... You may not have noticed, but last week was promoted as something called “Imports Work Week.”
The celebrate the importance of imports in the U.S., a group of
business associations led by the National Retail Federation (NRF) has
released a study showing the many ways that imports benefit American
consumers and businesses alike.
Cheaper prices are the most obvious benefit. “In the past decade, the
price of television sets sold in the United States has dropped 87
percent. Computers have gone down 75 percent, toys 43 percent and dishes
and flatware by a third,” the NRF’s Jon Gold explains in a blog post. “Why? The answer is easy – imports."
But the benefits don’t stop there, according to the study, which runs
down how imports also help farmers, mom-and-pop businesses,
working-class Americans, and even U.S. manufacturers. Here are a few of
the groups that should love what imports do for them, per the report:
• Imports improve American families’ standard of living.
They help families make ends meet by ensuring a wide selection of
budget-friendly goods, like electronics we use to communicate and many
clothes and shoes we wear, and improve the year-round supply of such
staples as fresh fruits and vegetables.
• Imports support more than 16 million American jobs. A
large number of these import-related jobs are union jobs, held by
minorities and women, and are located across the United States.
• More than half the firms involved in direct importing are small businesses, employing fewer than 50 workers.
• American manufacturers and farmers rely on imports
including raw materials and intermediate goods to lower their production
costs and stay competitive in domestic and international markets.
Factories and farms purchase more than 60 percent of U.S. imports. ...
Protectionism is one of
the most persistent misunderstandings I encounter when talking about economics.
What person wants to make everything the use ... car, computer, house, clothes,
etc. ... or become an expert on any number of topics to live self-sufficiently
... medicine, climate, chemistry, biology, etc. At the micro-level of our
personal lives, we intuitively understand that specializing in our work and
then engaging in exchange with neighbors who specialize in their work benefits
everyone involved. We seem to get that benefits multiply if we expand exchange
beyond our neighborhood, to our city, state, region, and country. But somehow
when expand the idea beyond national boarders, this understanding flies out the
window.
Some will say their
concern is international trade is unfair because workers in other countries get
paid lower wages. But they are also far less productive. Given a relatively
free market, as workers’ productivity increases, so does their wages. And while
there are certainly some exploitive circumstances around the world,
multinational corporations and their satellites typically offer some of the
highest wages and have the most sought after jobs. There are challenges when societies
of different degrees of development interact but I don't perceive that this is
really the issue behind much protectionist thinking. Rather it is the abstract
belief that our country will be better off our country made everything we consume, a standard we do not apply to our state, city, neighborhood, or family. And this is particularly problematic for the many who say they want justice for the poor but want to exclude the foriegn poor from networks of growing productivity and exchange.
... The app itself is the work of one Los Angeles-based 26-year-old
freelance programmer, Ivan Pardo, who has devoted the last 16 months to
Buycott. “It’s been completely bootstrapped up to this point,” he said.
Martinez and another friend have pitched in to promote the app.
Pardo’s handiwork is available for download on iPhone or Android, making its debut in iTunes and GoogleGOOG +2.28%
Play in early May. You can scan the barcode on any product and the free
app will trace its ownership all the way to its top corporate parent
company, including conglomerates like Koch Industries.
Once you’ve scanned an item, Buycott will show you its corporate
family tree on your phone screen. Scan a box of Splenda sweetener, for
instance, and you’ll see its parent, McNeil Nutritionals, is a
subsidiary of Johnson & JohnsonJNJ +0.56%.
Even more impressively, you can join user-created campaigns to
boycott business practices that violate your principles rather than
single companies. One of these campaigns, Demand GMO Labeling,
will scan your box of cereal and tell you if it was made by one of the
36 corporations that donated more than $150,000 to oppose the mandatory
labeling of genetically modified food. ...
“How can we create a congregation where work and discipleship are
truly integrated?” This is a question I am hearing more often, even
though much has been written about a theology of work in recent years.
Pastors and church leaders are looking for a programmatic strategy. I don’t think there is one. ...
This is a piece I wrote for the High Calling. They posted it yesterday. What do you think? What ideas do you have?
Anyone who is familiar with Hernando DeSoto's The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, knows that the poor control trillions of dollars of capital in the form real estate but can't leverage it due to inadequate property rights. As you read this article keep in mind that 5 billion people are expected to gain access to the internet in less than a decade.
Building data bases of land ownership, Wikipedia-style, would be a cheap and easy way for poor, rural communities to compile a record of property rights and land use, reducing corruption and helping to lessen illegal land grabs.
Imagine whipping out your smartphone, walking the boundaries of your
property, and pressing “Send” to upload a map of your land to a common
databank. You also could attach a photo of a legal contract proving your
tenancy or ownership.
The pressure to record land tenure is mounting worldwide. ...
It seems like this could have a tremendous impact on economic development with the poor.
Harvard Business School's "Working Knowledge" has a post, Why Isn’t ‘Servant Leadership’ More Prevalent?, which is a bit strange because the article never addresses the question. However, I did think this was interesting:
Now it appears that a group of organizational psychologists, led by
Adam Grant, are attempting to measure the impact of servant leadership
on leaders, not just those being led. Grant describes research in his
recent book, Give and Take, that suggests that servant leaders
are not only more highly regarded than others by their employees and not
only feel better about themselves at the end of the day but are more productive as well.
His thesis is that servant leaders are the beneficiaries of important
contacts, information, and insights that make them more effective and
productive in what they do even though they spend a great deal of their
time sharing what they learn and helping others through such things as
career counseling, suggesting contacts, and recommending new ways of
doing things.
Further, servant leaders don't waste much time deciding to whom to
give and in what order. They give to everyone in their organizations.
Grant concludes that giving can be exhausting but also
self-replenishing. So in his seemingly tireless efforts to give,
described in the book, Grant makes it a practice to give to everyone
until he detects a habitual "taker" that can be eliminated from his
"gift list."
That assertion
might appear strange in light of the billions of dollars firms spend
lobbying Congress in America, but that is exactly the point. Most
lobbying seeks to tilt the playing field in one direction or another,
not to level it. Most lobbying is pro-business, in the sense that it
promotes the interests of existing businesses, not pro-market in the
sense of fostering truly free and open competition. Open competition
forces established firms to prove their competence again and again;
strong successful market players therefore often use their muscle to
restrict such competition, and to strengthen their positions. As a
result, serious tensions emerge between a pro-market agenda and a
pro-business one, though American capitalism has always managed this
tension far better than most.
This also explains why many people bristle at the term "free market." They incorrectly perceive that "free market" means unfettered businesses having the freedom to stack things in their favor (and indeed some business lobbyists try to twist free market constructs to justify efforts to curb challenges from competition contributing to the confusion.) They advocate for "fair trade" but free trade is fair trade. They should be championing a free market in opposition to many pro-business agendas.
There are few better places in the world where Tim Keller could write a
book about career and calling. "New York City is a place where people
live in order to work," says the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church
in Manhattan and author most recently of Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work
(Dutton). "They basically live more in their work than in their
neighborhoods. That . . . means that if you start talking about work,
you get right at their hearts."
In a recent sit-down conversation with This Is Our City executive
producer Andy Crouch, Keller explained why he wanted to write a more
comprehensive book about faith and work, how he learned to answer
congregants' questions about their work, and what Redeemer has done to
equip laypeople to live into their vocations outside the church.
Andy: What's been missing from faith-and-work books that Every Good Endeavor was designed to address?
Tim: When I read faith-and-work books, they tended to pass by each
other. I had the sense that they were drawing on different streams of
thought, maybe different biblical or historical themes. I tend to be a
complexifier. I like to hold the different biblical themes in tension. I
got the sense that most books on faith and work tended to isolate a
certain idea. This book is trying to bring the different streams
together.
What streams of thoughts have been most missing when we talk about faith and work?
It depends on who you're talking about. It seems to me the evangelical
tradition tends to talk a lot about how faith essentially spiritually
helps you deal with the troubles and the stresses of work. You need help
to face challenges.
Mainline churches tend to put more emphasis on social justice and
basically did a critique of capitalism early on, so whenever the
mainline churches or ecumenical movement did faith-and-work stuff, it
was usually critiquing the market, not "how's your heart?"
The Lutheran stream emphasizes that all work is God's work. Worldview
doesn't matter. You make a good pair of shoes, then you're doing God's
work, because work is God's way of caring for creation.
The Calvinist stream was more like yes, it's not just you are caring
for creation through work, but you are shaping it. and therefore your
beliefs have an impact.
When you put those four streams together, I think they're very
comprehensive. If you isolate them from each other, they can create
idiosyncrasies at best and imbalances at worst. ...
... Myths abound about the young entrepreneurs who dreamed up crazy ideas
while in their dorm room, raised millions of dollars in venture
capital, and started billion-dollar businesses. But these are just the
outliers. The typical entrepreneur is more like Albert -- a middle-aged
professional who learns about a market need and starts a company with
his own savings.
Research that my team completed in 2009 determined that the
average age of a successful entrepreneur in high-growth industries such
as computers, health care, and aerospace is 40. Twice as many successful
entrepreneurs are over 50 as under 25; and twice as many, over 60 as
under 20. The vast majority -- 75 percent -- have more than six years of
industry experience and half have more than 10 years when they create
their startup. Nearly 70 percent start their companies to capitalize on
business ideas that they have -- which they see as a way to build
wealth. ...
... These are all struggles about your vocation. That word has become a synonym for “job,” so that colleges debate the extent to which higher education should be primarily vocational training or whether it should have higher goals, such as cultivating the intellect. But vocation is simply the Latinate word for “calling.” It is one of those theological words—like inspiration, revelation, mission, and vision—that
has been taken over by the corporate world and drained of its meaning.
The idea is that what you do for a living can be a calling. From God.
That He has made you in a certain way and given you certain talents,
opportunities, and inclinations. He then calls you to certain tasks,
relationships, and experiences.
Your job is only a part of that, and
sometimes not the most important part. We have vocations in the family
(being a child, getting married, becoming a parent) and in the society
(being a citizen, being a friend). There are also vocations in the
church (pastor, layperson), but even if you don’t believe in religion,
the vocations are operative. Not only that, according to Martin Luther,
the great theologian of vocation, God works through vocation, including
the work of people who do not believe in Him. God gives us our daily
bread by means of farmers, millers, bakers, and the person who served
you your last meal. God creates new life by means of mothers and
fathers. He heals by means of doctors, nurses, and pharmacists. He
protects us by means of police officers, judges, and the military
callings. He creates works of beauty and meaning by the talents He has
given to artists.
The purpose of every vocation—in the
workplace, the family, the church, the society—is to love and serve our
neighbors. These are the “good works” that we are given to do. That may
sound idealistic. Surely in our participation in the economy we are
motivated by our enlightened self-interest. And yet it is surely true
that if we are not helping someone by the goods or services we provide,
we will not stay in business very long. Even our self-interests are
taken up into God’s providential workings. In serving ourselves we also
find ourselves serving others, whether or not that is our intention.
Thus our work, our families, and our citizenship can be charged with
moral and even spiritual significance. ...
... College students are often so fixated on what their future vocations may be that they forget that they have vocations right now.
Slinging burgers may be a dull and boring
occupation with the sole purpose of earning tuition money. While it
won’t be your vocation forever, it is still a calling, a sphere of
service to one’s neighbors–customers, the boss, fellow workers—and a
meaningful human enterprise.
College students also have a vocation as
members of their family, with obligations to their parents, brothers,
and sisters. They also have a vocation as citizens of the various
communities they inhabit (their hometown, their college community, their
state, their country). They also have vocations in their religious
communities, if they have one.
Most notably, they have the vocation of
being college students. This calling, like all the others, has its
proper work—namely, to study, read, go to class, discuss ideas, and
write papers. ...
Good stuff! In the popular vernacular we typically think of "vocation" as an "occupation." "Vocation," or "calling," is mission given to us by God. R. Paul Stevens talks about three vocations.
Human vocation - Doing all of those things we do that make our world run and contribute to human flourishing that God called us to do at creation.
Christian vocation - Caring on the work of Christ in the world.
Personal vocation - Our particular response to the first two vocations in our particular time and context.
Our occupation is an important application of our vocation but our occupation can change. It is only one among many possible applications. And vocation includes much more than our occupation.
A thought provoking peace about how we think about charity. His characterization of Puritanism is way off but most of his substantive points are important to consider.
