The rate of Black entrepreneurship has always been lower than for other communities due to systemic and overt racism over past generations. This CNBC piece does a good job explaining the ongoing obstacles faced by Black-owned enterprises.
The rate of Black entrepreneurship has always been lower than for other communities due to systemic and overt racism over past generations. This CNBC piece does a good job explaining the ongoing obstacles faced by Black-owned enterprises.
Posted at 08:47 AM in Business, Demography, Economic Development, Racism, Sociology | Permalink | Comments (0)
Alan Murray at Fortune summarizes a more lengthy piece by Geoff Colvin called Why every aspect of your business is about to change. Here is my summary of Murray's summary:
1. You don't need a lot of physical capital. ...
2. Human capital will matter more than ever. ...
3. The nature of employment will change. For the rest of your employees, gig work will grow. ...
4. Winners will win bigger, and the rest will fight harder for the remains. ... McKinsey Global Institute puts it: "tech and tech-enabled firms destroy more value for incumbents than they create for themselves."
5. Corporations will have shorter lives. The average life span of companies in the S&P 500 has already fallen from 61 years in 1958 to 20 years today. It will fall further.
6. Intellectual property knows no natural boundaries.
Fascinating stuff.
Posted at 02:39 PM in Business, Capitalism and Markets, Christian Life, Economic Development, Generations & Trends, Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Week: Walmart's wage hike proves we don't need the government to raise the minimum wage
There are lessons here for both left and right.
First, this should show progressives that the government doesn't actually have to mandate a minimum wage hike for wages to go up. There are other, market-based ways to get wages to increase, like tightening labor markets.
For companies, raising wages is not an exercise in philanthropy. It's a business decision. They'll almost certainly make it up in higher retention and productivity. ...
But
... Whenever a problem arises that progressives want to fix with some heavy-handed government intervention, conservatives respond that the market will take care of it — and they're very often right. But here's the thing: "The market" is not a demigod who lives on the planet Neptune. The market is simply decisions made by individual human beings, and human beings can decide to do some things and not others.
The progressive demand for government intervention often arises from cultural failures, and cultural remedies do not spring up magically into existence. They have to be created. Sometimes conservatives risk adopting their own version of the left's materialistic Vulgar Marxism when they think of "the market" as an autonomous force that drives history and doesn't leave room for individuals to choose to drive it in one direction or another. As the economic historian Deirdre McCloskey and the philosopher Michael Novak have shown, a thriving free enterprise system rests on the exercise of virtues and not just the laws of supply and demand.
If we conservatives think the federally mandated minimum wage is a terrible policy (and it is), we shouldn't just explain why it is a terrible policy, and we shouldn't even just support alternatives like wage subsidies. We conservatives should also actively make the case to companies like Walmart that they should pay their employees more. Same thing with rethinking work-life balance and careers for women. It's striking that we almost never hear the expression "civic duty" anymore; the reason why the demand for regulation arises is because people are no longer expected to exercise private virtue.
Important points.
Posted at 09:37 AM in Business, Capitalism and Markets | Permalink | Comments (0)
PBS News Hour has a piece Why employees earn more at big-box chains than mom-and-pop shops.
Contrary to widespread belief, big-box stores and chains have increased wages in the retail sector as they have spread, according to “Do Large Modern Retailers Pay Premium Wages?” (NBER Working Paper No. 20313). Retail wages rise markedly with the size of the chain and the individual store, according to the study by Brianna Cardiff-Hicks, Francine Lafontaine and Kathryn Shaw. As retail chains’ share of establishments has risen from one-fifth in 1963 to more than one-third by 2000, the number of jobs that pay better than traditional mom-and-pop stores has proliferated.
Half of the difference in wages between large and small retailers appears to be attributable to differences in the average skill level of workers in the two groups of firms. On average, better workers find their way to the bigger companies. With more levels of hierarchy than small stores, larger establishments also allow better workers to move into management positions, increasing their pay even more.
“The increasing firm size and establishment size that are a hallmark of modern retail are accompanied by increasing wages and opportunities for promotion for many workers,” the authors write. “While retail pay is considerably below that in manufacturing, pay in retail is above that found in service jobs… [These results] contradict the image of the retail sector as one comprised of the lowest paying jobs in the economy.” ...
An anti-consumerism Dickensian narrative frequently emerges among critics of big box stores. Wal-Mart (or another big box) moves into an area, drives out virtuous small businesses and their owners, drives down wages, and throws people into the cold uncaring machinery of greedy behemoth. The narrative is wrong at several levels.
First, there is considerable nostalgia and romance built into the preference for small businesses. In reality, relative to big box stores, small businesses vary widely in quality of management. Management and personnel policies are often subject to quirky whims of the owners. Cross-training to improve skills and opportunities for advance are minimal. Family nepotism not infrequently triumphs over meritorious performance. Wages are lower. Big box stores are better on all these fronts.
Second, stores like Wal-Mart do not tend to drive out small business. Wal-Mart’s major disruptive impact is on other discount store chains. In fact, Wal-Mart can be a boost to small business. By creating high traffic areas, small specialty businesses can open nearby and draw from the traffic generated by Wal-Mart.
Third, rather than drive down wages, these stores actually pay better wages than the mom and pop enterprises. The also offer substantially greater opportunity for learning and wage growth, even management opportunity. And if you think the stores are monolithic soul-sucking monstrosities, I’d invited you to read about Charles Platt’s experience as an editor for Wired who went to work for Wal-Mart to find out what it was like. See Life at Wal-Mart.
Finally, there is an additional indirect, but significant, Wal-Mart impact. Your standard living can improve in two ways: Increased wages and lower prices. The article makes clear that big box stores like Wal-Mart raise wages. But Wal-Mart also brings in a wide range of quality goods at low prices. It particularly does so for things like food, clothing, household goods, and medicine. These items make up a much higher percentage of the monthly budget for low-income people. Through low prices, big box stores have a positive impact on living standards that disproportionately benefits low income people.
When Wal-Mart stores open, it is not uncommon to have ten times as many applications as jobs. Wal-Mart tried to open a store in Chicago five years ago and one source published a map that shows support for the idea by Ward (See here.) The strongest support came from the poorest wards and support decreased as you moved up the economic scale. The big box stores offend the aesthetic and ideological sensibilities of the wealthy but low-income people overwhelmingly embrace them.
