VOLUME III, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 20, SECTION 1
1975, That Company in Rochester
Among the five chains of the last chapter, the first was called the market. It was only said that he cannot stop, and it was never asked: what in the end is the market, by what does it lock that person, by what can it in a single night carry a whole trade away. This chapter takes that one procedure and lifts it out on its own to look. To see it clear, first go back to 1975, back to a city in New York State called Rochester, and walk into the corridor of a company.
One. That company
Speak of that company first, it was called Kodak. From the end of the nineteenth century, the people of the whole world, wanting to keep a picture, had to pass through it: the photographs of your parents when small, the photograph of your grandparents on their wedding day, most likely were kept by its film. How large was it? In its best years, of the rolls of film sold across the whole world, the greater part were its own, and in this one city of Rochester it hired tens of thousands, and the city lived by it.
Stand this picture up: a company that had ruled a trade for a hundred years, plant, machines, patents, channels, talent, name, first in every one. It is the hide the last chapter spoke of, a hide thick and firm.
Two. The thing that young man made
In 1975, in this company there was an engineer in his twenties, and he made a thing. That thing was clumsy: as big as a toaster, taking twenty-some seconds to shoot one frame, the picture it shot so coarse the face could hardly be made out, storable only on a reel of tape, viewable only by connecting to a television. What it shot was worse than the company’s own film by an immeasurable distance.
Yet it had one place unlike every camera before it: it used no film. Stop a moment, see clear the weight of this thing. This company’s whole fortune was on film, selling cameras did not much earn, what earned was the film, the developing, that consuming round after round. And the thing this young man made cancelled the very thing that had to be bought round after round.
Three. Those above pressed it down
He carried this thing up to those above, ran a demonstration, and those above, having looked, asked him several questions, and then pressed it down. Do not hurry to curse those people. The rule of this volume is to walk close and look, look down into what is under them. So walk close.
The people seated in that room had to answer for the rice bowls of tens of thousands of staff, in their hands was the finest film production line in the whole world, patents saved up over decades, a whole supply chain from the chemical plant to the developing shop. And the thing set on the table, its picture coarse, and slow, and dear, could not sell more than a few units in a year. If you were seated in that chair, how would you choose? Leave a business earning great money each year and go do a thing coarse and slow that would besides ruin your own business? Their choice, in that year, was reasonable, and every one of them, in his own position, did his duty.
Four. Then, thirty years passed
What came next, everyone knows. That coarse and slow thing slowly grew not coarse, and not slow: first it could shoot the face clear, later it could shoot a single hair clear, it grew small, grew cheap, and at the last bored its way into that pane of glass in everyone’s pocket. The trade of film, just so, was gone.
See clear how it went. It was not beaten down by anyone, no rival charged into Rochester and seized its plant. It was the people who buy, one by one, no longer buying film: a mother no longer bought, a student no longer bought, a person going out to travel no longer bought, several hundred million people, each making a decision smaller than small. And then, that company that had ruled for a hundred years, fell. Its plant stood, its machines stood, its patents stood, the masters’ craft stood, only no one came to buy.
Five. This is that rule
Speaking to here, the thing called the market must be set on the table. What is the market? It is not a person, not a room, not a judge seated on high, it is several hundred million people, each making that decision smaller than small, gathered into one. Every single thing that company did back then was right: it kept the workers’ rice bowls, kept the profit, guarded its own thickest hide. But the account it reckoned was the account of its own house, and the account the market reckons is the account of everyone. Remember this line: that rule the market is does not ask how hard you toiled, does not ask how much right is on your side, does not ask how brilliant you were yesterday, it asks one line only: today, is there still anyone who wants this thing of yours.
Six. What this section set, crossing to the next
This section looked at one matter. In 1975, a young man in that company made a coarse and clumsy thing, and those above pressed it down, and the ones who pressed it were not bad people, each in his own position did his duty. Thirty years on, that trade was gone, no one beat it down, only no one came to buy.
The second chain the last chapter spoke of was called the iteration of technology, and it carries the whole table away. Today one layer must be corrected: the one that carries the table away is in truth not technology. Technology only sets a new thing before the person who buys, and the one that truly carries the table away is those several hundred million people, each making that small decision. Technology is the hand, and that rule the market is the eyes. Then this rule, where does it come from? Who made it? By what is it so exact, and by what so fierce? The next section asks Guanzi out, for more than twenty-six hundred years ago, he had already spoken this rule through.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.