... The subject-area expert, the substantive specialist, will lose some
of his or her luster compared with the statistician and data analyst,
who are unfettered by the old ways of doing things and let the data
speak. This new cadre will rely on correlations without prejudgments and
prejudice. To be sure, subject-area experts won’t die out, but their
supremacy will ebb. From now on, they must share the podium with the
big-data geeks, just as princely causation must share the limelight with
humble correlation.
This transforms the way we value knowledge, because we tend to think
that people with deep specialization are worth more than generalists —
that fortune favors depth.
Yet expertise is like exactitude: appropriate for a small-data world
where one never has enough information, or the right information, and
thus has to rely on intuition and experience to guide one’s way. In such
a world, experience plays a critical role, since it is the long
accumulation of latent knowledge — knowledge that one can’t transmit
easily or learn from a book, or perhaps even be consciously aware of —
that enables one to make smarter decisions.
But when you are stuffed silly with data, you can tap that instead,
and to greater effect. Thus those who can analyze big data may see past
the superstitions and conventional thinking not because they’re smarter,
but because they have the data. (And being outsiders, they are
impartial about squabbles within the field that may narrow an expert’s
vision to whichever side of a squabble she’s on.) This suggests that
what it takes for an employee to be valuable to a company changes. What
you need to know changes, whom you need to know changes, and so does
what you need to study to prepare for professional life.
Harnessing data is no guarantee of business success but shows what is possible.
The shift to data-driven decisions is profound. Most people base
their decisions on a combination of facts and reflection, plus a heavy
dose of guesswork. “A riot of subjective visions — feelings in the solar
plexus,” in the poet W. H. Auden’s memorable words. Thomas Davenport, a
business professor at Babson College in Massachusetts and the author of
numerous books on analytics, calls it “the golden gut.” Executives are
just sure of themselves from gut instinct, so they go with that. But
this is starting to change as managerial decisions are made or at least
confirmed by predictive modeling and big-data analysis.
As big data transforms our lives — optimizing, improving, making more
efficient, and capturing benefits — what role is left for intuition,
faith, uncertainty, and originality? ...
... Big data is not an ice-cold world of algorithms and automatons. What is
greatest about human beings is precisely what the algorithms and silicon
chips don’t reveal, what they can’t reveal because it can’t be captured
in data. It is not the “what is,” but the “what is not”: the empty
space, the cracks in the sidewalk, the unspoken and the
not-yet-thought. There is an essential role for people, with all our
foibles, misperceptions and mistakes, since these traits walk hand in
hand with human creativity, instinct, and genius. ...
1. Conventional wisdom says wearing the red shirt in Star Trek will get you killed. Not so fast. Statistical analysis in Significance Magazine disagrees. (Keep your redshirt on: a Bayesian exploration)
"... In spite of wearing a redshirt, there is
only an 8.6% chance of a member of the operations or engineering
departments becoming a casualty. These personnel should ensure that
their life insurance plans are based on their departments and not their
uniform color.
Although Enterprise crew members in
redshirts suffer many more casualties than crew members in other
uniforms, they suffer fewer casualties than crew members in gold
uniforms when the entire population size is considered. Only 10% of the
entire redshirt population was lost during the three year run of Star Trek.
This is less than the 13.4% of goldshirts, but more than the 5.1% of
blueshirts. What is truly hazardous is not wearing a redshirt, but being
a member of the security department. The red-shirted members of
security were only 20.9% of the entire crew, but there is a 61.9% chance
that the next casualty is in a redshirt and 64.5% chance this
red-shirted victim is a member of the security department. The remaining
redshirts, operations and engineering make up the largest single
population, but only have an 8.6% chance of being a casualty.
Red uniform shirts are safe, as long as the wearer is not in the security department."
2. Interesting piece on automation in the Economist: Robocolleague
Robots are getting more powerful. That need not be bad news for workers. ...
... Historically, technological advances have been relatively benign for
workers. Labour-market trends through the 19th and 20th centuries show
surprising continuity, according to Lawrence Katz of Harvard University
and Robert Margo of Boston University. In recent decades, for example,
computerisation and automation have displaced “middle-skilled” workers
at the same time as employment among high- and low-skilled workers has
increased. This “hollowing out” is not new, Messrs Katz and Margo note.
Early industrialisation had similar effects. Middle-skilled artisans,
like trained weavers, were put out of work by industrial textile
production, but the fortunes of less-skilled factory workers and
white-collar factory managers steadily improved. Mechanisation’s
insatiable appetite for routine work of all types has yet to create mass
unemployment. Quite the opposite.
The worry is that technology now has its sights set on non-routine
tasks as well as mundane ones. Yet Mr Autor notes that just because a
skilled job can be automated does not mean it will be. The number of
workers used to build Nissan vehicles varies a lot between Japan, where
labour is expensive, and India, where it is abundant and cheap. The
relative cost of different types of workers matters for firms as they
choose how to deploy new technologies. ...
Indie Capitalism has three foundational principles:
• Creativity generates economic value.
Creativity is the source of profit. Yes, efficiency can squeeze more
out of what exists, but creativity gives us originality, which
translates into a market advantage and big margins.
• Creativity drives capitalism.
These past few years we have been victimized by the disastrous results
of “creativity” applied to the financial sector (mortgage-backed
securities, for starters). What we lost sight of is that the scaling of
creativity to actually make things of value sold in the marketplace is
the true heart of our economic system. It is the true generator of net
new jobs, wealth, and tax revenue.
• Creative destruction is crucial to economic growth.
Crony capitalism, which relies on monopoly and political power, is
antithetical to entrepreneurial capitalism. A faster cycle of birth,
growth, and death of companies boosts creativity, economic value, and
growth.
The bottom line: For the first time in decades, several key economic drivers have created a competitive advantage for the U.S. that will encourage corporate strategic decisions on capital allocation and acquisitions for generations to come.
Here's why:
1. Cheap and abundant natural gas. ...
2. Innovation. Despite talk of a brain drain, the U.S. remains the global innovation leader, maintaining a position enjoyed for 50 years. ...
3. Rule of law. Without the means to protect intellectual property, it cannot be exploited for competitive advantage. ...
4. Human capital. The wage gap between the U.S. and China has been shrinking. ...
5. De-complexity. Western multinationals continue to struggle with management of operations in developing countries. ...
6. Public policy and abundance. The federal government appears to be seizing the opportunity to promote job growth at home.
7. Credit, currency and the coming wave of mergers and acquisitions.
"Picture an assembly line not that isn’t made up of robotic arms spewing sparks to weld heavy steel, but a warehouse of plastic-spraying printers producing light, cheap and highly efficient automobiles.
If Jim Kor’s dream is realized, that’s exactly how the next generation of urban runabouts will be produced. His creation is called the Urbee 2 and it could revolutionize parts manufacturing while creating a cottage industry of small-batch automakers intent on challenging the status quo. ..."
Throughout history, war and innovation have gone hand in hand,
whether it’s breakthroughs out of heavily funded R&D programs
or makeshift contraptions thrown together with spare parts. Soldiers are
trained to use the technology on hand to get the job done, one way or
the other.
But how would military operations change if soldiers on the
battlefield could have the best of both worlds: access to expert
engineers able to fabricate custom-designed fixes right on-the-spot and
in very little time? ...
"It may sound strange and far out, but it’s actually quite simple. 4D
printing is being billed as a process where synthetic objects can change
and adapt themselves to the environment. In a recent TED interview, Tibbits compared the process of 4D printing to the process of natural adaptation:
Natural systems obviously have this built in — the
ability to have a desire. Plants, for example, generally have the desire
to grow towards light and they generate energy from the translation of
photosynthesis, carbon dioxide to oxygen, and so on. This is extremely
difficult to build into synthetic systems — the ability to “want” or
need something and know how to change itself in order to acquire it, or
the ability to generate its own energy source. If we combine the
processes that natural systems offer intrinsically (genetic
instructions, energy production, error correction) with those artificial
or synthetic (programmability for design and scaffold, structure,
mechanisms) we can potentially have extremely large-scale
quasi-biological and quasi-synthetic architectural organisms."
The music industry, the first media business to be consumed by the
digital revolution, said on Tuesday that its global sales rose last year
for the first time since 1999, raising hopes that a long-sought
recovery might have begun.
The increase, of 0.3 percent, was tiny, and the total revenue, $16.5
billion, was a far cry from the $38 billion that the industry took in at
its peak more than a decade ago. Still, even if it is not time for the
record companies to party like it’s 1999, the figures, reported Tuesday
by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, provide
significant encouragement.
8. Teleworking: The myth of working from home from the BBC. "Yahoo has banned its staff from "remote" working. After years of many predicting working from home as the future for everybody, why is it not the norm?"
"Reasons for high unemployment among the young include ineffective education systems (the share of early school dropouts is 20% in Italy and 30% in Spain) and dual labour markets with highly protected jobs for older employees. The good performance of Germany is not least a result of the German apprenticeship system, which facilitates labour market access for school leavers by lowering the company’s costs for employing them. The OECD’s latest “Going for Growth” report recommends reforms to strengthen the vocational training systems as one of the most effective ways to fight structural youth unemployment. This would also be a reasonable starting point for the EU’s youth employment programme."
"What’s most revealing about this study is that, like earlier research,
it suggests that students’ preference for printed textbooks is reflects
the real pedagogical advantages they experience in using the format:
fewer distractions, deeper engagement, better comprehension and
retention, and greater flexibility to accommodating idiosyncratic study
habits. Electronic textbooks will certainly get better, and will
certainly have advantages of their own, but they won’t replicate the
particular advantages inherent to the tangible form of the printed book."
The Catholic Church has struggled to bring in young members in the
United States. Less than half of U.S. Hispanics between 18 and 29
identify as Catholic, compared with the 60+ percent of Hispanics older
than 50.
The narrative of decline in the mainline church underestimates the continuing influence of its members, says a religion researcher.
16.Some interesting observations by NYU psychologist Jonathan Haidt. He says we tend to process our social world through three lenses: Social distance, hierarchy, and disgust. Conservatives tend to have a lower threshold of revulsion while liberals, and praticularly libertarians, have a higher threshold.
... Slightly more than 10 million American workers, or seven percent of the
workforce, are self-employed, according to estimates compiled by Rob
Sentz and his colleagues at Economic Modeling Specialists
(EMSI, for short). EMSI's figures are based on data from the United
States Census (American Community Survey and Non-employer Statistics).
More than four million (43 percent) of those self-employed workers are
members of the creative class of scientists and technologists, knowledge
workers and professionals, artists, designers, entertainers, and media
workers.
... It's high time we temper the the mythology of freelance work with a
dose of reality. While the popular image of self-employment is
technology or knowledge working free-agents, the reality is that the
ranks of the self-employed are populated by a mix of high-skill
knowledge work and low-skill, much lower wage service work. Not only do
they often earn less money, self-employed Americans lack the basic
protections and security that workers and a middle-class society
require.
Given the flexibility that has come along with the knowledge and
service-based economy and the preference many Americans have for doing
their own thing, it will be next to impossible to go back to the old
system of long-term employment tenure in "real jobs" of the past. The
number of full-employed independent workers is projected to swell to 30
million in the next decade and the total number of freelancers could
reach as many as 70 million when as much as half of the workforce could
be involved in some sort of freelance work. What's more, 57 percent of
freelancers chose to go independent in 2012, as Johnson reports, and only 13 percent say they want to go back to traditional employment.
What's needed is nothing less than a new social compact which reflects the new realities of work. ...
Then Ross Douthart, writing in the New York Times, has this piece: A World Without Work
If such a utopia were possible, one might expect that it would be
achieved first among the upper classes, and then gradually spread down
the social ladder. First the wealthy would work shorter hours, then the
middle class, and finally even high school dropouts would be able to
sleep late and take four-day weekends and choose their own adventures —
“to hunt in the morning,” as Karl Marx once prophesied, “fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner ...”
Yet the decline of work isn’t actually some wild Marxist scenario. It’s a
basic reality of 21st-century American life, one that predates the
financial crash and promises to continue apace even as normal economic
growth returns. This decline isn’t unemployment in the usual sense,
where people look for work and can’t find it. It’s a kind of
post-employment, in which people drop out of the work force and find
ways to live, more or less permanently, without a steady job. So instead
of spreading from the top down, leisure time — wanted or unwanted — is
expanding from the bottom up. Long hours are increasingly the province of the rich. ...
Whether or not either of these stories has things framed just right, I do think we are in the midst of a major upheavel in what work and employment look like. I remember reading once that Americans made or grew more than 80% of everything they consumed in 1885. By 1915 is was less than 20%. I suspect this last decade is the leadning edge of changes that may be just as profound, and just as hard to anticipate, as those on the horizon in 1885.
