artdiamondblog.com – Page 494 – Art Diamond's web log

Successful Entrepreneurs Do Not Need to Give Back to Society—They Already Gave at the Office

(p. A15) Successful entrepreneurs-turned-philanthropists typically say they feel a responsibility to “give back” to society. But “giving back” implies they have taken something. What, exactly, have they taken? Yes, they have amassed great sums of wealth. But that wealth is the reward they have earned for investing their time and talent in creating products and services that others value. They haven’t taken from society, but rather enriched us in ways that were previously unimaginable.
. . .
Let’s hope the philanthropy of those who . . . sign the Giving Pledge achieves great things. But let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that businessmen are likely to achieve more by giving their money away than they have by making it in the first place.

For the full commentary, see:
Kimberly O. Dennis. “Gates and Buffett Take the Pledge; Wealthy businessmen often feel obligated to ‘give back.’ Who says they’ve taken anything?” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., AUGUST 20, 2010): A15.
(Note: ellipses added.)

French Utopian Planned Community Goes Up in Flames

“The planned neighborhood Villeneuve, in Grenoble, has slowly degraded into a poor district before it finally burst into flames three weeks ago, with a mob setting nearly 100 cars on fire.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A7) GRENOBLE, France — A utopian dream of a new urban community, built here in the 1970s, had slowly degraded into a poor neighborhood plagued by aimless youths before it finally burst into flames three weeks ago.

After Karim Boudouda, a 27-year-old of North African descent, and some of his friends had robbed a casino, he was killed in an exchange of automatic gunfire with the police. The next night, Villeneuve, a carefully planned neighborhood of Grenoble in eastern France, exploded. A mob set nearly 100 cars on fire, wrecked a tram car and burned an annex of city hall.
. . .
Villeneuve, or “new city,” emerged directly out of the social unrest of the May 1968 student uprising.
People committed to social change, from here as well as from Paris and other cities, came to create a largely self-contained neighborhood of apartment buildings, parks, schools, and health and local services in this city of 160,000 people, at the spectacular juncture of two rivers and three mountain ranges at the foot of the French Alps.

For the full story, see:

STEVEN ERLANGER. “Grenoble Journal; Utopian Dream Becomes Battleground in France.” The New York Times (Mon., August 9, 2010): A7.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review is dated August 8, 2010.)

Neanderthal “Innovation Was Rare”

(p. 42) Judging from slowly changing styles of stone axes, innovation was rare and technological change almost imperceptible. The rhythm of daily life varied little from one generation to the next, just as the lives of animals followed predictable and familiar paths of migration and dispersal, life and death. Humans were collaborative predators among predators, both hunters and the hunted, effective at survival thanks to their expertise with wooden spears, their stalking ability, and their painfully acquired knowledge of animals and plants. And, over two hundred millennia, they gradually evolved into the Neanderthals, the primordial Europeans encountered by the Cro-Magnons.

Source:
Fagan, Brian. Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010.

Government Import Quotas Increase Price of Sugar in U.S.

Source of graph: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) The gap between what Americans and the rest of the world pay for sugar has reached its widest level in at least a decade, breathing new life into the battle over import quotas that prop up the price of the sweet stuff in the U.S.

For years, U.S. prices have been artificially inflated by import restrictions designed to protect American farmers. That has kept the price well above the global market.
But in recent days, the difference between the two has ballooned, giving new impetus to U.S. sugar processors and confectioners to step up their long campaign to pressure the government to increase import limits.
Attention to sugar prices, and the dwindling supply of sugar left in U.S. warehouses, has intensified in the lead up to April 1, after which the U.S. Department of Agriculture can review and change the import quotas, which now stand at 1.3 million metric tons.
Sugar users have long been vocal critics of the quotas but have failed to convince the government to change the limits. The quota has remained unchanged since it was first imposed in 1990, except for two temporary increases after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and a major refinery explosion in 2008.

For the full story, see:
CAROLYN CUI. “Price Gap Puts Spice in Sugar-Quota Fight.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., MARCH 15, 2010): A1 & A20.

Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma Is “Most Influential Business Book”

(p. W3) . . . in today’s world, gale-like market forces–rapid globalization, accelerating innovation, relentless competition–have intensified what economist Joseph Schumpeter called the forces of “creative destruction.”
. . .
When I asked members of The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council, a group of chief executives who meet each year to deliberate on issues of public interest, to name the most influential business book they had read, many cited Clayton Christensen’s “The Innovator’s Dilemma.” That book documents how market-leading companies have missed game-changing transformations in industry after industry–computers (mainframes to PCs), telephony (landline to mobile), photography (film to digital), stock markets (floor to online)–not because of “bad” management, but because they followed the dictates of “good” management. They listened closely to their customers. They carefully studied market trends. They allocated capital to the innovations that promised the largest returns. And in the process, they missed disruptive innovations that opened up new customers and markets for lower-margin, blockbuster products.