I do not give blanket endorsement to the big box stores but if my wealthier and more intellectual friends are truly concerned about justice and poverty, they may want to dig a little deeper than their moralistic anti-consumerism narratives take them.
Posted at 10:29 PM in Business, Capitalism and Markets, Poverty, Public Policy | Permalink | Comments (0)
Ivey Business Journal: Followership: The Other Side of Leadership
"... Followership is a straightforward concept. It is the ability to take direction well, to get in line behind a program, to be part of a team and to deliver on what is expected of you. It gets a bit of a bad rap! How well the followers follow is probably just as important to enterprise success as how well the leaders lead.
The label “excellent follower” can be a backhanded compliment. It is not a reputation you necessarily want if you are seeking higher corporate office. There is something of a stigma to followership skills. Pity because the practical reality is one does not reach progressively more responsible leadership positions without demonstrating an ability to follow and function effectively in a group. The fact is that in organizations everybody is both a leader and a follower depending on the circumstances which just adds to the paradox of the followership stigma.
Followership may take the backseat to leadership but it matters: it matters a lot! Quite simply, where followership is a failure, not much gets done and/or what does get done is not what was supposed to get done. Followership problems manifest themselves in a poor work ethic, bad morale, distraction from goals, unsatisfied customers, lost opportunities, high costs, product quality issues and weak competitiveness. At the extreme, weak leadership and weak followership are two sides of the same coin and the consequence is always the same: organizational confusion and poor performance. ..."
Posted at 01:53 PM in Business, Christian Life, Sociology | Permalink | Comments (0)
Christian Science Monitor: How focusing on profit can help the poor
Water technology company Xylem makes a profit on its foot-operated irrigation pumps for poor farmers. But those profits allow it to stay around to service its products and develop new ones.
When leading water technology company Xylem started manufacturing simple pumps for smallholder farmers, it wasn't for charity: The company expected to profit.
The new Essence of Life line caters to the everyday water needs of farmers with small plots of land, among some of the world’s poorest customers. Like any of its customers, Xylem expects these farmers to pay for the right product at the right price.
“Many of us in the water business – Xylem and its peers – are engaging in a lot of the same strategies: premium products in premium markets,” said Keith Teichmann, vice president and director of innovative networks and marketing at Xylem in an interview with Global Envision.
The new Essence of Life line caters to the everyday water needs of farmers with small plots of land, among some of the world’s poorest customers. Like any of its customers, Xylem expects these farmers to pay for the right product at the right price.
“Many of us in the water business – Xylem and its peers – are engaging in a lot of the same strategies: premium products in premium markets,” said Keith Teichmann, vice president and director of innovative networks and marketing at Xylem in an interview with Global Envision.
So Xylem developed the Essence of Life program to focus on the water needs of the 1.5 billion smallholder farmers who live on less than $2.50 per day, said Teichmann.
By doing so, Xylem became one of the few original equipment manufacturers making water management products directly for the individual smallholder farmer. ...
Posted at 09:14 AM in Business, Economic Development, Poverty | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Xylem
Huffington Post Business: Faith and Business - Michael Jinkins
The church has a knack for depreciating the vocations of the laity. Well, perhaps not all vocations of the laity. The church routinely blesses vocations like the helping professions and education, especially if they are in the not-for-profit realm. But the church is ambivalent, at best, when it comes to blessing the vocations of those folks whose business is, well, business. I find this troubling, since the overwhelming majority of Christians I know are working in the business world just making a living.
The problem the church has with business has as much to do with an ignorance of economics as a flawed theology of vocation. When pastors and theologians begin talking about economic matters, I often cringe, not only because of their lack of knowledge in the fields of financial and economic matters, but because of the thinness of the theological reflections. Usually such conversations reflect little more than the individual's biases dressed up in theological language to dress down someone else's interests. ...
Michael Jinkins is the president of Louisville Presbyterian Seminary. I can't tell you what an encouragement it is to hear a Presbyterian seminary president come forward and raise this issue. I have made the case in public and in private for just this emphasis for nearly ten years as I have served the denomination at the national level. I have made the case that church renewal begins when people begin to see the connection between what they do in their daily lives and God's mission. I occasionally caught an ear here and there but largely what I experienced was acute indifference. To hear the president of one of our seminaries acknowledge the deprecating (and I will add "demonizing" in some contexts) attitude toward people in business and lack of economic acumen is such an encouragement. Blessings on you, Dr. Jinkins, and may your tribe multiply among our denomination's hierarchy.
Jinkins mentions Presbyterian John Knapp's (now president of Hope College) How the Church Fails Businesspeople (and what can be done about it). I blogged through the book two years ago both here and at Jesus Creed. The index is here.
If you are interested in a couple of books about basic economics from a Christian perspective I would recommend Bulls, Bears and Golden Calves: Applying Christian Ethics in Economics, written by John Stapleford, a professor of mine when I was at Eastern University.
Also, Economics in Christian Perspective: Theory, Policy and Life Choices by Victor Claar and Robin Klay.
A Facebook friend linked this article this week, The One Thing Christians Should Stop Saying. I get the gist of what he is saying but I also have reservations. He is a businessperson and tells of how a friend asked how his business was going. He answered with his usual response:
"Definitely feeling blessed. Last year was the best year yet for my business. And it looks like this year will be just as busy."
But on further reflection he has concluded that it is wrong for him to say that. Two reasons:
... First, when I say that my material fortune is the result of God's blessing, it reduces The Almighty to some sort of sky-bound, wish-granting fairy who spends his days randomly bestowing cars and cash upon his followers. I can't help but draw parallels to how I handed out M&M's to my own kids when they followed my directions and chose to poop in the toilet rather than in their pants. Sure, God wants us to continually seek His will, and it's for our own good. But positive reinforcement?
God is not a behavioral psychologist.
Second, and more importantly, calling myself blessed because of material good fortune is just plain wrong. For starters, it can be offensive to the hundreds of millions of Christians in the world who live on less than $10 per day. You read that right. Hundreds of millions who receive a single-digit dollar "blessing" per day. ...
