What is so impressive about the story is that he didn't break the rules, he found a clever way to work within them. He was confronted with a brick wall most people would have seen as non-negotiable, and he found a way around it. This required subtlety and cleverness.
Outright breaking the rules is a shortcut that will often be morally wrong and will also carry practical ramifications that you probably don't want to deal with. I.e. you'll be a jerk and get nailed for it.
It takes nothing but shallow bravado and sociopathy to "break the rules." It takes a lot of smarts to work with / around them, and will work out a lot better for you.
Agreed. The established order didn't work for him, so he was able to leverage an alternative (but legal) way of achieving his ultimate goal.
There have been some other interesting marketing hacks/stunts over the years. I remember from about 20 years ago one involving the late Eazy E of N.W.A., a rap group which helped take gangsta rap mainstream in the late 80s/early 90s. Eazy E was invited to and showed up for a White House luncheon with then-President George H.W. Bush. How'd he get the invitation? Apparently by donating $2,500 to the Republican Party or the elder Bush's re-election campaign. The press was all over it. Eazy E later said the publicity was worth a million dollars.
Actually, given the specific circumstances, I'm not sure that your analysis is correct, IANAL, but obtaining a permit and using it under false pretenses despite performing the activity required by the permit might be illegal.
They probably don't care if you don't make the film (sometimes film-making fails), but certainly you wouldn't be allowed to sell shoes under this permit.
Bureaucracies arise because people take advantage -- rules are usually descriptive of what people did to cause problems in previous iterations.
It depends on the rule and the severity of the rule-breaking. Every day some kid is risking a fine for selling lemonade by breaking any number of permit and health code laws. They do it anyway.
I suppose a lesson could be learned, start a movie studio that shows how to build a lemonade company. Most kids would not get off the ground.
Most would simply complain to their parents who would in turn email The Consumerist causing the media to get the kids their lemonade stand.
I probably would have broken the rules and got the truck without the permit. Maybe it would have blown it for me, and I would have been forcibly removed and never sold a single shoe. Though I think there is another important side to this.
That side is the nepotistic behavior of the city issuing permits to only movie studios and construction companies to build ball parks.
I would rather prove the point that there is nefarious permit issuing going on within the city than be a part of their corrupt system of permit issuance.
I suppose the best thing to do would be to work as did the shoe guy, make your 40K units sold, and then make some noise about the permit issue with your profits.
Sometimes breaking rules is a good thing, and helps to enact change for the better, or make awareness of the absurdity of the rule itself.
It's shallow bravado and sociopathy if you think the rules don't apply to you.
The fine line is right at the point where if everybody did what you just did, would it work or would we all fail?
The rules are there for a reason, your ability to cheat your way to the top notwithstanding and there is nothing impressive at all about a lack of respect for a common resource.
It's shallow bravado and sociopathy if you think the rules don't apply to you.
That's total bullshit. Sociopathy? Really? Think maybe there's some hyperbole here?
Lots of rules were created simply to make life easier for some at the expense of others. Other rules are place long after they make any sense.
The fine line is right at the point where if everybody did what you just did, would it work or would we all fail?
That's only true in a broad view. Also "everybody did what you just did" may point out just why a rule is foolish. Or not, but blind obedience is no virtue.
* ... and there is nothing impressive at all about a lack of respect for a common resource.*
So it's OK for one business (film) to tie up traffic and inconvenience the locals, but not another (apparel)? And this is based on some objective assessment of the common good and not back-room deals, tax breaks, and cronyism?
Typically movie making permits are given under the assumption that there will be no abuse of such permits (after all, only a limited number of movies will be made) and because cities like the exposure.
Selling apparel is so common that if everybody that sold apparel would get a movie permit that no traffic could use the road anymore.
"Rules" are human mental constructs that the universe cares nothing for.
If you want to live your life chained up because somehow that proves or validates your ego, it will only impress similar minded individuals. You're still playing this game, yet win nothing at the end.
Realize that the only way you're going to get ahead is via advantages. And they are not going to come to you, you create them.
> "Rules" are human mental constructs that the universe cares nothing for.
Yes, but we humans do.
> If you want to live your life chained up because somehow that proves or validates your ego, it will only impress similar minded individuals.
I don't need to impress anybody and I don't care what others think. This is a matter of self respect and good stewardship of the resources that we all need.
> You're still playing this game, yet win nothing at the end.
You can win plenty by playing by the rules.
> Realize that the only way you're going to get ahead is via advantages.
Sure, you can study and you can use that to your advantage. Or build up a web of people that you can rely on and that can rely on you.
> You can work hard or you can work smart...
You should go and watch 'the smartest boys in the room'. It's enlightening for those that think that they can obey some of the rules most of the time to get ahead.
You should go and watch 'the smartest boys in the room'. It's enlightening for those that think that they can obey some of the rules most of the time to get ahead.
From this it sounds like you are suggesting that breaking any rules will result in Enron. The arguments that come to mind are too complex to list them all here, so I'll just say that Enron is an example of what happens when people follow the rules as they actually exist in the system of greed, cronyism, and regulatory capture that governs some parts of our society.
> This is a matter of self respect and good stewardship of the resources that we all need.
It's self-respect to blindly do what others tell you? Remember, if there's any potential reason you'd disobey a rule you aren't really a rule-follower, you're just as willing to be the final arbiter of right and wrong as an anarchist is.
Following rules is the easy answer for sure and I guess if you see yourself as someone willing to go with the flow you have an easier time.
> You can win plenty by playing by the rules.
Of course, that's what rules are about. Can't have a game without them.
