Notorious R.O.B.

It's high time we brought back these classes...

Apparently, some legislators in South Dakota are pulling a political stunt by introducing a bill to require that all adults buy a gun upon turning 21. I say it’s a political stunt because the whole point of the exercise apparently is to say that Obamacare is unconstitutional, just like a an individual mandate to buy a gun would be:

Rep. Hal Wick, R-Sioux Falls, is sponsoring the bill and knows it will be killed. But he said he is introducing it to prove a point that the federal health care reform mandate passed last year is unconstitutional.

“Do I or the other cosponsors believe that the State of South Dakota can require citizens to buy firearms? Of course not. But at the same time, we do not believe the federal government can order every citizen to buy health insurance,” he said.

Well, what I find really disturbing about this is that a frikkin’ state legislator is so ignorant of the Constitution that he can make statements like this. We need to bring back civics education and do some sort of teaching on basic, fundamental constitutional law. Our nation is starting to suffer because of the low level of knowledge and education on the part of the citizenry on the most fundamental document that governs our political lives: the U.S. Constitution.

Read the rest of this entry »

In Part 1, I explored how large law firms and big brokerages are similar, based on the forthcoming paper by Glenn Reynolds, a law professor and blogging pioneer.  Then in Part 2, we looked at how they’re different in some fundamental ways, particularly compensation models, that makes the size of Big Brokerage appear to be all of the disadvantages with none of the advantages.

In this Part 3, I would like to explore how size could be made relevant again.  There are still areas where size does matter, even in real estate.  And the future of the industry really depends on how big brokerages respond to the rapid changes in the social and economic marketplace.  Up to this point, most have been extremely slow to react, believing that a strategy of evolutionary adaptation makes more sense than a risky revolutionary act.  I no longer believe, if I ever did, that slow evolution will get the job done for the giants in our industry.  The window of opportunity is closing, and quickly at that.  Unless something fairly dramatic is done, and soon, I believe that by 2020, the large brokerage as we know it will be a thing of the past.

So, with that Cassandra moment out of the way, what are the areas where size still matters?  And how might big brokerage respond to make size matter once again?

Read the rest of this entry »