Black Monday 2: Economic Boogaloo

[profloater]

The broken window fallacy may not be so false/ it has been shown that GDP rises after a natural disaster because of all the work needed. In that respect a broken window is not very different from a new window although the fallacy argument says there has been no wealth increase for the window owner.

[profloater]

anyone watching a group with mobile phones will soon see why there is no productivity increase. The trivial traffic on the world's phones must take up, guess, 90% or more of the installed capability. I expect there's a survey somewhere. When I was working on the technology many years ago tyhe market wisdom was that serious use of mobiles would not justify the investment. No one (ewell harly anyone) fore saw the take up by teenagers

[Ara Pacis]

anyone watching a group with mobile phones will soon see why there is no productivity increase. The trivial traffic on the world's phones must take up, guess, 90% or more of the installed capability. I expect there's a survey somewhere. When I was working on the technology many years ago tyhe market wisdom was that serious use of mobiles would not justify the investment. No one (ewell harly anyone) fore saw the take up by teenagers

LOL seriously. I don't have kids and yet even I remember that teenagers spend most of their evenings chatting on the landline, so it's no surprise they took to mobiles like flies to [blank].

As for productivity, I suspect people already stayed in contact enough to be productive, so cells don't do much to increase it except for professions that are mobile or on call already (which had been served by radio or pager before that). Moreover, intruding on private time with cell phones may be used by workers to justify wasting time at work. I suspect that this "on-call-ability" blurs the lines between at-work and off-work and creates stress and contributes to the mindset of being a good worker in a way that is deleterious to proper work-life balance.

I think it also has something to do with the all-or-nothing mindset some people have of employment. Perhaps it's why a shift to reduced working hours, predicted by some people, failed or happen. An example is vacuum cleaners (from what I've heard), which (while being a labor saving device) simply allowed and consequently socially required people to clean their carpets more often than once a year (more at once a week or once a day). Worse yet, the sacrifice of free time, monetary investment and sometimes dignity required to maintain a job causes people to experience Cognitive Dissonance, wherein they decide that their sacrifice must be worth something so they become over-bearing to those in other positions or professions that do allow a better work-life balance. (You may have seen this mentality in action a few years ago in a viral video where a guy in a crisp white dress shirt angrily tosses dollar bills at a old man with Parkinson's who wants a more efficient healthcare system.)

Or, to put this in terms for the more mathematically inclined here, where does that extra 10% come from when a manager asks his people to consistently give 100% to the company. I dunno about you guys, but I've been known to tell him to pull it outta his donkey.

[Hlafordlaes]

Or, to put this in terms for the more mathematically inclined here, where does that extra 10% come from when a manager asks his people to consistently give 100% to the company. I dunno about you guys, but I've been known to tell him to pull it outta his donkey.

Off topic, but worthy of an aside. I actually used to wonder at the value of C-level executives who act like psychopaths, know little about the tech or product, and push for unrealistic or even impossible goals. Used to think they were an unnecessary bane to be overcome. Now not so sure.

Things like analysis paralysis (), or an *excessive* desire to play fair, and misplaced empathy (people, after all, sometimes must be fired) can plague an organization that does not have an unreasonable alpha (male or female) pushing things. That pushing makes all the smart yet fair folks figure out ways to make the boss's impossible demands somehow work.

My $0.02.

[Ara Pacis]

Off topic, but worthy of an aside. I actually used to wonder at the value of C-level executives who act like psychopaths, know little about the tech or product, and push for unrealistic or even impossible goals. Used to think they were an unnecessary bane to be overcome. Now not so sure.

Things like analysis paralysis (), or an *excessive* desire to play fair, and misplaced empathy (people, after all, sometimes must be fired) can plague an organization that does not have an unreasonable alpha (male or female) pushing things. That pushing makes all the smart yet fair folks figure out ways to make the boss's impossible demands somehow work.

My $0.02.

That's when you apply the "Scotty Strategy". Tell 'em it will take twice as long to do as you think. Then, when you get it done sooner, you look like a hero.

[Extravoice]

On a related note, I once worked for a start up where the CEO explained that "at some point you have to kill the engineers and ship the product."
Fortunately, he was using the word "kill" in a figurative sense.

[Ara Pacis]

On a related note, I once worked for a start up where the CEO explained that "at some point you have to kill the engineers and ship the product."
Fortunately, he was using the word "kill" in a figurative sense.

"Art is never finished, only abandoned."

[Ara Pacis]

This sounds like scare-mongering, but maybe the facts are correct. The article looks at the stock moves by several billionaires in US stocks linked to consumer purchasing and concludes that they are following the advice/predictions of a 40 minute-long "secret" controversial video by former CFO of Goldman Sachs said Wiedemer that's suggests a market correction of 90% and an inflation rate of 10% in the US.

I haven't seen the video, but I think I found it and a followup with a simple google of "Wiedemer Video", assuming it's the Aftershock titled ones. Has anyone else seen it? Has it been mentioned in this thread already.

Thoughts?

[Hlafordlaes]

Some of those predictions were already made for 2012. As for the purported magic prescience, I was hearing about the danger of the housing bubble in 2004 already from a number of quarters, and it was glaringly obvious by early 2005 that the bubble was just that. And never take an endorsement from the WSJ as indicative of an honest assessment. News Corp.

And a 16% decline in the dollar, stated in one of the videos on the site, does not indicate an impending crash in its value, it is a natural outcome of the monetary policy; see Europe moaning about how that is unfair competition.

The main thing to keep in mind when someone says the US is about to tank and the rats are jumping ship, is that there is no better 'boat' in the sea and no safer shores. Slow growth in consumer spending, and not an imminent collapse, is enough to warrant large portfolio changes. Berkshire Hathaway looks for growth in share value, mainly, and that doesn't look good for consumer product companies over the next few years. So they are adjusting the portfolio. And?

Business-as-usual is being cherry-picked for the kind of ill news many shady characters make money peddling, or use to manipulate stocks. Methinks someone is short selling and trying to jump-push the bandwagon.