I’ve written before about Shark Tank, the television series that premiered on ABC in August, 2009. The show which is currently in its 7th season, features business owners who make presentations to five potential investors. The investors are referred to as “sharks.” Each of the sharks is an experienced entrepreneur who became wealthy by successfully starting and growing multiple businesses.
Last month, the Chinese government announced that it was changing its one-child policy to a two-child policy. For more than 35 years, the Chinese government has mandated that its citizens refrain from having more than one child. Couples knew that if they violated the one-child policy, they would be punished with fines, job losses, and forced abortions.
One of the greatest technological breakthroughs of the past 100 years was the perfection and mass production of the automobile. Although the initial design of a steam-powered “motorized carriage” dates back to the 18th century, it was the invention of the internal combustion engine that allowed the automobile industry to dramatically change our way of life.
During the 1990s, one area of my law practice that did very well was collections. At its peak, my law firm was filing several hundred small claims cases per year to collect money that was owed to our clients. Many of our clients included doctors (past due medical bills), grocery stores (bad checks), video rental stores (late charges and failure to return videos), and landlords (past-due rent).
This is my fifth and final response to an email that I received from Tony, who questioned an article I had written about Amazon.com and its founder, Jeff Bezos. Tony provided the following reasons why I (and other Catholics) should refuse to buy products from Amazon:
One of the things I wanted to cover in my series of articles concerning Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com is the process of creative destruction. Have you ever heard of “creative destruction”? It’s a term that was originally used by an Austrian economist, Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950). Schumpeter described creative destruction as an essential process that takes place in a free-market economy, wiping out entire industries after new technologies are discovered and put into place.
One evening during the summer of 2005, I called one of my clients and asked him if he would come over to my house to fix a problem with my plumbing. His name was Jim, and at that time he was in his mid-50s. We had done business with each other since the early 1990s. I was originally introduced to Jim by another client who owned several rental properties and had hired Jim to work on his properties.