There's been a lot of articles comparing Costco and Walmart lately. Whereas Walmart pays its employees poverty-level wages and locks night-shift employees in the building, Costco pays its employees more than most stores and gives them excellent benefits. The costs are apparently offset by reductions in employee turnover and employee theft. The CEO insists that their policies are business decisions and not altruism, but I respect them for trying to do both, and they're actually succeeding so far.
Judevac sent me this NYTimes article about Costco, which goes into more depth about their other business practices, like how they have a policy of marking up products at a maximum of 14 to 15 percent. Also, I didn't realize before that the current CEO founded Coscto, but he also helped to found Price Club. I liked this quote from the CEO:
"On Wall Street, they're in the business of making money between now and next Thursday," he said. "I don't say that with any bitterness, but we can't take that view. We want to build a company that will still be here 50 and 60 years from now."
Luckily, despite complaints, Costco's stock has actually been rising, too. I guess stockholders are learning to think a little long term.
Btw, I doubt any of my readers care, but the NYTimes also has an article about the creation of the new Battlestar Galactica series. I'm just so happy that what I predicted is actually beginning to happen: Around the turn of the millennium, I ranted about how excited I was that the cost of visual effects was going down, so that in a few years' time, we'll finally start to see intelligent science fiction. Because science fiction no longer has to mean big budget, it's finally broken the bonds of having to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Yay!