Greece and … IMF?
A very interesting thing has caught my eye in the photographs from the recent riots in Athens, Greece.
If you look at the pictures, it very definitely says “I.M.F. GET OUT“. Why would demonstrators talk of IMF in Greece? Would it be possible that Greece bought into one of those IMF backed plans? If so, it would be interesting to learn a bit more about what economic development “plan” was sold to Greece. It is also quite interesting to see that Reuters does not mention IMF in their articles on Greece for some reason. Did they not see their own pictures?
Eurozone troubles drove U.S. treasury debt prices higher as investors fled to havens including gold and the dollar.
Seek the one who benefits, right?
Did you see how much Euro went down recently? Do you think it is normal? Do you think if Greece went bankrupt it would really mean something apocalyptic for the Euro-zone? No, really? How much of the all-European economy is in Greece? Come on, be realistic, Greece is too small for the kind of impact pictured in those articles. But panic! yes, panic can hurt Euro-zone, oh, yes… I have seen panic used many times in the recent years… and always by the same powers… rings a bell, yes, it does.
Of “digital piracy”…
Wasn’t I saying it all along? The net result of abandoning DRM (Digital Rights Management) would be positive for most companies. Various studies show this again and again from different perspectives. This time it is a behavioral study of an Oxford economist Karen Croxson discussing the potential customer behavior and result of the piracy on the net sales. And the conclusion is still same: piracy does not hurt sales, even helps sometimes.
Really, if one abandons DRM and lets go of the piracy hype, the result must be positive. Here is the list of things to consider:
- The customers that buy your product would buy it anyway.
- The customers that would not be buying your product will not buy it anyway
- The customers that are influenced by the “ease to copy” and decide to copy instead of buying are extremely marginal in number.
- The experience with your product, the rumors, the hype, the word-of-mouth advertisement would generate many more customers than you might lose in the previous category.
- Customers loyal to you are not annoyed by your silly DRM schemes.
- You do not need to waste money and time on the DRM.
- People who spent time breaking your DRM schemes and making bad publicity went to do the same for your competitors.
And the list goes on and on. I cannot think of any logical (as opposed to “feel good” or “appear good to the boss”) reasons to fight piracy and create DRM schemes. Happily I am now only annoyed by DRM as a customer and I can vote with my wallet for the products with good sense and reason.
EU economic growth
The data for the economic growth in EU is here: Eurostat Report. It is in German but you understand the numbers. It seems that Northern Europe and Eastern Europe are pretty much all right and at least until the second wave of the “financial crisis” comes should be well on their way to the new boom. It is interesting to see the comparisons between various countries and how the growth is distributed in Europe. Begs the question of “who supplies who with what?”
Toys
I spent a lot of time recently thinking about toys. Well, it all started not so recently, in fact, but recently this idea that I am toying with is not letting me rest. So I spend more and more time thinking about toys.
If you never noticed, the toys in the shops are somewhat different from what we used to have a good twenty years ago. Drop by some time at the toy shop and have a very good look around just by yourself. Check out the toys. See anything strange? No? Check the material and where they are all made. Maybe that’ll give a clue.
Once, toys were not so abundant. When I grew up, the toys were something very special. You did not even get a toy every birthday, although the parents tried. They were expensive and they were good. And you cherished and wanted them. And they were a pleasure to hold and, oh, so carefully, to play with.
Then the industrial revolution in the toy world happened. First, there became to be many, many more toys and they became cheap. And that was wonderful. Kids could now have all the toys in the world. Well, most of them, and at least in Europe. The toys, let’s put it another way, became quite affordable. I suppose anyone could afford to buy toys for birthdays of their kids at least. Most parents bought many more toys than necessary, to tell you the truth.
And then something not so benign happened. And we did not notice it in the beginning but by now it is, oh, so apparent. The toys are made in China. The toys are made of the cheapest possible plastic. They are made without any regard to design and quality. They are not at all pleasant to take into your hands. And not pleasant or fun to play with. And they break after half an hour.
