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 [...]
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 mutually [...]
Makes sense to me:
Knowledge stocks -> Knowledge Flows
Knowledge transfer -> Knowledge Creation
Explicit Knowledge -> Tacit Knowledge
Transactions -> Relationships
Zero Sum Mindset -> Positive Sum Mindset
Push Programs -> Pull Programs
Scalable Efficiency -> Scalable Peer Learning
Stable Environments -> Dynamic Environments
I’ve not read the book. Three things I might wonder about
Won’t economic actors will strive to own or control one [...]
In this morning’s batch of bargain shopping news feeds appears this already exhausted offer. For nine dollars Target was selling a gadget from GE that looks like a light switch; you toggle it’s toggle and it then sends a radio signal to a module across the room to turn on a lamp. Since I live in [...]
Rumor is that Google will offer for sale to the general public a phone based on the Android platform, real soon now. Here is what I hope they do. I hope they announce a slew of phones, not just one. That they offer a shop where you can pick any of N Android phones. In [...]
Monday, December 28, 2009
This email I just got informs me that I’m queued up to get twelve cents cashback. I think this maybe a sign that my power shopping habits are a bit out of hand. The vendor, the intermediary, and I will bear far more than twelve cents each to see this through.
Two of my rules [...]
Sunday, December 27, 2009
I was skimming this long long post about the demographics and institutional affiliations of the community of climate skeptics, and deep in the body is this fascinating bit.
UPDATE (December 19, 2009): Peter Staats, in the comments, suggested that belief in anthropogenic global warming is entrenched among scientists and will disappear as the older generation dies [...]
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
There must be a term of art for the scenario where a corporate sponsor uses a charitable activity in such a noxious manner that the charity becomes entirely a vile facade for marketing. It can obviously be quite quantitative. If the firm spends N units of cash on marketing their affiliation with the charity [...]
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Two fun examples of business models that reside adjacent to the waste stream.
First a fun posting about getting free food for your pigs by talking to the guy at the cold storage warehouse who has to puzzle out how to dispose of damaged good. (HT – Rebecca). He’s obviously having fun playing the game, [...]
Fresh Links…