October 2011
21 posts
“Consider the cosmic irony: wobbly Western economies are depending on the Chinese Communist Party to save their capitalist bacon. Likewise, the Chinese government’s grand scheme to rebalance its economy hinges on Western-style materialism.”
—Bill Saporito, Time Magazine
“We’re running through the United States with dynamite and rock saws, all so that an algorhithm can close the deal 3 microseconds faster, all for a communications framework that humans will never know—that’s a kind of manifest destiny and will always look for a new frontier.”
—Kevin Slavin, How Algorithms Shape Our World (TED)
“You know, we’ve looked at the math on this, and I estimate that 70 to 80 percent of the colleges in the U.S. are not generating a positive return on investment. Even at the top universities, it may be positive in some sense — but the counterfactual question is, how well would their students have done had they not gone to college? Are they really just selecting for talented people who would have done well anyway? Or are you actually educating them? That’s the kind of question that isn’t analyzed very carefully. My suspicion is that they’re just good at identifying talented people rather than adding value.”
—Peter Thiel (on what he calls the “education bubble”)
“Like housing was, college is advertised as an investment for the future. But in most cases it’s really just consumption, where college is just a four-year party, in the same way that buying a large house with a really big swimming pool, etc., is probably not an investment decision but a consumption decision.”
—Peter Thiel
Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?
Reading David McCullough’s 1776, I found myself wondering: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents? If so, when did American accents diverge from British accents?
The answer surprised me.
“The U.S. is slipping, by most measures of global competitiveness. It has dipped slightly in the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) rankings to No. 5, behind Sweden, Singapore, Finland and Switzerland. But the WEF rankings are based, in good measure, on surveys—polls of CEOs and the like. Other studies, using hard data, show America slipping further behind. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation finds that in category after category—actual venture-capital funding, research and development—the U.S. has dropped well behind countries like Japan, South Korea and Sweden. The foundation measures 44 countries and regions on their efforts to improve their competitiveness over the past decade. The U.S. comes in next to last.”
—Fareed Zakaria, The Hard Truth About Going ‘Soft’ (Time Magazine)
Robert Reich: The Rise of the Regressive Right and the Reawakening of America →
robertreich.org
A fundamental war has been waged in this nation since its founding, between progressive forces pushing us forward and regressive forces pulling us backward.
We are going to battle once again.
Progressives believe in openness, equal opportunity, and tolerance. Progressives assume we’re all…
Had an interesting discussion about this issue with my mom the other day. While I agree that the Occupy Wall St and other derivatives are certainly signs of frustration, I think the true tipping point lies where liberal and conservative agendas align in the face of government inaction. This is currently happening on infrastructure issues, where funds are scarce and municipalities are turning to creative solutions to achieve what would otherwise be solved with government funds.
An article I recently read in Time Magazine pointed out Philadelphia’s sewage problem, where rainwater runoff overflows the sewer system, which carries both sewage and wastewater, and dumps raw sewage to into nearby rivers. A new sewer would cost $8 billion, which the city doesn’t have. Instead, the mayor is requiring private landowners to create absorption zones, such as roof gardens and porous concrete, to slow runoff. The city saves $8 billion, becomes more environmentally friendly and the rivers stop running brown with poo. Conservatives and liberals rejoice at the federal government’s inability to help our cities by traditional means.
Unity is dangerous for our ruling parties, especially when it paints the government as useless. (Never mind that it is useless.) I suspect this will happen more and more for the reasons stated in this article—that one party is trying to create an impotent government that relies on private industry to get things done. Unfortunately for conservatives, there are far more poor people than there are rich, and those people will soon feel the effects of a less-helpful government. Further, the same media that has been used so effectively to divide us over the past 10 years can very quickly do the opposite, as we saw in Middle-Eastern countries during The Arab Spring. It’s just the early stages of this resurgence, but the disillusionment of a post-hope world and with meager prospects on the horizon, we may just be in for a revolution.