Issue 104 examines the impact of automation on Europe and America and the varying responses of the church to the problems that developed. Topics examined are mission work, the rise of the Social Gospel, the impact of papal pronouncements, the Methodist phenomenon, Christian capitalists, attempts at communal living and much more.
"Despite the tough economy, many of the nation’s largest churches are
thriving, with increased offerings and plans to hire more staff, a new
survey shows.
Just 3 percent of churches with 2,000 or more attendance
surveyed by Leadership Network, a Dallas-based church think tank, said
they were affected “very negatively” by the economy in recent years.
Close to half — 47 percent — said they were affected “somewhat
negatively,” but one-third said they were not affected at all. ..."
... It's not surprising that younger entrepreneurial firms are considered more innovative. After all, they are born from a new idea, and survive by finding creative ways to make that idea commercially viable. Larger, well-rooted companies however have just as much motivation to be innovative — and, as Scott Anthony has argued, they have even more resources to invest in new ventures. So why doesn't innovation thrive in mature organizations? ...
... First, he says, the focus of an established firm is to execute an existing business model — to make sure it operates efficiently and satisfies customers. In contrast, the main job of a start-up is to search for a workable business model, to find the right match between customer needs and what the company can profitably offer. In other words in a start-up, innovation is not just about implementing a creative idea, but rather the search for a way to turn some aspect of that idea into something that customers are willing to pay for. ...
... discovering a new business model is inherently risky, and is far more likely to fail than to succeed ...
... Finally, Blank notes that the people who are best suited to search for new business models and conduct iterative experiments usually are not the same managers who succeed at running existing business units. ...
5. A fascinating, if sobering, look at the conflict over islands off the coast of East Asia. Trouble at sea
"President Barack Obama's proposed tilt of U.S. priorities toward the Pacific – and away from the historical link to Europe – represents one of the most encouraging aspects of his foreign policy. Although welcome, we should recognize that this shift comes about three decades too late and that it may miss the rising geopolitical centrality of sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. The emergence of these longtime historically impoverished backwaters has been largely missed as American policy-makers and businesses are now obsessed with the challenges and opportunities posed by the emergence of China and, to a lesser extent, India. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, over the past decade has produced six of the world's 10 fastest-growing economies. Through 2011-15, according to the International Monetary Fund, seven of the fastest-growing countries will be African, and Africa as a whole will surpass the slowing growth rates in Asia, particularly China.
This growth has caused the region's poverty rates, still unacceptably high, to fall from 56.5 percent in 1990 to 47 percent today. Further growth will likely push poverty levels down further."
8. New Geography also asks, Is the Family Finished? Some interesting thoughts about the impact of declining birthrates in the U.S.
Pew Research Center has compiled key findings from a new analysis of the
nation’s foreign-born population, based on U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011
American Community Survey.
With more than half the population of many U.S. cities who are
multicultural and Hispanics comprising more and more of the
U.S. population, when does it become meaningless and redundant to
execute marketing strategy that is directed to a general market and a
Latino market perceived to be homogenous?
11. Committee on Economic Development has an interesting piece looking at both the ideological and economic aspects underlying the debate about the minimum wage. Raising the Minimum Wage: “Which Side Are You On?”
"It is an easy call if you are either (a) a strict libertarian or (b) an
enthusiastic advocate of the less fortunate with limited concern about
the scarcity of resources. (If you belong to both of those groups,
there is little advice that I can offer.) However, in between those
poles of opinion, things become rather murky, rather quickly."
... Comparing the Democrat and Republican participants turned up differences in two brain regions: the right amygdala and the left posterior insula. Republicans showed more activity than Democrats in the right amygdala when making a risky decision. This brain region is important for processing fear, risk and reward.
Meanwhile, Democrats showed more activity in the left posterior insula, a portion of the brain responsible for processing emotions, particularly visceral emotional cues from the body. The particular region of the insula that showed the heightened activity has also been linked with "theory of mind," or the ability to understand what others might be thinking. ...
... The functional differences did mesh well with political beliefs,
however. The researchers were able to predict a person's political
party by looking at their brain function 82.9 percent of the time. In
comparison, knowing the structure of these regions predicts party
correctly 71 percent of the time, and knowing someone's parents'
political affiliation can tell you theirs 69.5 percent of the time, the
researchers wrote. ...
STERLING, Va. - Perched by a computer monitor wedged between shelves of cough drops and the pharmacy in a bustling Walmart, Mohamed Khader taps out answers to questions such as how often he eats vegetables, whether anyone in his family has diabetes and his age.
He tests his eyesight, weighs himself and checks his blood pressure as a middle-aged couple watches at the blue-and-white SoloHealth station advertising "free health screenings." ...
... As Americans gain coverage under the federal health law, putting increased demand on primary care doctors and spurring interest in cheaper, more convenient care, unmanned kiosks like these may be part of what their manufacturer bills as a "self-service healthcare revolution." ...
Recent developments in the field of nanotechnology might give new
meaning to the phrase “nothing gold can stay.” Atoms and bonds developed
not by Mother Nature, but by scientists, are gaining momentum as the
building blocks for cutting-edge materials.
Using nanoparticles as “atoms” and DNA as “bonds,” Chad Mirkin, the
director of Northwestern University’s International Institute for
Nanotechnology, is constructing his very own periodic table. So far Mirkin has built more than 200 distinct crystal structures with 17 different particle arrangements. ...
Today is the day our advanced technological culture turns to a cute furry rodent in Pennsylvania for a weather forecast. (The only thing a groundhog foretells in my yard is that I'm probably going to need some new landscaping.) Happy Groundhog Day!
"In the course of our strategic planning work with clients, we've
identified the things that make the difference between visions that fall
flat and those that turn on. Here's a no-nonsense summary of those
elements that you can use as a guide when you develop your strategic
plan."
"In this way a conception of subsidiarity “from below” is focused on the location of sovereignty from the “bottom up” rather than on the delegation of authority from the “top down.” We see these variegated approaches to subsidiarity and sovereignty work out in diverse ways in later centuries. It is with these different lenses of subsidiarity “from above” and “from below” that we can better understand the developments of the Roman Catholic principle of subsidiarity as such and the neo-Calvinist articulation of “sphere sovereignty” in the late nineteenth century and beyond."
"Pally’s essay is framed around the thesis that these evangelicals have “left the right.” But left it for what? What she describes is really another vision of conservatism: church-based charity in lieu of a government safety net; exemptions from government regulation for religious groups; federal funding of religious activities; and persistent sexual puritanism. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say they’ve left the radical right and are in the process of creating a new religious right, stripped of harsh rhetoric but still undergirded by conservative ideology. Which is a movement worth chronicling, but not, as Pally intimates, as the new saviors of civility in our religiously-inflected politics."
"In the past scientists have warned that up to five per cent of species are at risk of dying-out as a result of climate change, deforestation and development.
But a new analysis by the University of New Zealand found that this figure was five times greater than reality because the number of animals living in the wild in the first place had been over estimated."
10. I've written before that fear is not an effective motivator for long term change. This is particularly true for some climate change and environmental activism. You need to make new behaviors fun and engaging. WWF appears to have taken this strategy to heart. (Hard to go wrong with anthropomorphized critters but maybe they should consider the article immediately above.)
From the time of Charles Darwin science has painted a picture of our earliest ancestor in the image of a chimpanzee. Scientific American editor Katherine Harmon explains how new fossil evidence is redrawing the lines of human evolution.
Actually, I think we already know who our first ancestor was.
12. For the most part (with a few exceptions), when it comes to movies, if you can't tell your story in less than two hours, then I think you didn't edit the movie well. Hollywood would apparently beg to differ. Why Movies Today Are Longer Than Ever Before
"The average of the highest-grossing films from 20 years ago is 118.4 minutes compared to this year's 141.6 minutes."
15. Okay purists, Rule Change Eliminates a Fake Pickoff. Pitchers will no longer be able to fake a throw to third before throwing to another base. Good idea or bad?
Andrew McAfee explains that the resurgence in American manufacturing doesn't mean the creation of new jobs. There is global decline in manufacturing jobs, even as manufacturing grows, due to automation. He ends with this:
... Even if total manufacturing employment goes down because of automation,
he [Ron Atkinson] writes, other industries will pick up the slack by employing more
people. This is because:
"...most of the savings [from automation] would flow back to
consumers in the form of lower prices. Consumers would then use the
savings to buy things (e.g., go out to dinner, buy books, go on travel).
This economic activity stimulates demand that other companies (e.g.,
restaurants, book stores, and hotels) respond to by hiring more
workers."
Fair enough, but what if those other companies are also automating?
One of the most striking phenomena of recent years is the encroachment
of automation into tasks, skills and abilities that used to belong to
people alone. As we document in Race Against the Machine,
this includes driving cars, responding accurately to natural language
questions, understanding and producing human speech, writing prose,
reviewing documents and many others. Some combination of these will be
valuable in every industry.
Previous waves of automation, like the mechanization of agriculture
and the advent of electric power to factories, have not resulted in
large-scale unemployment or impoverishment of the average worker. But
the historical pattern isn't giving me a lot of comfort these days,
simply because we've never before seen automation encroach so broadly
and deeply, while also improving so quickly at the same time.
I don't know what all the consequences of the current wave of digital
automation will be — no one does. But I'm not blithe about its
consequences for the labor force, because that would be ignoring the
data and missing the big picture.
Seriously, technological innovation always creates dislocations. Fear of machines replacing humans goes back to the beginning of the industrial revolution. The economy has always adapted and expect it will again.
Alas, that won't help, as this graph
compiled by statistician Simon Hedlin shows. The total dependency ratio
(children and retirees, compared with those of working age) fell in all
G20/OECD nations bar Germany and Sweden between 1960 and 2010. In the
next fifty years, it will rise in all those nations, bar India and South
Africa. In most nations, the ratio will rise by 40% or more; there are
huge increases in dependency in parts of Asia (China and South Korea)
and in eastern Europe. Britain and America are towards the bottom of the
table, but their problems are big enough.
There are many implications. With more dependents to care for, it is
very hard to imagine how we will pay down our debts. And it is also very
hard to imagine how one can possibly expect government spending to
shrink significantly.
"... BiblioTech, a $1.5 million Bexar County paperless
library will have scores of computer terminals, laptops, tablets, and
e-readers – but not a dog-eared classic or dusty reference book in
sight.
“Think of an Apple store,” Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, who led his county’s bookless library project, told NPR when describing the planned library.
The 4,989-squre-foot, digital-only library, one of the first of its
kind, will feature 100 e-readers available for circulation, 50 e-readers
for children, 50 computer stations, 25 laptops, and 25 tablets for
on-site use. Patrons can check out e-readers for two weeks or load books
onto their own devices.
“A technological evolution is taking place,” Wolff says. “And I think we’re stepping in at the right time.” ..."
"UCLA's survey of incoming
college freshmen shows fewer identify as liberals and an increasing
number saying the economy significantly affected their college choice."
"In some ways, this shift isn’t as dramatic as it might first appear.
Even though younger evangelicals are increasingly walking away from the
religious right, they are still self-identifying as Republicans (54 percent) more than Democrats (26 percent). Younger
Christians still agree with the religious right on the issues but
reject the movement’s tactics, tone, and narrow focus on social issues."
8. Scientific American: The Liberals' War on Science. How politics distorts science on both ends of the spectrum.
"Surveys show that moderate liberals and conservatives embrace science
roughly equally (varying across domains), which is why scientists like
E. O. Wilson and organizations like the National Center for Science
Education are reaching out to moderates in both parties to rein in the
extremists on evolution and climate change. Pace Barry Goldwater,
extremism in the defense of liberty may not be a vice, but it is in
defense of science, where facts matter more than faith—whether it comes
in a religious or secular form—and where moderation in the pursuit of
truth is a virtue."
1. I don't know much about Common Good RVA but I like their vision. Christianity Today published a piece featuring them, Why the Rest of Your Week Matters to God
"In general, the church has done a fine job equipping Christians for the "private" areas of their lives: prayer, morality, family life, and so on. However, in general, the church has done a poor job equipping people for the "public" parts of their lives: namely, their work, their vocation. The reality is, most people spend the majority of their time in this latter, "public" area."
