Archive for the “Learning” category
Ross • 15th Aug 2010 • Learning, Thinking • commodities, eating, fish, food, lobster
Even in the harsh penal environment of early America, some colonies had laws against feeding lobsters to inmates more than once a week because it was thought to be cruel and unusual, like making people eat rats.
From Gourmet magazine. It’s notable that gin and oysters were also once proletarian fare. Will Turkey Twizzlers and Ginster’s pies be tomorrow’s delicacies? Less flippantly, there probably is hope for oats, alfalfa and various grains we once fed animals but are no eating ourselves.
Ross • 26th Jul 2010 • Learning • banking, business, economics, finance
…private sector balance sheets will always fail at internalizing systemic risk. The official sector will always have to step in to help.
This is one of the conclusions of a New York Fed paper (PDF) on the shadow banking system, which provides a good overview and definition of the sector.
Ross • 20th Jul 2010 • Learning • ethics, god, religion
Comte’s thinking on religion had as its starting point a characteristically blunt observation that, in the modern world, thanks to the discoveries of science, it would no longer be possible for anyone intelligent or robust to believe in God. Faith would henceforth be limited to the uneducated, the fanatical, women, children and those in the final months of incurable diseases. At the same time Comte recognised, as many of his more rational contemporaries did not, that a secular society devoted solely to financial accumulation and romantic love and devoid of any sources of consolation, transcendent awe or solidarity would be prey to untenable social and emotional ills.
This piece from the New Statesman is worth reading in full.
Ross • 15th Jul 2010 • Learning, Thinking • bonds, business, crime, finance, green, justice, offender, policy, prison, social
During the Peterborough Prison pilot, experienced social sector organisations, such as St Giles Trust, will provide intensive support to 3,000 short-term prisoners over a six year period, both inside prison and after release, to help them resettle into the community. If this initiative reduces re-offending by 7.5%, or more, investors will receive from Government a share of the long term savings. If the SiB delivers a drop in re-offending beyond the threshold, investors will receive an increasing return the greater the success at achieving the social outcome, up to a maximum of 13%.
A colleague told me about these bonds (pdf) this afternoon. They are designed by Social Finance. Bonds with coupons linked to policy outcomes appear to be experiencing a surge in interest at the moment – note also the World Bank’s 2009 Green Bonds and US’s Qualified Green Building and Sustainable Design Project Bonds.
I like the idea of green financial products, but why stop at bonds? Going further in this direction could get us all the way to a Hansonian Policy Analysis Market.
Ross • 20th May 2010 • Learning, Thinking • capitalism, economics, libertarianism, liberty, philosophy
From Marginal Revolution I learn of the Unincorporated Man, a sci-fi book in which people are born with rights to only 75% of their incomes. The rest is shared between their parents and Government. Further ‘shares’ can be sold to pay for things such as degree courses, or, well, anything I guess. The Government’s 5% share in you at birth represents the only form of ‘taxation’ under this model.
I think this libertarian model is neat, and it makes the share of your income that Governments presume to ’own’ a lot more transparent. Ditto your duty to your parents. However, it does creates an incentive to dupe your investors. For example you could sell stock in yourself to fund a college degree and an MBA, then develop a drinking problem and use the dip in share-price to buy-back your stock. Perhaps the Incorporated Man would need to be audited by doctors?
Apparently, this firm is already pioneering this idea, in Latin America.
Ross • 18th May 2010 • Learning • berkshire, finance, investment, money, munger, stocks
Charlie Munger advises small investors:
Don’t go after large areas. Don’t try to figure out if Merck‘s pipeline is better than Pfizer’s. It’s too hard. Go to where there are market inefficiencies. You need an edge. To succeed, you need to go where the competition is low.
More here.
Ross • 1st May 2010 • Learning • business, consulting, dubai, work
Consulting can add huge value to organisations. Note the use of ‘can’: my claim is deliberately conditional. When done badly, consulting can knock value off firms. That is the point made well by this piece from The Tech. Although you must always be sceptical about the tone of articles such as this, especially when the paint a picture of personal moral superiority, it does contain some passages that will ring true from most consultants, like this:
This leads to what I like to call, “Find me a rock” problems. The classic “find me a rock” story is as follows: A manager goes to his engineer one day and asks for a rock. “A rock?” asks the engineer. “Yes, a rock. That isn’t going to be a problem, is it?” replies the manager. The engineer laughs and tells the manager he’ll go pick one up during his lunch break and it will be no problem. After lunch, the manager visits the engineer again and the engineer shows him the rock. The manager looks at it for a moment before telling the engineer, “No, that one won’t work at all. I need a rock.”
“Find me a rock” problems sound dead simple, but in actuality have requirements that are poorly stated or unknown. You never know what you’re looking for; you only know that you’ll know it when you see it.
If only badly specified requests were limited to consulting.
Ross • 8th Apr 2010 • Learning • business, economics, industry, piracy
Piracy has an established business model, a developing management lexicon, a developing literature, and its own public relations. A rum comment on the FT’s story asks:
How long before they’re talking about “a new parrot-digm” or “a raft of new initiatives” to “take piracy into the twenty-first century” ?
Ross • 18th Mar 2010 • Learning, Thinking • business, charter cities, ecological, economics, green, work
I have just come across Harvard Business Review‘s summary of ideas to watch in 2010. It’s great. Best bits:
- A Charter Cities plug
- It turns out that workers value progress in their workplaces. They like to hit project milestones and get stuff done. Managers don’t realise this.
- Short discussion of green bond financing for ecological building retro-fits.
There is also an ethically dubious encouragement to ‘hack work’. While I think this is valid in some cases, I don’t think it is a model that one should promote. In a good organisation, it shouldn’t be necessary, and the ideas that need to be promoted are those that fix the organisation, not learn to work around it more cunningly.
Ross • 7th Dec 2009 • Learning, Living, Thinking • bargaining, negotiation, taxi, travel
Via Tim Harford’s Twitter feed, I came across this interesting piece from Chris Blattman on national variation in bargaining strategies, a.k.a. how to negotiate your taxi fees. A good example of a thread where the comments add as much value as the post.
My top overseas taxi tip: When you arrive at an airport, go by foot from the Arrivals concourse to the Departures concourse. Collect a taxi there to save yourself roughly 50% of the price of a waiting taxi. (Plus you know they are a real taxi, you just saw their last Westerner fare arrive unmolested.)