The Cost of Free Time
Inspired by a trailer from Mr. Sexyback himself, I got to thinking about the cost of free time. “Four minutes for a cup of coffee?” JT laments as he peers at the menu in a world where time is also its currency. It strikes me that very few people actually factor the time it takes to buy a cup of coffee into the total cost. We bitch and moan at the $4 artisanal drip coffee (I recently realized this is a fitting term, since many baristas are likely art students), but rarely about the $15 in time wasted while standing in line.
For instance, last night I wanted a cheap snack after the gym, so I walked over to McDonalds and spent 15 minutes ordering $2 worth of McDoubles. Yes, I spent 15 minutes eating nutritionally bankrupt food that costs only $2. So was it worth it?
Edmond Lau, Quora engineer and overall smarty pants, breaks it down like this:
Assuming a typical person sleeps 8 hours a day and spends an hour a day on basic needs like showering, using the toilet, etc., he’s left with 105 hours per week. If he’s working 60 hour-weeks with a $100K annual salary, his break-even spending rate is $47/hour pre-tax and $28/hour post-tax. [Assuming a 40% tax rate and no implied savings]
In other words, that 15 minutes cost me $7 ($28/hr * 15mins/60mins). Total meal cost, twilight-years-healthcare costs aside, is actually $9.
But, of course, there are other concerns. Thankfully, Venkatesh Rao, the brilliant and cheeky author of Ribbon Farm and the Be Slightly Evil newsletter (personal favorite), brings the underlying narrative and personal goals to bear:
For many serious coffee geeks, their morning, meditative 15 minute ritual of grinding fresh beans, making their cup etc. is what makes their entire life possible. Would you do a simple comparative advantage analysis and conclude they should hire an intern to make the coffee?
You are basically conflating subjective utility with objective “money.” The former is different, and is derived from a life-narrative that provides the context for decisions.
This type of limited analysis also leads to weird conclusions like “If Bill Gates spotted $100 lying on the street, it wouldn’t be worth his time to bend down to pick it up.”
I think that is just plain silly. Gates should, and probably would, pick it up, even if only to give it to the next homeless person he meets. He didn’t get where he has without having a certain respect for money built into his life-narrative.
Indeed, there are intangibles that we beg to be accounted for. It’s why I prefer writing in a chair in our lobby to typing at my desk. Is it worth the five-minute ($2.30) setup cost? Not from an economic standpoint. But when you factor in the increased productivity of comfort and focus, which can admittedly be made very tangible if desired, the equation becomes more complex. Infinitely so if we account for other situational factors like sleep, coffee, shoes on or off, etc.
But this comparison lies at the very heart of why we’re often more happy with less-researched purchases. The weight of research, both in time and cognitive effort, have high costs that we attribute to our expectations of the purchase. And when our Bass Weejuns turn out to be coated in polyurethane, it shatters those of us who performed deep-dive research on which brand is best. (Pull the damn trigger, sissy!)
So what’s the moral? Think about your time critically. Calculate the cost of your time when alternatives are essentially equal.
e.g. You can take a $2 bus for 45mins or a $15 taxi for 15mins. Both get you to your location, assuming you can allot enough time for both.
Cab = $22 ($15 cash + $7 time); Bus = $23 ($2 cash + $21 time);
The taxi’s privacy is a tradeoff for reading your latest book on the bus. (Nothing is ever 100% equal, but try to be rational. Pretty please?)
Lastly, don’t forget cash. We don’t all make $100k/yr, so cash can be very important. Most small businesses fail because they are undercapitalized. Most people end up in debt for the same reason. Time, while it has a cost, is not a cash cost. Monetizing time is merely an economic utility to help you weigh alternatives, but not an end in and of itself. Your family, girlfriend and even the sweet little pooch that cheerfully pees on your rug, should not regularly (if at all) be subjected to this test. (Though the dog begs some interesting comparisons.) There’s a fine line between frugality and dickish behavior. Choose wisely.
