Crime Scene Cleanup As Oligarchy
A crime scene cleanup oligarchy arises as a one-time crime scene cleanup business of just proportions. As it grows, its business relationships and capital investments begin to pay larger dividends. It becomes less just as its size and dominance in the market place grows. This model reminds most people of how a capitalist society works in many cases. There's no denying that it works well for some people some of the time. For others it works less well. It happens that the market for crime scene cleanup companies has a small clientele, considering other cleaning services. Afterall, the need for homicide cleanup has its limits, thank goodness.
For a crime scene cleanup company to exist in a free and open market suggests conditions for such a market exist. Put another way, if death by violent crimes, violent suicides, and unattended deaths followed by decomposition rarely happen, little market potential can exist. So cities with higher populations will experience greater opportunities for crime scene cleanup companies than smaller cities. We suppose in this narrative that companies work as efficiently and intelligently as reasonably possible. We do not yet have a summary of company size and personnel, though, which we need.
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Small Company Oligarchs
Small crime scene cleanup companies become oligarchies in very few cases. They need control over a set geographical area and a population. Where we find this happening we find small cities within rural settings. Often a mortician serves as a body mover, coroner, and crime scene cleanup companies. In some ways this arrangement works most economically for the area serviced. In this case, "oligarchy" will not carry a pejorative meaning.
However, in those instances in which another person wishes to begin a crime scene cleanup company in the oligarch's territory, free enterprise fails. There's simply no way that a startup cleaning company can compete against an established company with one foot in the free market and another in the local government, the coroner's duties. How on earth would such a startup ever receive clients?
Suffice it to say that small company oligarchs hold a monopoly over death cleanup in the above mentioned area.
Some large cities do have a mix of crime scene cleanup oligarchies and free market crime scene cleanup companies. This writer knows of such oligarchs in Orange County, California and Los Angeles County, California. They began as small companies years ago. Slowly and steadily they gained the favors of county employees and received kickbacks. In some cases these companies belong to county employees. They are too close to the government to fail.
Los Angeles crime scene cleanup calls rarely come to my telephone. Although, I have a respectible Internet presence in Los Angeles County. It's the same, almost, for Orange County crime scene cleanup, only worse. Orange County crime scene cleanup remains at the top page of google, bing, and yahoo, but to no avail. See for yourself. I created Orange County Consumer Fraud and Orange County Fraud to draw attention to this criminal conduct by our county employees, but they continue their oligarchical monopoly over my business.
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Small Competitive Companies - Price Takers
Few of these entities exist in the United States. They do exist, but under very select and curious conditions. Rarely do they exist as a crime scene cleanup company without add-on businesses. Water damage and restoration and other small business configurations add to their vertical mix. If we were to look to an Anaheim crime scene cleanup company to fit this model, we would not find it. We might find it in a place like Bel-Aire, Maryland, though. Even a Maryland suicide cleanup cannot help sustain a mom-and-pop cleaning company. It's the bigger companies and the government crony companies that control as crime scene cleanup oligarchies.
Small competitive companies in the larger cities and suburbs have little chance of becoming oligarchies. That's a good thing, too. Democracy works best for all concerned. Small companies have fewer tools and fewer assets in general than the larger companies.
Large Companies
Large companies have large payrolls, large overhead, and they charge a great deal more than small companies. What they have they have in the way of county employee contacts. One company in the United States has county employees on their kickback list from most states. Given the opportunity, these government employees refer families to these large oligarch companies.
Insurance adjusters pull their heir out, but to no avail. There's no stopping a well managed oligarchy. It has relationships in abundance. It gets the job done before an insurance company has the slightest idea that it's paying for a big footprint in the crime scene cleanup business.
An advantage of a large company follows from its cleaning power. Given the opportunity, such companies have all sorts of resources available for death cleanup. A large company gains momentum with its marketing by catching the media's attentions. It also gains momentum by its employee base. From a large number of employees it gains in skills, abilities, and knowledge. Their crime scene cleanup tools alone must cost in the thousands.
When it comes to the larger crime scene cleanup oligarchy's structure, we need not look far for the more powerful businesses.
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In a better world we would find a more level playing field, but oligarchy seems to coincide with capitalism's tendency to concentrate and centralize power. Along with this power and centralization comes the oligarchy of power over death cleanup.
Also, we would find little to no interference by local government agencies, given a free and open market.
