Iron Chef: Industrial Collapse
Mar. 23rd, 2009 05:24 pmWhich Industry is more spectacularly committed to failing to deal with reality?
So what's your vote? Whose business model is most toast?
- The US Automotive industry. By all accounts, the US can presently make about one and a half times as many automobiles as anyone wants to buy, every year. This means they need to shrink, and they need to shrink a whole lot, even if they didn't have problems with their cost structure or product mix.
- The world-wide Music industry. Anytime you want to sue your most devoted customers, you're in a world of hurt, to paraphrase Clay Shirky
- The Print Press. They got used to distributing newspapers being hard and expensive, and thought that they were in the business of distributing newspapers (at which they're still better than everyone else), and not the business of distributing news. Unfortunately, not nearly so many people are really interested in newspapers, although an awful lot of people are interested in news. Again, see the excellent Shirky article.
- Common Carrier Passenger Air Travel - Their economics depends on many, many more people being willing to pay much more for travelling than a lot of americans are, and they're looking at the same sort of capacity overhang problems that some of the other big industries I mentioned. Also, they have some peculiar diseconomies of scale, because older aircraft cost a lot more to operate than newer aircraft, which makes an investment in a brand new carrier a lot more compelling than investing in an existing carrier, while the new carrier can offer their product at a lower price to boot.
So what's your vote? Whose business model is most toast?