Imagine you're an immensely powerful corporation. You have the best of the best of the best within your workforce. Talent beyond compare, and all you have to do to win is make common-sense decisions. You just do business as usual. You pay people what they're worth. You promote the most talented. You effectively sit back and allow nature to take its course, with the best and the brightest doing things that consistently take your company to the next level.
I'm not saying the work isn't hard and there aren't bumps in the road, but you're primed to overcome them more easily than most. All you have to do is not be an idiot.
Yet, so many corporations do idiotic things that leave you scratching your head and wondering how an entire room full of people, including the rooms on the floors below them, manage to make some of the dumbest decisions imaginable, costing themselves millions, if not billions of dollars, and ruining their company's relationship with their customers in the process.
Even if you haven't been avidly reading RedState, you've seen it yourself. Budweiser, Disney, Dicks' Sporting Goods, and Gillette have made moves that make someone with no business degree and no prior experience of running a business say, "Man, I wouldn't have done anything that stupid."
It's so mind-boggling that it should qualify as a "wonder of the world."
I was reading Bog Hoge's article about Buc-ee's CEO Arch "Beaver" Aplin III, openly discussing why he doesn't do business in blue states, where he said:
We have a lot of opportunities. We're growing. We're building in a lot of places. But when you find a conservative, business-friendly state with a phenomenal workforce, it makes a difference.
And I'm starting to realize life's too short to try to build in places that people don't appreciate what you're bringing.
READ: 'Life's Too Short': Buc-ee's CEO Thumbs His Nose at Liberal States, Will Build Where He's Wanted
Founder of Buc-ee’s BREAKS HIS SILENCE on how he chooses which state to build in: pic.twitter.com/IxWD7I3Gfe
— Chad Prather (@WatchChad) August 19, 2026
Now, as an avid Buc-ee's enjoyer (I'm convinced my constant presence at the beef jerky counter keeps the entire company in the black), I can tell you that this man knows business. His stores aren't just fun stops where clean bathrooms, good food, and a myriad of gas pumps await. This place is something special. There's nothing like it in the rest of America, and anyone who says otherwise is wrong. My 3-year-old thinks going to "Buc-ee's House" is a grand adventure in and of itself.
This is a company that serves its customers first.
And it really highlights for me how many companies don't. All the corporations I named above are attempting to serve something else. If the customers complain, they're either ignored or accused of some sort of social sin for resisting this "change." The companies cease hiring on merit and begin hiring to appease a section of the socio-politically obsessed populace that does not contribute, at all, to their bottom line.
This is just bad business, and in the shadow of a man like Aplin, these CEOs look really, really stupid. Virtue signaling is costly, and sometimes it's necessary to ride a social wave. I get that, but what they're doing isn't riding a wave so much as submitting to a business version of entropy and trying to sell it as "noble." Then they lose millions, if not billions, are forced to shut down locations, hundreds lose their jobs, and the economy, local and national, is worse off than before.
It's all for naught, because these social trends always pass. So what was it all for?
What Aplin is saying isn't even controversial. He's not endorsing conservatism as an ideology; he's just saying it's good for business, and so he goes where the conservatives are in charge because he wants to make money, employ more people, build more locations, and create a booming business.
Money-making 101.
Aplin sort of made me hate these other corporations even more. He could be a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat for all I know, but he doesn't let it get in his way. He's a net positive on the American economy; he's given thousands of people a livable income, and he provides an incredible experience.
Meanwhile, the Mouse can't even get people through the doors to see a movie of theirs without massive assistance from a beloved superhero owned by another company.
Aplin really highlighted that America is plagued by bad businessmen and women who have no business running a corporation. They shouldn't even be placed in charge of lemonade stands.