He goes on to talk about the beatitudes and talks about how it is the poor and the marginalized who are described as blessed. He concludes noting:
My blessing is this. I know a God who gives hope to the hopeless. I know a God who loves the unlovable. I know a God who comforts the sorrowful. And I know a God who has planted this same power within me. Within all of us.
And for this blessing, may our response always be,
"Use me."
Since I had this conversation, my new response is simply, "I'm grateful." Would love to hear your thoughts.
There is a lot of truth in this. I find myself strongly identifying with his observations ... and yet ...
What about passages like Deut 8:17-19:
“17 Do not say to yourself, "My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth." 18 But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today.” NRSV
I have been in small groups with countless businesspeople and entrepreneurs. What I hear from so many of them is a deep gratefulness for the opportunity to express what they understand as a God-given gift for creativity. They feel gratefulness because they can benefit their customers, their workers, their families, and, yes, themselves. When I hear them talk about being blessed, I don’t hear them saying, “I did all the right stuff, now see how God rewarded me.” Most are intensely aware of their shortcomings, they make endless mistakes, and yet they are still here in their businesses. They sense God’s presence with them in their work but I don’t get the sense that they think that those whose businesses fail do so because of a lack of God’s presence. They know people who have done everything seemingly right and don’t make it. They feel blessed in the sense that in God’s grand scheme of things, they are where they are.
What I worry about is the compartmentalization of our faith and the business world. If the businessperson claims all credit for achieving success in creating a sustainable profitable business, then we chastise her for attributing success to herself alone. But if she talks about being blessed in her work (i.e., God had a hand in her success), then that also is taboo because she is saying God withheld blessing from someone else who didn’t do well. In short, if you are in business, then you are only entitled to have vague feelings of gratefulness but not to see God as present in your daily life.
I’m not saying that the way "blessing" is used is without abuse. Someone in the comments section of the article talked about "blessed to be a blessing" as a corrective and I think that has merit. But I worry that the thinking in this article just drives a deeper wedge between faith and daily life. Maybe I read too much between the lines but it seems to me that the thinking here is evidence of a deep ambivalence so much of the church has about business and the people who make their living there.
Any thoughts?
Posted at 10:04 AM in Business, Christian Life, Vocation | Permalink | Comments (0)
Huffington Post: Why the Church Needs Business
... Beyond the mess that has been the Vatican bank, the Catholic Church can learn a lot from business. This may seem counterintuitive, but the same church that has (rightly) spoken out so forcefully on the excesses and the limitations of capitalism desperately needs some capitalistic skills.
How is it that so many seem to have so little expertise in what so many people take for granted? Not long after the financial crisis in 2008, one priest confidently told me, "Capitalism is dead." I asked him if he could still go to the corner and buy a hotdog. Yes, he said. "That's capitalism," I said. "It's not dead." A few days later another priest with a Ph.D. asked me, as he read about the financial crisis, "What's a bond?"
Whence the lack of business knowledge among otherwise smart and talented (and highly educated) men and women? There are two simple reasons:
First, many cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests, sisters and brothers now in their 60s and 70s (that is, those running things in the church) often entered their seminaries or religious orders right out of college, even high school. Thus, many (not all, but many) did not have the important experience of having to earn a paycheck, balance a checkbook, manage employees, read a balance sheet, invest in the stock market, and so on.
The second reason is more basic. Once in the seminary or religious order, business education was not a part of their training. This is an immense lacuna in the training or priests and men and women in religious orders. ...
In How the Church Fails Businesspeople (and what can be done about), John Knapp reports that one of the biggest obstacles the church has with influencing businesspeople to think more ethically and theologically about their own lives is the business practices of the church. A congregation's or denomination's sloppiness with finances, belief that fundamentally realities about business and economics can just magically be suspended, and, too often, defensiveness (if not hostility) toward sound business practices, causes businesspeople to tune out what the church has to say about material matters. The church holds no credibility. It is good to see that Pope Francis is recognizing the need for the gifted businesspeople to aid in the mission of the church.
Posted at 03:47 PM in Business, Christian Life | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: church finances
1. The 10 Worst Things Bosses (And Employees) Can Say
1. You’re fortunate we gave you a job. Few companies would have the patience and time to invest in you. Don’t make your employees feel like burdens. Encourage them to be better, but don’t condemn them for their shortcomings.
2. You look really good for your age. Beyond the legal issues this brings up of ageism, it’s in very bad taste to give such a backhanded compliment.
3. If you don’t like this job, there are plenty of other candidates standing in line. You’re lucky to be employed. This is a morale killer. If an employee feels like their job is in peril, they’ll be far more distracted at work and will likely start looking for a job elsewhere. ...
2. The 21 Unwritten Rules Of Meetings
3. Harvard Business Review on The Rise of Compassionate Management (Finally)
4. Why Happiness Is Your Secret To Productivity
... How you think is often more important than that you think, or even what you think. The characteristic separating the good from the great, the highly successful from the folks who are just getting along, is their ability to think about themselves as successful even while on the journey to greatness -- however "greatness" is defined for you.
An important skill is to think without acting: To plan. What do you want to be known for? What do you want to do? What is possible? Change begins with what you tell yourself and others. Change your outlook and you change what is possible. ...
5. I've linked this before but it needs a reprise: "Why I Think Nonprofits Should Act More Like Businesses"(While is understanding of Puritan history is a bit misguided, his overall take is very good.)
6. Wharton Puts First-Year MBA Courses Online for Free
7. Why Amazon Hides Its Cheapest Price (and Where)
Posted at 09:35 PM in Business, Links - Business and Management | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Forbes: Do Nice People Succeed In Business? It Depends
... So much for everyday life—how about the business world? That’s where Adam Grant’s Give and Take comes in. Many people implicitly think that niceness is a virtue for the rest of life, but when it comes to playing business hardball, only the selfish survive. The message of Grant’s book is that this isn’t true, and he gives us both scientific evidence and entertaining profiles for understanding why. Grant divides people into three behavioral categories: givers, matchers, and takers. As their names imply, givers are sweeties who unstintingly share their time and talent, seemingly for the sheer pleasure of it. Matchers calibrate their giving to their taking, and takers take whatever they can get. Who does best playing business hardball? It turns out that the givers do best and worst. When they succumb to the depredations of takers, they become doormats and chumps. But when they manage to work with other givers, they produce spectacular wealth and share the collective benefits. In other words, the costs and benefits of prosociality in the business world are no different than for the rest of life. ...
