Economics – Page 205 – artdiamondblog.com

William Rosen’s “The Most Powerful Idea in the World”

Source of book image: http://ffbsccn.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/the-most-powerful-idea-in-the-world.jpg

The range of William Rosen’s fascinating and useful book is very broad indeed. He is interested in THE question: why did the singular improvement in living standards known as the industrial revolution happen where and when it did?
The question is not just of historical interest—if we can figure out what caused the improvement then and there, we have a better shot at continuing to improve in the here and now.
I especially enjoyed and learned from William Rosen’s discussion, examples and quotations on the difficult issue of whether patents are on balance a good or bad institution.
Deirdre McCloskey taught me that the most important part of a sentence is the last word, and the most important part of a paragraph is the last sentence, and the most important part of a chapter is the last paragraph.
Here are the last couple of sentences of Rosen’s book:

(p. 324) Incised in the stone over the Herbert C. Hoover Building’s north entrance is the legend that, with Lincoln’s characteristic brevity, sums up the single most important idea in the world:

THE PATENT SYSTEM ADDED

THE FUEL OF INTEREST

TO THE FIRE OF GENIUS

In the next few weeks I will occasionally quote a few of the more illuminating passages from Rosen’s well-written account.

Book discussed:
Rosen, William. The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. New York: Random House, 2010.

Paternalistic Welfare State Discourages Integration of Immigrants

(p. A9) . . . Alf Svensson [is a] former leader of the center-right Christian Democrats.
. . .
Sweden’s paternalistic welfare state is partly to blame for some immigrants’ marginal status in the economy, said Mr. Svensson. “We had…a system which was ‘taking care’ of immigrants, which didn’t give them a chance to flex their own wings and show what they could do, and this has made integation worse,” he said.

For the full story, see:

MARCUS WALKER And CHARLES DUXBURY. “Far-Right Party Wins Seats in Sweden.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., SEPTEMBER 20, 2010): A9.
(Note: bracketed words and first two ellipses added; last ellipsis in original.)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated SEPTEMBER 19, 2010.)

“Small-Business Marketplace at a Standstill”

“David Wetzel tried for two years to sell his New Jersey hardware store.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) Small-business owners banking on a big payoff when they sell their establishments may have to settle for a lot less than planned.

A combination of tight credit, skittish buyers and business owners unwilling to sell at rock-bottom prices–factors similarly affecting home sellers–has left the small-business marketplace at a standstill.
. . .

(p. B4) “Owners still think their businesses are worth what they used to be,” says Thomas Coffey, a partner in Malvern, Pa., with B2BCFO, a provider of outsourced chief financial officers to small businesses. In reality, many “small companies just aren’t earning what they used to earn,” he says.

For the full story, see:
SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN. “Businesses Put Up for Sale Smack Into Harsh Reality.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., OCTOBER 14, 2010): B1 & B4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

All He “Could See Was Cows and Farms” in “Virginia’s High Tech Corner”

(p. A18) . . . government attempts to rejuvenate regional economies have a mixed track record, in the U.K. and elsewhere.

Stuart S. Rosenthal, an economics professor at Syracuse University, remembers driving through Virginia in 1997 and seeing a sign saying, “You are entering southwest Virginia’s high tech corner.”
“And all I could see was cows and farms,” he said. Recent employment data shows that aside from one pocket, little has changed.

For the full story, see:
ALISTAIR MACDONALD. “U-Turn in the U.K.: Big Spending Cuts.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., OCTOBER 15, 2010): A18.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated October 14, 2010.)

Home Depot Co-Founder Asks Obama to Stop Blocking Startups

Below I quote from the comments that Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone addressed to President Obama:

(p. A21) A little more than 30 years ago, Bernie Marcus, Arthur Blank, Pat Farrah and I got together and founded The Home Depot. Our dream was to create (memo to DNC activists: that’s build, not take or coerce) a new kind of home-improvement center catering to do-it-yourselfers. The concept was to have a wide assortment, a high level of service, and the lowest pricing possible.

We opened the front door in 1979, also a time of severe economic slowdown. Yet today, Home Depot is staffed by more than 325,000 dedicated, well-trained, and highly motivated people offering outstanding service and knowledge to millions of consumers.
If we tried to start Home Depot today, under the kind of onerous regulatory controls that you have advocated, it’s a stone cold certainty that our business would never get off the ground, much less thrive. Rules against providing stock options would have prevented us from incentivizing worthy employees in the start-up phase–never mind the incredibly high cost of regulatory compliance overall and mandatory health insurance. Still worse are the ever-rapacious trial lawyers.
Meantime, you seem obsessed with repealing tax cuts for “millionaires and billionaires.” Contrary to what you might assume, I didn’t start with any advantages and neither did most of the successful people I know. I am the grandson of immigrants who came to this country seeking basic economic and personal liberty. My parents worked tirelessly to build on that opportunity. My first job was as a day laborer on the construction of the Long Island Expressway more than 50 years ago. The wealth that was created by my investments wasn’t put into a giant swimming pool as so many elected demagogues seem to imagine. Instead it benefitted our employees, their families and our community at large.