For the full commentary, see:
ALAN MURRAY. “The End of Management; Corporate bureaucracy is becoming obsolete. Why managers should act like venture capitalists.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., AUGUST 21, 2010): A17.
(Note: ellipses added.)

The most complete and current account of Christensen’s views can be found in:
Christensen, Clayton M., and Michael E. Raynor. The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2003.

Harry Frankfurt’s Critique of Postmodernist “Bullshit”

“Harry G. Frankfurt.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 29) Q: Your new book, “On Truth,” is a sequel to “On Bull–,” a slim philosophical tract published by Princeton University Press that became an accidental best seller last year.
What do you mean by accidental? People didn’t know they were buying it?
. . .

In your new book, you are especially critical of academics and their theories of postmodernism, which treat all truth as an artificial construction as opposed to an independent reality.
I used to teach at Yale, which was at one time a center of postmodernist literary theory. Derrida was there. Paul de Man was there. I originally wrote the bull– essay at Yale, and a physics professor told me that it was appropriate that this essay should have been written at Yale, because, after all, he said, Yale is the bull– capital of the world.
But there is probably far more bull– in politics and entertainment than in academia.
I hope so!
What about in philosophy, which you still teach?
I think there is a certain amount of bull– in philosophy — people pretending to have important ideas when they don’t and obscuring the fact by using a lot of impenetrable language.

For the full interview, see:
DEBORAH SOLOMON. “Questions for Harry G. Frankfurt; Fighting Bull .” The New York Times, Magazine Section (Sun., October 22, 2006): 29.
(Note: ellipsis added; bold in original print version, to indicate questions by Deborah Solomon.)

The reference to the first book is:
Frankfurt, Harry G. On Bullshit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.

The reference to the sequel is:
Frankfurt, Harry G. On Truth. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.

Source of book image on left: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_T_py15A4TNY/SI9o5-lJ-3I/AAAAAAAAABc/ui9BmdO4Dns/s400/On+Bullshit.jpg

Source of book image on right: http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/bestsellers-2006/509-1.jpg

Compared to the Neanderthals, the Cro-Magnons Had “an Ongoing Culture of Innovation”

In an earlier entry Fagan discusses the eyed needle as key technological advantage of the Cro-Magnons over the Neanderthals. In the passage quoted below, he discusses some other key differences between the two human species.

(p. 14) We know from their art that they looked at their world with more than practical eyes, through a lens of the intangible that changed constantly over the generations. It was this symbolism, these beliefs, as much as their technological innovations and layered clothing, that gave them the decisive advantage over their neighbors in the seesawlike climatic world of the late Ice Age. There were more of them living in larger groups than there were Neanderthals, too, so there were more intense social interactions, much greater food gathering activity from an early age, and an ongoing culture of innovation that came (p. 15) from a growing sophistication of language, advances in technology, and a greater life expectancy. In a world where all knowledge passed orally from one generation to the next, this enhanced cultural buffer between the moderns and the harsh climate provided an extra, albeit sometimes fragile, layer of protection during the intense cold of the so-called Last Glacial Maximum, from 21,500 to 18,000 years ago.

Source:
Fagan, Brian. Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010.

Charles II Took a Gamble on Toleration

Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A19) Early in “A Gambling Man,” a detailed and thoroughly engrossing examination of the Restoration’s first decade, Jenny Uglow notes that Charles Stuart, upon his ascension, “wanted passionately to be seen as the healer of his people’s woes and the glory of his nation.” Cromwell’s regime had featured constant war and constant taxes. The population was bitterly divided among Anglicans, Catholics and dissenting Protestants–Presbyterians, Puritans, Quakers, Baptists. A huge standing army had burdened the people financially and frightened them; such an army, it was not unreasonably thought, could be used to impose a tyranny.
. . .
As a result of such divisions, Charles became a “gambler,” as Ms. Uglow puts it–not at cards or gaming tables but at affairs of state. His biggest gamble was on something he fervently wanted to achieve: religious toleration for all sects and the freedom for Englishmen to follow their own “tender consciences” in individual worship. He forwarded this policy in Parliament only to receive his first major defeat with the passage of the Corporation Act, a law that took the power of corporations (governing towns and businesses) away from Nonconformists and handed it back to the Church of England. Charles had gambled on “the force of reasonable argument,” Ms. Uglow says, but was ultimately defeated “by the entrenched interests of the [Anglican] Church” and “the deep-held suspicions” of Parliament, which believed that England’s dissenting sects posed a persistent threat. That Charles was willing to go head-to-head with Parliament for such a cause, even in failure, was especially audacious, considering his father’s fate.
. . .
In his desire to be a monarch of the people, Charles was determined to make himself accessible–in the early days of his reign he threw open the palace of Whitehall to all comers. He gambled, with some success, that (in Ms. Uglow’s words) “easy access would make people of all views feel they might reach him, preventing conspiracies.” During the 1666 Great Fire of London he and his brother, James, duke of York, went out into the streets and put themselves alongside soldiers and workmen. They could be seen “filthy, smoke-blackened and tired,” frantically creating a firebreak as the blaze consumed London like a monstrous beast.

