The Iron Yuppie

Sad day for fans of economic study ... Milton Friedman died. Instapundit had a bunch of coverage, which led me off to this link on the Corner covering a short blurb he had written in an open letter:

You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are a scourge that is devastating our society. You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are tearing asunder our social fabric, ruining the lives of many young people, and imposing heavy costs on some of the most disadvantaged among us. You are not mistaken in believing that the majority of the public share your concerns. In short, you are not mistaken in the end you seek to achieve. Your mistake is failing to recognize that the very measures you favor are a major source of the evils you deplore. Of course the problem is demand, but it is not only demand, it is demand that must operate through repressed and illegal channels. Illegality creates obscene profits that finance the murderous tactics of the drug lords; illegality leads to the corruption of law enforcement officials; illegality monopolizes the efforts of honest law forces so that they are starved for resources to fight the simpler crimes of robbery, theft and assault. Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike. Our experience with the prohibition of drugs is a replay of our experience with the prohibition of alcoholic beverages.

The good news? Someone very smart said it. The bad news? Absolutely nothing has been done about it since then. Not sure what to make of that... possibly a) being smart is not enough to get stuff done (makes sense) b) nobody listens to economists (very likely) c) Milton Friedman should have become a politician (?) d) something else (definitely). Your guess is as good (and likely better) than mine.

Instapundit linked to a book that piqued my interest and I thought I'd mention...

Most of the assumptions are definitely not news to me, but #3 caught my eye:

• Traffic congestion does much more harm than is generally appreciated
• Municipalities' programs aimed at making traffic worse in order to encourage people to use mass transit are deeply mistaken
• Fixing traffic problems is easier and cheaper than is popularly thought

Well, now I've just got to buy it. Isn't this refuted by market forces though? That is to say, if it was so easy and cheap to fiix the traffic problems, wouldn't they be FIXED?

Ah Muzak. There is an element of our society that makes us feel pretty isolated if we don't have SOMETHING going on audibly. But in can't just be the dull hum of the computer sitting next to me, it's got to be something structured. Someone sat around and said "Why not simply cover existing music so it's a little less harsh around the edges and so the licensing fees will be smaller" and presto, Muzak was born.

Of course no one really liked Muzak, and when you would hear it you would just try to figure out what the actual song was which, often, would be an exercise in madness. However, it turns out that Muzak has re-invented itself into a company that doesn't do covers any more, they put together play lists that get users in the mood... in the mood to what, I suppose, depends on the environment. I absolutely love this idea.

In "The Soundtrack of Your Life" by David Owen (New Yorker, April 10, 2006), they cover a lot of the different areas that are currently using this technology. Most of them are retail based. But why stop there? Just about every place has a need to get users in a certain mood. Maybe one type of mood at work, another in the car ride on the way home. We're already bombarded with music all the time, it might as well be more coherent.

I'm surprised radio stations haven't picked up on this as well. It's not like I want to get rid of the local DJ or anything, but if you have some central stream that provides a consistent way to get people in the mood you're looking for, why not? I know, I know, this is a slow path to mediocrity, where the resultant product is neither good nor bad but just slightly better than ok. But since casinos have figured out how to engineer every element down to the color and pattern of the carpeting to encourage more gambling, I'd expect other industries to start doing the same.

Which of course, reminds me of another idea recently out. The review for the excellent book Why We Buy sums it up nicely. It's all about sweating the small stuff. For example:

Female shoppers get agitated when they are bumped from behind (a term he calls the butt-brush), so wider aisles ease the tension and encourage them to linger.

This is a great insight, but it surprises me that the sales environment is still so incomplete. Reading a book like this should be required to own a store. Actually, check that. It should be required for anyone doing anything involving customers at all.

Oo, even better, it looks like he has another book out as well. Time to queue that up...

