A Good Christian Raisin’ and a Eighth Grade Education
I just realized last night why the ol’ gov’ment is so concerned about the stock market’s behavior over the last couple of weeks–they are afraid of competition. Â I’m not talking about competition among business operating in an free market. Â I’m talking about the free market’s competition with the gov’ment.
Up until now, the only way to achieve the negative returns people have seen in their 401ks was Social Security.Â
For the free market.
I’ll take any motherfucker’s money if they’re giving it away.”
–Clay Davis
One of the biggest arguments I read against allowing the market to solve problems like health care and fuel costs is that the market simply can’t do it. Why not?
The argument goes that these businesses, along with the pharmaceutical companies, are basically government supported monopolies. They’ve been allowed to run roughshod over the consumer, charging outrageous prices and raking in cash left and right while the average person suffers from their oppression. How did this happen?
The argument goes that politicians are bought and paid for by these companies. They have highly paid lobbyists who influence legislation that allows their industries to thrive, and they have friends in high places that are former board members and/or holders of large portions of their stocks.
According to the argument, the government, politicians, regulatory commissions, and entire bureaucracies are basically extensions of these powerful corporations and are nothing more than puppets held by Wall Street strings. It’s actually a pretty convincing argument, and from what I’ve seen recently seems pretty reasonable.
Now let me get this straight–the solutions to these problems lie in government? According to the argument, isn’t that the cause of the problem to begin with?
From the WSJ:
The offer, $31 a share in cash and stock, is a 62% premium to Thursday’s closing price. Microsoft said Yahoo holders would be able to trade their shares for cash or 0.9509 Microsoft shares a piece, with no more than half of the overall purchase price paid in cash.
Seems too good for Yahoo! shareholders to pass up. What would it mean for us?
It could have a big affect on bloggers and site owners. Currently Google dominates the pay per click advertising market with AdSense. Microsoft getting control of Yahoo’s advertising network could mean a higher payout for publishers and maybe even some transparency in just what percentage of the cost of an ad a site owner is paid for a click. Currently, there is no market force to compel Google to pay out higher rates or to disclose their payout percentages.
Microsoft can actually afford to operate a division at a loss for a while in order to change the market. For proof, look no further than Internet Explorer and the X-Box.
Of course, Google could always counter with an even better offer. It’s a good time to hold Yahoo! stock, huh?
I’m not affiliated with and don’t have any knowledge of the newspaper business. You could make the case that this doesn’t make my opinion worth much, but if you consider the performance over the last few years of people who do know the business, maybe doing something different warrants some consideration.
Jack Lail has been posting recently about possible new ways to calculate compensation for journalists, and in a post today hit on something:
At my newspaper, we have been distributing daily top 10 lists of articles based on page views to the entire newsroom for a year or more. The lists are not used for compensation and do seem to provide instant market insights about what readers found interesting.
The way I see it, newspapers, for now, are positioned to provide three things that are at a high premium and that most blogs/bloggers can’t deliver. I think most would be wise to capitalize on these by shifting the state of mind from being a newspaper to becoming a news organization/outlet/center:
Excellent writing
Not just good writing. For now, newspapers have a large market share of excellent writers. That’s a part of the market I’d want to keep. Let the good writers go if you have to, but keep the excellent writers around. That means paying them well. If you don’t, you will eventually lose the excellent writers to their own endeavors, and you’ll be stuck with nothing but good writers. Good writing is nice, but it doesn’t make you much more special that the thousands of independent blogs that feature above average writers.
Investigative journalism
The time, resources, and energy it takes to dig (and dig, and dig) for a story set newspapers and real journalists apart from everyone else. Give us more stories that take time to develop. Give us stories that, in short, no one else can. In most cases, that would mean increased concentration on local news, and pulling back on stories happening elsewhere. And sports? Please. The account of a football game that was attended by 100,000 people, viewed by millions, and opined about (real time) on countless message boards and blogs has little value the day after the event. Does it sell copies? I’m sure of it. Does it sell as many copies as it did 10 years ago? I’d guess probably not, per capita. And if you’re now going to count web clicks instead of copies, newspaper web sites definitely don’t have the market share that the print version of the paper had 10 years ago. It doesn’t seem like a good place for resources long term. It may be time to start scaling back or redirecting resources.
