Lynne Kiesling
I controlled myself this year and decided to summarize all of my Tour thoughts in one post, as opposed to last year. It’s been difficult, because I’ve enjoyed this year’s Tour more than any other in recent memory. That’s partly due to the Floyd Landis yellow win and Robbie McEwen green win, but it’s also due to the wide-open and suspense-filled nature of it this year.
Lynne Kiesling
Forbes has an interesting article today on the increasing use of viewer video in news stories.
The concept is a potentially revolutionary one for TV newsrooms and their Web sites, which rely on their own camera crews and news services such as Reuters and the Associated Press for the vast majority of their video footage. The plans for greater use of user-generated content coincide with recent initiatives at CNN, Reuters, AP and other news organizations to provide Web surfers with more online video footage.
“It’s a hot topic,” says David Payne, senior vice president and general manager of CNN.com. “I think we all see it as an opportunity to increase our news category by effectively enlisting an army of millions.”
Not a new concept, particularly with respect to weather news (it’s always been fascinating to watch home tornado videos on WGN!), but increasingly easy for major media outlets to harness due to the ease and low cost of transmission over the Internet. It’s also interesting to see the media outlets embracing some aspects of the changing business model in news.
Lynne Kiesling
While I was otherwise engaged this week, Pete Boettke was on a roll over at Austrian Economists. First was this post about economic discourse, building off of earlier posts by Tyler Cowen and Greg Mankiw, both addressing various aspects of how economists develop and communicate their ideas. Pete picks up on the apparent time inconsistency of Paul Krugman’s claims and how he communicates them. Pete worries about an increase in incoherence of economic arguments as the number and variety of communication outlets proliferate; he worries so much that it turns his natural optimism to pessimism. I’m not that inclined to become a pessimist, myself. Won’t good ideas continue to drive out bad, and good argumentation drive out bad? Sure, it’s not instantaneous, and sometimes policymakers are too swayed by economic demagoguery. But the proliferation of outlets brings out good discourse as well as bad, and increases the transparency and ability to observe and monitor quality. That’s a healthy dynamic.
Pete’s post from today about transition analysis looks very promising. I think it will help me construct a framework for analyzing institutional change in electric power, something that I’ll be spending quite a bit of time on in the next year.
Lynne Kiesling
Earlier this week Apple announced its quarterly profits for Q2; profits increased by 48 percent. Unexpectedly continued strong iPod sales combined with a 61 percent increase in sales of laptop computers. What the WaPo article doesn’t say, but I saw in other places, is that the power and operating system flexibility of the Intel dual core chip laptops fueled that 61 percent increase.
Sadly for Intel, though, their profits fell 57 percent relative to the same quarter last year. One reason for that is the competition with AMD in the chip market that I mentioned a few weeks ago. The Red Herring article linked above focuses on the importance of sales and marketing strategies, not price competition, as the way they can find success. It’s not just the technical capability of your chip, it’s how you sell it. I think that’s important. Recall that I noticed the AMD ads in the airport, but have taken no notice of any Intel marketing that might be out there (even if I’m not the target market).
This is the perennial gale of creative destruction in action, and it’s fascinating to watch. Well, it’s fascinating to me!
Lynne Kiesling
The radio silence from yours truly has been due to the concatenation (one of my favorite words) of two events: a project deadline today and my participation as a faculty member in the Institute for Humane Studies seminar Freedom, Tolerance, and Civil Society (note the serial comma, so there, Tom!). I gave three lectures on basic concepts in economics that apply to living together in civil society: the dynamics of how markets work and of prohibition, unintended consequences, and how property rights and ownership induce personal responsibility and self-regulation.
As with most IHS seminars, I got better than I gave; I learned more from the students and my colleagues than I taught. This seminar in particular focused on civil liberties, so it engaged my brain on topics I had not examined critically in quite some time: the drug war, prostitution, gambling, assisted suicide, smoking bans, gun ownership, school choice, and occupational licensing.
The arguments for individual liberty and personal autonomy in these areas is both practical and moral, and I believe we discussed them all (which is why I’m so bloody tired at the end of the week!). The practice of state paternalism directly contravenes liberty and autonomy, and induces the individual capability for self-regulation to atrophy. It also deteriorates community ties.
