It's All Greek To Me! - How Latin Was Used for Gatekeeping Medicine, Religion, and the Law

Half of learning any trade is learning the lingo.

I recently had another CT scan at Mayo.  They are very thorough there, but you end up getting referral after referral and each new doctor wants to run more tests.  I am hoping to be done with this, but the cardiologist wants to run a "stress test" (the chemical kind, not the treadmill kind) with a scan.   I told him that friends had this and it "felt like dying" and was like a heart attack.  "Well, it is, kind of, but not really" he replied.

I am not sure what the end game is here.  Parkinson's disease usually ends in a heart attack, after many years.  So even if they find coronary artery disease, I am not sure that treatment will extend my life much.

But what got me to thinking (again, a bad habit) was the reports I get from Mayo.  They are very thorough, to be sure!  And results buzz on your smart phone as you are walking to the parking lot after the procedure.  This is first-class medical care, to be sure - and I have yet to receive a bill for any of it.

Interpreting the results is another matter, as often they arrive, literally in Latin.  Fortunately, in the Mayo "app" they have a feature where Latin words are hyperlinked to a "patient-friendly" explanation of terms.

So the following report, for example, appeared on my phone, on the way home from the procedure:

EXAM: CT ABDOMEN PELVIS WITHOUT AND WITH IV CONTRAST

COMPARISON: None.

TECHNIQUE: CT of the abdomen and pelvis is performed with and without intravenous contrast.

FINDINGS:

Noncirrhotic liver. No focal hepatic lesion. No biliary dilation or radiopaque gallstone.

Spleen, pancreas, adrenals and left kidney are unremarkable. Simple 5 cm right lower renal cyst. 9 mm right lower renal probable cyst with dense wall calcification. No urinary calculus or hydronephrosis.

No bowel dilation or wall thickening. Multiple colonic diverticula but no evidence of active inflammation.

No lymphadenopathy. No ascites. No peritoneal or retroperitoneal lesion.

Aortoiliac calcifications without aneurysmal dilation. Patent visualized vasculature.

Urinary bladder is partially distended. Prostate size is within normal limits.

Degenerative changes in the skeleton.

Translation? You are as healthy as a horse.  The liver thing was a real surprise.  You'd think years of drinking would have caused some damage.  But no - healthy liver, gall bladder, kidneys, etc.  This made me feel great, although the Parkinson's thing is still an issue.  The only organ I wore out was my brain, apparently.

But again, it got me to thinking, why was the report written in code when a plain language version was also avaialble?  And this got me to thinking how Latin has been used, over the years, in the fields of Medicine, Religion, and the Law.  Yes, at one time,  lawyers spoke in Latin and even today, Latin terms are used to describe certain concepts - e.g., pro se, res ipsa loquitur, stare decisis, bona fide, mens rea, amicu curiae - the list goes on and on.

Every first year law student buys a copy of Black's Law Dictionary and memorizes the meaning of all these terms, much as first year med students (I suppose) study Gray's Anatomy, which also documents a host of obscure and common medical terms, usually in Latin.  But of course, the granddaddy of them all was the Bible, which for centuries, was available only in Latin.

In fact, that was a big sticking point with the Protestant reformation - the idea that the "Word of God" should be available in the native tongue, and not read in some mystical dead language and then interpreted to the masses by the anointed few.  Vatican II - still controversial to this day - allowed for Mass to be said in the local language, but some conservatives still pine for the "good old days" when the Priest would spout Latin gibberish.  Maybe the audience didn't understand a word of it, but it sure sounded pretty elegant!

The list goes on and on.  Scientific terms were (and are) often in Latin, particularly in fields of biology and botany. Plants and animals are given species names in Latin, along with their colloquial native language counterparts.  The Norther Cardinal is also the Cardinalis cardinalis, which sounds so nice, you say it twice.  Oddly enough, Catholic prelates are named for this bird - or vice-versa, I forget which.