2. Can we Survive Technology? Written 57 years ago, Fortune resurrected this article by John von Neumann. The editor's note begins:
Editor's note: Every Sunday, Fortune publishes a favorite story from our magazine archives. This week, to mark our FutureIssue,
we turn to a feature from June 1955 by John von Neumann tackling the
profound questions wrought by radical technical advancement—in von
Neumann's day the atomic bomb and climate change. von Neumann was one of
the twentieth century's greatest and most influential geniuses. The
polymath and patron saint of Game Theory
was instrumental in developing America's nuclear superiority toward the
end of World War II as well as in framing the decades-long Cold War
with the Soviet Union. In his time, von Neumann was said to possess "the world's greatest mind." Here is his characteristically pessimistic look on what the future holds.
It is amazing how much of what he wrote remains true today!
"CONCLUSION: Although "materialists' perceptions that
acquisition brings them happiness appear to have some basis
in reality," that happiness is short-lived, Richins concluded. As such,
"The state of anticipating and desiring a product may be inherently more
pleasurable than
product ownership itself.""
5. One of the most difficult topics to understand in economics is comparative advantage, especially why outsourcing jobs to other countries often is advantageous for both countries. Forbes has a creative piece this week, Is Outsourcing American Jobs Wrong?. However, as the BBC reports American manufacturers come back home, a trend that has been true for a few years now.
"In order to fight that perception and reclaim capitalism and business as
positive words, businesses have to find a purpose beyond just making money. Profit is necessary for business, Mackey said, but it's necessary in the same way that his body has to produce red blood cells. It's needed, but it's not the sole purpose."
"Most business leaders don't understand what makes innovation so different from everything else they do at work -- and they haven't adjusted their behavior to accommodate these differences."
"The science fiction vision of stars flashing by as streaks when spaceships travel faster than light isn't what the scene would actually look like, a team of physics students says.
Instead, the view out the windows of a vehicle traveling through hyperspace would be more like a centralized bright glow, calculations show. ..."
That's all for this week. Like the Kruse Kronicle at Facebook.
1. Governments want them. Surely, from a “seeing like a state”
perspective it is better to have large corporations that are dependent
on favors than small firms that are not.
2. There are genuine economies of scale and scope, including network effects.
3. Workers believe that they are more secure working for large
corporations, and they are willing to take less compensation as a
result. Note that this sort of belief could be self-fulfilling. Note
also that it is not terribly consistent with the data: compensation
appears to be higher at large firms, although that comparison assumes
that the investigator’s idea of objective value of workers is more
meaningful than their actual choices.
Think about Google. It needs to retrieve, store, and process huge
amounts of data. There are scale economies. Once you have that data,
you can benefit from other data, so you want to expand into email,
location services, social networking, phones, and anything else that
generates data. So there are economies of scope as well.
Maybe that is an exceptional case.
My tendency is to think that economies of scale are fairly common,
but economies of scope are relatively rare. I understand big companies
that specialize in a relatively narrow capability–something like Fedex,
for example. I am less convinced about organizations that branch into
many functions, like universities or large financial firms....
I think his last paragraph is an important distinction. The
size of the firms in an industry is directly related to the nature of the goods
and services offered in that industry. The economies of scale and the
technological wherewithal needed to execute the manufacture of a jet versus
providing a haircut means a handful of big firms will exist in the former
industry and no large firms will exist in the latter.
There is nothing intrinsically bad about having large
corporations. They are indispensable in achieving certain ends. That doesn't
mean they don't present challenges.
As a financial planner, Ray Linder sometimes found that he would give what seemed like
solid, reasonable advice to a client that would be met with a
surprising level of resistance–one that had more to do with emotions
than anything else.
A little digging told him that people handle money differently,
according to their personality type, and these differences were often in
line with the Myers-Briggs test.
You’ve probably heard of it: The Myers-Briggs test is a psychological
profiling exam that was created during WWII. It divides people into
extroverts and introverts, and then segments them even more into types
that sense vs. intuit, think vs. feel and judge vs. perceive.
It’s kind of complicated, which is why categorizing people into the
16 personality types outlined by the Myers-Briggs test – which you can
officially take for a fee –
is big business. (The results are often used by recruiters, human
resources professionals, salespeople, matchmakers and lawyers in various
professional capacities.)
Linder was so interested in the parallels between the Myers-Briggs
test and his clients’ approach to finances that he literally wrote the
book on it: “What Will I Do With My Money?“
He also consolidated the 16 types into four broader categories: Protectors, Planners, Pleasers and Players.
But he’s careful to point out that there’s no right or wrong place to
be within the 16-category universe. Rather, the purpose of figuring all
this out is to capitalize on your type’s natural assets – as opposed to
shame yourself or beat yourself up.
We tracked down Linder to hear more about the four Ps – Protectors, Planners, Pleasers and Players. ...
I'm a planner. The description describes my investment challenges well.
Young African American men, especially ex-offenders, face high obstacles to employment. That’s where entrepreneurship training comes in. If just 1 in 3 small businesses hired one employee, the US would be at full employment. Young men of color can be crucial to this progress.
... This new non-profit [City Startup Labs] was created to take at-risk young African
American men, including ex-offenders, and teach them entrepreneurship,
while creating a new set of role models and small business ambassadors
along the way. City Startup Labs contends that an alternative education
that prepares these young men to launch their own businesses can have
far more impact with this population than other traditional forms of job
readiness or workforce training.
Today’s economic climate allows
employers their pick of candidates, leaving few options for anyone with a
record. Young black men, who’ve had no brushes with the law, still
routinely face real barriers in getting on a job ladder’s lowest rung.
According to a 2005 Princeton
study, “Discrimination in Low Wage Labor Markets,” young white high
school graduates were nearly twice as likely to receive positive
responses from employers as equally qualified black job seekers. Even
without criminal records, black applicants had low rates of positive
responses – about the same as the response rate for white applicants with criminal records.
This
is where entrepreneurship comes in. For example, a report done by the
Justice Policy Institute states that, “…recidivism is higher for those
persons who are unable to obtain employment after leaving prison and
imposes a high cost on society; and yet employment opportunities are
especially limited for ex-convicts. Thus self-employment would be a
viable alternative for ex-offenders, at least for those with above
average entrepreneurial aptitude…” Someone like a Lawrence Carpenter. ...
... Despite this entrepreneurial divide, black business development has quite a compelling story. According to the Census Bureau,
during the period from 2002 to 2007 and before the Great Recession
struck, the growth rate of black-owned companies was more than triple
the national rate of 18 percent. Revenue generated by black-owned
companies increased more than 55 percent to $137.5 billion. Many of
those were businesses like Carpenter’s Super Clean Professional
Janitorial Services. ...
1. Too often Westerners perceive African economy as a monolithic basket case. There are actually many regions of that are very hopeful. Ozwald Boateng explains Why entrepreneurs are back in Africa
3. Lots of recent talk about whether or not e-books will ever actually totally supplant hard copy books. This week Mashable explores Why Are People Still Buying CDs? (And people are still buying them.)
7. I almost didn't link this article because I could swear I've linked it before. Why Does Deja Vu Happen?
8. Several months ago I saw a speech expert interviewed has offered voice training to a number of famous figures. One was Margaret Thatcher. They showed her speaking in the 1970s and then in the 1980s, after receiving voice training. A big piece of the change was lessening the modulation in tone and pitch, which tends to vary more widely with female voices. The changes were intended to make her sound more authoritative, which both men and women, unjustified as it may be, more often associate with male vocal traits. But apparently, the thing that really triggers gender detection in our language is the way we use S's. Change Your Perceived Gender by Pronouncing S's Differently
Many women have trouble asking for more money at work—but it doesn't have to be that way.
... Many women don't know how to ask for the money. So many, in fact, that Carnegie Mellon runs a Negotiation Academy for Women co-founded by Linda C. Babcock, a professor of economics. Babcock has also co-authored two books on the subject, Women Don't Ask and Ask For It. In her first book, she offers some troubling statistics:
Men initiate negotiations about four times as often as women.
When asked to choose a metaphor to describe the negotiation process, women picked "going to the dentist." For comparison, Men chose "winning a ballgame."
Women enter negotiations with pessimistic expectations about what wage increases are available, and thus if they do negotiate, they don't ask for much: 30 percent less than men.
20 percent of adult women say they never negotiate at all, even when it may be appropriate.
"If you don't ask, you don't get," said Holly Schroth, who holds a doctorate in social psychology and is a senior lecturer at Berkeley's Haas School of Business. ...
Schroth urges female students to vie for larger bonuses and salary increases and offers several strategies. In her experience, women have proven more successful with off-cycle requests, meaning they seek opportunities to negotiate outside of year-end reviews. The best time, Schroth strongly believes, is in the wake of an achievement. ...
3. Four Harvard and MIT grads are experimenting with direct aid to the poor. "GiveDirectly, the brainchild of four Harvard and MIT graduate students, is so simple, it's genius. Give poor Kenyan families $1,000 -- and let them do whatever they want with it." Can 4 Economists Build the Most Economically Efficient Charity Ever?
"... Despite
its reputation as a leftwing utopia, Sweden is now a laboratory for
rightwing radicalism. Over the past 15 years a coalition of liberals and
conservatives has brought in for-profit free schools in education, has
sliced welfare to pay off the deficit and has privatised large parts of
the health service.
Their success is envied by the centre right
in Britain. Despite predictions of doom, Sweden's economy continues to
grow and its pro-business coalition has remained in power since 2006.
The last election was the first time since the war that a centre-right
government had been re-elected after serving a full term.
As the
state has been shrunk, the private sector has moved in. Göran Dahlgren, a
former head civil servant at the Swedish department of health and a
visiting professor at the University of Liverpool, says that "almost all
welfare services are now owned by private equity firms". ..."
"... We
have reached a point in our economy where it is becoming increasingly
clear that businesses are being measured not just for their profit, but
also for their impact. And I’m not just talking about writing a check or
funding a charity; I’m referring to business models for which community
involvement and inspirational brand building are the profit centers.
(Think Warby Parker, TOMS, and startups such as SOMA.) I recently went
to a conference where the founders of a startup posited a powerful idea:
the future of marketing is philanthropy. But I think the even bigger
idea is the future of business is morality. My grandfather saw this
early on.
At a time when the moral framework of America appears
to be fractured – or at the very least confused – businesses are in the
propitious position to espouse cultural standards that can help restore
values that our youth can use to build the next generation of positive
enterprise. In fact, whether businesses succeed in creating and
promoting positive cultures might determine whether they stay in
business at all. The future of business is morality, and the future is
now.
Whether it’s the job of the corporation or not to set the
moral tone for society, the expectation is trending towards companies
setting the right example for others to follow. With the sharp rise in
entrepreneurship, young companies have the opportunity to establish
strong cultures early on and share them with their communities. Money
must have a moral center, and from greater consciousness in business,
greater profit will follow. ..."
"New data show an increasing contribution of mental and behavioral disorders to deterioration in the health-related quality of life among teens in the U.S. and Canada over the past two decades, and increases elsewhere around the globe."
More people moved out of California in 2011 than moved in, according to the latest report from the U.S. Census Bureau, signaling that the Democrat-run state’s economic woes continue to drive residents away.
Most statisticians attribute California’s net loss of 100,000 people last year to its high cost of living, increased population density and troubling unemployment rate.
The widening middle class in Mexico is also encouraging some immigrants to remain in that country instead of moving to California.
Texas — home to lower taxes, less regulation and what the Manhattan Institute calls a “labor pool with the right skills at the right price” — is one of the most attractive destinations for companies departing from California, according to the Census Bureau. ...
"The country reported 85 executions in 2000 but only 43 in 2012, according to a new report released by the Death Penalty Information Center. Plus, far fewer people are being sentenced to death row in the first place. The year 2000 saw 224 new inmates sentenced to death, while 2012 saw only 78, according to the report."
15. Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic had a great piece Why 'If We Can Just Save One Child ...' Is a Bad Argument, referring to a statement President Obama made at Newtown, CT. When we deal with complex topics like gun control, we are always
talking about tradeoffs. For instance, I know how we can save more
than 30,000 lives. The were 32,367 traffic fatalities last
year. Let's set the speed limit to 5 miles per hour. Nearly all those lives would be saved. Should we do this "if we can save just
one more life"? I, like Friedersforf, am not advocating any particular
policy. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of making statements like this, as politicians often do.
"I found that the structural supports of evangelicalism are quivering as a
result of ground-shaking changes in American culture. Strategies that
served evangelicals well just 15 years ago are now self- destructive.
The more that evangelicals attempt to correct course, the more they
splinter their movement. In coming years we will see the old
evangelicalism whimper and wane."