Such a market supports a small number of companies.
I own Orange County Crime Scene Cleanup web page and Los Angeles Crime Scene Cleanup web page.
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The Meaning of a Business Oligarchy in a Capitalist Society
Leadership rolex in Orange County continue with little scrutiny, except in the case of our recent Sheriff Corona. For an example, we need to recall how Robert Citron gambled with the county's economic future.Citron rose to the position of supervisor in Orange County's tax collector office. He then won his county tax collector position in a fair election. In 1971 we still were twenty-four years from taking first place as a failed county. During these years Citron help set the stage for something like our nation's 2008 failed economy.
Trading favors, lobbying Sacramento (state capital) lead to changes in California's state regulations. Liberalized statutes now allowed county treasuries' investment in exotic financial products, like "reverse repurchase" agreements. Citronn worked hard to make it so. An honest, dedicated, hard working man, he sincerely believed that he worked for the county's best interest.
His personality issue have no place here. His finance issues do. The board of supervisors received Citron's reports yearly. Verbally and in writing, they were incomprehensible, reminding us today of Greenspan's gobblygook. From Merrill Lynch he understood interest rates. From Merrill Lynch's broakers he took investment device. Merril Lynch had found a willing and gullable buyer in Citron.
..Six Waltons Have More Wealth Than the Bottom 30 % of Americans
By Tim Worstall | Forbes – 4 hrs ago....Email
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.....Different people will take this different ways, but Jeffrey Goldberg tells us that six members of the Walton family (the original owners of WalMart) have more wealth than the bottom 30 % of Americans. Here's where he says it:
In 2007, according to the labor economist Sylvia Allegretto, the six Walton family members on the Forbes 400 had a net worth equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans.
And given that he quotes us here at Forbes on the point, he's almost certainly right.
The question is, what are we to make of this point? I think we all know what Mr. Goldberg wants us to make of it, it's a telling indictment of American wealth inequality, the world's going to the dogs and something must be done about rising inequality.
The Waltons are now collectively worth about $93 billion, according to Forbes.
Well, yes, but. Total US household wealth is in the $50 trillion (yes, trillion) to $70 trillion range. The range is depending on whether you want to take before the housing crash or in the middle of it. So the statement is that these Waltons have, between the family, 0.13% of US wealth. Which, for the people who inherited the world's largest (well, certainly the country's) and most successful retailer doesn't sound like a particularly terrible concentration of wealth. It's certainly less than John D Rockefeller had all by his lonesome when he was in his pomp.
But I think it's possible that the comment is more revealing about Mr. Goldberg really, for as Felix Salmon points out, Mr. Goldberg himself has more wealth than the bottom 25% of Americans.
This sounds outrageous, until you stop for a second and take note of the fact that Jeffrey Goldberg, individually, has a net worth greater than the bottom 25% of all Americans.
In fact, given that I have equity in my home and no other debt than mortgage, I have, as is highly likely do all readers of these pages, more wealth than the bottom 25% of Americans added together. For as Felix points us to:
In 2009, roughly 1 in 4 (24.8%) of American households had zero or negative net worth, up from 18.6% in 2007, and 37.1% of households had net worth of less than $12,000, up from 30.0% in 2007.
Wealth is always more unequally distributed than income. By the way, it isn't even true that all of those households with zero or negative wealth are what we would call poor either. It's entirely possible to have no net assets while having a good income, even a high income. All you need to have is debts higher than your assets: something that will almost certainly be true of anyone with student debt and fresh out of college for example. Fresh out of grad school you might well have $100,000, $200,000 of debt, hey, possibly even from medical school you might be carrying $500,000. None of us are actually going to weep all that hard for you though, not you with that associates job at a Wall Street law firm on $100,000 or more, not a newly qualified doctor on hundreds of thousands a year.
I certainly don't mean that all those with negative net household value are in that situation: there are an awful lot of people who are "properly" poor in the way that we all usually understand it.
But this comparison of wealth desn't show us quite what Mr. Goldberg thinks it does. If you've no debts and have $10 in your pocket you have more wealth than 25% of Americans. More than that 25% of Americans have collectively that is.
That a family who have inherited the majority of one of the leading global retailers have more wealth than the bottom 30% of Americans, when compared with how high up the tree a single ten dollar bill gets you, is pretty much worthy of a heartfelt "Meh".
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