Even the stars in the sky are given Latin names, like proxima centauri, the closest star to our solar system.  One wonders why, but then again, the naming of these things dates back to a time when people actually studied and read Latin, but rarely spoke it.  Latin was, I guess, a universal language.  So Scientists, Doctors, and Priests could converse, so to speak, even if their native languages were disparate.  I guess also too, it made sense that the language of only one country would not dominant these fields, much as English does today in world commerce or French did in world diplomacy.

But I can't help but wonder whether gatekeeping was also part of the deal.  By putting professions behind a paywall of sorts, you could keep the amateurs out of the guild.  And perhaps I am overstating this.  After all, even without Latin, each profession or field has its own lingo and terminology that only practitioners are familiar with.  A simple Latin phrase, for example, can describe a complete concept in an abbreviated format - in a manner which those in the field quickly and easily grasp.

Acronyms are arguably the Latin of today.  We use three-letter acronyms to describe concepts in science and technology, rather than spell these things out longhand.  Funny and odd-sounding names (e.g., Bluetooth) are also used to label functions or technology.  Latin has become a dead language in that regard, at least going forward.

Speaking of which, no one learns Latin anymore.  One of my ancestors taught school in Pompey, New York in a one-room schoolhouse in the 1800's.  The curriculum included both Latin and Greek, neither of which appear in the current school curriculum of that County today - or indeed, anywhere else.    My older brother took Latin in the 7th and 8th grades, but by the time I was in Junior High, the teacher had retired and was not replaced.  Students today struggle to learn English - their native tongue.

And indeed, when it comes to Latin, why bother?  Other than in naming a few things and reading Roman numerals, there seems to be little point to it anymore.  Common Latin phrases and terms have morphed over to the English language - a language that seems to absorb terms from every other language on the planet.  You can be a Doctor, Lawyer, or Scientist without being fluent in Latin.  One only needs to know the names of things relevant to their profession.  Priests, I am told, are still required to learn Latin, although fluency may not be required.

So, I suppose it is not gatekeeping per se, but also has utilitarian functions.  But it also is a way of separating the plebes from the higher-ups.

Just stupid things I think about in waiting rooms.

How We Keep Ourselves Down

The biggest obstacle to success in life is us - and the people willing to help us be that obstacle!

I was lurking on Reddit the other day and someone posted an inquiry as to what has fundamentally changed in the USA in the last 50 years that no one seems to have noticed.  People put up all sorts of good suggestions and I was tempted to reply, "Gambling!" but kept my mouth shut instead.

I noted before how gambling has taken over America since I was a kid.  Back in the 1960's you couldn't gamble anywhere, legally, except in Las Vegas.  No Indian casinos, no gambling boats, no lottery tickets, no sports gambling.  I recounted before, as a pizza delivery driver, one of my jobs was to stuff unmarked fat envelopes into a mail slot and was told not to ask questions.  They were sports betting slips - illegal at the time.

Sure, gambling went on - illegally - but it was kept in check by the local "bunko" squads and raids were conducted periodically.  I could have been arrested, of course - for that and a lot of other things.  Today, we are "free" to gamble ourselves to death (and many literally do) as everyone in the US lives within a 30-minute drive of some sort of casino or another.  There is a gambling boat at the end of our causeway - a ten minute drive from my house.  The local gas station sells a plethora of lottery tickets - the "numbers racket" of today, run by the government, which is the new Mafia.

It struck me that the "system" promotes self-destruction.  Once you start down the gambling road, you end up poor and destitute,, as the house always wins.  It is a poverty tax on the stupid and those who flunked courses in probability (or never took one).  But we are "free" to ruin ourselves these days, and the very wealthy make sure we have lots of outlets for self-destruction.

But it is a choice - to gamble or not.  Some people claim to be addicted and maybe that is so. But maybe the powers-that-be want you to think you cannot control this compulsion.  Or maybe it is chemicals in the brain that make us gamble - as one experiment-gone-wrong seemed to prove.

There are other ways to destroy yourself, of course.  Drugs and alcohol (redundant, as alcohol is indeed a drug!) can prevent you from reaching your full potential.  And when you fail at life, drugs and alcohol are there to nurse you along and let you feel that even trying is a waste of time.

