Bribe or Business expense?

[Larry Lyke]

Leon --

It's not necessarily any different than national account sales. They lock up the product territory, so it doesn't matter when they get around to the customer, they are the only ones with what the customer wants once the servicer(s) have carved up the territory. [Read "locked up" the territory]

You get the same results by farming your church. Talk about a dog-eat-dog world!

 

[Leon Stewart]

Larry:

I didn't get your full point, but this is a different type of product where the influence on value is somewhat different since there is a wide market area that could be affected when individuals becomes corrupted and exchange money and favors. This eventually could, and usually will, leads to corruption of data, and low quality of reports that could extend far into the future. Maybe that's one of the reasons we currently have low quality Reports.

leon

 

[Larry Lyke]

Leon --

My point, stated another way, might say that the appraisal product is less important than controlling the market territory. In my scenario you really only have to exchange favors with those who DON'T follow the rules.

Corruption can be reduced by controlling the marketplace. Of course, there's the irreducible minimum beyond which you can't or wouldn't produce a bad product, because the product would be morphed into something that has no value -- as in ZERO VALUE -- thus unsalable.

But that's unlikely to be the consequence of controlling an appraisal market territory, because the appraisal product isn't hard to produce from a physical standpoint, and the skill level to produce it is quite low.

So to control a territory and garner the right to produce the majority of the product sold therein requires that most of the knowledge and effort be expended at a higher echelon.