... In a video interview with one of us (David S. Wilson), Grant said that Wharton students are constantly coming into his office expressing a desire to give, which they assume must be suppressed in their business lives until they make a fortune. Only then can they express their desire to give by becoming philanthropists. If that’s the way that business school students think, then the message of Grant’s book is indeed revolutionary. We need to exchange lenses to see that giving can succeed as a business strategy from day one, as long as givers can keep their distance from takers. Businesses flourish when they create social environments that allow niceness to generate value, thereby winning the Darwinian contest.
Posted at 10:54 PM in Business, Christian Life | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: business, prosociality
MIT Technology Review: Technology Is Wiping Out Companies Faster than Ever
... Today’s S&P 500 includes many familiar firms, like Apple, AT&T, Corning, Ford, Intel, and Yahoo (and Hewlett-Packard, too). Yet at today’s fast rate of turnover, three out of four names on the list will be banished into obscurity within the next fifteen years.
Foster’s view is that big companies can’t ever out-innovate the market. Instead, he thinks that to stay big, companies need to be willing to exit old businesses and enter new ones—and do it quite boldly. (HP, by contrast, can’t decide whether to jettison its PC business.) ...
Posted at 09:52 PM in Business, Capitalism and Markets, Generations & Trends | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: innovation
Posted at 10:50 AM in Business, Generations & Trends | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Forty-one years after publication of the infamous Limits to Growth, Bjorn Lomborg offers this excellent piece, The Limits to Panic:
... But the report’s fundamental legacy remains: we have inherited a tendency to obsess over misguided remedies for largely trivial problems, while often ignoring big problems and sensible remedies.
In the early 1970’s, the flush of technological optimism was over, the Vietnam War was a disaster, societies were in turmoil, and economies were stagnating. Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring had raised fears about pollution and launched the modern environmental movement; Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 title The Population Bomb said it all. The first Earth Day, in 1970, was deeply pessimistic.
The genius of The Limits to Growth was to fuse these worries with fears of running out of stuff. We were doomed, because too many people would consume too much. Even if our ingenuity bought us some time, we would end up killing the planet and ourselves with pollution. The only hope was to stop economic growth itself, cut consumption, recycle, and force people to have fewer children, stabilizing society at a significantly poorer level.
That message still resonates today, though it was spectacularly wrong. For example, the authors of The Limits to Growth predicted that before 2013, the world would have run out of aluminum, copper, gold, lead, mercury, molybdenum, natural gas, oil, silver, tin, tungsten, and zinc.
Instead, despite recent increases, commodity prices have generally fallen to about a third of their level 150 years ago. Technological innovations have replaced mercury in batteries, dental fillings, and thermometers: mercury consumption is down 98% and, by 2000, the price was down 90%. More broadly, since 1946, supplies of copper, aluminum, iron, and zinc have outstripped consumption, owing to the discovery of additional reserves and new technologies to extract them economically.
Similarly, oil and natural gas were to run out in 1990 and 1992, respectively; today, reserves of both are larger than they were in 1970, although we consume dramatically more. Within the past six years, shale gas alone has doubled potential gas resources in the United States and halved the price.
As for economic collapse, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that global GDP per capita will increase 14-fold over this century and 24-fold in the developing world.
The Limits of Growth got it so wrong because its authors overlooked the greatest resource of all: our own resourcefulness. Population growth has been slowing since the late 1960’s. Food supply has not collapsed (1.5 billion hectares of arable land are being used, but another 2.7 billion hectares are in reserve). Malnourishment has dropped by more than half, from 35% of the world’s population to under 16%.
Nor are we choking on pollution. Whereas the Club of Rome imagined an idyllic past with no particulate air pollution and happy farmers, and a future strangled by belching smokestacks, reality is entirely the reverse.
In 1900, when the global human population was 1.5 billion, almost three million people – roughly one in 500 – died each year from air pollution, mostly from wretched indoor air. Today, the risk has receded to one death per 2,000 people. While pollution still kills more people than malaria does, the mortality rate is falling, not rising.
Nonetheless, the mindset nurtured by The Limits to Growth continues to shape popular and elite thinking. ...
... Obsession with doom-and-gloom scenarios distracts us from the real global threats. Poverty is one of the greatest killers of all, while easily curable diseases still claim 15 million lives every year – 25% of all deaths.CommentsThe solution is economic growth. When lifted out of poverty, most people can afford to avoid infectious diseases. China has pulled more than 680 million people out of poverty in the last three decades, leading a worldwide poverty decline of almost a billion people. This has created massive improvements in health, longevity, and quality of life. ...
The key issue here is innovation. Think in terms of a continuum. At one end is the ape from the opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The first human ancestor discovers the idea of using a large bone as a tool for manipulating his environment.
Further along the continuum might be simple tools like hammers and plows. They are extensions of the human body. Then come machines. Human beings are no longer wielding tools but are directing and servicing machines. Next there is artificial intelligence, where computers are able to make some decisions for us, as well as doing repetitive dehumanizing work. Finally, at the other end, might be something like the replicator in Star Trek, where you simply state your wish and a device rearranges atoms to create the desired object.
The problem with the Limits to Growth mentality is that it is locked into a current point along the continuum. It correctly observes that there is a fixed amount of resources in the world but it incorrectly assumes that economic growth means increased use of a materials at rate proportional to the rate of economic growth. To get the depletion date for a resource you calculate the quantity of a material known to exist, calculate annual present usage of the material, project a rate of economic growth, and subtract the projected annual usages from the total.
Total Resource/Current Annual Resource Usage = Years to Depletion (Increase economic growth and the years to depletion shrinks.)