But it goes beyond that.  Major corporations push fast-food and fast-casual chains that sell horrific foods, high in fats and sugars.  You gain weight and they sell you a diet drug that, if it does not kill you directly, keeps you dependent on it for life.  Then there is type-2 diabetes, which is the perfect illness from the point-of-view of the medical industry as it makes you dependent on the pharmaceutical industry and the plethora of dialysis centers springing up all over America.  More sweet tea?  Drink up!

If that doesn't work, they'll attack your mind directly, convincing you that your childhood was scarred by trauma as your parents were "narcissists" and you have PTSD as a result and are now a "victim."  There is a support group with folding chairs and a coffee urn waiting for you!  No trigger words, now!

The list goes on and on - various means to beat you down and make you feel like a passive victim in life rather than an active participant.  They want to keep you fearful and scared so you buy an extended warranty for your car or vote for the "law and order" candidate who will keep those brown people from stealing the Amazon packages off your front porch.

This is not to say there aren't real victims in the world - there are.  But it seems victimhood is a new form of status - inverse status.  And the only real result is that it keeps you down, depressed, and passive.  I noted before that depressed people make excellent consumers as they will drown their sorrows in a flood of expensive coffee drinks and online shopping.  Treat yourself - you deserve it!  After all, your Mom was mean to you!

Another Reddit post from a self-described "financial advisor" who works for a "non-profit" argued that the major causes of poverty in America were the the high cost of housing, education, and medical care, and there is no way around it, so "go ahead and get that Starbucks and sign up for that streaming service!"  Because controlling your discretionary spending (the only expense you can control) is pointless.

Instead of buying one $5 coffee drink a day, investing that money comes up to nearly $200,000 after 30 years, if invested at 7% which isn't hard to do in a 401(k) plan (and cuts your taxable income to boot!) - as the above chart shows.  You can generate your own chart - change the interest rate, the amount saved or whatever - the result is the same.  It adds up to a surprising amount of money.  Compound interest is a bitch - when you are borrowing.  It is your friend when you choose to save.  And 401(k) plans are insulated from bankruptcy, too!

It isn't hard, even for the poorest person, to eliminate an unnecessary $5 expense, if you try.  What is even more appalling is people who choose not to save, but are in the middle or higher income brackets, but choose instead to spend money on a series of leased SUVs or monthly subscription services.  It is a choice, too, not a mandate.

But again, depression and victimhood make it easy to wallow in self-pity.  So why not call Door-Dash or Uber Eats and send out for a pizza?  It is only like $40 and you'll never get ahead anyway in life so why bother?

Oddly enough, this same mentality took hold in Japan in the 1990s.  Young people were convinced they would never own their own home or get married and have kids, so instead they lived with their parents and spent their disposable income on clothes, accessories, electronic gadgets, cars, and of course, clubbing and partying.  The aging Japan we see today is the result.

Oddly enough, one of the fundamental principles of Scientology addresses this same concept - dressed up, of course, in the psudo-science of that religion.  They test you with a galvanometer and tell you that you have "Engrams" from your upbringing (or whatever) and for a fee, they will help you "go clear" of them.  It is like shooting fish in barrel, as most people have some sort of trauma - real, imagined, or amplified - in their lives, and as a result are receptive to these suggestions.  It is why many followers feel helped by that religion - and who knows, maybe they are?

But I think you can "clear" your "engrams" without handing over your hard-earned-cash to a religion.  Just realizing that nearly everyone has some sort of trauma or hardship in life is a start on the road to wellville.  If you can stop perceiving yourself as a victim and start seeing yourself as self-actualizing, you can do great things in life.  And it can start with simple things - like making your own coffee in the morning (and not with a Keurig!) for 50 cents instead of five bucks.

"But what about people with real trauma?  Real hardships?"  Well, when you meet people like that, they often do not perceive themselves as victims, and in fact, resent being characterized as such.  When Mark worked at the lighthouse museum, a lady came in with her kids, wanting to climb the lighthouse.  She was in a wheelchair, and was a double amputee (or was born with no legs).  She asked for four tickets and Mark, seeing only three kids, asked who the fourth was.

