Thursday, August 12, 2010
My father was wrong. I learned at my father’s knee that it is wise to self insure for the little things and buy insurance for the big things. Thus it is clever and thrifty to buy insurance policies with large deductibles. It is a little odd to notice that poor people should buy more comprehensive, and [...]
Plucked from this poignant post about externalities (which reminds me of my realization that limited liability corporations evolved from pirates) is this bit from a Rolling Stone article. It’s a nice clean example of cost benefit analysis in the “real world.” BP has also cut corners at the expense of its own workers. In 2005, 15 [...]
The ongoing puzzle, debate even, about the choice points between a closed and open system appears to have picked up a new aspect. At least I had not noted this one before. What differentiates a closed model from an open one is the extent that the business hordes the options created by it’s product offerings. [...]
In the best scenario all Facebook is doing with their new service that allows 3rd party sites access to your Facebook identity along with a bit of what they know about your is a slightly more transparent version of what, say, Google’s Doubleclick can does. They are selling a service to their partners that identifies [...]
The Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein of ProPublica’s recently released work on the economic train wreck’s roots is marvelous. Listen to it on This American Life! A quick overview of the story: First recall that a key link in the supply chain of the subprime mortgage industry was the step where the risky mortgages where bundled [...]
I wonder why Apple included the word “originally” in “Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript”? If you are building a platform of unhackable devices then you need to control the gateways to hacking; i.e. the tool chain and the application distribution channel. So the clause above’s purpose is to due [...]
I should come up with a snappy name for this prediction: Doorbells will be cell phones. What I mean by this is that lots of the very very simplest signalling devices, push buttons, switches, etc. etc. are going to work via the cell phone network. Devices which do not need any of the obvious features of [...]
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
I’m still chewing on the idea of guard labor, so a pile of random thoughts I’ve been having. Businesses adapt the ratio between guard labor v.s. productive labor. That ratio varies across firms within industries, from one industry to another, and inside of firms from on department to another. Presumably there is a great deal [...]
I’m reading, savoring actually, a fascinating essay on “guard labor” i.e. people paid to enforce the rules upon others. The TSA, those guys at the front desk of office buildings that check ID cards, the mall cops, the supervisors who’s only role is to be sure everybody keeps their nose to the grind stone, etc. etc. [...]
I’m writing this because Microsoft recently granted a limited license for some awesome intellectual property they acquired two years ago. I want to temper the press accounts that are tending suggest they granted a generous license. Almost immediately upon the wide spread adoption of patents industries fell into gridlock. In a classic game of [...]
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