Since the material quantities are fixed, the only variable is economic demand. Consequently, economic growth … whether the result of escalating wants and needs per capita or from increasing population … is unsustainable. (Similarly, take the current level of pollution and multiply it times the rate of economic growth to see how polluted the world will be.) Human innovation is nowhere in sight!
But we are not frozen at a point on the continuum. Human creativity is constantly changing the equation. Here is how.
First, in the short run, there is productivity. As demand for a natural grows it becomes more profitable to go after previously unconsidered deposits of that resource. For example, copper is everywhere but it varies in its accessibility and quality. Quality accessible cooper is the first to be used. But as demand increases, new techniques are invented for finding cooper, accessing deposits, and processing cooper. The Limits to Growth report estimated available cooper in the world in 1972 and projected we would run out of cooper by 2000. Today, not only have we not run out, but we are using more annually and the amount of available cooper has grown magnitudes larger.
Second, economizing. Figuring out how to do twice as much (sometimes much more) with the same resource changes the equation. Household appliances today use less than half the power they did forty years ago and often have features that were not imagined then.
Third, substitution of less plentiful resources with more plentiful resources, especially renewable resources. It is true that over a long time horizon that cooper would one day be depleted barring changes in consumption. But as productivity and economizing gradually lose their ability to keep cooper plentiful, the price of cooper will begin to rise. Recycling cooper will become more attractive. But even more likely is replacement of cooper by other alternatives. Think how much of our communication now is done with sand (fiber optics are made from silica) versus cooper (our old phone lines.) Furthermore, virtually everything made of nonrenewable resources can eventually be made using renewable resources.
Fourth, nanotechnology. We are in the beginning stages of manipulating matter at the molecular level. Nanorobots, about fifteen times the size of an atom, that can disassemble molecules and assemble atoms into new molecules. 3-D printers are already “printing” a range of items, including human tissue and organs. Scientists are developing printed food for long-term space voyages. Something akin to a replicator is not that unthinkable. The range of materials we can use for particular applications, our ability to manipulate matter at the molecular level, and our flexibility at forming matter into useful forms continues to evolve.
A finite stock of materials is not a limit to economic growth. That is not to say to we are without challenges. While many resources can be made more plentiful over time it is true that the very near term there can be shortages and injustices. Extraction of raw materials without adequate consideration for environmental impact could lead to horrific consequences. I’m not making the case that everything will magically take care of itself. I’m making the case that opposition to economic growth based on static zero-sum perceptions of the world that sees inevitable depletion of resources or over-pollution is groundless.
Posted at 12:23 PM in Business, Capitalism and Markets, Economic Development, Economics, Environment, Poverty | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: climate change, environmentalism, limits to growth, population
Business Insider: Why Some Companies Seem To Last Forever
... What explains this longevity? Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor Charles O’Reilly calls it "organizational ambidexterity": the ability of a company to manage its current business while simultaneously preparing for changing conditions. "You often see successful organizations failing, and it's not obvious why they should fail," O’Reilly says. The reason, he says, is that a strategy that had been successful within the context of a particular time and place may suddenly be all wrong once the world changes.
Staying competitive, then, means changing what you're doing. But the change can't be an abrupt switch from old to new — from print to digital distribution, say, or from selling products to selling services — if that means abandoning a business that's still profitable. Hence the call for ambidexterity. You can't just choose between exploiting your current opportunities and exploring new ones; you have to do both. And the companies that last for decades are able to do so time and time again. ...
I think there is a message for congregations and denominations as well.
Posted at 07:21 PM in Business, Christian Life, Ecclesia, Generations & Trends, History | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: corporations, longevity
Business Insider: 18 Extremely Religious Big American Companies
Talking about religion and politics can be dangerous among friends. It's doubly so for businesses.
That double-edged sword became crystal clear last year after Chick-Fil-A's COO made comments about the chain's opposition to gay marriage. It sparked a massive backlash from the media, gay and lesbian couples, and even the mayor of Boston.
The controversy also helped the company shatter sales records after former Arkansas governor and Fox commentator Mike Huckabee organized a "Chick-Fil-A appreciation day."
Many other big companies in America are also religious, including some that might surprise you. ...
I knew about most of the companies on the list. Did any surprise you?
Posted at 03:13 PM in Business | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Business Insider: 12 US Industries That Will Collapse In The Next Decade
The long decline of American manufacturing isn't over yet.
Fifteen of the 20 fastest shrinking industries are in the manufacturing sector, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report on job growth from 2010 to 2020.
Government jobs, especially in the postal service, are also getting axed. ...
14 US Industries That Will Boom In The Next Decade
There are lots of jobs in America if you know where to look.
The fastest-growing industries — according to a 2012 Bureau of Labor Statistics report — include ones tied to the aging population, like home health care services and offices of health care practitioners.
High tech industries are also doing well, and there's even a steady comeback happening in construction.
Between 2010 and 2020, the BLS projects an overall gain of 20.5 million jobs in America. ...
Posted at 11:10 AM in Business, Generations & Trends, Vocation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: industry forecasts, job market
Last summer I had the privilege of meeting Dr. Thom Thomson, professor of finance at the University of Texas. Dr. Thomson was in Toronto a week ago preaching at his brother's church, Every Nation, Greater Toronto. The topic was "Business as Calling." This is a wonderful presentation! You can find the 30 sermon at Faith & the Marketplace Part 2: BUSINESS AS CALLING or by clicking below. For some reason my player indicates it will 78 minutes long but it is actually about 30 minutes. (Disclosure: At 11:40 into the sermon the author of the controversial Facebook post was me. I was intrigued that Dr. Thomson picked up on this post because I have privately used the responses to to the post as an example of the deep cynicism toward business held by so many theological professionals.):
Here is the sermon setup:
A leading personal finance magazine published its list of the 10 best fields of study based on the potential they had of offering a steady, well-paying career. Some of you may already be pursuing these studies or are in these business areas, such as Pharmacy and Pharmacology, Nursing, Chemical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Management Information Systems and Treatment Therapy Professions. As we read the New Testament in the Bible, we come across other popular professions: Jesus was a carpenter. Paul was a tentmaker. And Peter was a fisherman. All noble business pursuits providing a valuable service to the community and offering a means to make a good living. Our city – Toronto – is built on business. So how does faith enter the equation? Does it have a place? This week Dr. Thomas Thomson, a finance professor at the University of Texas, continues our series by giving us a fresh perspective on how faith can positively affect business and how business can be a worthy calling. Join us, and bring a friend, to Innis Town Hall at 10:30 a.m.