"Me!" she answered.  Mark told her there was no elevator and she replied, "Oh, I don't need one!" and she produced a pair of flip-flops, leapt out of the chair and did a handstand on the floor, "walking" around the gift shop - much to the embarrassment of her teenage kids who were used to Mom showing off. And she went all the way up - 129 steps in all, and all the way back down.  It is a trip that winds me, to be sure.

The point is, here was a woman who was a bona fide victim of circumstance, but wasn't willing to see it bring her down.  She did not perceive herself as a victim and would no doubt fight you to prove the point.  Meanwhile, the vast majority of Americans (I think) see themselves as put-upon, due in many cases, to their own actions.

And sadly, there is a whole industry - a plethora of industries - ready to cater to your low-self-esteem.  "Give up!" they say.  "Spend it all now!  Why bother saving!  You'll never retire!  You'll never get ahead!  Buy a coffee drink!  Go to Disney!  Put it all on the credit card and never pay it off!  Everyone has debt!  This is perfectly normal!"

In a way, it is.  To keep us all yoked to the plow, they dangle these trinkets in front of us - small pleasures and electronic gadgets and shiny automobiles.  We work so we can spend, and we spend so we have to work - harder and harder and never getting ahead.  And so it seems and it seems we have no other choice.

Or do we? Yes, it is harder today than in the past, not because housing is expensive or the threat of medical bankruptcy looms or student loan debt is "inevitable" but because we have so many new ways to destroy ourselves that are all perfectly legal.  And yes, maybe it is pointless to outlaw self-destruction.  We tried that with prohibition - it didn't work.  We tried outlawing gambling - that just drove it underground.  The "war on drugs" resulted in mass incarceration of millions (mostly minorities) without really putting a dent in drug use.  Today we are "freer" than ever (not according to the Proud Boys, of course!) to do what we want to do - even to the point of self-destruction.

We are free to make bad choices.  We are free to pay too much for a car and finance it on a ten-year loan.  We are free to pay too much for a house and sign a mortgage with onerous terms.  We are free to buy quack cures on the television without the FDA stepping in to say "No!"   And yes, this means the least sophisticated among us are often victims of these scams.  Maybe we should protect people from themselves - but I am not sure we are going back to that "nanny state" of the 1950s or 1960s anytime soon (the "good old days" the far-right pines for, but obviously wouldn't like in reality).

Maybe we can't save people from themselves.  But a whole host of middle-class people - people with smarts and educations - can see that gambling on sports or using restaurants as a kitchen aee not sound practices.  Sadly, the Greek chorus of the Internet screams otherwise - which is why I get suspicious when people on Reddit (or anywhere online) say things like, "Go ahead, get a Starbucks, it won't affect your bottom line at all!"  I mean, that sort of propaganda isn't benefiting the ruling class, right?

That right there is the problem.  The Internet and the Smart Phone are a powerful propaganda machine.  People compulsively look at their phones for hours each day, programming their minds with bad ideas - ideas that are promulgated by the powers-that-be.  They want you to consume, spend, and feel like a helpless victim.  They can get you to vote how they want based on your victimhood.  Vote Republican!  They'll throw out the immigrants and make everyone a crypto-billionaire!  Vote Democratic!  They'll give you guaranteed annual income and robots will do all your work for you!

But God forbid, you should think and act for yourself, because that would mean you were taking charge of your life - instead of letting it be just a bunch of crap that happens to you.

FWIW.

Tortured Sheetmetal - How Style Sells Cars

 Style sells cars, not functionality.   Always has, always will, because.... Humans.

I have been busy working on the camper van and have gotten a lot done.  It is interesting, doing a little "automotive archaeology" and seeing how things were put together. The Mercedes part seems to work OK, although - typical of German Engineering - everything is over-engineered.  The, there are also some odd design choices.

For example, right next to the gas pedal (diesel pedal?) is the main disconnect for the battery - right where your foot might rest.   Kick that, and it disconnects the ground cable from the battery.  It hasn't happened - yet - but it seems like an odd placement.  Good thing I read the owner's manual and learned about it!  It would be a bummer to be stuck somewhere with no electrical systems working and wondering why.