He speaks of an Evangelical "collapse" having happened. That may be a bit premature but I think his articulation of trends is right.
This month's Atlantic magazine predicts that we are on the verge ofa U.S.-based manufacturing renaissance,
as companies see the advantages to making more goods at home, such as
more control over the final product, lower energy costs from moving
goods across an ocean, and a falling "wage gap."
Simply put, U.S. factory workers are a much better deal than they were just ten years ago. ...
The chart above shows the 30 occupations that are expected to experience the largest job growth between 2010 and 2020, according to employment forecasts from the BLS.
Between 2010 and 2020, the BLS estimates that the total number of U.S.
jobs will increase by 20.4 million, from 143 million in 2010 to 163.5
million by 2020. The number of jobs created this decade in the top 30
fastest growing occupations – 9.3 million – will represent almost half
of all of the new jobs created by 2020.
What’s really interesting is that only five of the top 30 occupations
expected to create the most jobs by 2020 require a college degree or
more (nursing, post-secondary teachers, elementary school teachers,
accountants and physicians), and ten of the fastest growing occupations
don’t even require a high school diploma. Moreover, of the top nine
occupations expected to create the most jobs this decade, only one
(nursing) requires a 4-year college degree. ...
(Like the Kruse Kronicle at Facebook if you want links to daily posts to appear in your Facebook feed.)
1. Pray for Egypt Today!
More than 50 million Egyptians are voting today on a constitution that would be a giant step backward for Egypt and much of the Middle East, marginalizing women and religious minorities. A nation that has historically been a voice of moderation, the largest Muslim nation in the region, will likely move toward becoming an Islamist state. Remember to pray for Egypt. (See the Economist'sThe Founding Brothers)
2. Our prayers are with families of the victims at the Sandy Hook elementary school. Grace and peace to the entire community.
Traffic deaths in the USA continued their historic decline last year,
falling to the lowest level since 1949, the government announced
Monday.
A total of 32,367 motorists, bicyclists and pedestrians died in 2011,
a 1.9% decrease from 2010. Last year’s toll represents a 26% decline
from 2005, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
said. ...
... The trend has emerged in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as
well as smaller places like Anchorage, Alaska, and Kearney, Neb. The
state of Mississippi has also registered a drop, but only among white
students.
“It’s been nothing but bad news for 30 years, so the fact that we have
any good news is a big story,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the health
commissioner in New York City, which reported a 5.5 percent decline in
the number of obese schoolchildren from 2007 to 2011....
....The experiment, in April, used a disabled form of the virus that causes AIDS to reprogram Emma’s immune system genetically to kill cancer cells. ...
... The research is still in its early stages, and many questions remain.
The researchers are not entirely sure why the treatment works, or why it
sometimes fails. One patient had a remission after being treated only
twice, and even then the reaction was so delayed that it took the
researchers by surprise. For the patients who had no response
whatsoever, the team suspects a flawed batch of T-cells. The child who
had a temporary remission apparently relapsed because not all of her
leukemic cells had the marker that was targeted by the altered T-cells. ...
....In 2011, 1.4 million chlamydia infections were reported to the CDC.
The rate of cases per 100,000 people increased 8%, to 457.6 in 2011 from
423.6 in 2010.
The CDC reported 321,849 gonorrhea infections. The
rate increased 4% to 104.2 cases per 100,000 in 2011 from 100.2 in
2010. Like chlamydia, gonorrhea can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease,
a major cause of infertility in women.
Last year, 13,970 primary and secondary syphilis cases were reported. The rate of 4.5 cases per 100,000 was unchanged from 2010. ...
7. You may be bilingual but can you write in two languages, one with each hand, at the same time?!
10. Kevin Drum of Mother Jones speculates on why liberals have more exaggerated perceptions of political differences. We Are More Alike Than We Think
11. A surprising "right to work" bill was signed into law in Michigan, of all places. That has spurred a lot of debate about unions and the right to work. Michael Kinsley wrote a thoughtful piece opposing RTW, The Liberal Case Against Right-to-Work Laws. David Henderson has piece in support of RTW, The Economics of "Right to Work".
12. Slate has a piece about The Great Schism in the Environmental Movement.
Keith Kloor opines on the division between mondernist environmentalists
(or eco-pragmatists) and conservation traditionalists.
...
Modernist greens don't dispute the ecological tumult associated with the
Anthropocene. But this is the world as it is, they say, so we might as
well reconcile the needs of people with the needs of nature. To this
end, Kareiva advises conservationists to craft "a new vision of a planet
in which nature—forests, wetlands, diverse species, and other ancient
ecosystems—exists amid a wide variety of modern, human landscapes."
This
shift in thinking is already under way. For example, ecologists
increasingly appreciate (and study) the diversity of species and
importance of ecosystem services in cities, giving rise to the
discipline of urban ecology. That was unthinkable at the dawn of the
modern environmental movement 50 years ago, when greens loathed cities
as the antithesis of wilderness. ...
13. One of the creepiest Twilight Zone episodes I remember from my
childhood was when this woman ends up trapped in a department store at
night. The mannequins begin calling to her. She discovers she is actually a mannequin who
has over stayed her time out in the world and it is time for the next
mannequin to spend some time outside the store. This story confirms my worst nightmares: In Some Stores, the Mannequins Are Watching You
15. One of the biggest concerns about fracking technology is the enormous amount of water it uses. A company has figured out how to recycle water so that far less water is used in the fracking process. Solving fracking's biggest problem
... 3D printing represents the latest version of what industry experts call
"additive manufacturing" — a way to turn practically any computer
designs into real objects by building them up layer-by-layer using
plastics, metals or other materials. The technology could end up
affecting every major industry — aerospace, defense, medicine, transportation, food, fashion — and have an even bigger impact on U.S. manufacturing than the robot revolution. ...
20. Michael Cheshire has a great piece in Leadership Journal on "What I learned about grace and redemption through my friendship with a Christian pariah." Going To Hell with Ted Haggard
".... A while back I was having a business lunch at a sports bar in the
Denver area with a close atheist friend. He's a great guy and a very
deep thinker. During lunch, he pointed at the large TV screen on the
wall. It was set to a channel recapping Ted's fall. He pointed his
finger at the HD and said, "That is the reason I will not become a
Christian. Many of the things you say make sense, Mike, but that's what
keeps me away."
It was well after the story had died down, so I had to study the screen
to see what my friend was talking about. I assumed he was referring to
Ted's hypocrisy. "Hey man, not all of us do things like that," I
responded. He laughed and said, "Michael, you just proved my point. See,
that guy said sorry a long time ago. Even his wife and kids stayed and
forgave him, but all you Christians still seem to hate him. You guys
can't forgive him and let him back into your good graces. Every time you
talk to me about God, you explain that he will take me as I am. You say
he forgives all my failures and will restore my hope, and as long as I
stay outside the church, you say God wants to forgive me. But that guy
failed while he was one of you, and most of you are still vicious to
him." Then he uttered words that left me reeling: "You Christians eat
your own. Always have. Always will."
He was running late for a meeting and had to take off. I, however, could
barely move. I studied the TV and read the caption as a well-known
religious leader kept shoveling dirt on a man who had admitted he was
unclean. And at that moment, my heart started to change. I began to
distance myself from my previously harsh statements and tried to
understand what Ted and his family must have been through. When I
brought up the topic to other men and women I love and respect, the very
mention of Haggard's name made our conversations toxic. Their reactions
were visceral."
21. Leonardo Bonucci got a yellow card for faking collision during a
soccer game. It should have been a red card. No one deserves to be a professional soccer player with acting skills
this bad!
Despite fears of so-called showrooming, some stores are opening up to wireless internet.
FORTUNE -- For years, retailers frowned on shoppers visiting their
stores merely to scope out products before returning home and buying
them online for less. The phenomenon became so common that it earned a
name -- showrooming.
The practice has only expanded with the proliferation of smartphones.
Shoppers can use them to quickly compare the price of a Fossil handbag,
for example, with the same version on Amazon.com (AMZN). There's
nothing store managers can do to stop them. The shoppers have won the
war.
Recognizing their defeat, many retailers have made a u-turn and are now helping shoppers get online. ...
... To connect to a network, shoppers must first agree to a terms of
service that appears on their smartphone screens. The agreement
generally spells out that the network is not secure and that the stores
will track the Web sites customers visit and the type of devices they
use.
Such data could eventually be used to help stores offer personalized
coupons and identify merchandise to add to their shelves, said Bryan
Wargo, chief executive of Nearbuy Systems, a start-up that helps stores
monitor customer behavior on Wi-Fi networks and dissect the data.
Customers frequently using the Wi-Fi network to search a rival's Web
site for red cashmere sweaters, for instance, could signal that the
store should start stocking them. ...
When the economy became unreliable, people decided to rely on themselves to propel their careers.
“We see the labor market itself following the trend that we call ‘the individualization of work' — people working for themselves,” says Iain MacDonald, CEO of SkillPages. “People are increasingly either moving jobs more often, doing what they love, or doing what they really like to do, rather than what they have to do.”
Nearly one in three workers in America are freelancers, contractors, or contingent workers, according to the Freelancers Union, and 19 percent of them say that they've doubled their income within the past year.
According to a survey by Elance, the average freelancer expects to earn 43 percent more in 2013 than they did in 2012. Furthermore, 70 percent claim they're happier and 79 percent say they're more productive working as a freelancer than a full-time employee. ...
"... I didn’t know it then but my world, my social world, was changing. Today, my 1,500 Facebook
friends — 1,300 of whom I have never actually met—have already seen the
best of the year’s haul of pictures of my kids. They also know where
I’ve gone on vacation and sometimes, what I cooked for dinner or what I
thought of a movie on a Saturday night in May. There’s little point to
writing a Christmas update now, with boasts about grades and athletic
prowess, hospitalizations and holidays, and the dog’s mishaps, when we
have already posted these events and so much more of our minutiae all
year long. The urge to share has already been well sated. ...
... Still, the demise of the Christmas photo card saddens me. It portends
the end of the U.S. Postal Service. It signals the day is near when
writing on paper is non-existent. Finally, it is part of a decline of a
certain quality of communication, one that involved delay and
anticipation, forethought and reflection. Opening these cards, the
satisfaction wasn’t just in the Peace on Earth greeting, but in the
recognition that a distant friend or relative you hadn’t heard from in a
year was still thinking about you, and maybe sharing news about major
events of the past 12 months...."
Is she right? Do you send cards and Christmas letters? Has social media changed how you communicate around the holidays?
"... Drawing on data from the [Harvard] university's library collections, the animation
below maps the number and location of printed works by year. Watch it
full screen in HD to see cities light up as the years scroll by in the
lower left corner. ..."
4. There is a U-shaped happiness curve, consistent across cultures, that shows happiness declines from childhood until about our mid-forties and then begins to improve as me grow old. It appears it may hold true in primates as well. Our ability to discount bad news, even when we shouldn't, follows the same U-shaped curve. Our brains and experience are optimal for discerning bad news in middle-age. Turns out that ignorance (or maybe denial) truly is bliss. Viewpoint: How happiness changes with age. On a related note, it appears that Elderly Brains Have Trouble Recognizing Untrustworthy Faces.
5. The holiday season is in full swing and many people falsely believe this a time of elevated suicide rates. Actually, spring and summer have the highest rates and Nov - Jan have the lowest. In 2010, July was highest and December was lowest. Holiday suicide myth persists, research says
"Michael" was in the top 3 names for boys from 1953-2010. It dropped to sixth last year. Want to know how your name ranks for each year since 1880? Go to the Social Security Online's Popular Baby Names. The Baby Name Wizard is also pretty cool.
"For the first time in Barbie’s more than 50-year history, Mattel
is introducing a Barbie construction set that underscores a huge shift
in the marketplace. Fathers are doing more of the family shopping just
as girls are being encouraged more than ever by hypervigilant parents to
play with toys (as boys already do) that develop math and science
skills early on.
It’s a combination that not only has Barbie building luxury mansions —
they are pink, of course — but Lego promoting a line of pastel
construction toys called Friends that is an early Christmas season hit.
The Mega Bloks Barbie Build ’n Style line, available next week, has both
girls — and their fathers — in mind.
“Once it’s in the home, dads would very much be able to join in this
play that otherwise they might feel is not their territory,” said Dr.
Maureen O’Brien, a psychologist who consulted on the new Barbie set...."