Being community hubs
Newspapers have a huge asset that takes years to create–name recognition in their local markets. It makes sense to capitalize on that by being first to that market with resources that connect the community. Instead of viewing local bloggers as competitors and hacks, find a way to leverage them as a way to drive traffic. Become the place that the community uses to find local blogs. The bad news? It’s may already be too late. In my local market, the News Sentinel caught on remarkably early, and even goes so far as to feature bloggers on the front page of their web site on the weekends and has built a community aggregator. In other markets, it has taken a while, and links to other sites and blogs still aren’t featured or easy to find. As a result, other organizations have stepped up and are trying to fill the void left by what should have been the logical market owner.
It is great to see some newspapers are catching on and are willing to try something new or go in a different direction. At the same time, it’s frustrating to see the industry as a whole belly aching about its problems. Face the facts–not only are the rules of the game changing rapidly, but the game itself is evolving.
I mean, this isn’t the record industry. You guys may actually have to change.
After yesterday’s post, I’ve had a chance to read a little more and think about the issue. This is so obviously a free market issue to me. If baseball fans demand a clean up, we’ll have one. Frankly, I don’t think many of the baseball fans that are left really care one way or the other.
HungryMother brought up health issues in yesterday’s comments. Admittedly, a health issues exist, but are the health issues of baseball players a concern of Congress? Should Congress also step in and do something about the years shaved off of pro football players’ lives? Average life expectancy for football player is 55 years, and only 52 years for linemen, according to this article, and the NFL has arguably the most stringent drug policy of all the professional leagues in the U.S. Consider boxing and stock car racing.
Should Congress investigate every time someone’s chosen occupation is a risk to their life and health?
People make personal choices, some of which shorten their lives. Athletes are people too. Some choose to use steroids and risk their health and lives in doing so. Others choose to participate in a sport that takes years off their life by itself. How much resolution to we really need in federal regulation and oversight?
The Coyote Chronicles challenges Free Marketers to defend deregulation of the credit card industry:Â
You can make the argument that people who can’t pay their balances in full every month should not take out a credit card, but thats more than a little disingenuous since we would see a staggering drop in consumer spending if people only spent when they could pay cash. The restaurant and travel industries would suffer immediately. I doubt there would be a Black Friday at all. Don’t even get me started about the car business.
I’ll take a shot at this one. First of all, Black Friday, car financing, and credit cards themselves are all fairly new concepts. Somehow, civilization survived before they existed, and suspect it will survive long after they are gone. The assertion that our economy is propped up by the insane amount of consumer credit that exists currently tells me that we are, as a country, living above our means. The fact that the savings rate keeps declining while consumer debt continues to rise tells me that we are in denial of this fact. Government regulation that enables this foolish behavior only delays the inevitable crash that must occur to correct the market and insures with each passing year that the crash will be harder.
What would happen to the economy if people stopped using credit cards and started paying cash? One thing is for sure. Every debt free individual would have greatly increased buying power because a higher percentage of his income would be available to purchase goods and services instead of paying interest on the Big Mac Value Meal he bought 4 months ago.
Hat tip to MCB.
Okay, I already have feedback on my last post about the beggars outside of the supermarket. Some guys I work with read my blog (I write, they read, where’s the “work”?), and one of them brought up another case outside of grocery stores–free kittens.
The “free kittens” sign almost always includes the small print phrase “to a good home.”
What kind of home is good? Is it the kind where you don’t get your cat spayed, allow it to reproduce, then stand out in front of a store and give away the feline offspring to total strangers? Or, as my friend put it, “why do they care? By making the kittens free, they have determined that they have no value on the open market.”
And by rich I mean the lobbies that are successful in getting governors to propose prison time and heavy fines for online gamblers and poker players in the same bill that makes the way for licensing for casinos.
Patrick’s casino legislation, which has been introduced at the State House but is not expected to get a hearing until next year, would license three casinos in three regions of the state. Casino developers would bid on the licenses, and Patrick expects they would attract 10-year licensing fees of $200 million to $300 million for each casino.
Oh, never mind. It’s the State that will get rich. My bad. Don’t you wish you could use the legal system to set up a monopoly for yourself and your buddies?
I don’t.
Thanks to Reason for pointing this one out.
This one is making the rounds, and worth watching.
It’s widely known that Phil did his show free of charge for many years. When he was finally forced to accept compensation, he handed what was left after taxes over to the gov’ment to do with as they saw fit. A real humanitarian.
[youtube RWsx1X8PV_A]