But what was really disappointing was how Winnebago "converted" the camper into a van.  They seemed to prioritize glitzy add-ons that maybe made the vehicle look better, but seemed to skimp on basic construction quality techniques.  For example, the Mercedes Sprinter van comes with black rubber bumpers and a black plastic band that runs along the sides of the van.  Winnebago decided to paint these body color and then apply a stick-on piece of stainless steel trim to gussy it up.

Does it look better?  I guess, but for my money, I could have lived with black bumpers.  I noticed some of the paint was peeling off the bottom lip of the bumper.  I wonder if they used the proper elastomers in the paint when applying it to the urethane bumper.  There is also overspray where they painted the side bands - you can see the original black color when you open the door.  Sort of a pointless exercise.

The standard wheels are painted steel - simple, inexpensive, durable and interchangeable (it has dual wheels in the rear).  Winnebago decided to install chrome-plated alloy wheels to gussy it up.  Problem is, this means we have to use a special lugnut adapter and the inside rear wheels are still steel, so the wheels cannot be rotated to reduce tire wear.

Modern vehicles use little chrome - it comes from Rhodesia and is expensive.  Chrome today is used only to alloy steel, not to plate it.  The "chrome" you see on cars today is mostly plastic covered with a mylar film (or stainless steel trim).  "Chrome" wheels, such as on our old pickup truck, was polished and clear-coated aluminum.  Many cars today are going to painted alloy rims, often matte black.  Shiny trim in general seems to be disappearing.

Given the high cost of chromium, it is no surprise that the wheels they chose had the thinnest coating of it - coating that, at ten years, was largely peeled off, discolored, or looked like hell.  We decided to paint the rims and Mark chose Rustoleum matte black wheel paint.  I bought a half-case (six cans) on Amazon for cheap.  From a YouTube video, Mark got the idea of using an old deck of playing cards to mask the rims.  Jam the cards between the tire and the rim edge, until they cover the entire circumference of the rim.  Use painters tape to hold them in place.  After sanding and cleaning, the paint went on with no problems.  We tossed the stupid plastic Winnebago "hub caps" that covered the center of the wheel.  I think it came out good and no longer looks frightening.

Funny how black wheels started as a style trend among the younger set - and has now morphed to mainstream automakers.  It does look... functional.

But speaking of frightening, how the workers at Winnebago installed things was appalling.  When you drill a hole in body sheetmetal, it is well known that one must put some paint or primer on the raw metal edge you just created.  Otherwise you get rust.  Well, it seems they didn't do that, and everywhere a hole was cut in the body (and there are a lot!) there was rust, sometimes through the sheetmetal.  For example, they put a "courtesy outlet" on the side of the vehicle, along with a 12V outlet.  Since neither hole was primed or painted, the area surrounding the openings rusted through.

I was able to patch the problem by removing the outlets, grinding away the rust and using some black paint to cover up the rust (and cover the raw metal from the holes).  A simple thing, really.  I only wish they put as much thought into basic construction techniques as they did into glitz and glamour.

The front seats rotate around, which is handy.  But the wire - thin wire - for the seatbelt switch tends to get caught in the mechanism and shears right off.  I bought a new seatbelt buckle for the driver's side and installed it and then armored the cable with plastic wire loom and then secured it with wire ties so that no matter how you rotate the seat, it would not bind.  A simple thing, really.  All it took was a few minutes.

But Winnebago's priorities were on glitz.  They spent a small fortune putting little vinyl skirts around the base of the seats.  Little vinyl skirts that attracted and held dirt and dust and served no function other than to hide part of the seat base (but not the ugly slide/rotate mechanism).  An easy fix - I took them off and threw them in the trash.

Funny thing - the only place on the coach that labels it as a "Winnebago" was some cheap chrome (Mylar coated plastic) letters stuck on the rear door.  The Mylar was peeling off, so off they went, leaving behind a faint shadow.  Now, the only label is the words, "Touring Coach" on the back.