And this reminds me of last year, or the year before, when cooking sets were becoming big with boys. They've been watching Emeril Lagasse on the Food Network. "Bam!" New merchandising angle.
11. Love them or hate them, the Koch brothers are intriguing. Many political junkies know of them but few others seem to know about them. Forbes has an interesting feature article in the most recent issue on the Koch empire and its influence: Inside The Koch Empire: How The Brothers Plan To Reshape America
14. "Data-driven healthcare won't replace physicians entirely, but it will help those receptive to technology perform their jobs better." Technology will replace 80% of what doctors do
"Scientists have designed an energy-efficient light of plastic packed with nanomaterials that glow. The shatterproof FIPEL technology can be molded into almost any shape, but still needs to prove it's commercially viable."
"... Last month, at the first ever conference of the Sustainable
Nanotechnology Organization in Washington DC, Michail Roco of the
National Science Foundation, and architect of the U.S. National
Nanotechnology Initiative provided a response. He said, “every
industrial sector is unsustainable…and nanotechnology holds the promise
of making every one of them sustainable.”
It’s my belief that that is true: nanotechnology, or the ability to
manipulate matter at a scale of one billionth of a meter, has
far-reaching implications for the improvement of sustainable technology,
industry and society.
Already, it is being used widely to enable more sustainable
practices. Safer manufacturing, less waste generation, reusable
materials, more efficient energy technologies, better water
purification, lower toxicity and environmental impacts from chemotherapy
agents to marine paints are all current applications of nanotechnology.
There is no reason for this technology to develop in an unsustainable
manner.
In the past, a lack of foresight has resulted in costs to society – people, businesses, and governments, and—
that could have been avoided by proactive efforts to manage risks.
Today, the tools to develop safer technologies and less harmful products
exist. Let us not miss this opportunity. ..."
"It used be that news of death spread through phone calls, and before
that, letters and house calls. The departed were publicly remembered via
memorials on street corners, newspaper obituaries and flowers at grave
sites. To some degree, this is still the case. But increasingly, the
announcements and subsequent mourning occur on social media. Facebook,
with 1 billion detailed, self-submitted user profiles, was created to
connect the living. But it has become the world's largest site of
memorials for the dead."
20. From the "That's just not right!" file. Harvard Economics Department does their version of "Call me maybe."
After years of bad headlines the industry finally has some good news
... Many papers have been raising the price of their subscriptions and
news-stand copies, which has helped to stem losses. But a more important
contributor to the change of mood in newspapers is what Ken Doctor of
Outsell, a consultancy, terms a “revolution in reader revenue”.
“Paywalls”, methods of charging readers for online content, have become
popular. The number of American newspapers with some sort of paywall has
at least doubled this year. More than a quarter of newspapers now have
one, and most big groups that do not have plans to charge for digital
access. This is a global trend: newspapers in Brazil, Germany and
elsewhere are fed up with giving away their articles for nothing on the
internet.
Charging for content online used to be the privilege of the lucky few, such as the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal,
offering market-sensitive information readers would pay for. General
newspapers opposed charging because they feared their traffic would
drop—and their fragile digital ad revenues would fall rather than rise.
Several factors have changed their mind. For one, technology has got
better and cheaper. Online pay systems were expensive to build and test,
but Press+ changed that. The firm, which was founded in 2010—and was
bought last year by RR Donnelley, a big printing and marketing
firm—licenses the technology for newspapers to erect a pay system in
return for a cut of digital revenues. So far 566 (mostly American)
papers have signed up, and 400 of them have launched.
Tablets and other mobile devices have also been a boon for news
organisations, because they make paid digital subscriptions more
attractive. Many newspapers have started offering “all access” editions,
bundling print and digital subscriptions (sometimes at a slightly
higher price). Executives say that if they can train people to pay for
digital subscriptions, they will be less threatened by print’s
persistent and inevitable decline, since digital editions bring in
fatter margins. ...
... But it has also become clear that digital advertising dollars will never
offset what newspapers are losing in print advertising—which is why
papers want to be less dependent on ad revenue. Advertising, which is
high-margin, has historically contributed around 80% of American
newspapers’ revenues, far more than in most other countries. This is
changing, mostly because advertising has slid so far. In the third
quarter the New York Times earned more than 55%
of its revenues from circulation, compared with only 29% in 2001.
Newspaper bosses say they are moving their papers to a model where they
get half their revenues from advertising and half from circulation. ...
The article goes on to explain that there are still many challenges and paywalls won't work for everyone. Advertising will still need to be a part of the mix and it is unclear of ad revenue decline can be stablized or reversed.
Do you have any pay subscriptions for news? Do you anticipate you would buy online subscriptions for one of your favorite news sources if they create a paywall?
Here are the links. BTW, if you haven't already, you can "like" the Kruse Kronicle Facebook page and see daily links in your Facebook feed.
1. When I was a kid, I used to watch Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom on Saturdays. That was the beginning of my life-long appreciation for big cats. One of the organizations we support is the Turperntine Creek Wildlife Refuge for big cats in Arkansas. Check out this Nat Geo super slo-mo video of a running cheetah. Be sure to go to minute 5:00, and see him from the front. His head barely moves. Just amazing!
7. If you are a man, getting along with the in-laws means you have 20% higher chance of not getting divorced. If you are a woman, getting along well the in-laws makes you 20% more likely to get divorced. Getting Along With The In-Laws Makes Women More Likely To Divorce
"The Supreme Court announced Friday it would review a case testing whether human genes may be patented, in a dispute weighing patents associated with human genes known to detect early signs of breast and ovarian cancer. A 2009 lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union claimed among other things the First Amendment is at stake because the patents are so broad they bar scientists from examining and comparing the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes at the center of the dispute. In short, the patents issued more than a decade ago cover any new scientific methods of looking at these human genes that might be developed by others."
I am guessing there are some bioethics questions to consider here as well. ;-)
15. 4.5 billion years of the earth's evolution in as if it happened in 24 hours.
"The Pew Research Center announced Nov. 29 that the U.S.
birth rate fell to its lowest level since at least 1920, when reliable
record-keeping began. That was true—but not news. The National Center
for Health Statistics reported that way back on Oct. 3.
What was
news was Pew’s analysis of the government data, which showed that the
birth rate decline was greatest among immigrant women. “We were the
first to point that out,” Gretchen Livingston, the lead author of Pew’s
report, said in an interview. ..."
... New research shows that Catholics now report the lowest proportion of
"strongly affiliated" followers among major American religious
traditions, while the data indicates that evangelicals are increasingly
devout and committed to their faith.
According to Philip Schwadel, a sociologist at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, in the 1970s there was only a five-point difference
between how strongly Catholics and evangelicals felt about their
religion.
By 2010, he said, that "intensity gap" had grown to around 20 points,
with some 56 percent of evangelicals describing themselves as "strongly
affiliated" with their religion compared with 35 percent of Catholics.
Even mainline Protestants reported a higher level of religious intensity
than Catholics, at 39 percent. ..."
"Indeed, for America’s Amish, much is changing. The Amish are, by one measure, the fastest-growing faith community in the US. Yet as their numbers grow, the land available to support the agrarian lifestyle that underpins their faith is shrinking, gobbled up by the encroachment of exurban mansions and their multidoor garages.
The result is, in some ways, a gradual redefinition of what it means to be Amish. Some in the younger generation are looking for new ways to make a living on smaller and smaller slices of land. Others are looking beyond the Amish heartland of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, seeking more space in states such as Texas, Maine, and Montana."
21. Finally, one of the things I found interesting about the presidential election was Team Romney's seeming confidence they were winning. I think every candidate who is losing often tries to spin things positively until the very end but I had the sense that Team Romney wasn't faking it. They believed they were winning. I think post-election analysis is revealing that was true. From The New RepbulicThe Internal Polls That Made Mitt Romney Think He'd Win
After years of offshore production, General Electric is moving much of
its far-flung appliance-manufacturing operations back home. It is not
alone. An exploration of the startling, sustainable,
just-getting-started return of industry to the United States.
... What has happened? Just five years ago, not to mention 10 or 20 years
ago, the unchallenged logic of the global economy was that you couldn’t
manufacture much besides a fast-food hamburger in the United States. Now
the CEO of America’s leading industrial manufacturing company says it’s
not Appliance Park that’s obsolete—it’s offshoring that is.
Why does it suddenly make irresistible business sense to build not just
dishwashers in Appliance Park, but dishwasher racks as well?
In the 1960s, as the consumer-product
world we now live in was booming, the Harvard economist Raymond Vernon
laid out his theory of the life cycle of these products, a theory that
predicted with remarkable foresight the global production of goods
20 years later. The U.S. would have an advantage making new, high-value
products, Vernon wrote, because of its wealth and technological prowess;
it made sense, at first, for engineers, assembly workers, and marketers
to work in close proximity—to each other and to consumers—the better to
get quick feedback, and to tweak product design and manufacture
appropriately. As the market grew, and the product became standardized,
production would spread to other rich nations, and competitors would
arise. And then, eventually, as the product fully matured, its
manufacture would shift from rich countries to low-wage countries.
Amidst intensifying competition, cost would become the predominant
concern, and because the making and marketing of the product were well
understood, there would be little reason to produce it in the U.S.
anymore.
Vernon’s theory has been borne out again and again over the years.
Amana, for instance, introduced the first countertop microwave—the
Radarange, made in Amana, Iowa—in 1967, priced at $495. Today you can
buy a microwave at Walmart for $49 (the equivalent of a $7 price tag on a
1967 microwave)—and almost all the ones you’ll see there, a variety of
brands and models, will have been shipped in from someplace where hourly
wages have historically been measured in cents rather than dollars.
But beginning in the late 1990s, something happened that seemed to
short-circuit that cycle. Low-wage Chinese workers had by then flooded
the global marketplace. (Even as recently as 2000, a typical Chinese
factory worker made 52 cents an hour. You could hire 20 or 30 workers
overseas for what one cost in Appliance Park.) And advances in
communications and information technology, along with continuing trade
liberalization, convinced many companies that they could skip to the
last part of Vernon’s cycle immediately: globalized production, it
appeared, had become “seamless.” There was no reason design and
marketing could not take place in one country while production, from the
start, happened half a world away.
You can see this shift in America’s jobs data. Manufacturing jobs
peaked in 1979 at 19.6 million. They drifted down slowly for the next 20
years—over that span, the impact of offshoring and the steady adoption
of labor-saving technologies was nearly offset by rising demand and the
continual introduction of new goods made in America. But since 2000,
these jobs have fallen precipitously. The country lost factory jobs
seven times faster between 2000 and 2010 than it did between 1980 and
2000.
Until very recently, this trend looked inexorable—and the significance
of the much-vaunted increase in manufacturing jobs since the depths of
the recession seemed easy to dismiss. Only 500,000 factory jobs were
created between their low, in January 2010, and September 2012—a tiny
fraction of the almost 6 million that were lost in the aughts. And much
of that increase, at first blush, might appear to be nothing more than
the natural (but ultimately limited) return of some of the jobs lost in
the recession itself.
Yet what’s happening at GE, and elsewhere in American manufacturing,
tells a different and more optimistic story—one that suggests the
curvature of Vernon’s product cycle may be changing once again, this
time in a way that might benefit U.S. industry, and the U.S. economy,
quite substantially in the years to come. ...
... Even then, changes in the global economy were coming into focus that
made this more than just an exercise—changes that have continued to this
day.
Oil prices are three times what they were in 2000, making cargo-ship fuel much more expensive now than it was then.
The natural-gas boom in the U.S. has dramatically lowered the cost for
running something as energy-intensive as a factory here at home.
(Natural gas now costs four times as much in Asia as it does in the
U.S.)
In dollars, wages in China are some five times what they were in 2000—and they are expected to keep rising 18 percent a year.
American unions are changing their priorities. Appliance Park’s union
was so fractious in the ’70s and ’80s that the place was known as
“Strike City.” That same union agreed to a two-tier wage scale in
2005—and today, 70 percent of the jobs there are on the lower tier,
which starts at just over $13.50 an hour, almost $8 less than what the
starting wage used to be.
U.S. labor productivity has continued its long march upward, meaning
that labor costs have become a smaller and smaller proportion of the
total cost of finished goods. You simply can’t save much money chasing
wages anymore.
So much has changed that GE executives came to believe the GeoSpring
could be made profitably at Appliance Park without increasing the price
of the water heater. “First we said, ‘Let’s just bring it back here and
build the exact same thing,’ ” says Kevin Nolan, the vice president of
technology for GE Appliances. ...
