Letters to the Editor

Global fishiness How can Wal-Mart sell Chilean salmon for $4.84 a pound? An excerpt from "The Wal-Mart Effect." By Charles Fishman [2006-01-23]

• Timeframes

  "If salmon poo needs to be cleaned up and properly disposed of, well, that's not a way of making salmon cheaper -- it's potentially a way of making salmon more expensive."

  Although I can understand the thinking that produces such a reaction, the reality is that cleaning up salmon poo IS a way of making salmon cheaper...in the long term. Short-term thinking seems to pervade business, which, I suppose, explains how companies can sacrifice their future for larger profits in the present. The question is whether investors will be content for companies to continue these short-term practices, when these companies could instead secure their future profits through actions in the present (such as cleaning up salmon poo). I'm just curious as to when investors will begin to ask the necessary questions.

  -- Dave
  [Read Dave's other letters]
  Permalink Flag Monday, January 23, 2006 02:57 AM
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