“ every thing is AWesoMe.” spreAdibilit y And THE LEGO MOVIE
187
and customers, the Business Roundtable of the United States off icially
changed its mandate in 1997, stating that “the notion that the board must
somehow balance the interests of other stakeholders [than shareholders]
fundamentally misconstrues the role of directors.” 23 While this trend
was already developing in the 1980s, it led to massive downsizing and
staffing/cost reductions, which were put in force as a way to boost share
prices, based on the assumption that layoffs would increase shareholder
confidence, in turn having a positive impact on prices. So, as shareholders’
prof its have come to “trump all other considerations” including any
concern for “society as a whole,” managers have found that the easiest way
to increase prof its in the short term is through constant restructuring,
which invariably results in mass layoffs and, ultimately, the end of the
ideal of lifelong careers and all of the psychological and social stability
that goes with such a concept. 24
Furthermore, while market deregulation has often led to massive downsizing, deregulation has also produced a pronounced market dependence on
derivatives. Briefly, derivatives amount to a disaggregation of assets to be
reassembled in (partially) new configurations so that, whereas in the past
industry and the market attempted to build,
tightly integrated commodit[ies] that [were] more than the sum of [their]
parts, financial engineering play[s] this process in reverse, disassembling
a commodity [or company] into its consistent and variable elements and
dispersing these attributes to be bundled together with elements of other
commodities of interest to a globally oriented market for risk-managed
exchange. Each of these moveable parts is reassembled by risk attribute
so that they become worth more as derivatives than their individual
commodities, leveraged as they are for the further purchase of credit
instruments. 25
This model, according to Martin, is structured by the logic of the derivative,
and it works in much the same way as LEGO’s bricks, the company’s business
model, and its many transmedial outputs. As one business-blogger wrote
under the heading of “The Legofication of Business,” “the key to [the] LEGO
block is the simple and consistent interface. Doesn’t matter what the shape
23 Barbara Ehrenreich, Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America & The World (Croydon:
Granata, 2009), 109 (emphasis added).
24 Ibid.
25 Martin, 89.
187
and customers, the Business Roundtable of the United States off icially
changed its mandate in 1997, stating that “the notion that the board must
somehow balance the interests of other stakeholders [than shareholders]
fundamentally misconstrues the role of directors.” 23 While this trend
was already developing in the 1980s, it led to massive downsizing and
staffing/cost reductions, which were put in force as a way to boost share
prices, based on the assumption that layoffs would increase shareholder
confidence, in turn having a positive impact on prices. So, as shareholders’
prof its have come to “trump all other considerations” including any
concern for “society as a whole,” managers have found that the easiest way
to increase prof its in the short term is through constant restructuring,
which invariably results in mass layoffs and, ultimately, the end of the
ideal of lifelong careers and all of the psychological and social stability
that goes with such a concept. 24
Furthermore, while market deregulation has often led to massive downsizing, deregulation has also produced a pronounced market dependence on
derivatives. Briefly, derivatives amount to a disaggregation of assets to be
reassembled in (partially) new configurations so that, whereas in the past
industry and the market attempted to build,
tightly integrated commodit[ies] that [were] more than the sum of [their]
parts, financial engineering play[s] this process in reverse, disassembling
a commodity [or company] into its consistent and variable elements and
dispersing these attributes to be bundled together with elements of other
commodities of interest to a globally oriented market for risk-managed
exchange. Each of these moveable parts is reassembled by risk attribute
so that they become worth more as derivatives than their individual
commodities, leveraged as they are for the further purchase of credit
instruments. 25
This model, according to Martin, is structured by the logic of the derivative,
and it works in much the same way as LEGO’s bricks, the company’s business
model, and its many transmedial outputs. As one business-blogger wrote
under the heading of “The Legofication of Business,” “the key to [the] LEGO
block is the simple and consistent interface. Doesn’t matter what the shape
23 Barbara Ehrenreich, Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America & The World (Croydon:
Granata, 2009), 109 (emphasis added).
24 Ibid.
25 Martin, 89.