... For years, too many American companies have treated the actual
manufacturing of their products as incidental—a generic,
interchangeable, relatively low-value part of their business. If you
spec’d the item closely enough—if you created a good design, and your
drawings had precision; if you hired a cheap factory and inspected for
quality—who cared what language the factory workers spoke?
This sounded good in theory. In practice, it was like writing a cookbook without ever cooking. ...
... “What we had wrong was the idea that anybody can screw together a
dishwasher,” says Lenzi. “We thought, ‘We’ll do the engineering, we’ll
do the marketing, and the manufacturing becomes a black box.’ But there
is an inherent understanding that moves out when you move the
manufacturing out. And you never get it back.” ...
While this article is talking about the return of manufacturing to the United States and think caution should be exercised in be optimism about new low-skilled jobs returning. The United States manufacturing sector has been growing at a steady rate even as manufacturing employment has tapered off and declined. I think automation, not globalization, is the longer-term threat manufacturing jobs.
JCPenney can offer shoppers something no online retailer can: food and drinks to enjoy while they spend money.
CEO Ron Johnson said the retailer was planning on replacing traditional cash registers with coffee and juice bars, reports Sapna Maheshwari at Bloomberg News. A prototype he showed reporters in August included a Caribou coffee stand. ...
... Johnson has also announced plans to give associates iPads and eliminate most cash registers. ...
Johnson is the guy who introduced selling upscale products at Target and created the Apple birck and mortar model. He recently did away with most of JC Penny's model of using sales and coupons to bring people into the store and sales have suffered as a result. But this was only the first step in a move to remake the JCPenny shopping experience ... and I would say "experience" is the operative word.
Eight years ago, Joseph Pine did a TED Talk What consumers want. He explains that through most of human history we had a commodity economy. We grew things or extracted things from the ground. Then we figured out how to form commodities into goods. We became an industrial economy. But eventually goods became so standardized that they became commodities and everything was about lowest price. Then came customization of goods, which be definition entailed offering service that would distinguish goods. Enter the service economy. But now, due to the internet revolution, services are almost a commodity. What many people are now looking for is an experience from their economic exchanges. Studies already show that many people scope out products on the internet but still go to a brick and mortar store for the shopping experience.
It sounds like Johnson is in accord with Pine's perspective. Johnson's critics are legion right now. It will be interesting to see if he pulls this off.
As Google continues to build its high-speed Google Fiber network in Kansas City, more startups are moving into the neighborhood to make the most of the new service.
The first neighborhood to get Google Fiber,
known on the map as Hanover Heights but locally as the Kansas City
Startup Village, is the new home of early stage startups co-locating
near one another to collaborate, leverage resources and to build a
community based around growing a tech business.
“The number of startups in this region of several blocks is over 10
now, but it’s happened quickly and every day I hear of someone new
moving in,” Mike Farmer of mobile search app Leap2 tells Mashable. “The Kansas City Startup Village was not formed with some grand strategy or goal in mind — it came together organically.”
Leap2 is among the first wave of startups moving to the village. In
early November, the company — which was founded in 2011 — moved its
offices from a non-Google Fiber neighborhood in Kansas City to a
connected one. The KC Startup Village consists of other companies such
as Local Ruckus, Eye Verify, Trellie and Form Zapper, as a part of an
initiative to make it a new startup tech hub. ...
... From here [Des Moines] to Omaha to Kansas City — a region known more for its barns
than its bandwidth — a start-up tech scene is burgeoning. Dozens of new
ventures are laying roots each year, investors are committing hundreds
of millions of dollars to them, and state governments are teaming up
with private organizations to promote the growing tech community. They
are calling it – what else? – the Silicon Prairie.
Although a relatively small share of the country’s angel investment
deals – 5.7 percent – are done in the Great Plains, the region was just
one of two (the other is the Southwest) that increased its share of them
from the first half of 2011 to the first half of this year, according
to a report commissioned by the Angel Resource Institute, Silicon Valley
Bank and CB Insights. About 15 to 20 start-ups, most of them
tech-related, are now established each year in eastern Nebraska, a more
than threefold increase from five years ago, according to the Omaha
Chamber of Commerce. Today, there is more than $300 million in organized
venture capital available in the state, as well as tax credits for
investors; six years ago there was virtually none, according to the
chamber.
About a dozen start-ups have flocked to a single neighborhood in Kansas
City, Kan., alone after Google Fiber installed its first ultrafast
Internet connection there last week. And over the past seven months,
about 60 start-ups have presented their ideas in Kansas City at weekly
forums organized by Nate Olson, an analyst with the Ewing Marion
Kauffman Foundation. In Iowa, Startup City Des Moines,
an incubator financed with $700,000 in public and private money,
including a quarter-million dollars from the state, received
applications from 160 start-ups over the past two years. It has accepted
nine so far....
Yes sir! Everything is up to date in Kansas City! ;-)
"This patient capital movement has already attracted tens of millions of
dollars. Investors are driven by the opportunity to match their faith
with their finances."
Christian investment vehicles have always struggled. When the
FaithShares ETF launched in December 2009, it was to significant press.
The founders rang the opening bell on the floor of the New York Stock
Exchange, and the Christian and secular press covered their launch. The
funds allowed retail investors to put money into stocks based on the
recommendations of their denominations. Baptists could avoid liquor
while Methodists could avoid gambling profits. However, 18 months after
the high-profile launch, FaithShares went defunct.
Now a new movement is well underway that links Christian values and
emerging investment opportunities. This time, it isn’t retail investors
who are participating but the more affluent “qualified” investors.
They’re taking a new approach to their money, patiently allowing firms
the time required to obtain their objectives. They aren’t ringing bells
to announcing these new opportunities, but slowly attracting wealthy
Christian investors who want to earn solid returns, achieve social goods
like providing jobs or clean water, while also seeing spiritual fruit.
This patient capital movement has already attracted tens of millions of
dollars. Investors are driven by the opportunity to match their faith
with their finances. They expect to earn a return, but to see social
impact (jobs created, children in school) and spiritual fruit (families
seeking prayer from chaplains and churches built). The Acumen Fund, a
non-sectarian group seeking social good, defines patient capital as “a
debt or equity investment in an early-stage enterprise providing
low-income consumers with access to healthcare, water, housing,
alternative energy, or agricultural inputs.” The Christian funds also
seek some kind of spiritual return on investments of less than $2.5
million.
Andreas Witmer, a former member of the Pope’s Swiss Guard, began
studying Catholic theology and the free market economy after one of his
own investments turned bad. Witmer is now launching a debt fund and has
served as a kind of personal think tank for the movement. He’s the
author of The CEO and the Pope: John Paul II’s Leadership Lessons to a Young Swiss Guard. Despite his early questions, he has now determined that “business done in a virtuous way is a core constituent of prosperity.” ...
We live in a polarized world. I know few people who doubt that.
Through increased mobility and our digitally-enhanced ability to form
like-mined communities, we are segregating into echo-chambers.
Last Thursday I wrote about Moderating
Opinions by Confronting Confirmation Bias. (Confirmation bias is the tendency
to only take note of information that confirms our biases.) I suggested ways we
can resist confirmation bias as we wrestle with issues and gain better
understanding. But it is wrong to think that this will always, or even often, lead
to agreement on the truth of the
matter and a unified course of action.
I say this because many issues we wrestle with are not actually
problems. They have no solution. For instance, which is more essential to
breathing: inhaling or exhaling? That is an unsolvable problem. It pits two opposite
but interdependent realities against each other. Like breathing, many
challenges we face are not problems to be solved but polarities to be managed.
The answer lies in embracing both poles.
Dr. Barry Johnson, author of Polarity
Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems, uses a chart with
four quadrants to illustrate how a polarity works. The columns represent two
poles. The rows represent the positive (top) and negative (bottom) aspects of
each pole.
So let’s look at an example. The board for a congregation is
divided between those who want a regimented and well-planned ministry, and those
who want an adaptive and free flowing style of ministry. We’ll call Pole 1
“Planned” and Pole 2 “Free-Flow.”
Quadrant A - The positive side of a planned environment is
that everyone knows their responsibility. Lines of accountability are clear.
People know what to expect and how to plan. Resources can be effectively and
efficiently marshaled for a given task.
Quadrant B – Over time, life and ministry becomes stale.
Activities are done by rote. Creativity is stifled. Opportunities are missed
because the focus is on keeping the “machine” running. New people with new
gifts and passions have no way to plug in.
Quadrant C – The congregation moves toward the free-form
pole. The possibility of new dreams and visions is embraced. New opportunities
are identified and pursued. Creativity is unleashed. People begin to find new
ways to minister.
Quadrant D – Eventually chaos ensues. Overlapping activities
happen while other concerns drop through the cracks. Creativity is stifled
because there is no way to effectively engage the community. Opportunities are
missed because there is insufficient structure to mobilize people to action.
This pushes the group to Quadrant A and the whole thing starts over.
This oscillation is a natural and healthy part of community.
Polarization blocks the ability of this natural flow from happening. Our
confirmation biases can lead us to see only the positive of the pole we favor
and the negative of the pole we dislike. We may come to see the “problem” as an
insufficient commitment by others to our pole. As we become more entrenched in
our view of “the problem,” people predisposed toward the other pole of the
polarity, usually influenced by their confirmation biases, cling more strongly
to their pole. They define the “the problem” as departure from their pole. This
escalates into seeing opponents as “the problem.”
When polarization over a polarity emerges, the solution is
to regain a polarity perspective. If I gravitate toward Pole A, I need to genuinely
confess the downside of Pole A to those who gravitate to Pole B. I need to
express an appreciation for the upside of Pole B. That opens the conversation
to a discussion of balance, rather than of right/wrong or good/bad. It frees
those that embrace Pole B to be able to confess the downside of their pole and
the upside of Pole A. We cease seeing an issue as a problem to be solved and
begin seeing it as polarity to be managed.
This doesn’t mean that polarity management will always lead
to entirely satisfying decisions or resolve all differences. Most decisions require
trade-offs. We value options differently. We assess risks differently. We have
differing degrees of risk aversion. Sometimes we don’t agree on the practicality
of particular options, even though we agree on ends. But correctly identifying
polarities, and addressing them as such, leads to less polarization.
Working on our confirmation biases and being aware of
polarities can significantly minimize polarization. They will not resolve all
problems. Some things are not polarities. They have a binary quality. These
conversations move us into another set of issues. But those issues become more manageable
if we have learned and practiced the disciplines of depolarization where we
can. I’m convinced that our practice of these disciplines is always imperfect
and learning these disciplines is a lifelong transformational process. But the
rewards are well worth the journey.
In
a national online longitudinal survey, participants reported their
attitudes and behaviors in response to the recently implemented metered
paywall by the New York Times. Previously free online content now
requires a digital subscription to access beyond a small free monthly
allotment. Participants were surveyed shortly after the paywall was
announced and again 11 weeks after it was implemented to understand how
they would react and adapt to this change. Most readers planned not to
pay and ultimately did not. Instead, they devalued the newspaper,
visited its Web site less frequently, and used loopholes, particularly
those who thought the paywall would lead to inequality. Results of an
experimental justification manipulation revealed that framing the
paywall in terms of financial necessity moderately increased support and
willingness to pay. Framing the paywall in terms of a profit motive
proved to be a noncompelling justification, sharply decreasing both
support and willingness to pay. Results suggest that people react
negatively to paying for previously free content, but change can be
facilitated with compelling justifications that emphasize fairness.
... Beyond the United States, global statistics point undeniably toward
progress in achieving greater peace and stability. There are fewer wars
now than at any time in decades. The number of people killed as a result
of armed violence worldwide is plunging as well — down to about 526,000
in 2011 from about 740,000 in 2008, according to the United Nations. ...
... Most top Pentagon officials say the statistics showing that the world is
safer are irrelevant and don’t reflect the magnitude of the risks. The
result is what Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, has dubbed a “security paradox.” The world may seem safer,
Dempsey says, but the potential for global catastrophe has grown as the
planet has become more interconnected and potential enemies have greater
access to more powerful weapons and technology. ...
9. How much difference is there in the coming of age experience between Baby Boomers and Millennials? Mother and daughter team Robin Marantz Henig and Samantha Henig are interviewed about their new book: What’s the Matter With Millennials?
