Tesla is certainly a public company and it's certainly not focused on the short term. Perhaps, it it survives, it will be focused on quarterly earnings at some point, but that's not the case now. Maybe it's Enron, maybe it's Amazon; we don't know at this point. We'll just have to wait and see.
However, we do have the opportunity to participate, as did Sam Walton's employees and other investors. In reading about HEB, I noticed that they are distributing in some way shares representing 15% ownership of the company to some employees. The absence of stock options in privately-held companies can make working there less attractive for executives. HEB apparently employs a significant number of MBAs who are undoubtedly aware of the value of options. Perhaps competing with WalMart has made that more of an issue.
Again, I wouldn't favor one form of corporate organization over another, nor would I say that one fosters desirable behavior any more than the other. Every corporation's behavior is determined by the people who control it, whether they own it outright or not.
MathTeacher, post: 443570, member: 7674 wrote: Again, I wouldn't favor one form of corporate organization over another, nor would I say that one fosters desirable behavior any more than the other. Every corporation's behavior is determined by the people who control it, whether they own it outright or not.
Therein lies the real issue, i.e., corporate governance. In the unrestrained situation that has evolved in the US since 1980, various factors have promoted the sort of amoral behavior that typifies large, publicly held corporations, including a pervasive pirate ship corporate culture wherein the boards of directors are much less a restraint or actual directors than willing rubber stamps of everything presented to them, from CEO compensation to you-name-it.
It's a problem. The recent Wells Fargo mess is one egregious example. I'm waiting for shareholders to react, but so far, nothing.
Many, if not most, public corporation CEOs refer to the board as "my board" and view it as such. On the other hand, if you look at what happened with Travis Kalanick at Uber, it's clear that a board will act decisively when it feels it's necessary to do so. Wells Fargo's board acted, too, but withstood a fair amount of outside pressure before caving in.
But think how that would have played out had Uber been privately held with Kalanick as the majority owner. Forget the notion that Uber could not have been built without outside investors, just think about the power he would have wielded compared to the power he yielded.