I could go on - for example, why they felt they needed to use 20 lbs of rubber caulk to install the refrigerator (only took me a week of scraping to remove) or why they used rubber hoses for the propane lines - and then bent them so they crimped.  The usual RV stuff - I'm not complaining, just saying.  After 30+ years of RVing and our sixth RV, I can say I have seen it all.  Never spend a lot on an RV and never buy one unless you are "handy."  Tears will result otherwise.

But this got me to thinking about style over substance.  It is nothing new in the automotive world.  Old car brochures are pretty shameless about it - touting new styling features over technical improvements.  Copywriters would gush over the fender shapes or the massive new bumpers on the '58 Dodge, but little was said about the nuts and bolts of the car.  Most people buy vehicles based on appearances, with technology and features coming in a distant second or third.  It is all about style and status - wanting to look smart and look wealthy.  You don't want to drive an out-of-style car, do you?

At GM, the Engineers derisively referred to it as "tortured sheetmetal" - the doo-dads and dagmars the stylists slathered onto the body in an effort to make the car look new and different.  And while annual model changes are largely a thing of the past, people still line up to buy the "new model" in its first year of production.   And not surprisingly, the first year of production is usually the least reliable in the run, as bugs are worked out and the assembly line is running at full-tilt.

Even "functional" features can be used to sell style.  When the center high-mounted stop lamp (CHMSL) was mandated in the 1980s, automakers fought the new rules.  But a funny thing happened - people ran out to buy aftermarket CHMSL lamps for their older cars so as to "update" them.  You don't want to be seen driving last year's car, do you?  So long as the new car looks, well, new, it doesn't matter what changed, so long as Humans can cling to their style and status and look down their noses at those who can't keep up.

So, in a way, I get it why Winnebago spend the money on making the van look more sophisticated.  Rather than better quality or upgraded features (heated seats would have been nice!) they slather on some paint and shiny trim.  The person they are selling to isn't me - it was the guy, ten years ago, who paid over a hundred grand for the van and drove it a scant 900 miles before unloading it.  The new-car buyer is persuaded by shiny trinkets.  The used car buyer is more interested in the oil change history.

I am not sure where this is all going, other than it illustrates why cars are so ugly today.  Even the Japanese have taken to torturing sheetmetal, with folds and creases that make little sense, or the "weeping taillights" of the later model Camrys.  At least the era of the "giant grill" seems to be coming to an end (looking at you, BMW and Lexus!).   That was indeed an odd design choice, particularly since most automotive grills are non-functional.  Cars can suck in cooling air from under the front bumper, as the original Taurus and Infinity did with no problem.  Grills are just, well, ornamentation at this point.

And ornamentation sells!

First To Market Is Last In The Marketplace - Roomba

iRobot is going bankrupt - and it was inevitable.

I wrote before about this phenomenon - how market pioneers end up broke, over time, or at least lose their first-to-market advantage, often rather quickly. DeHavilland was first to market with a jet airliner, but within a few years was eclipsed by Boeing and Douglas.  The second-to-market learns from the expensive lessons of the first.

It is a pretty consistent pattern, too.  Early automakers dominated the market, but largely disappeared within a decade or two. Digital Research dominated the market for PC operating systems, only to be rapidly eclipsed by newcomer Microsoft.  And that example illustrates how hubris can sometimes lead to downfall.  After all, when you basically invented a market segment, you might think you are invulnerable.  But instead, all you did was blaze the trail, taking all the risks and making the majority of effort, only to make things easier for those who follow.

So, it is not surprising that iRobot went bust.  In a strange-but-not-so-strange coincidence, it will end up being taken over by its main rival, much as Segway ended up being absorbed by its Chinese knock-off competitor.  First to market is last in the marketplace.

The mathematics of Chapter 11 bankruptcy are simple.  Shareholders are wiped out - their share price goes to zero and they lose everything.  Debtors become the new shareholders of the company, post-bankruptcy and life goes on.  In the case of iRobot, the debtor was one of their biggest competitors (making knock-off Roombas for cheap) and also their biggest supplier.  They bought up iRobot's debts from the Carlyle group (no doubt at a discount) and ended up owning the company.