"The online startup Kaggle assembles
a diverse group of people from around the world to work on tough
problems submitted by organizations. The company runs data science
competitions, where the goal is to arrive at a better prediction than
the submitting organization's starting 'baseline' prediction. Results
from these contests are striking in a couple ways. For one thing,
improvements over the baseline are usually substantial. In one case,
Allstate submitted a dataset of vehicle characteristics and asked the
Kaggle community to predict which of them would have later personal
liability claims filed against them. The contest lasted approximately
three months, and drew in more than 100 contestants. The winning
prediction was more than 270% better than the insurance company's
baseline.
Another interesting fact is that the majority of Kaggle contests are
won by people who are marginal to the domain of the challenge — who, for
example, made the best prediction about hospital readmission rates
despite having no experience in health care — and so would not have been
consulted as part of any traditional search for solutions. In many
cases, these demonstrably capable and successful data scientists
acquired their expertise in new and decidedly digital ways"
A primary interest of mine is a theology of work. What would it mean to have radical abundance where no one needed to work? Kaku raises some important theological and sociological questions.
How businesses are doing more holistic ministry than ever.
With all the twists and
turns that led to his vocation, Chuck Proudfit might never have gotten
there without the quest for more efficient toilet paper.
He was fresh out of college working for Procter & Gamble at the
time. The company had scooped up the gifted entrepreneur after he
graduated from Harvard. Proudfit had already launched a laser-printing
business when he was a sophomore, selling it to Harvard upon graduation.
Now he was on the fast track in the Cincinnati headquarters of Procter
& Gamble. And one of his first jobs was to oversee a project whose
objective was to fit fewer sheets on a toilet paper roll.
And then, he says, he had "a meltdown." Surely, he thought, there was more to life.
He pursued that "more" while he advanced in the business world over the
next decade. That journey included running a large division of the
Gallo wine empire on the West Coast, then returning to Ohio as a
high-level manager for LensCrafters. All the while, he was reading
voraciously about the major religions, searching for the truth.
He finally discovered it, he says, in Christ. Proudfit says he was
eager to "apply my new faith to every area of my life, including my
work." But when he looked to his church for guidance, he was stymied.
"The local church doesn't deal much with everyday realities for the
working people in the pews," he laments. So, "more out of exasperation
than inspiration," Proudfit founded the Cincinnati-based marketplace
ministry At Work on Purpose (AWOP).
That AWOP formed independently of the church is common, says Princeton University scholar David W. Miller. Author of God at Work: The History and Promise of the Faith at Work Movement,
Miller notes that most marketplace ministries "have formed outside the
authority, involvement, or impetus of the church." What is uncommon is
AWOP's holistic approach to integrating faith and work among its
5,000-plus members in the Cincinnati metro area. It's moving past a
narrow focus on workplace evangelism to include ethics, social
responsibility, and citywide engagement—a model that more marketplace
ministries are embracing across the nation. ...
Tomorrow’s Youth Organization based in Nablus, on the West Bank, helps promising new women's businesses survive.
... TYO’s Women’s Incubation Services for Entrepreneurs (WISE) brought
back six businesses that had developed a foundation from their initial
women’s entrepreneurship program—Fostering Women Entrepreneurs in Nablus, and recruited nine additional female entrepreneurs by running advertisements in local newspapers, radio, and on Facebook.
The requirements were simple—businesses had to have a foundation or
business plan already completed, and had to be based in the northern
West Bank.
Candidates who responded to ads underwent two rounds of
interviews, designed not only to determine the entrepreneur's
eligibility for the program, but also to assess her strengths and needs
moving forward. Partnering with the Small Enterprise Center,
TYO sent their final 15 candidates to one-on-one coaching early in the
process in order to set their women up for targeted support and success.
Additionally, the year-long incubation project will provide marketing,
access to capital, and financial-growth trainings, as well as business
English and social-media training facilitated by last year’s Palestinian
TechWomen delegation.
When
planning for an incubation center, TYO kept in mind that the
conservative culture in Palestine often limits businesswomen’s
opportunities to participate in meetings, classes, conferences, and
other development programs. Furthermore, the psychosocial environment at times leaves women discouraged when they do not see immediate growth or results in their efforts to propel their businesses forward.
By planning programming in the mornings and weekends, TYO is able to
work around many of the restrictions on women’s mobility. Not only that,
but establishing the TYO center in Nablus as the base for WISE, they
are able to fill a gap by being the only business incubation center in the northern West Bank geared to women, and provide support to women who may not be able to travel all the way to Ramallah,
where such programs are more common. By serving as a support system to
the businesswomen, Samin and Inas Badawi—a local Palestinian—provide
examples of female-to-female support that is uncommon in Palestine, and
try to foster the same sense of encouragement between the women they
work with.
It is this model of American-Palestinian cooperation
that sets TYO’s WISE program apart from other entrepreneurship trainings
in Palestine. ...
Open source shouldn't just stop at the world of software. In fact, more and more manufacturers are warming up to the cause.
FORTUNE -- The term "open source" was first coined in response to
Netscape's January 1998 announcement that the company would make freely
available the source code for its web browser, Navigator. Since then,
the philosophies of universal access and free redistribution of source
code have revolutionized the software industry.
While we have seen how open source communities can foster creativity
and collaboration in software (think of the Android app store), open
source has not ventured too far beyond this space. This is partly
because software is inherently modular, instantly accessible from
anywhere, and easily altered.
Yet open source ideas have tremendous potential beyond
software. All you need to create a successful open source community are
participants who both contribute to, as well as benefit from, shared
content. Such networks of transparency, collaboration, and trust can be
tremendously beneficial in other industries as well, from
pharmaceuticals to manufactured goods. ...
... Although the open source model has not yet been broadly applied to
manufactured goods, there are promising emerging examples --
particularly in the not for profit sector. One nonprofit group, Open
Source Ecology, is experimenting with ways to cheaply construct from
scratch over 50 crucial machines, from bakery ovens to back hoes, with
basic materials. Founder Marcin Jakubowski publishes all the blueprints
and schematics for each piece of his Global Village Construction Set
(GVCS) on a Wiki for contributors from all over the world to access and
tweak. Groups throughout the country have developed blueprints for Open
Source Ecology, while machines are prototyped and improved on the Factor e Farm
in rural Missouri. According to the group's website, 12 of the 50
machines are in their prototyping and documentation phase, including a
microtractor, backhoe, and CNC circuit mill. Through this construction
kit, Open Source Ecology aims to lower barriers to entry for farming,
building, and manufacturing in rural communities, urban neighborhoods in
need of renovation, and developing nations. ...
Despite early signs of success, there are, admittedly, real challenges
to implementing open source principles to for-profit manufacturing. ...
Is God calling you to the workforce or full-time ministry?
Many Christian college students preparing to graduate feel as if their entire life rests on the answer to this question.
During my senior year at James Madison University, I watched plans to
become doctors and business leaders dissolve as many of my friends gave
up their dreams for "full-time ministry." I respected their decisions
and wondered if I could find the same significance in my "ordinary"
calling. As they began raising support to join campus ministry staff or
church plant teams, I applied for internships in Washington, D.C., and
tried to convince myself that my vocation would be equally meaningful.
I found some repose from the leaders in my church. They regularly
emphasized the importance of secular work in building God's kingdom. I
learned that I would find significance in any job, as long as I:
Exemplified Christ's love
Shared my faith with my co-workers
Donated a portion of my income to ministry
But I found this answer only half-satisfying. It explained how I
should interact with co-workers and steward my money, but what about
the actual work I was going to be doing?
I came across an article in Relevant Magazine recently, called "Kingdom Living from the Middle of Normal."
I was interested to see if author Kelli Trujillo's insights were any
deeper than what I had heard in church. Sadly, they weren't.
To find eternal meaning in your "seemingly mundane calling," Trujillo says that, among other things, we should:
Reduce consumption
Reuse and recycle
Sponsor a child
Donate your things
Buy fair trade
Buy local
So I guess the message is ... my office job means absolutely
nothing? While stewardship and charity are responsibilities of the
Christian life, none of these points have anything to do with the
"seemingly mundane" job itself. Trujillo nearly implies secular work can
only contribute to the Kingdom of God in areas outside the
nine-to-five, since the secular really isn't directly "God-related."
If I had read this article my senior year of college and believed it,
I would have immediately deserted my "ordinary" calling to jump on the
"full-time ministry" bandwagon. Troubled after reading this article, I
wondered if Christians had lost a true understanding of work as it
relates to doing God's work.
A few days later, ...
Read the whole thing. Elise Amyx is talking about the problem from an Evangelical perspective but Mainliners do similar things. Justice advocacy and compassionate ministries are what count as "real" ministry. There is no real theology of work and daily life.
Jobs going to other countries in China's 'great industry transfer'
Rising wages and shrinking export demand are forcing manufacturers to relocate to neighboring Southeast Asian nations and many that remain are seriously considering moving, a foreign trade official from the Ministry of Commerce said.
The official, who declined to be named, said that "nearly one-third of Chinese manufacturers of textiles, garments, shoes and hats" are now working "under growing pressure" and have moved all, or part, of their production outside China in what he called the great industry transfer.
Favored destinations are usually members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, especially Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia.
And in all likelihood, "the trend will continue" with more traditional labor-intensive manufacturers transferring production, he told China Daily. ...
... China's labor costs have surged recently by 15 to 20 percent annually, squeezing margins and driving some companies to bankruptcy.
According to the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, from January to June the minimum wage was raised, on average, by 20 percent in 16 provinces.
The minimum wage in Shenzhen now stands at 1,500 yuan ($238) per month, setting the highest standard for the whole Chinese mainland.
Many developing countries in Southeast Asia have lower labor costs.
The monthly wage for manufacturing jobs in Vietnam was, on average, 600 yuan in 2011, equivalent to the level of 10 years ago in Dongguan, an industrial town in South China's Pearl River Delta....
...But lower costs in other countries could soon change, some said.
"The advantage (of labor and production costs) in Southeast Asian countries will only last for a few years," said Chen Jian, a general manager of a garment company headquartered in Foshan, on the Pearl River Delta.
"The trend is just like what happened some 10 years ago when many manufacturing industries in Hong Kong and Taiwan moved to the Pearl River Delta to chase cheap labor. But now you can see how much our labor costs have gone up."
The tide of brain drain – from developing countries to industrialized nations – has turned. Human capital is returning home to Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa, while some European professionals squeezed by the recession, turn toward developing countries for advancement.
"Brain drain" – the flow of intellect and skilled labor from poor to rich countries – has been so constant in modern times that the Nigerian cabdriver who was educated as a doctor back home is just as much a fixture of New York City's landscape as a fledgling Broadway actress or Wall Street banker.
Academics and college-educated engineers from Brazil to China to Poland
have long set off for the world's more developed nations for better
opportunities, sometimes in their own fields, often behind steering
wheels or in fast-food or restaurant kitchens.
But now that tide is turning; immigrants no longer always see developed countries as a better place to be. ...
... Emerging economies not only are faring better than most of the developed
world in the current recession, they also continue to grow, drawing
back their expatriates and, in some cases, even luring new high-skilled
citizens of the US and Europe.
It is the "democratization of talent," says Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the nonprofit Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
"Everyone went to four or five English-speaking countries before, [and
all other nations] got the third-rung talent. Today, knowledge is no
longer monopolized anywhere." ...
... Benefits are not just measured in the individuals' skills or number of jobs generated but also in a host of ancillary benefits.
"When
you've lived in an OECD country and you see how things work there, I
would think you become less tolerant of a corruption, of things that
don't work, inefficiency, people sitting on their thumbs," says Georges
Lemaitre, an expert on workforce migration at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. "You want to see your own country with much more available services and with the efficiency that you are used to."
Such benefits, he adds, could become a global pattern in coming years, both from new migration and reverse migration.
In the meantime, those countries losing their allure could also lose their competitive edge. ...
... Grocery stores that found success on the internet are instead returning
to the physical world with a hybrid business model: the "virtual"
supermarket, a shop for smartphone users that carries photographs and
bar codes instead of food. After the success of locations in mass
transit stations from Seoul to Philadelphia, the virtual supermarket is about to hit the city above ground. Chinese supermarket giant Yihaodian announced this week it is opening 1,000 brick-and-mortar locations. ...
... Grocery stores want to reach time-starved commuters, but they also seem
to be capitalizing on consumers' desire to browse. It's one of the
reasons why many people at least claim to still prefer physical
bookstores, even as the monstrous success of websites like Amazon seem
to negate that notion.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Yihaodian has also experimented with
subway stores, but the announcement this week marks a big move back into
physical space. No longer will "virtual supermarkets" be only in mass
transit stations. They'll occupy actual retail space in the city.
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