But this is not my area of expertise, so I will defer to other more knowledgeable and eloquent parties on these topics, such as Radley Balko. For me, it was a great learning experience.
Lynne Kiesling
The radio silence from yours truly has been due to the concatenation (one of my favorite words) of two events: a project deadline today and my participation as a faculty member in the Institute for Humane Studies seminar Freedom, Tolerance, and Civil Society (note the serial comma, so there, Tom!). I gave three lectures on basic concepts in economics that apply to living together in civil society: the dynamics of how markets work and of prohibition, unintended consequences, and how property rights and ownership induce personal responsibility and self-regulation.
As with most IHS seminars, I got better than I gave; I learned more from the students and my colleagues than I taught. This seminar in particular focused on civil liberties, so it engaged my brain on topics I had not examined critically in quite some time: the drug war, prostitution, gambling, assisted suicide, smoking bans, gun ownership, school choice, and occupational licensing.
The arguments for individual liberty and personal autonomy in these areas is both practical and moral, and I believe we discussed them all (which is why I’m so bloody tired at the end of the week!). The practice of state paternalism directly contravenes liberty and autonomy, and induces the individual capability for self-regulation to atrophy. It also deteriorates community ties.
But this is not my area of expertise, so I will defer to other more knowledgeable and eloquent parties on these topics, such as Radley Balko. For me, it was a great learning experience.
Lynne Kiesling
The Italilan football league scandal has brought the relegation of the four culprit teams, including Juventus, the best team in the Italian Serie A. If I understand the stipulations of the contracts, this relegation means that players are not obligated to remain with the relegated teams. It is better for their careers for them to play in the top leagues, so relegation makes these teams much less attractive.
Thus there’s the perception that other European teams will swoop in and buy the services of the top players on these teams. 13 of Italy’s national team players and 5 other World Cup players are on the relegated teams; these 18 players are expected to attract attention from many other teams in England, Spain, and other European countries.
But the new Juventus president is trying to signal to the labor market that they do not expect to have to transfer the rights to these players at fire-sale prices:
Juventus’ new president Giovanni Cobolli Gilli has vowed to try to keep as many of their star names as possible at the club, and insists none will leave at cut-down prices.
“I hope that some of our important players will stay,” he said.
“Obviously lots of them will find it hard to stay with us in Serie B with 30 points deducted, but the clubs that are interested will have to pay full rate.
“Should Real Madrid want our players, they will have to pay. That also applies to other teams who may be interested in our players, because we have the duty to defend the club’s heritage.”
Nice sentiment. But I think what will determine the ultimate trading price is the demand-side bidding activity, not any sentimentality about the club’s heritage.
Lynne Kiesling
OK, this is the kind of creative thinking that makes life beautiful. This CNET News article discusses a new service, Qunu, that aims to unleash distributed tech geek knowledge on tech support problems.
In my experience, the best technical support on any product will come from somebody who actually uses and likes the product, not a paid support rep following a script. That’s why people use open message boards. Message boards have always amazed me, though because so many people are willing to chip in and help people they don’t know. But they work, and whatever the topic you need help with, there’s almost certainly a group of people online willing to lend their earnest advice.
If you can’t wait for a response in a message board, you can try a new service, Qunu, which is trying to replicate the message board community spirit, but in real time. Qunu connects you via instant message to an expert on the topic you need help with.
Qunu experts register themselves and tell the system what they know about. People who need help select a topic, and the system then connects the two people via IM.
How absolutely, utterly, totally cool is that? Qunu has an embedded reputation mechanism (which the article doesn’t describe), and is in limited use right now because it does not use the more widely-available IM platforms. But the developers are working on that.
It’s only been up for 39 days, and already 1,500 experts are registered. This will be fun to watch.
Thanks to Slashdot for the link.
Lynne Kiesling
Let me just state for the record that Alex’s telling his wife that he’ll appreciate the peace and quiet of an empty house is not a function of gender (or, at least not solely). I have been know to make similarly tactless (to use Tim Worstall’s word) remarks to the KP Spouse, who is an incredibly patient soul. And perhaps economists are a bit lacking in tact …
Lynne Kiesling
One of the casualties of my ISP’s DNS server failure yesterday: Alex Tabarrok beat me to linking to his comments on The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
In any case, O’Rourke’s review is a good read.
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