The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

FANCY OFFICE BUILDINGS ARE EVIDENCE OF WASTE
The following material should put into an entirely new perspective the 
ornate corporate headquarters in which many firms seem to “invest.” 
Prospective customers should take these buildings not as evidence of the 
firm’s success, but rather as a symptom of waste for which they must pay.
The same can easily be said of businesses that locate their offices in, for 
example, New York City for the “prestige” of a New York address. This 
kind of address tells the customer that he or she is paying not for value but 
rather for Manhattan-scale rents, taxes, and the higher salaries necessary 

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132  •  The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work
to retain employees in an expensive city. The same applies, of course, to 
Los Angeles, Chicago, and other major urban centers.
Cities evolved as (1) places of safety that were defensible with walls, and 
later with elaborate fortresses, and (2) centers of industry and commerce. 
Zeppelin raids on England, and long-range artillery attacks on Paris, 
warned during World War I that cities were no longer places of defense and 
refuge. World War II then proved that a city was the most dangerous place 
for a British, and later a German or Japanese, civilian to live, and also the 
worst place for any kind of business to operate. September 11, 2001, then 
proved that a big skyscraper at a prestigious address can be a target even 
during peacetime, although a previous bomb attack on the World Trade 
Center should have given the tenants at least some hint that they were 
on somebody’s list. Robert A. Heinlein’s On the Slopes of Vesuvius (1981, 
originally published shortly after World War II) meanwhile discusses the 
means by which terrorists might deliver a nuclear weapon, and ends with 
a mushroom cloud over New York City.
Modern technology makes it easy to run the financial services for which 
large cities are known from so-called “flyover country,” or at least from sub-
urban areas in states with low taxes and low costs of living. Therefore, one can 
question the judgment of a firm that squanders money for a pricey location. 
Ford says explicitly that his company “would prefer to be advertised by our 
product than by where we make our product.” To this we can add that the 
world’s first “monuments of success,” Egypt’s pyramids, were in fact tombs.
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Keeping that principle in mind we can attack waste with a definite objective. 
We will not put into our establishment anything that is useless. We will not 
put up elaborate buildings as monuments to our success. The interest on the 
investment and the cost of their upkeep only serve to add uselessly to the cost 
of what is produced—so these monuments of success are apt to end as tombs. 
A great administration building may be necessary. In me it arouses a suspi-
cion that perhaps there is too much administration. We have never found a 
need for elaborate administration and would prefer to be advertised by our 
product than by where we make our product.

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How Cheaply Can Things Be Made?  •  133