Posted at 03:37 PM in Business, Christian Life, Theology, Vocation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: business, calling, vocation
Time: Forget ‘Buy American’? U.S. Retailers Push an ‘Imports Work’ Campaign
... 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.
Posted at 09:49 PM in Business, Capitalism and Markets | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: Protectionism
Forbes: New App Lets You Boycott Koch Brothers, Monsanto And More By Scanning Your Shopping Cart
... 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 Google GOOG +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 & Johnson JNJ +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. ...
Posted at 10:18 AM in Business, Christian Life, Public Policy, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Web) | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: buycott
The High Calling: Six Ideas on How to Lead Congregations to Integrate Work and Discipleship
“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?
Posted at 08:36 AM in Business, Christian Life, Ecclesia, Theology, Vocation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: theology of work, vocation
Christian Science Monitor: Protecting land rights using Wikipedia-style maps
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.
Posted at 11:18 AM in Business, Economic Development, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Web) | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: property rights
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."
Posted at 11:35 AM in Business, Vocation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: servant leadership
I came across this quote a couple of weeks ago by Luis Zinagles in his article Capitalism After the Crisis (HT: Carpe Diem)
True capitalism lacks a strong lobby.
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.
Posted at 02:16 PM in Business, Capitalism and Markets | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: capitalism, free market, pro-business, pro-market
Christianity Today: Why Tim Keller Wants You to Stay in That Job You Hate
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. ...
Posted at 06:38 PM in Business, Christian Life, Vocation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: vocation, work
PBS: The Truth About Entrepreneurs: Twice As Many Are Over 50 than Under 25
... 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. ...
Posted at 11:10 AM in Business, Economic Development, Vocation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: Entrepreneurs
Intercollegiate Review: How to Find Your Vocation in College - Gene Veith
... 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.
Posted at 06:05 PM in Business, Christian Life, Vocation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: Gene Veith, vocation
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.
Posted at 04:01 PM in Business, Capitalism and Markets, Christian Life | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: charity, nonprofit
Wired: Does ‘Big Data’ Mean the Demise of the Expert — And Intuition?
... 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. ...
Posted at 09:33 AM in Business, Christian Life, Sociology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: big data
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. ...
3. Speaking of technology and its impact on industries Technology Upends Another Industry: Homebuilding
4. Businessweek has a piece about Indie Capitalism
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.
5. Business Insider reports on Why Manufacturing Jobs Are Returning To America For The First Time In Decades
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.
6. 3-D Printed Car Is as Strong as Steel, Half the Weight, and Nearing Production.
"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. ..."
7. And more about 3-D Printing. 3D Printing On The Frontlines — Army Deploying $2.8M Mobile Fabrication Labs.
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? ...
8. And how about 4-D printing? 4D Printing Is The Future Of 3D Printing And It’s Already Here
"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."
7. The New York Times reports that Music Industry Sales Rise, and Digital Revenue Gets the Credit
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.
The Economist also posted this chart this week:
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?"
9. Europe's Youth Unemployment Nightmare Started Long Before The Euro Crisis
"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."
10. Benjamin Wright - Book Review: God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life by Gene Edward Vieth, Jr.
11. Rough Type: Students to e-textbooks: no thanks
"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."
12. How Many Ph.D.'s Actually Get to Become College Professors?
13. Top 10 Causes of Death in the U.S.
14. ABC reports that Young Hispanics Leaving Catholic Church for Protestant Faith
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.
15. Robert Jones says Don't write off mainline Protestants
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.
17. Bruce Fieler has an interesting piece in the Atlantic. Want to Give Your Family Value and Purpose? Write a Mission Statement
Posted at 03:54 PM in Business, Capitalism and Markets, Christian Life, Demography, Ecclesia, Economics, Education, Politics, Public Policy, Religion, Saturday Links, Sociology, Sports and Entertainment, Technology, Technology (Manufacturing & Construction)), Technology (Transportation & Distribution) | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Atlantic Cities has an interesting piece about the rise of the freelance economy. The Geography of America's Freelance Economy.
... 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.
Posted at 08:56 AM in Business, Vocation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: freelance economy, self-employed
1. Christian History magazine has an entire issue devoted to Christians in the New Industrial Economy: The World Changed, the Church Responded. It is a priceless collection of essays on how various religious traditions responded to (or failed to) the challenges of the Industrial Revolution.
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.
2. Orange County Register says Don't count out mainline Protestants yet.
As flocks shrink, denominations that once defined America fight to stay relevant with new ways of reaching out.
3. The Washington Post reports that Megachurches thriving in tough economic times.
"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. ..."
4. Harvard Business Review: Steve Blank on Why Big Companies Can't Innovate
... 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
6. The rise of post-industrial China? (Economist)
7. New Geography thinks, U.S. LATE TO THE PARTY ON LATIN AMERICA, AFRICA.
"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.
9. A Portrait of U.S. Immigrants
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.
10. Marketing Daily says More Latinos See Themselves As Bicultural
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."
12. Being a Republican or a Democrat may all be in your head: Republican Brains Differ From Democrats' In New FMRI Study
... 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. ...
13. Health Care Without the Doctors Coming to a Walmart Near You
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." ...
14. Is this a case of marketing going too far? Young Japanese Women Rent Out Their Bare Legs as Advertising Space
15. Nanotechnology Rebuilds the Periodic Table
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. ...
16. ExtremeTech says NASA’s cold fusion tech could put a nuclear reactor in every home, car, and plane.
17. Atlantic Cities has some great maps showing the impact of railroads on travel time in the early 19th Century, thus shrinking the nation. A Mapped History of Train Travel in the United States
18. A soccer goalie's worst nightmare.
19. You might want to think twice before a game of horse with this cheerleader.
Posted at 03:28 PM in Africa, Asia, Business, Capitalism and Markets, China, Christian Life, Demography, Ecclesia, Economic Development, Economics, Health, History, Politics, Saturday Links, Science, Sociology, South America, Sports and Entertainment, Technology (Energy), Technology (Manufacturing & Construction)), Technology (Transportation & Distribution), Weatlh and Income Distribution | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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!