Of course, what they own is mostly intellectual property - the Trademarks and a few Patents.  They already owned the manufacturing facilities.  No doubt the pension liabilities for the former employees will be stripped-off or severely reduced during bankruptcy proceedings.

Of course, political hacks on both the right and left are using this to advance their own nefarious agendas.  Leftists argue this is another example of greedy CEOs "putting profits above people" while the Rightists argue this is another example of how globalism and free-trade cause an American innovator to go broke.  Neither are correct, of course - at least  not in whole.

Like most bankruptcies, the main issue is corporate debt.  Often perfectly good companies making a reasonable profit are swamped by debt-service.  If debt-free, they could survive, but buried in a sea of debt, they cannot survive.  And often, these debts are acquired for frivolous purposes, such as stock buy-backs, which used to be illegal and for good reason.  Over the years, iRobot engaged in a number of stock buy-backs as well.  One wonders if paying down debt would be a better option - or was the downfall inevitable and insiders decided to cash-out instead?

How iRobot ended up where it is today is not a simple one-word answer, but a combination of factors.  Being first-to-market has initial advantages, but they are short-lived.  You can try to preserve market share through intellectual property enforcement, but that is time-consuming and expensive - and often ineffectual in foreign markets.

In the case of both iRobot and Segway, the companies ended up being owned by their competitors and/or principal suppliers.   And this is not unusual.  I recounted before how the very big sneaker company had to police its IP rights overseas as knock-offs of their sneakers were being sold in foreign markets.  And who was making these knock-offs?  Their very own overseas suppliers, who just kept the assembly line running, once the initial order from the sneaker company was satisfied.  Makes you wonder - are they really "knock-offs" if they are made in the same factory as the originals, using the same tooling?

Could have this been avoided?  Perhaps not.  Greater forces are at work here than the decisions of a CEO.  Moving production overseas is a given these days, as the price of US labor is prohibitive.  Patents expire over time (as their initial Patents apparently did) allowing others to enter the market at a lower price. Taking on debt maybe was the nail in the coffin 

Would tariffs have helped?  I think not.  For starters, since they outsourced production to Asia, tariffs ended up being a factor leading to bankruptcy, as their supply chain was disrupted.  In the tariff fantasy world, such prohibitive tariffs would have incentivized iRobot to move production to the US and also acted as a barrier-to-trade for their foreign competitors.  But as we have seen in the auto industry, the net effect has been that foreign competitors simply open up shop here in the US - in low-wage non-union States, and thus have huge economic advantages over the US legacy companies.

This left iRobot with few options.  They could continue to innovate, hoping that proprietary technology would help them maintain market share - and allow them to continue to charge premium prices. This seems to be the Apple strategy - selling technology as designer goods.  But since few people carry their Roombas on their person, it is doubtful this would work in that market segment.  Rather, the vast majority of users would gravitate toward cheaper tech where price point is the key and margins are slim.

And I suspect those in the "C-suite" knew this was inevitable and thus pumped up the stock price with buy-backs and paid themselves handsomely with stock options and salaries.   The founders no doubt make fabulous amounts of money as well.  Who got hurt?  The small investor who thought this was "the next big thing!" and assumed that once a company hits a home run, that's all they will ever do.  Each of us, no doubt, took a small hit in our 401(k)s as our mutual funds likely had some exposure at some time during our tenure.

iRobot stock history - note how the share price spiked during the buy-back era, then crashed.  There is a lesson here, somewhere...

But that's just it - it was a small risk and small loss for a lot of people - too small to complain about.  On the other side, a few people made a lot of money.  As I noted before, if you can scam a dollar from every American in America, you'd have over $300 million dollars - and your victims would likely never notice the missing buck.  Now make that $100 per citizen or even $1000 and the effect is largely the same.

Expanded history chart showing P/E ratio and EPS.  A profitable company, at one time, that took a nose-dive in 2022!

Note that the P/E ratio, over time, shows that the share price was over-valued for much of its history.  P/E ratios over 20 are suspect, but "tech" entrepreneurs remind us that economic laws don't apply to them - until they do.  Note that the company took on long-term debt at the same time as profits nosedived - circa 2022.  Perhaps failure was inevitable.