I have often pondered and occasionally written on American Capitalism.

Capitalism to me means the ability of the owners of the means of production to optimise their benefit (wealth) by managing their assets in a manner that will serve them, whilst at all times complying with all regulations and legislation pertaining to the markets within which they choose to operate.

Although the US boasts that Capitalism is the dominant economic model there, in reality, and for listed companies, it is not. The American publicly listed system is one in which the agents (directors and managers) of the owners (stockholders) rule the roost and not the owners.

The Wall Street fiasco was a great example of where managers (and presumably directors) manipulated products, services and organisational structures to embed performance criteria upon which KPIs were based and against which the directors and managers were rewarded. In fact, the only legacy that stockholders get is increased risk and increased costs.

Intuitively one would expect that small organisations with few shareholders are more “in-touch” with their owners’ objectives than larger organisations. One would further expect that the larger the organisation and the greater the number of shareholders, then the less able the organisation is to keep “in-touch” with all shareholder objectives.

Unfortunately, experience and reality show that companies, irrespective of size, are not immune from the lack of congruence between owner objectives and corporate actions.

The majority of companies are small businesses who have one or a small number of people carrying out the roles of managers, directors and owners simultaneously. One would expect that since one person carries out all three roles then “knowledge” would be “perfect” and congruence would be maximised.

Most small businesses actually have difficulty in ensuring congruence because they are too involved in operational management. It is easier to change the objective than to change the operational, marketing or business realities that threaten incongruence.

Generally boards and management of large corporations maintain that since they have many shareholders with varying objectives and they can’t effectively ask shareholders what they want; the board has the responsibility to define the core deliverables of the organisation. These deliverables are intended to keep shareholders satisfied. For reasons identified earlier, such presumptions by boards are often misplaced because they are subjectively derived. The demonstrable fact is that many (most?) corporations do not know what their owners want in any realistic, practical and measurable way.

In the case of medium size companies where management may be divorced from directorship and/or ownership, it is common to find organisations intent on striving to maximise generic outcomes rather than satisfy specific owner objectives. Certainly, a large part of this lack of congruence is caused by management failing to ask owners what they want; but equally at fault, are owners who have not made the effort of telling management in realistic and measurable terms what it is that they desire from their involvement in the company.

Very few companies, irrespective of size, really know what their owners want. In the case of small business, the owner/manager has rarely defined what it is that is wanted so that it becomes the principal driver of business performance.

The solutions are clear and easy: if you are an owner, even of the largest corporation, make sure that the board and/or management knows what you want in terms of value, benefit, growth and risk. Also identify your objectives in terms of environment, ethical activities and governance issues such as related-parties transactions.

If you are a director or senior manager, ask your owners what they want as an outcome.

If you are an owner/director/manager, then be honest with yourself and what you are doing operationally. Is the company that you run giving or likely to give you the outcome you seek? If not, then its time to assess the options.

So now it's two kids under 8 who have shot their toddler siblings in the US! And the Neanderthal gunslingers of the USA want more guns. Go figure?

Now, I am a strong supporter of the American idiom (despite my irregular criticisms) and their many amazing achievements, but let's get real - what a bunch of self-serving morons.

I do get the American Constitution. I truly do understand where the pro-gun lobby gets its moral strength - but really - it's the 21st Century now - not 1787.

When  the Constitution was written, it was to enable the country to protect itself. Which cretin believes that the hand gun or machine gun is the way the USA will be protected in the 21st Century.

In fact it's the gun that is a significant contributor to the destruction of the values that have made the USA so strong for so long. Just look at South Africa. Give me one good argument that will convince me that the USA won't end up like that sick society where people are scared to walk in the streets and where 'everyone' carries a gun for self preservation.

It's easy to preach rights - but it takes guts, honesty and intelligence to confront one's reality. And the gunslingers of the US have neither the honesty, intelligence or moral clarity to resolve this themselves.

In a blog I wrote a couple of years ago commenting critically on some of the weirder US practices, I received a comment that said "Then keep your sorry arse out of the US."

I bet that person owned a gun!

Pro-gun proponents argue for more people to be armed so they can repel attempted mass murders before they eventuate.

I was playing this out in my head to see how it would work in reality.

Suppose a gunman opens fire on someone at work and kills them. The only other person in the area takes out his gun and kills the shooter. The noise is heard by others who rush into the room to find the second shooter standing there with a gun in his hand with two dead bodies at his feet.

How do people know which of the three was the culprit? They don't know which is the culprit and aren't aware that one of the killings was a 'rescue-shoot', so they assume the live person is the culprit and shoot him too, since he has a smoking gun in his hand.

Do the pro-gun proponents have any suggestions on how to solve this one?

So the US Constitution allows its citizens to bear arms. In the days when the Constitution was written, "arms" were handguns, rifles and perhaps limited range cannons - the latter were unlikely to be kept by private citizens. 

The founding fathers could not have envisioned the evolution of weaponry and the fire-power of modern armaments.

If you extend the arguments of the pro-gun lobby, then its OK for people to have assault rifles, anti-tank armaments, mortars, and by logical extension, missles, and even nuclear weapons.

My suggestion is that the US goverment define what is meant by "Arms" to be non-assault rifles, non- military hand guns and similar. All other "arms" should be referred to as "weapons of war" (or similar) and banned from all citizens other than the military or police.

Simple!

The shooting in Newtown is but another symbol of the malaise pervading the US.

The right to bear arms; the inalienable right to pursue personal maximisation above national well-being; the sink or swim culture that pervades everywhere; and the effective bankruptcy of the US; are a toxic and heady brew.

I suspect that a movement of only a few degrees in each of these attributes will inevitably lead to a  level of combustability never seen  before in the US. All it needs is a small spark to ignite the nation into a morass of lawlessness and anarchy that will make the Arab Spring seem like a child's birthday party.