Dear Spy

Can you help me with a family issue? It's really breaking us up.

See, we have this uncle who's lately become a problem for the family. O.K. strictly speaking Samuel's not actually our uncle, but he styles himself so. Yeah, we're distantly related, but that was, like, centuries ago. For almost that long, our two branches of the family have lived peacefully on side-by-side properties, and we've both built up extensive business interests that over the decades have become quite intertwined. We buy, sell, and market both raw materials and finished products that each side manufactures, and this cooperation has worked to our mutual benefit for generations. We've helped each other fend off badly governed cutthroat competitors that make and sell cheap, shoddy, even dangerous products, and a while back worked and fought side by side to shut down some truly malignant operators.

Our branch of the family and our collective business enterprises are in sum much smaller than his, but we have a lot more land, most of it not farmable, yet on the other hand containing vast mineral and energy resources that both parties need and use--part of what we sell to his corporate group.

The problem is lately Samuel has broken all our traditional ties, thrown in with a bunch of unethical and very hostile competitors, and has raised the prices for which he resells our goods so as to line his pockets at our expense (by crippling our business) on the pretext of wanting those markets for his own products, even though he cannot any time soon manufacture them himself and could not at all without using our raw materials and parts. He is now threatening us with a hostile takeover, regardless of whether we retaliate or simply leave him be to harm his own customers.

At the same time he's gone nuts on some of his long term loyal employees, firing them without cause whenever he deems them insufficiently loyal to him personally, regardless of their past service to his various companies. And, did I mention that he has taken on new managers with extremist "political" views (I can't call them "right" or "left" wing, because at the edges the two are crazy indistinguishable.) who act like world class haters of anyone other than their own crony cadre of wealthy, white, alpha males that are two hundred percent unthinking Samual supporters. The whole thing is a bizarre mess. Sooner or later, in their own respective best interests, our banks will have to take official notice, lower both our credit ratings, increasing costs dramatically, and ultimately pushing us both into insolvency, so they can salvage something for their shareholders from our respective corporate wreckages.

I suppose it wouldn't matter if all Samuel and his buds were to bankrupt their own businesses, but they seem bent of destroying ours, and those of everyone else around without realizing that just as we all prospered collectively through mutual cooperation, their anti-business practices will surely take us all down to oblivion together, with no lack of predatory scavenger outfits eager to snap up the meagre leftover scraps and do with them and us as they will.

So, what can we do to stave off impending and seemingly inevitable catastrophe? Samuel and his new managers/cronies, rich as they may be in some ways, seem impoverished of any understanding of economics or "common" (it isn't) sense, except that of the "beat everyone else into oblivion regardless of the consequences" school of business. Oh, and don't suggest we go along with our not-very-related relative's wishes. We've surveyed our employees, and 92% want nothing to do with him, favour cutting all business ties and changing their personal buying habits to exclude his companies' goods, even when made with raw materials we have provided. They favour us finding new business partners, but that constitutes wrenching, costly, and likely irreversible change that cannot be made overnight. What's your take?

Yours in fear and trepidation,
Johnny C.

Dear Johnny C.

As it happens, I am familiar with your business affairs. Yes, the situation presents existential perils. But as I see it, your own internal corporate lines of authority and communication appear to be inefficient and non cost-effective. You need to move quickly to remove barriers and make your supply and retail distribution channels more nimble, more friction free. Moreover, since you can do little to thwart the aggressiveness of a far more powerful adversary, you need to groom new business associates to replace his business permanently. Both tasks must be attended to expeditiously so to blunt his influence over you, render his immediate threats impotent, and keep at least your own creditors at bay, whatever happens with his. In short, disentangle, and do so as quickly as may be.