In a word, there is something awful in the toy industry. It literally went down the drain. There is probably no toy factory in the world that makes good toys anymore. The toys are bought by hundreds and quickly end up in the landfills. What is the point of such toys? They are more than useless, they are harmful.
And to get to the point, I am toying with an idea of a toy factory. I want our children and grandchildren to play with high quality toys. I want them to enjoy the toys and cherish them as I cherished mine so long time ago. Otherwise, as they grow, they will not learn to cherish things that they earn and all of their life may get filled with things that belong to a landfill, making their life a landfill. And that would be sad.
Technology vs. People
A well-known expression used an abused millions of times over the history of the mankind says that the weapons do not kill people, other people do. The meaning is, of course, that the knife is just a tool and it is up to the hand wielding the knife to put it to use – good or bad.
In fact, all of the technology is like that. The technology can be put to serve people or it can be used to deceive people. I think that recently most technologies are used to deceive people and more and more technologies and techniques arrive every day that serve this same purpose. They could be put to good use, serving people and helping us on our evolutionary path but, no, they are not. Instead, they are all abused.
I used to argue and fight against such uses of technology (that I consider to be rather abuses) but to no avail. And now I realize that it is no use fighting against it. As Antoine de Saint-Exupery says, you never fight “against”, you always fight “for”. So it is necessary to fight for the proper uses of technology, put all those resources to the service of people with their full understanding and consent.
I think this is something worth fighting for. I think this is what my company will be doing. Fighting for the right uses of technology, making it serve people, not deceive.
South America bloc
There was an interesting event in South America – a meeting of the Rio Group happened in the middle of February as DW-World reports. What is interesting? The Latin American and South American countries have announced their intention to create a union similar to the EU in nature. This is a great answer to many problems connected with their northern neighbors.
See, the real integration like in EU is unlikely coming any time soon, the South American countries are far too independent and nationalistic for that. Not that it is a bad thing either. But, but, what is quite possible is that they can create a no-Visa-required travel space in the South and Latin America and organize a monetary union. Especially now that the US Dollar is in trouble and everyone and their neighbor is looking for an alternative to the USD trading, the South American monetary union could be very successful, especially if they manage to avoid the blunders with the local monetary policies like it happened so many times in the past.
If they succeed, South and Latin America may well become the newest place-to-be, the region could really develop into a more balanced and highly attractive place for business.
Smog alert reality check
The government declared a “smog alert” here today. It will last for a week if anything from the past is an indicator. The purpose of the “smog alert” is to reduce the speed on the roads, especially the highways. Highway speed is limited to 90 km/h on days when “smog alert” is in force.
Local radio just gave a good summary of facts about the today’s situation:
- The smog is caused by a cloud of particles (pollution) brought to us by wind from the east, it is not originating in the country.
- The morning traffic jam was exceptional with roughly 400 km of jams covering the country (against the usual 100 km).
- The number of accidents was something extraordinary as well, although they did not provide specifics.
- Traffic jams happened even in places that never see traffic jams and without visible cause (like road works or an accident).
Managing a country is similar to managing a corporation, the basic rules are the same. So there is nothing wrong with the businessmen looking at the governmental decisions from the business point of view. What do we have?
The smog was not caused by any internal source in the country. The wind is blowing, so the emissions from inside the country are blown away and new pollution from outside is blown in.
Ok, fine, we still want to reduce the pollution at least a bit. Well, the emissions at various speeds for various cars is a very complicated subject and nobody will tell you what the cumulative effect of the speed increase or decrease will be. There are just no such data. But one thing we definitely know for sure is this:
Emission rates are higher during stop-and-go, congested
traffic conditions than at free flow conditions operating at the same average
speed. — U.S. EPA, “Automobiles and Ozone.” Fact Sheet OMS-4
So the result is that we increase the pollution while lowering the safety of the traffic (remember accidents). That is not a good business decision. In companies, people should get fired for this kind of decisions. In the government, unfortunately, this is not the case.
