Beyond Trump, J.D. Vance and the RNC: The Real Issues of climate and competitiveness revealed in a Soda Can

by Bruce Piasecki, author of Wealth and Climate Competitiveness: The New Narrative, and a releasely life summary Memoir Doing More with One Life.

Think of your last SouthWest economical air flight, say, to anywhere populated.

Remember this first: Business literature if full of how Herb, their orginal SouthWest founder, saught the best most populated areas, like Baltimore Washington airport, for his early conquests.

Herb knew the consumer seeks ease, convenience, and low prices. This is different than political aspirants and the many Senators willing to spend tax dollars on flights from DC’s two other airports that cost 3 to 4 times the new Southwest rates. Thus, the ascent of SW in the business literature, and stock histories.

Plug in a specific when you want to understand competitiveness

Now think of your SODA CAN while waiting for the flight lift, which are usually on time. Fell your heart rate, then feel the cans heat. IT does not matter if this CAN is made in China, Japan, or InBev or another location.

What matters is its price, and is it convenient and reliable?

Was the can swollen like your ankles from the very hot day last week in Washington DC? My laywer partners in DC said it was over 100 Degrees F in DC last week alone, 100 Degrees F. Now that is seriously different than the DC at the start of my career: think of how heat caused the melt floods in Calgary in the picture below, and all over the world now. Things are different in out atmospher, in our rallies, and in a flight.

From cold places like Calgary Canada to warmer places all over, the world has changed. My point: change matters to politics and corporations.

Calgary Canada flooded in 2013

Well, on today’s National Public Radio the announcer navigates a clever story about how SODA CANS are exploding when delivered by a steward on Southwest Airline flights. There are three reasons for this:

1. Southwest always seeks the lowest price for consumers. That is a good

I am the doing more with less guy. (see www.thedoingmorewithlessguy.com for more fun on that topic)

In this open global market for talent, we kept getting hired, and my firm worked for years, at frugal giants like WalMart, bp, and Toyota. They wanted more competitiveness for less in this time of climate change. (More on that at my developing Wikipedia pages, folks writing those entries.)

Back to Airplanes and Soda Cans.

Southwest does not, as a result, refrigerate the transfer of those cans in your hands from storage to airplane. Green house gas emitting refrigeration remains the norm at the the more wasteful other airlines, even though logisitics people know “the refrigeration cool index” is lost to the customer in a matter of minutes upon entry to the plane.

You remember some of them in past flights feeling hot, but not yet explosive. Capitalism is about smaller and smaller global margins.

1. In addition, Southwest is data driven and disciplined, again like a WalMart and Toyota.

Throughout its history, SouthWest embodies what I call social response capitalism. They compete on the usual things like price and quality but also listen intently to their buyers, customers, social trends.

Here is a secret. The great companies think about the real world, about 40 years ahead of J.D. Vance and about 60 years ahead of Trump.

And I know this secret because I travelled with Southwest’s former financially savvy General Counsel on several flights back East from LA.

Here is the story, never before revealed…..Due to frequent travel from LA to Manhattan, SW consistently upgraded me to first class on several cross country flights: thus this seat next to Southwest’s clever and frugal General Counsel. She was smart, and open, willing to talk, not just a paper pusher in pursuit of her dream. I paid the lowest rates of an ordinary citizen, but got the sit next to a real corporate Executive.

She surprised me in many ways.

One of the relevant secrets revealed in private: Southwest buys the thinnest cans possible to save energy and freight costs. Less insulation factor. This was a new move I saw coming when I worked — a few years before her — on the same sustainability topic for Annheuser Busch. Stack thinner cans for longer cheaper results.

Bruce Piasecki as Business Owner at Staff Retreat at Lincoln Estate Vermont

Now we get into this new world that neigher the venture capitalist JD Vance, nor our ideologicallly self interested Republican candidate can imagine —

Real modern competitive capitalism is not only about return and direct monies. That is old school.

The limit in J. D. Vance’s background is he remains a venture capitalist, manipulating the current rules for short term large results, not compounding results across a decade or two like Southwest or Walmart or Toyota. (Or any of the superior companies I write about at www.brucepiasecki.com)

When the Vance deal is done, he moves on, like he will do with Trump. If Trump wins, he stays. If not, I bet you’ll see him back home in venture firms, not the Ohio or Kentucky he represents.

But real capitalism is far more complicated than anything Trump did for tax relief his first term, or for anything the Trump republican party now promises — in the 2025 plan or elsewhere — about immigrants or explusion of real workers in our markets. Real capitalism is about results, not promises, and rapid adjustments to stay the course of results across decades of compounding profit.

Capitalism, global capitalism, the kind of capitalism our Kentucky and Ohio swing state workers need to compete in, is about the smart realignment of money, people and rules.

That is what keeps America wealthy, great, and getting stronger like the last 3 years has shown economically in numbers, not in political rhetorics.

Bottom line: Southwest listens to their stewards and female stewards are reporting these CAN EXPLOSIONS, as the traveller popped the can.

Come see 55 real executievs in action this January in our workshops in Phoenix

Expect Southwest to change their policies on cans soon.

Expect Trump to forget the real meaning of the assination attempt, and get back into his hatred, and vengeance, rambling speeches lacking discipline and focus. Expect J.D. Vance to cringe inside each time. More and more voters will take the fake white bandgages off their ears. How silly.

While the RNS displayed serious fear of Trump, the lack of real corporate endorsement is a concern to the Republican party.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Not a single Fortune 500 CEO is favoring Trump.

Corporations are socially responsive, knowing the margins of each seat in the airplanes they fly for a living. And how many people are arriving with Soda on their suits or shorts should worry any real executive.

Has a Trump or a J.D. Vance ever acknowledged the power of social giving and ESG?

This leaves me to another prediction:

Expect Vance to leave Trump if not elected, and expect Trump to never get the essence of real capitalism.

Trump is owner of a small set of failing family business. They do not know anything about soda cans, heat, data, or what prevails. They pay fines, not stewards.

Bruce Piasecki is at home writing about social history. See him on Wikipedia, and at www.thedoingmorewithlessguy.com.