More important, it is possible that your Uncle has a case of CIAG Caesar Imposter Anxiety Gout (OTOH extreme delusions of grandeur, self importance, and disdain for any he perceives as the "other" but OTOH combined with self loathing for what his conscience is telling him is sinful behaviour). This was a listed disease until recently. However, recent alleged research published in an issue of the Journal of Irreproducible Results, (right after the article claiming that Measles vaccines can turn people into fish and just before the one documenting that the moon landings were a hoax to support the lie that the earth is flat rather than an oblate spheroid) purported to show there is no such disorder, though it was previously well-documented as a highly contagious serious mental condition with potential deleterious effects for everyone connected to the affected central patient. JIR is partly funded by your uncle, and he has incfuence over the CDC, so CIAG has now been declassified as a disease that would once have warranted him being institutionalized and treated. Further, I note that the cover article of that edition claims that before Steve Jobs died he downloaded himself into a portion of a prototype that would become the M-chip series, so that a copy of him lives on in all current and future Apple devices. That article further speculates that your uncle is considering joining him there when his time comes.

Meanwhile, the unpredictability of those suffering with CIAG makes them potential threats to everyone, including themselves. In particular your "Uncle's" powerful position as head of your once partner corporate entity lends him a façade of self-perceived invulnerability. Specific outcomes can be random and unpredictable, but unchecked, this disorder invariably produces ever more egregious behaviour, usually eventuating in one or both of two broad scenarios.

first that his own employees, supporters and enablers turn against him because they realize his actions threaten their jobs, fortunes, or other perceived self-interest, and/or second that he commits some act so far outside the bounds of decently and the law (such as rape, some other physical assault, gross fraud, or even cheating at his favorite sport of table tennis) that he ends up imprisoned sufficiently many years to lose his influence over his enablers and they move on to someone else during his incarceration. On the other hand, one of several worst case scenarios is that his influence lives on and is even amplified, either because he is never checked, or because his cronies carry on his agenda even after he leaves the scene.

I regret having delivered worse news than you might have anticipated, but unfortunately persons with this disorder cannot perceive the existence of truth, civility, or the difference among right, wrong, and left, up, down and sideways, and further, have no concept that laws apply to them. Consequently, they act solely in self-perceived interest and/or that of their cronies, leaving behind an irreparable legacy of carnage and duck soup. Pray that God will prevent the worst possible outcomes, but take immediate positive action to ameliorate the damage to your own corporation. Do read the JIR article, though. It advises that all these scenarios are impossible and actually the worst thing that can happen to someone who has this nonexistent disease is that he will undergo a startling self-discovery, and learn that he is an illegal immigrant...from Neptune.

--The Northern Spy, who is rather predictable on 04 01

Opinions expressed here are entirely the author's own, and no endorsement is implied by any community or organization to which he may be attached. Rick Sutcliffe, (a.k.a. The Northern Spy) is Professor of Computing Science and Mathematics and Assistant Dean of Science at Canada's Trinity Western University. He completed his fifty-fourth year as a high school and university teacher in 2024. He has been involved as a member of or consultant with the boards of several commercial and/or educational organizations and participated in developing industry standards both nationally and internationally. He is a long-time technology author and has written two textbooks and ten alternate history SF novels, one named best ePublished SF novel for 2003. His various columns have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers (both dead tree and online formats) since the early 1980s, and he's been a regular participant and speaker at churches, schools, and academic meetings and conferences. He and his wife Joyce celebrated their fiftieth anniversary in 2019 and lived in the Langley/Aldergrove/Bradner area of B.C. from 1969 to 2021 when cancer happened, so he latterly continues alone, depending heavily on family and friends to manage.

URL s for Rick Sutcliffe's Arjay Enterprises:

The Northern Spy Home Page: https://www.TheNorthernSpy.com

opundo : https://opundo.com

Sheaves Christian Resources : https://sheaves.org

WebNameHost : https://www.WebNameHost.net

WebNameSource : https://www.WebNameSource.net

nameman : https://nameman.net

General URLs for Rick Sutcliffe's Books:

Author Site: https://www.arjay.ca

TechEthics Site (Fourth edition of text; the fifth has been released; site to be redesigned real soon now) : https://www.arjaybooks.com/EthTech/index.htm

Publisher's Site: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Richard-Sutcliffe.html

URLs for a product mentioned last month:

Wipf&Stock site for his 4Civ textbook Volume One: https://wipfandstock.com/9798385226818/the-fourth-civilization-volume-one/

Wipf&Stock site for his 4Civ textbook Volume Two: https://wipfandstock.com/9798385232932/the-fourth-civilization-volume-two/