Article 72854 of comp.sys.amiga.misc: Path: news.PEAK.ORG!engr.orst.edu!osshe.edu!news.uoregon.edu!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!hookup!lll-winken.llnl.gov!uwm.edu!msunews!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!metro!calvin.abc.gov.au!not-for-mail From: brett@abc.gov.au (The Famous Brett Watson) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc Subject: The Great Commodore Conspiracy Date: 20 Apr 1995 17:05:46 +1000 Organization: Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Sydney Lines: 123 Message-ID: <3n514a$6i5@calvin.abc.gov.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: 202.6.74.1 Summary: A conspiracy theorist theorises... Keywords: Nutter, Conspiracy, Commodore, Amiga, Liquidation, Baloney [Inquiry:] What is the problem? [Fact:] Commodore is in liquidation. [Inquiry:] What brought about this state of affairs? [Opinion:] Probably because it was grossly mismanaged. [Inquiry:] What grounds do you have for saying that it was mismanaged? [Opinion:] Companies usually fail because they are inherently not viable or they are mismanaged to that state. [Inquiry:] Was Commodore a viable business? [Opinion:] I believe so, given proper management. [Assumption:] Commodore was a viable business. [Inquiry:] What possible explanations are there for mismanagement? [Fact:] Mismanagement can be explained by incompetence or malicious intent. [Inquiry:] Is there a way to decide which it was? [Fact:] Hanlon's Razor dictates that we should not attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. [Opinion:] (This is a good rule.) [Inquiry:] Is incompetence an adequate explanation? [Opinion:] Difficult to say, really. It would have to be pretty gross stupidity/incompetence. [Assumption:] Let's assume that incompetence is *not* adequate. [Conclusion:] We can then say that Commodore was deliberately mismanaged. [Inquiry:] Why would Commodore have been deliberately mismanaged? [Opinion:] The only likely explanation is that there was some benefit to the management in doing so. [Assumption:] The management benefits in some way from what would otherwise be called poor management. [Inquiry:] What possible benefit could there be? [Fact:] There is (short term) personal benefit in taking an unreasonably high salary. Inappropriate pay levels (either too high or too low) are forms of mismanagement. [Inquiry:] Did the management of Commodore do this? [Fact:] There is evidence to support this view, but ultimately it comes down to opinion. [Assumption:] Let's assume that the management of Commodore was, at least in some instances, grossly overpaid. [Inquiry:] Is this sufficient to explain Commodore's downfall? [Opinion:] I don't know for sure, but I doubt it. It may have given Commodore a hard time financially, but it seems unlikely that it would kill it outright. [Inquiry:] Were there other forms of mismanagement apparent? [Opinion:] Yes. The development of the Amiga was misguided. [Fact:] (We are assuming that this was malicious rather than stupid.) [Inquiry:] What benefit could there be in doing this? [Opinion:] There is no apparent benefit to management. [Inquiry:] What was the *effect* of this mismanagement? [Fact:] It is commonly agreed that much time and effort was wasted on misguided development projects. For example, the A600 was a step sideways, not forward; the A4000 (although not in itself a poor machine) was very late in coming for the features that it offered. [Opinion:] The A4000 should have been released at around the time of the A3000, which was itself too little too late. [Summary:] The Amiga's development was retarded. [Inquiry:] What was the effect of this retarded development? [Fact:] It pissed Amiga lovers off no end. [Inquiry:] Did this directly benefit anyone? [Opinion:] It probably gave third party developers an advantage. [Inquiry:] Can this be used to explain the misguided development? [Opinion:] I doubt it. If it was being done for the benefit of third party hardware manufacturers there would have been development effort put into retargetable graphics and such like, but that was retarded too. [Fact:] The demise of Commodore has been harmful to third party hardware developers because the Amiga is now a shrinking market. [Inquiry:] Did the misguided development of the Amiga benefit anyone else? [Fact:] It would have benefited the manufacturers of other computer systems by allowing them time to catch up and/or overtake the Amiga's features. [Inquiry:] Can this be used to explain the misguided development? [Fact:] (We are assuming that this was malicious rather than stupid.) [Opinion:] The complete demise of the Amiga would seem to be consistent with the desires of the manufacturers of other systems, assuming they cared. [Inquiry:] Could this benefit the management of Commodore? [Fact:] It would only if the other software and/or hardware manufacturers made it worth their while. This would involve extremely unethical and probably illegal behaviour. [Inquiry:] Is such behaviour apparent? [Opinion:] Not that I've seen, but I would expect it to be well hidden if it existed. [Inquiry:] Did the misguided development of the Amiga benefit anyone else? [Opinion:] Not that I can think of. [Inquiry:] Were there other forms of mismanagement apparent? [Opinion:] None spring immediately to mind. [Summary:] We have assumed that Commodore was an inherently viable business