1. Strategic Planning and the "Vision Thing" -- Fire, Not Fluff.
"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."
2. Some good thoughts on strategies we should all consider in trying to address controversial issues. Five simple lessons from Shane Windmeyer’s friendship with Chick-fil-A’s Dan Cathy
3. Anticipating a move? Here's Everything You Should Consider Before Moving To A New City
4. Jordan Ballor has some thoughts on subsidiarity at Political Theology. Subsidiarity ‘From Below’
"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."
5. Business Insider offers 21 Surprising Facts About Illegal Immigration.
6. Sarah Posner has an interesting piece. ‘New Evangelical’-Progressive Alliance? Not So Fast
"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."
7. What has the iPad meant to Apple? A picture says a thousand words. A decade of Apple 'computer' sales
8. Extinction of millions of species 'greatly exaggerated'
"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."
9. Turns out once culprit in species extinction may be curled up in your lap. Cats Are Ruthless Killers. Should They Be Killed?
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.)
11. The evolutionary plot thickens. Who Was the First Human Ancestor?
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."
13. More interesting findings early civilization in the Americas. Research Confirms Massive Louisiana Mound Was Built By Archaic Native Americans In Less Than 90 Days.
14. Melissa and I love history and we have always loved old cemeteries. This story makes me sad. Black history dies in neglected Southern cemeteries
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?
Posted at 10:12 AM in Business, Christian Life, Culture, Environment, Evolution, History, Politics, Public Policy, Religion, Saturday Links, Science, Sports and Entertainment | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Harvard Business Review Blog: Manufacturing Jobs and the Rise of the Machines
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.
I too wonder about this.
Posted at 04:38 PM in Business, Generations & Trends, Technology, Technology (Manufacturing & Construction)) | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: automation, employment, manufacturing, technology
1. Lots of news outlets picking up on this story about technology displacing humans. In The Future, Machines May Have All The Jobs. We all know where this leads.
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.
2. Has the ideas machine broken down?
"The idea that innovation and new technology have stopped driving growth is getting increasing attention. But it is not well founded."
3. Business Insider reports that The Worldwide Demographic Cliff Is Going To Be Brutal
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.
4. San Antonio plans one of the nation's first bookless libraries
"... 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.” ..."
5. Some good thoughts on The 10 Things Entrepreneurs Waste The Most Time On
6. College freshman survey: finance worries up, liberalism down
"UCLA's survey of incoming college freshmen shows fewer identify as liberals and an increasing number saying the economy significantly affected their college choice."
7.Walter Russell Mead on The End of the Religious Right?
"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."
9. How did Fido become domesticated by humans? Dog evolved 'on the waste dump'
10. Any volunteers? Harvard Professor Seeks Woman Willing To Have A Neanderthal Baby
11. A fascinating history of high heels. Why did men stop wearing high heels?
That's all for this week. Like the Kruse Kronicle at Facebook.
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."
And I like this video clip:
CommonGood RVA from This Is Our City on Vimeo.
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 Future Issue, 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!
3. Human beings are notoriously bad at evaluating probability and risk I hope to do some blogging on this in the not too distant future. For now, Business Insider has 'The Birthday Problem' Shows How Terrible We Are At Estimating Probability.
4. The Atlantic reports on a study concluding Wanting Things Makes Us Happier Than Having Them
"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.
6. Whole Foods Founder Says Too Many Companies Get Capitalism Wrong
"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."
7. Fortune has a great piece on Why innovation is so hard.
"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."
8. We've all been watching Lance Armstrong this week. Beware! Study Finds That Having Power Can Make You Stupid
9. More on the continuing evolution of the print industry in The Growing Adoption of Creative Commons Textbooks and Nation's First Bookless Public Library Could Be in Texas.
10. Paper-Thin Computer Debuts at CES
11. Scientist reveal that Star Wars And Star Trek Got Warp Speed Totally Wrong.
"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.
Posted at 11:29 AM in Business, Capitalism and Markets, Christian Life, Economics, Science, Technology, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Web), Vocation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: bookless public library, capitalism, Common Good RVA, Creative Commons Textbooks, innovation, John von Neumann, leadership, manufacturing, outsourcing, Paper-Thin Computer, probability, risk assessment, technology, theology of work, vocation, warp speed
askblog: Why Large Corporations? - Arnold Kling
Kling writes:
... Some possibilities:
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.
Posted at 11:35 AM in Business, Economics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: industry size, large corporations
Business Insider: Your Personality Has Everything To Do With How Well You Invest
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. ...
Posted at 08:19 PM in Business, Christian Life | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: investing, Myers-Briggs, personality
Christian Science Monitor: Hope for US economy: Young black men as entrepreneurs
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. ...
Posted at 08:26 AM in Business, Economic Development | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: african american men, black men, entrepreneurs
2. Want a higher paying occupation? Here Are The Jobs With The Biggest Wage Growth Right Now
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.)
4. Speaking of transitions to digital media, Business Insider shows that Old Media Is Alive And Rocking
5. This fascinating chart shows Inflation Since 1775 And How It Took Off In 1933
6. Want to live to a ripe old age? US News reports on What People Who Live to 100 Have in Common.
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
9. This has to be a new low technological achievement: a sensor-filled smartfork that tells you when you're eating to much. Medieval Tines: A Brief History of the Fork
10. And this has to be the Holy Grail of technology cool! Star Trek-Inspired 'CommBadge' Gives You Handsfree Access to iPhone, Android
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Posted at 11:37 AM in Africa, Business, Demography, Economic Development, Economic News, Generations & Trends, Health, Male and Female, Saturday Links, Sports and Entertainment, Technology, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Web), Vocation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: africa, CDs, CommBadge, economic development, high paying jobs, inflation, live to be 100, longevity, music, old age, old media, ozwald boateng, smartfork, star trek, traditional media, voice training
Atlantic: 'Don't Ask, Don't Get': How to Fix the Gender Gap in Salary Negotiations
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. ...
