Oct

31

The current monthly issue of American Dry Cleaner had this comment from a dry cleaning plant owner:

"The advent of valet dry cleaning businesses that rely on local plants to process the work may look like a good thing for a slow plant, but they are only a Trojan horse. Enabling someone to enter the business with little to no upfront capital expense is a death knell. The services enter a market taking business away from the plant operators with the "sale" that they will bring more business to you, but the operator is getting only a fraction of the price, usually half. A route does not cost 50% to operate, but most plant owners are too lazy to start their own route. We as plant owners must stop enabling people to cannibalize our markets. If someone wants to enter the dry cleaning business, make them pay all the costs that you incurred as a plant owner, not just the cost of a van."

The idea that "capital" - i.e. money spent - deserves a rate of return seems to be an inescapable article of faith among us all. Why else would economists still be discussing "the natural rate of interest"?

BTW, If you do a full text search of the English translations of Das Kapital, you will find that the word "distribution" recurs again and again but only with regard to "capital" and "profit" , never once with regard to goods and services. The words "advertise" and "advertisement" are similarly absent. "Advertise" is found once, in a mention of a Dr. Harvey who was selling recipes for weight loss to "the bourgeoisie and aristocracy" in the 1880s; and the word "advertisement" is found once, where Marx compares child wage rates to "the advertisements" that use to appear in American newspapers" for slaves.

Peter Grieve comments:

I often see the Marxist rot in unexpected places. It seems like a very, very bad sign. Once a tumor has metastasized…


Comments

Name

Email

Website

Speak your mind

1 Comment so far

  1. Marvin Kelly on October 31, 2011 10:08 pm

    Its not clear to me that this paragraph is at all Marxist. Sounds more like a wake-up call to increased competition which is thoroughly capitalist. Dry cleaners do typically have significant investments in their operations, especially given EPA and other restrictions, and they should defend their margins wherever they can.

Archives

Resources & Links

Search