For the full commentary, see:
KEN LANGONE. “Stop Bashing Business, Mr. President; If we tried to start The Home Depot today, it’s a stone cold certainty that it would never have gotten off the ground.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., OCTOBER 15, 2010): A21.

Stimulus Money Sent to the Jailed and the Dead

(p. A8) The Social Security Administration sent about 89,000 stimulus payments of $250 each to dead and incarcerated people–but almost half of them were returned, a new inspector-general’s report found.
. . .
. . . 17,000 payments went to recipients who were in prison at the time the payment was made in May 2009. However, not all of those payments were necessarily against the letter of the law. While lawmakers intended to prevent payments to people in prison, the law included only a provision prohibiting payments to people incarcerated in the three months before the plan was passed–from November 2008 through January 2009.
. . .
. . . : The SSA says that the stimulus package didn’t include a provision allowing it to try to retrieve funds that were mistakenly sent out, so it can’t try to retrieve the rest of the money. Money transferred electronically may be sitting untouched in bank accounts of dead people.
The combined total of the mistaken payments is $22.3 million. About $12 million hasn’t been returned.

For the full story, see:

LOUISE RADNOFSKY. “Stimulus Checks Sent to Dead, Incarcerated.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., OCTOBER 8, 2010): A8.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the article was dated OCTOBER 7, 2010.)

Entrepreneurial Improvisation is Like “Jumping Rock to Rock Up a Stream”

“Crossing the Sulphurous River.” Source of caption and photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/33506763@N00/211985842#/photos/sparlingo/211985842/lightbox/

In The Venturesome Economy book, and later (pp. 129 and 142) in the book quoted below, Bhidé describes the entrepreneur’s decision process as “improvisation.”

(p. 18) Entrepreneurs who start uncertain businesses with limited funds have little reason to devote much effort to prior planning and research. They cannot afford to spend much time or money on the research; the modest likely profit doesn’t merit much; and the high uncertainty of the business limits its value.

Sketchy planning and high uncertainty require entrepreneurs to adapt to many unanticipated problems and opportunities. One entrepreneur likens the process of starting a new business to jumping from rock to rock up a stream rather than constructing the Golden Gate Bridge from a detailed blueprint. Often, to borrow a term from Elster’s discussion of biological evolution, entrepreneurs adapt to unexpected circumstances in an “opportunistic” fashion: Their response derives from a spur-of-the- moment calculation made to maximize immediate cash flow. Capital-constrained entrepreneurs cannot afford to sacrifice short-term cash for long-term profits. They have to play rapid-fire pinball rather than a strategic game of chess.

Source:
Bhidé, Amar. The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
[Note to self: the search phrase “jumping rock stream” seems most productive of relevant images]

“Chris and Andrea Jumping from Rock to Rock Up a Stream.” Source of caption and photo: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/Q-FvMT8GFG7kZdvUm8d_Jw

“Girl (10-12) jumping on rocks in river.” Source of caption and photo: http://cache4.asset-cache.net/xc/200447463-001.jpg?v=1&c=NewsMaker&k=2&d=B3B7071D257FC0393BFC8E309AE4811E35B7CE0CF91BE8709437A3EAE6A5D3E800123AA3B5A18ED0

Competitors Have “Incentive to Misuse the Government to Obtain an Advantage”

(p. A15) Today’s technology behemoth risks becoming tomorrow’s dinosaur, and competitors sometimes plead for government intervention to obtain what they fail to achieve in the market. As a former head of a competition agency, I offer . . . principles to guide competition policy toward successful innovators.

. . . , be wary of competitor complaints. When a competitor tells government that its rival acts unfairly, the complaint should be viewed with great suspicion. Competitor complaints are driving recent EU investigations into companies that include Qualcomm, Google, Oracle and IBM. Competitors can provide valuable information about marketplace realities, but they have every incentive to misuse the government to obtain an advantage that is otherwise unattainable.
. . .
. . . , don’t create disincentives for innovation. Complaining competitors often want innovators to be forced to share the source of their success, regardless of intellectual property rights. Nothing could be more destructive to the incentives for future innovation than rules that prevent innovators from reaping the full benefits of their work. As a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court said in its 2004 Verizon v. Trinko decision, “[f]irms may acquire monopoly power by establishing an infrastructure that renders them uniquely suited to serve their customers.”

For the full commentary, see:
TIMOTHY J. MURIS. “Antitrust in a High-Tech World; The first rule of regulators should be to be wary of complaints from competitors..” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., August 12, 2010): A15.
(Note: ellipses added.)

