Carnivals
The Canucks (via Jen) and the capitalists (via Jonathan).
Economics
It’s Already There!
I suspect that SK Bubba doesn’t really mean this post title: To Much Technology. Here’s the post:
I was just wondering where the heck a package was that was supposed to be delivered today. I called the company and got a tracking number and looked it up on the Internet. The carrier said it had been delivered to my door. I looked on the porch and sure enough, there it was. How pathetic is that?I had a similar experience this morning. Vendor sends email that says the package they sent yesterday has been delivered. A couple minutes later the shipping clerk is carrying the package through my door.
What a wonderful example of a productivity improvement brought on by enough technology.
Not that many years ago when I purchased (business or personal) or shipped something (business) there was no such thing as a tracking number. Some of you will remember the numerous phone calls that would go back and forth between folks that went something like:
Buyer: My #$%$ package isn’t here yet!Repeated many times.
Seller: But we shipped it yesterday….
Today tracking numbers are common. Business use is nearly universal and most online retailers include a tracking number in an email as part of their service process. And today’s conversation is most often with a computer database that tells one exactly where the package is…right now. It’s easier, less confrontational and I even have a sense that deliveries are on time more often as well.
There is a lot of people time that had been involved with tracking packages that has now been outsourced to technology and not to India or China.
Seems a good thing to me. And likely to get even better as the related technology becomes more pervasive.
Enron Tapes
Ever wondered what was going on inside Enron during the California blackouts? Here is part of the answer:
“He just f—s California,” says one Enron employee. “He steals money from California to the tune of about a million.”
“Will you rephrase that?” asks a second employee.
“OK, he, um, he arbitrages the California market to the tune of a million bucks or two a day,” replies the first.
There is a lot more so go read the rest.
Now that you have read the rest do you really think that the Justice Department and Enron lawyers didn’t want the tapes released because of the foul language?
Via Making Light.
Modest Drug Policy Changes
The contrarian leader has some fine policy changes to put in place that will rationalize a lot of the injustice created by current US drug policy. Simple things like:
School Principals who enforce zero-tolerance policies must get written permission from one of their students before taking an aspirin or any other medication (any time of day or night).
There are a bunch more.
Via Pacific Views.
Taxing or Extortion?
Looks like the Italian Mafia may be taking some lessons from the US Gov/IRS:
Libero Grassi, owner of a thriving textile company outside Palermo, was killed in 1991 after he refused to pay a large monthly “pizzo,” the Sicilian word for an extortion payment.
The new strategy is to avoid exorbitant rates, such as the ones applied to Grassi’s factory, but to cast the protection net much further afield, even to small shopkeepers.
Yep, if you kill them they will not be around to pay you tomorrow. A much better method is to expropriate their assets and perhaps dump persistent refuseniks in jail.
And like much government and its tax collectors:
It means the Mafia selling itself as a fact of life, even a benevolent association that helps find a job or fix a problem. This makes it not just a criminal organization but a criminal phenomenon rooted in history and harder to extirpate.
It has long seemed that one reason the politician gangs have pretended to want to eliminate folks like the mafia is that they want the same business themselves: extortion taxes, your local lottery, etc.
Via Catallarchy.