which could have survived (or thrived) under good management and that therefore Commodore's management was either incompetent or malicious. For the sake of argument, we have further assumed that malice is the correct reason. We have assumed also that malicious intent is only adequately explained by resultant personal gain. The facts and opinions indicate, among other things, that the Amiga's development was misdirected, resulting in wasted money and painfully slow progress (when progress occurred at all). As far as can be told, this would only have been of direct benefit to the makers of other computer systems. To reconcile the requirement of personal gain for management and the effect of benefiting the makers of other systems, we must assume that some such maker or makers provided the benefit to the management of Commodore in return for deliberate mismanagement. [Summary for other than Nutters:] This implies a conspiracy and must therefore be false. TFBW is a loony. -- Extra heavy duty disclaimer applies: I speak for myself and NOT for my employer. All opinions above are mine and likely to be wrong. I am in no ways accusing any past or present manager of Commodore of any form of unethical or illegal activity. I live in Australia, wear loud ties, call myself The Famous Brett Watson and will plead insane if I have to! This is meant to be thought-provoking and entertaining (in some obscure sense) rather than informative - I have presented no new information. -- / The Famous Brett Watson x=sin(t), y=cos(3t) \ / Small fish in the pond at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. \ \ <> / \ Disclaimer: I am a Nutter. No Nutter speaks for the ABC. Figure... / Article 72859 of comp.sys.amiga.misc: Path: news.PEAK.ORG!engr.orst.edu!osshe.edu!news.uoregon.edu!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!news-feed-1.peachnet.edu!gatech!newsfeed.pitt.edu!dsinc!netnews.upenn.edu!nova.voicenet.com!omni!frotz From: frotz@omni.voicenet.com (Steve Bara) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc Subject: Re: The Great Commodore Conspiracy Date: 20 Apr 1995 10:13:54 GMT Organization: DSC/Voicenet - BBS/Unix Shells/SLIP/NEWS - (215)443-7390 Lines: 48 Message-ID: <3n5c52$msm@nova.voicenet.com> References: <3n514a$6i5@calvin.abc.gov.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: omni.voicenet.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] The Famous Brett Watson (brett@abc.gov.au) wrote: : [Assumption:] The management benefits in some way from what would : otherwise be called poor management. : [Inquiry:] What possible benefit could there be Good Question! But your answer sucks. There are several rather obvious points that you missed, I think. Here are a few theories: 1) The management of CBM also held massive amounts of stock in their own company, and could make LOTS of money by manipulating the stock value through their own management actions. This includes BAD management. For example, if you ran your business poorly and ran the value of the stock down, you could grab more stock, then announce a possible buyout (as happened before the liquidation) quietly but loudly enough to drive up the price of the stock. Then you could sell the stock, make a BUNCH of money and then blow out the company in order to evade the bill collectors. 2) The total lack of advertising and marketing efforts by CBM is rather striking for a US computer company. The explanation was the lack of a solid dealer network in the US, but this poses another question that was left in the air - why was the dealer network allowed to disintegrate? Does simple stupidity adequately explain actions that the most basic business principles would find so grossly destructive? We're not talking about bumbling, we're talking about a strategy to systematically put yourself out of business. 3) CBM had a research and development team that was quite wonderful, given the resources that they were alloted, but how many high-technology companies producing competitive hardware spend less than 1% of their yearly earnings on R + D? The ONLY company that comes to mind is CBM. Even if they thought that the amiga was a futile effort after several years of bad sales, the sensible move for a "going concern" (a well managed business) is to try and develop a more palatable product, or try to advertise more. More and more of the actions of CBM through the years not only defied logic, but things like lack of R+D defy even the most common sense business management ideas. 4) Many large US companies go under every year, and in fact many of them are high technology companies, but the 10 year plight of the amiga begs the question "Why didn't you change your strategy when you saw these results?". This wasn't a sudden bad year, or an accident of stupidity, but a steady slow (agonizingly so) decline of a billion dollar a year company. There was NO change in management strategy even when sales plummeted. Although there was a revolving door on the president's office, this sort of decline in business would prompt most companies to change MANY of their plans. Instead we saw CBM take a 10 year dive into liquidation. This isn't the usual up and down pattern that any business shows, even in decline, but a steady plunge into the toilet. It certainly doesn't prove any conspiracy theories, but it does indicate serious mismanagement that went unchecked for years.