“I Just Love Economics”

Paul Ryan. Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 16) Your once-quiet life as a congressman from Wisconsin was forever altered at the House Republican retreat in Baltimore last month, when President Obama singled you out as a “pretty sincere guy” and gave a shout-out to your “Road Map for America’s Future 2.0,” your plan to balance the federal budget.
He brought up my plan and I thought for a moment, Wow, this could be a sincere olive branch.

As the ranking Republican member of the House Budget Committee, you are seen within your party as a policy wonk.
I’ve been working on the federal budget most of my adult life, which is kind of a pretty sad thing to admit to. I just love economics.
Your “Road Map,” we should explain, is a somewhat alarming document that proposes, in 600-plus pages, erasing the federal deficit by radically restricting the government’s role in social programs like Social Security and Medicare. The president described it as “a serious proposal.”
Right. And then the next day his budget director starts ripping me and then the day after that the entire Democratic National Committee political machine starts launching demagogic attacks on me and my plan. So when you hear the word “bipartisanship” come from the president and then you see his political machine get in full-force attack mode, it comes across as very insincere.

For the full interview, see:
DEBORAH SOLOMON. “Questions for Paul Ryan; The Big Cheese.” The New York Times, Magazine Section (Sun., February 21, 2010): 16.
(Note: bold in original versions, to indicate questions by Deborah Solomon.)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated February 19, 2010.)

Charlie Munger: Capitalist Ventures Do Good, While Philanthropies Are a Source of “So Much Folly and Stupidity”

We’d all be better off if Warren Buffett listened a little more to his old friend Charlie Munger, and a little less to his new friend, Bill Gates.

(p. 6A) Charlie Munger, the business partner of billionaire philanthropist Warren Buffett, said private investment may advance society more than charity.

“I believe Costco does more for civilization than the Rockefeller Foundation,” Munger, 86, told students in a discussion at the University of Michigan on Tuesday, according to a video posted on the Internet. “I think it’s a better place. You get a bunch of very intelligent people sitting around trying to do good, I immediately get kind of suspicious and squirm in my seat.”
Munger is a director at Costco Wholesale Corp., the largest U.S. warehouse-club chain, and has served as vice chairman of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. for more than three decades. Munger’s stake in Omaha-based Berkshire’s Class A shares is valued at more than $1.6 billion.
. . .
“I’ve seen so much folly and stupidity on the part of our major philanthropic groups, including the World Bank,” Munger said. “I really have more confidence in building up the more capitalistic ventures like Costco.”

For the full story, see:
Bloomberg News. “Costco beats charity, Munger Says.” Omaha World-Herald (Sat., September 16, 2010): 6A-7A.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the title “Munger: Costco beats charity.”)

Munger’s comments can be viewed online at: http://rossmedia.bus.umich.edu/rossmedia/SilverlightPlayer/Default.aspx?peid=4d215177cbe44b1e8e94d0dd68f5058f

Long and Unknown Incubation Time Sometimes Needed for Innovation

(p. 118) The incubation stage is the most mysterious of the three stages of divergent thinking. Sometimes it appears as if the problem-solving process has stopped altogether.

Incubation is the absolute opposite of the normal business processes of the operating organization. It is often totally unpredictable. But since it is also the heart of the creative process, it creates a dilemma for the business executive who wants to support innovation but has little patience for unfocused activity. In the incubation period, observations stew on the edge of consciousness until something clarifies. As Newton observed, “I keep the subject constantly before me, and wait until the first dawnings open slowly, little by little, into the full and clear light.”

There is no way to plan “enough” incubation time. What, then, can one do to improve the productivity of this period of incubation? One useful tool is what psychologists call “suspending disbelief–suspending judgment on data or observations that seem to make no sense. It allows time for the rearrangement of data, allowing one time to find new images that explain or illustrate how things might work. Suspending disbelief (p.119) is essential to avoiding premature closure on an issue, or entrenchment in existing ideas and approaches. Suspending disbelief helps to improve one’s chances of finding a fresh view of the universe. It is an unnatural act for an operating organization, but an essential trait for an innovative organization.
A second useful tool is to deconstruct the problem so that you can recombine elements of it and gain fresh insight. Sir James Black, Nobel Prize winner for the discovery of histamine antagonists, suggests that one “turn the question around.” Dr. Black prefers an “oblique attack” to a problem rather than a direct one.
One way to change context, Csikszentmihalyi observes, is to position yourself at the intersection of different cultures or disciplines: “where beliefs, lifestyles, and knowledge mingle and allow individuals to see new combinations of ideas with greater ease. In cultures that are uniform and rigid it takes a greater investment of attention to achieve new ways of thinking. In other words, creativity is more likely in places where new ideas require less effort to be perceived.”

Source:
Foster, Richard N., and Sarah Kaplan. Creative Destruction: Why Companies That Are Built to Last Underperform the Market—and How to Successfully Transform Them. New York: Currency Books, 2001.