Posted at 08:53 PM in Business, Male and Female, Weatlh and Income Distribution | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: Pay inequity, women's wages
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1. Several articles I saw this week are reflecting on data presented in The Pew Forum's The Global Religious Landscape: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Major Religious Groups as of 2010. Here is one interesting chart from the survey, showing what percentage of each religions's adherents live in minority religious status in their own country.
2. This is really fascinating. Smithsonian: Why Japan is Obsessed with Kentucky Fried Chicken on Christmas. “Kurisumasu ni wa kentakkii!” (Kentucky for Christmas!)
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?
4.From the Guardian, Private healthcare: the lessons from Sweden
"... 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". ..."
5. Scott Annan writes in The Future Of Business Is Morality, And The Future Is Now
"... 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. ..."
6. Scientific American asks, After 40 Years, Has Recycling Lived Up to Its Billing?
7. AOL has a short piece about the rise of small nuclear reactors. The Next Big Thing in Nuclear Power: Going Small
8. Scientific American has a list of The Top 10 Science Stories of 2012.
9. Depression Surpasses Asthma as Top Disability Problem among U.S. and Canadian Teens"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."
10. Robotic arm controlled by the mind allows paraplegic woman to feed herself
11. Interesting piece on Why We Prefer Masculine Voices (Even in Women).
12. Atlantic Cities looks into The Mystery of Our Declining Mobility.
13. People Are Leaving California In Record Numbers
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. ...
14. The United States Has Seen A Huge Drop In Executions Since 2000.
"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.16. The New York Times has an opinion piece by John Dickerson, The Decline of Evangelical America
"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.
17. I saw two interesting posts on the sociology Facebook this week. The New York Times had a piece about announcing bad news on Facebook: On Facebook, Bad With the Good. Mashable reports that Socioeconomic Status Predicts Number of Facebook Friends.18. Gangnam Style hits one billion views on YouTube. K pop rules!
Posted at 06:58 AM in Business, Christian Life, Culture, Demography, Environment, Europe, Generations & Trends, Health, International Affairs, Poverty, Public Policy, Religion, Saturday Links, Science, Social Media, Sports and Entertainment, Technology (Biotech & Health), Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Web), Technology (Energy) | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: Asthma, business, Death Penalty, Depression, evangelical, Executions, facebook, Gangnam Style, givedirectly, Global Religious Landscape, harvard, healthcare, japan, kentucky fried chicken, kfc, Masculine Voices, migration, mit, mobility, morality, nuclear power, pew forum, Robotic arm, small nuclear reactors, social media, sweden
Posted at 08:50 AM in Business, Generations & Trends | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: advertisements, google, print media
Atlantic: Showing the American Manufacturing Worker Is Suddenly an Incredible Bargain
This month's Atlantic magazine predicts that we are on the verge of a 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. ...
Posted at 10:13 AM in Business, Generations & Trends, Globalization, Technology (Manufacturing & Construction)) | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: in-sourcing, manufacturing, outsourcing
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. ...
Posted at 03:09 PM in Business, Generations & Trends, Vocation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: employment, jobs, occupations
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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's The Founding Brothers)
2. Our prayers are with families of the victims at the Sandy Hook elementary school. Grace and peace to the entire community.
In the wake of the horrific shooting, more debate about gun control is certain to surface. The Atlantic has some useful charts showing the nuanced take Americans have on gun rights and gun control. Do Americans Want More or Less Gun Control? Both, Actually The Christian Science Monitor also has this piece: What gun control laws might US voters support?
3. Traffic deaths in 2011 fewest in six decades
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. ...
4. Obesity in Young Is Seen as Falling in Several Cities
... 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....
5. In Girl’s Last Hope, Altered Immune Cells Beat Leukemia
....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. ...
6. The CDC says Chlamydia, gonorrhea cases increasing
....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?!
8. Washington State Senate: Republicans Claim Majority After Democrats Defect. That makes two states were Democrats have won majorities in the state Senate and then a small number of Democrats decide to caucus with Republicans, giving Republicans the majority. The same thing happened in the New York Senate last week.
9. One-party dominance grows in states
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
14. Carpe Diem: World manufacturing output, 201115. 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
16. Scientific American has a interesting article on the potential impact of 3-D Priting: Why 3-D Printing Matters for "Made in U.S.A."
... 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. ...
17. Popular Mechanics is celebrating its 110th anniversary. In celebration, they are publishing 110 Predictions For the Next 110 Years.
18. Scot McKnight has a great post reflecting on the (false, IMO) equation of progressive with prophetic: The Prophetic is the Progressive
19. Dirk Kurbjuweit offers some interesting insights into Why Germany Can't Shed Its Troubling Past.
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!
Posted at 09:06 AM in Africa, Business, Capitalism and Markets, China, Christian Life, Demography, Economic News, Environment, Generations & Trends, Health, International Affairs, Politics, Saturday Links, Sports and Entertainment, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Web), Technology (Energy), Technology (Food & Water), Technology (Manufacturing & Construction)) | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: 3-D Printing, aids, childhood obesity, Chlamydia, constitution, democrats, Egypt, environmentalism, fracking, German history, gonorrhea, gun control, Leonardo Bonucci, Leukemia, liberals, Mannequins, Michael Cheshire, mondernist environmentalist, popular science, predictions, progressive, prophetic, redemption, republicans, right to work, Sandy Hook, shooting, soccer, super majorities, Ted Haggard, traffic deaths, world manufacturing output
Fortune: Why stores are finally turning on to WiFi
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. ...
Posted at 05:28 PM in Business, Social Media, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Web) | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: in-store wifi
Business Insider: One-Third Of Americans Are Working For Themselves
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. ...
Posted at 01:01 PM in Business, Generations & Trends, Vocation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: self-employment, unemployment
Business Insider: Here Are The Most And Least Happy Careers
For more top 10 employment lists go to myplan.com.
Posted at 09:25 AM in Business, Christian Life, Vocation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: career satisfaction, employment
Time: Why I’ve Stopped Sending Holiday Photo Cards
"... 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?Posted at 05:31 PM in Business, Social Media | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: facebook, greeting cards, holiday photo cards, social media