• Content


• Content


• Content


• More content


• Even more content


• Additional content


• Also, content

For example, getting The Beatles would be such a huge coup, it's tough to explain in words. I wonder if this goes back to the old "Apple Records" v. "Apple Computer". Who knows if it'll actually happen. If they don't have the above, they can have all the pictures of women orgasm-ing they want, people won't buy it.

What are your thoughts? I really think she just looks like she's singing, but I guess you could say something else. I think it's just trying to be a little bit more human, and a little less stock photo. Note to any MS marketers reading this, don't be upset by the noise around this. I'd rather it have emotion than the cardboard cutouts in use today.

Of course, I should stress that content is NECESSARY but not SUFFICIENT (also here) for success. That doesn't mean you should move on to step two... finish out the content first.

To spoil the surprise, the six beverages are (as borrowed from "Liquid Assets" by Steven Shapin (New Yorker, Aug. 1, 2005)) ...

• Beer (Mesopotamia/Egypt)
• Wine (Greek and Roman)
• Distilled spirits (distillation being a medieval Arab discovery, and rum about the American battle for independence)
• Coffee (and the rise of the coffeehouse)
• Tea (British imperialism)
• Coke (globalization, Americanism and consumerism)

Not bad, eh? Covers lots of the big eras with just six drinks. Without reading the book (and, therefore, unencumbered by the thought process), I'd like to see a couple more eras added.

• Water (Historic discovery of wells, founding of cities there upon)
• Wine (Start of state supported religion/monotheism and the drink of choice there of)
• Water again (present day as a representation for bringing the basic necessities to the world's poor)

You could add a lot more on there, but I don't think that'd be as crisp. The only reason I mentioned the above is there appears to be some fairly major gaps in the timeline. Anyhow, just noting that this is something I'd like to read.

I've been waiting around for WPF/e to come out for quite a while. It's a new technology from Microsoft that I think will really flip the way we interact with the web. It's kind of like Flash, only more so. Anyhow, here's a sampling where you can read a story and download the reader at the NYTimes beta reader page:

Shadow of the iPod

As to the question of the day, on whether or not Zune will beat iPod, boy there's a lot of talk about that one. Engadget has my biggest worry put to rest... the Zune packaging seems untouched by MS hands :). (BTW I LOVE the music associated with that

Here's my thoughts:

• First, I'm most definitely not a standard user. When I'm somewhere, I almost always have a computer near by... listening to music generally involves me plugging into that along with what I'm already doing.
• Second, the Zune is closer to what I want than the iPod, if for no other reason than it comes with built in FM tuner, instead of it being an add on. If you wanted REALLY killer, they would synch it up with Sirius or NPR and give me podcasts of Morning Edition or Howard Stern. That would be awesome.

I think that Zune uptake will mimic the Xbox uptake. A strong #2, but will not get near #1 for a while (if ever). It'll be enough to annoy Apple, but whatever's next will catch both Apple and Microsoft flat footed.

Live.com has released a new web based competitor to Google Earth. It's called:

Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D

I came upon it totally randomly while looking at houses and was really impressed. I'm not in agreement with this guy for a bunch of reasons. First, who cares that it's only available for IE. That makes up 85% of the market AND we all know that they'll be releasing for FF soon enough (don't know about other platforms, but I'd bet on it). And second, it requires a lot less work to install than Google Earth does.

Second, with the ability to program against in using Javascript (like this http://soapbox.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=1a6474da-1d84-479c-a95f-59e8234d745e), this could be really really cool. Nicely done VE3D team.

D

I'm going to spend some time on checking out whether or not this documentary is correct, but if you're ANY voting company, I'm really surprised you don't bend over backwards to make your code auditable. I mean if Microsoft, who regards their IP pretty strongly, can make source available to large customers and governments, a little company like a voting system surely could as well.

As an aside, nice work Google Video for linking this up to make it easy to post!

As another aside, bad work Google Video on a random error at the end that made me retype this blog entry. :( In fact, this is now the third time I've tried to post it. It logs in fine, but when I try to post it says "Invalid login". Weird, and almost more annoying than if you hadn't offered the feature at all.

D