Friday, January 15, 2010

Another cornflake economist

Some strange person is arguing that “marketing” is the answer to Sweden’s problem. If only we’d market our products more SAAB wouldn’t be the scrapheap it is and Volvo would today be greatest of them all.

This is another example of a snowed-in moron with tunnel vision. As any marketer worthy of his or her diploma would admit – marketing is only one additional tool, and no marketing in the world can in the long-run save a bad product. You can spend trillions on advertizing, internet campaigns, telemarketing and whatnot and get sales through the roof, but only temporarily, if the product you’re selling isn’t worth what has been promised or the alternatives are better and/or cheaper then marketing is only a waste of time and money.

The Swedish producing capacity is in decline and there are a number of reasons for this. Too high salaries, few new inventions, too high costs for manufacturing, too high taxation and so on, but what it all comes down to is that we have too much government and very little of entrepreneurial spirit. During a couple of decades in the late 19th century and in the beginning of the 20th Sweden was one of the world’s most free and best countries to invest and start a business in. All the major and fantastic companies that made Sweden rich started during this period, hardly a single one since.

From this time and forward only the cowardness keeping us out of two world wars and a general increase of world trade have kept the country afloat. We’re still richer than most and some good traits, but that is in comparison with others. It’s not that Sweden is a good country, it’s just not as bad as many others.

While we’re giving hundreds of billions to fraudulent banks and handing out welfare checks to pretty much every person in the country our production is faulting. While we’re beating our chest for being on top on almost all hoax-lists UN spits out, no new great companies are being built and our wealth is deteriorating. You see wealth need to be produced. On contrary to what leftie media say and our elected criminals in suits promise us, this fact cannot be circumvented; wealth need to be produced.
SAAB and Volvo are not making better, cheaper or more inventive cars than anyone else, that’s the fact that makes these companies show bad results, nothing else. No marketing, no matter what you do or say and no matter how much money is thrown about will change this.

What we need is a sound money system; we need much lower taxes and a government that doesn’t put up obstacles in the way of people’s dreams. We need to have a country that lets bad banks fail; we need a country that ignores lobbyists and are not a member of the European Union. We need a school system that encourages inventiveness and we need a people that understand that you cannot get something for nothing. Until that happens more companies will wither and die and with that our producing capacity and with that our wealth.

Marketing... pfff...


Footnote: I have myself a masters in marketing…

A Call for Revolution