But if "it" was the right thing to do, why does society have to reward you for doing it? It's likely you're being fed a line, and a bit of the profits, so you'll go along with whatever abuse was so egregious it had to be codified as a rule just to get people to accept it.
I've never read a bug-free piece of code over a hundred lines long and the law isn't as well written as most of the code I've seen. And even if correct as envisioned, the validity of rules in general relies on the failed assumption that we knew more in the past than we do now.
Codified rules, like "representative" democracy, are harmful to a free society.
Great point - and very true - He didn't break the rules, but found a way to make the rules work for him. If he just showed up with the truck it would have been a few hours before he was ticketed and forced out, but this way he made it look even more important and translate to even more sales. Perfect!
What's funny is that you see lying and filing a misleading application to be playing by the rules. Clearly the intent was to sell shoes.
What was really helped by the fake paperwork? They were willing to pay for a sales permit anyways so it's not money...
> you'll be a jerk and get nailed for it.
Actually, the term for someone who doesn't follow the rules is 'a criminal'. A jerk therefore is someone who follows the rules and hurts people regardless.
But usually the laws that a thoughtful person would choose to disregard are ones where you wouldn't even be jerkish to do so. If I smoked a joint it wouldn't hurt you at all. When I jaywalked on my old street where I had a 100m view in each direction I was less of a risk to myself and others than if I'd walked to the busy corner to cross the street.
No, clearly the jerk is the rule-follower who needlessly makes everyone else's life miserable by insisting everyone should blindly follow the rules.
> It takes nothing but shallow bravado and sociopathy to "break the rules."
Pft. That's what following rules is. The shallow (easily observed) lie that those who wrote the laws knew enough to do so (more than we do now), and the sociopathy to ignore the circumstances and damn people based on cold unreasoning laws.
It takes a caring and empathic human to evaluate a situation and say the rules are for shit. Sometimes that's self-serving, sometimes that's Schindler. I'd risk the former for the latter.
This is nothing more than a bricks-and-mortar version of spam. Misleading subject? Check. Message scrambled so it can pass through the spam filter? Check. Exacerbating traffic congestion at pipe owner's expense? Check. Millions of people's time wasted? Check.
Ok, spam is not genocide, and ok, it moves product. But to make it into an inspiring Young-Entrepreneur-Breaking-The-Rules story? Give me a break.
Yeah, great for him. This law is in place prevent the tragedy of the commons from killing NYC traffic because "well, its ok for ME to block traffic selling my shit".
If he never closed shop he was selling over 11 pairs of shoes a minute for 2.5 days straight. I assume he was actually doing bulk sales to distributors.
The article doesn't make it clear. Was Market Week a retail event or a business to business event?
I'm pretty sure this is the kind of event where purchasers make deals with manufacturers. You're right, it would be logistically impossible for that many shoes to be sold one at a time...
Millions of people work around stifling bureaucracies daily.
Anyone working for a large corporation probably has a dozen or more arrows in their quiver when it comes to working around stupid rules, inefficient procedures, or stupid/inefficient coworkers.
It's easy to break the rules if you just see them as rules, like kids do: they interpret rules literally.
If, instead, you have learned to see some sort of an authority or greater justification issued behind the rules, rules become bearly impossible to bend because you'd be not only mucking with the rules but challenging something much greater.
For an example, if you bump into a locked door of an abandoned old house, most people shy away because they assume the whole premises are off limits. While that is a safe assumption, a hacker mind would just consider the locked door as one particular blocked entry to the house and hop in through the basement window that was left slightly open. It might not be too relevant for him whether the premises themselves are, or are not, off limits: the hacker mind would realize that him looking around the house doesn't cause any tangential damage to anything, but at least he would satisfy his endless curiosity about what's inside.
Similarly this shoe guy realized it does no harm to anyone and nobody would actually care if he posed as a film crew even if they weren't filming anything. Well, it seems nobody did care!
He did break the rules, but these rules were irrational and he didn't hurt anyone in the process. Thats the ethical and moral dilemma that hustlers have to deal with every day.
This is an inspiring story, but when I hear about founders cheating, backstabbing and hurting others in the process, that is not inspiring... and there is a fine line between the two.
I am not propagating that anyone should be allowed to have a truck on the NYC road, but why is it restricted only for movie studios and utility companies? Why not look at other industries that might value from such a permit. Even the author seems to agree with that evaluation.
>I am not propagating that anyone should be allowed to have a truck on the NYC road,
>Why not look at other industries that might value from such a permit.
Ah, yes, you're not propagating that anyone can block my streets. Only the ones that stand to make money from it. Look, if you want to be on the streets of NYC, rent some fucking street-front property, don't ask the city to turn the roads into bonus street-front property because you're too fucking cheap to cover rent.
For utility work, its necessary. I'm not actually thrilled about closing streets for filming. I don't know how easy it should be to do, but I do know that it requires the access. Getting outdoor street shots in NYC isn't possible from inside a store, selling shoes is as possible whichever side of the sidewalk you're on.
Utility companies need to block traffic in order to service the public infrastructure. Film studios need to block traffic because traditionally it's been the only way to get street shots, especially when large film crews and big name actors are involved. Both are special cases that require special consideration.
What is the special needs use case for a shoe manufacturer?
Outright breaking the rules is a shortcut that will often be morally wrong and will also carry practical ramifications that you probably don't want to deal with. I.e. you'll be a jerk and get nailed for it.
It takes nothing but shallow bravado and sociopathy to "break the rules." It takes a lot of smarts to work with / around them, and will work out a lot better for you.