You Got It Bad
Tyler Cowen asks and answers some questions about Microsoft's dividends.#
6. Will Microsoft ever be a dynamic, growth-oriented company again? Probably not. Why pay a dividend when you have wonderful ways to invest the money? But if there is a way to make the place buzz again, cash starvation (relatively speaking, of course) is a good first step.
Russell Roberts points to a description of a cool new method of transporting hydrogen.#
Tony Pierce answers President Bush's questions to the National Urban League.#
Q. Does the Democrat party take African American voters for granted?
A. Everyone takes African-American voters for granted. But I would say the Republicans give up on the Black vote, wisely, while the Dems rely on them, unwisely.
Q. Is it a good thing for the African American community to be represented mainly by one political party?
A. It's a good thing if they're actually being represented, which they aren't by either party. The question is, is it a good thing that the rich are being represented mainly by one political party? What about the Pro-Lifers? Shouldn't everyone have a choice?
Shaun Small writes about a recent Social Security reform bill, The Cato Institute has another.#
Russell Roberts on the difficulty of a Senator getting elected President.#
Arnold Kling on what the average person can understand and learn themselves.#
When I was in St. Louis helping take care of my Dad after a fall a couple of weeks ago, I took a walk in Forest Park. I saw a woman doing strenuous sit-up exercises and I remarked that they looked difficult. She was just finishing, got up, and joined me for walking. She was eager to talk about her new commitment to fitness.
She described her exercise regimen, and I asked her about diet. She said that she now eats mostly steamed fish and fruits and vegetables, which sounds to me like a Dean Ornish approach rather than one of the more dubious fad diets.
She said that she had lost 12 pounds in three weeks, and she still had a long way to go, but her goal was to lose weight slowly and keep it off, not lose it quickly and gain it back. Again, this is consistent with what I have heard is the best medical advice.
What struck me most of all was that this well-informed approach for fighting obesity was being undertaken by a middle-aged African-American woman, unemployed (she was going to start a job as a medical courier the following week), married to a janitor. It seems to me that if someone of that demographic knows how to fight obesity on her own, then maybe going after Big Food with lawsuits is pretty misguided.
Chris Coyne on the economics of obesity:
Policy should be aimed at making the obese internalize the costs of their actions. This could be done through increased premiums or by deciding that Medicare and Medicaid won't pay for the costs of certain procedures due to obesity. Critics may raise issues of "fairness" and "equity" because part of obesity is genetic. However, there are many genetic traits that are not the subject of government intervention and are not covered by private insurance. For instance, government doesn't subsidize the purchase of glasses or contacts and many insurance programs don't include coverage for vision related procedures.
Peter Leeson points to that enemy of ours, the sun.#
I was remind of this petition.
This rival, which is none other than the sun, is waging war on us so mercilessly we suspect he is being stirred up against us by perfidious Albion (excellent diplomacy nowadays!), particularly because he has for that haughty island a respect that he does not show for us.
Henry Farrell writes about the "Netflix Fallacy."#
Netflix, for those of you who aren't familiar with it, is a subscription service where you pay a set amount each month to rent movies. You can have three DVDs out at any one time - when you are finished with one, you send it back, and receive a new DVD from your list of picks by return post. In theory, it's an ideal way to make sure that you have the movies you want, when you want, and an excellent deal if you rent more than 3-4 DVDs a month.
In practice, it's different - at least in my experience. Movies that we've rented sometimes sit there for two or three months before we watch them, or eventually, reluctantly, decide to send them back without seeing them. To my shame, this happens most often with the interesting, difficult films with sub-titles. I suspect that this is because we're accustomed to thinking of DVDs as stocks rather than flows. Because we have physical possession of the DVD, we're disinclined to give it back until we've actually watched it. Of course, this means that we face substantial costs - we may very easily end up paying more money to rent the damn movie than we would have to pay to buy it and keep it forever. Meanwhile, Netflix is laughing all the way to the bank. It's much smarter to think of the rental service as a flow - you're likely to be happier if you keep the movies coming along in a steady stream, even if you don't watch them (the latter may be useful information about your actual preferences, as opposed to the preferences that you would like to have). I suspect that virtually any reasonable decision rule along the lines of 'send the movie back if you haven't watched it within two weeks' is likely to produce better results than our current policy of watching the movies whenever we get around to it. Or, more typically, don't get around to it.
Peter Leeson is sick.#
Chris and I went to dinner last night and discovered a new and entertaining game that's fun for the whole family. We decided to see who could drive the average cost of their soft drink closest to zero. Coke, which both of us were drinking, cost $1.50 with free refills. Of course, you know what that means. . . marginal cost is zero. This makes it especially easy to drive down average cost since total cost is not rising at all with consumption.
Chris Coyne links Labor and Materials.#
The idea is simple: Take Iraqi families whose houses were destroyed. Rebuild their houses, filling them with new goods, all donated by viewers who respond to the message flashed at the end of the show. (Donations count as zakat, the one-fifth of yearly income all Muslims must give to charity.) The show is so popular that a host of scam artists now circulate Baghdad pretending to collect "donations" for the families on it, now national celebrities.
Staffed by a crew of jolly ex-Baathists - most of them worked for Saddam Hussein's Ministry of Information - "Labor and Materials" airs every Friday on Al Sharqiya ("The Eastern One"), Iraq's first privately owned satellite channel. The scrappy station is the newest venture of London-based Iraqi media tycoon Saad Bazzaz, who owns the Arabic- language daily Azzaman and is reputed to have political ambitions.
Tyler Cowen links about being buried while alive.#
In 1995 a $5,000 Italian casket equipped with call-for-help ability and survival kit went on sale. Akin to bleeping devices which alert relatives to an elderly family member's being in trouble, this casket is equipped with a beeper which will sound a similar emergency signal. The coffins are also fitted with a two-way microphone/speaker to enable communication between the occupant and someone outside, and a kit which includes a torch, a small oxygen tank, a sensor to detect a person's heartbeat, and even a heart stimulator.
KISS Action Figures Live Show#
Michael Williams quotes Michael Moore.#
Left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore says public opinion polls prove that the American people side with the left. ...
"They are up at six in the morning trying to figure out which -- you know -- minority group they are going to screw today -- the hate that they eat for breakfast," Moore said. "Our side, we never see six in the morning, unless we have been up all night," he added.
That's what I did this morning. How did he figure it out?
Paul Graham writes about "Great Hackers."#
I think, though, that all other things being equal, a company that can attract great hackers will have a huge advantage. There are people who would disagree with this. When we were making the rounds of venture capital firms in the 1990s, several told us that software companies didn't win by writing great software, but through brand, and dominating channels, and doing the right deals.
They really seemed to believe this, and I think I know why. I think what a lot of VCs are looking for, at least unconsciously, is the next Microsoft. And of course if Microsoft is your model, you shouldn't be looking for companies that hope to win by writing great software. But VCs are mistaken to look for the next Microsoft, because no startup can be the next Microsoft unless some other company is prepared to bend over at just the right moment and be the next IBM.
It's a mistake to use Microsoft as a model, because their whole culture derives from that one lucky break. Microsoft is a bad data point. If you throw them out, you find that good products do tend to win in the market. What VCs should be looking for is the next Apple, or the next Google.
I think Bill Gates knows this. What worries him about Google is not the power of their brand, but the fact that they have better hackers. [7]