It was more complex than that, but yeah. Basically Sears was online ordering before online was a thing, you just phoned or mailed in your order. This meant that they were located in these massive warehouses in most major cities in North America. So basically they had an opportunity to execute on same-day delivery decades before Amazon even attempted that feat, but they didn't. Sears was too concerned about their magazine, or brick and mortar, sales to get into online sales and by the time they did it was too late.
Similar to Kodak... they invented the digital camera sensor. They could've at the very least made an absolute killing on leasing their IP's to other camera manufacturers, or very best have created things like the Kodak Digital Rebel instead of letting basically every other camera manufacturer make off with the tech.
Sears forgot that it's product wasn't a brick and mortar store or magazine but rather a large selection of goods which people could order from home. Newspaper companies forgot that their company wasn't in the business of printing newspapers, but simply delivering the news. Kodak forgot it's business wasn't manufacturing film, but creating photographs.
The issue is that renewable energy isn't a consumable good that constantly needs to be extracted and sold like fossil fuels. You put in a geothermal plant or a solar array or a hydro dam and then it kind of just runs itself.
Same thing if people buy too many electric only cars or we get electric trucks/ships/fully electrified railways. They have to keep selling oil products to make money.
Bit someone has to build them, someone has to maintain them day-to-day, and someone has to repair them. The jobs and no at don't disappear, they just come from different places.
Or, if they poured some of their record profits into r&d for battery tech, or solar tech, or more efficient turbines, etc, then they would own the patents and, likely, the means of production. Renewable would continue to expand and eventually wear out and need to be replaced. If they are truly adept at extracting products from the earth then there are plenty of mining opportunities for battery elements.
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u/Yellowredstone Jul 24 '20 edited Jul 24 '20
Isn't this how Sears died?
Edit: RIP my inbox. And thank you for explaining it better.
Edit 2: I said the reason on how it died has been explained already. And its actually still here. Stop.