For the full review, see:
NED CRABB. “BOOKSHELF; Risky Business; A bitterly divided nation, a monarchy splendiferously restored..” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., NOVEMBER 27, 2009): A19.
(Note: ellipses added; bracketed word in original.)
(Note: the online version of the review is dated NOVEMBER 26, 2009.)

Book being reviewed:
Uglow, Jenny. A Gambling Man: Charles II’s Restoration Game. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.

Tax Hike Would Hurt Entrepreneurs

(p. A17) When Congress returns from its summer recess, members will face a pivotal decision about the expiring Bush tax cuts. President Barack Obama has called for their permanent extension for singles with incomes below $200,000 and married couples with incomes below $250,000, but has proposed that most of the tax cuts for households with higher incomes be allowed to expire.
. . .
The fact that there are millions of people in the lower tax brackets with small amounts of business income may be interesting for some purposes, but it is irrelevant for the assessment of the economic impact of the tax hikes.
The numbers are clear. According to IRS data, fully 48% of the net income of sole proprietorships, partnerships, and S corporations reported on tax returns went to households with incomes above $200,000 in 2007.
. . .
Economic research supports a large impact. A pair of papers by economists Robert Carroll, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Harvey Rosen and Mark Rider that were published in 1998 and 2000 by the National Bureau of Economic Research analyzed tax return data and uncovered high responsiveness of sole proprietors’ business activity to tax rates. Their estimates imply that increasing the top rate to 40.8% from 35% (an official rate of 39.6% plus another 1.2 percentage points from the restoration of a stealth provision that phases out deductions), as in Mr. Obama’s plan, would reduce gross receipts by more than 7% for sole proprietors subject to the higher rate.
These results imply a similar effect on proprietors’ investment expenditures. A paper published by R. Glenn Hubbard of Columbia University and William M. Gentry of Williams College in the American Economic Review in 2000 also found that increasing progressivity of the tax code discourages entrepreneurs from starting new businesses.

For the full commentary, see:
KEVIN A. HASSETT and ALAN D. VIARD. “The Small Business Tax Hike and the 97% Fallacy; The president’s plan to raise top marginal rates is holding back the very people who should be leading the economic recovery.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., SEPTEMBER 3, 2010): A17.
(Note: ellipses added.)

One of the papers by Carroll et al, is:
Carroll, Robert, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Mark Rider, and Harvey S. Rosen. “Income Taxes and Entrepreneurs’ Use of Labor.” Journal of Labor Economics 18, no. 2 (April 2000): 324-51.

The Hubbard paper is:
Gentry, William M., and R. Glenn Hubbard. “Tax Policy and Entrepreneurial Entry.” The American Economic Review 90, no. 2 (May 2000): 283-87.

Brit Papers Survived Due to “the Gratifying Defeat of the Luddite Unions by Rupert Murdoch”

“Evans says: “Ultimately, Mrs Thatcher was the reason I was fired, because I attacked her so much.” Source of caption and photo: online version of The Independent on Sunday article quoted and cited below.

(p. 12) As a condition of acquiring both The Times and The Sunday Times in early 1981, Murdoch promised that the independence of each would be protected by a board of directors, and made other solemn guarantees.

“On this basis,” Evans wrote in Good Times, Bad Times, “I accepted Rupert Murdoch’s invitation to edit The Times on February 17 1981. My ambition,” he admitted, “got the better of my judgement.” Every assurance regarding editorial independence, he added, was blithely disregarded.
On 9 March 1982, the day after he’d come back from burying his father at Bluebell Wood cemetery in Prestatyn, Harold Evans was sacked.
“Ultimately,” he says, “Mrs Thatcher was the reason I was fired. Because I was attacking her so much. When she started to dismantle the British economy, the most cogent critic of that policy which led, OK, to… a lot of things… was The Sunday Times. I wrote 70 per cent of that criticism myself. When I became editor of The Times, I continued to criticise monetarism. But I could still see some of the good things about her.”
“Just remind us?”
“I’m thinking – and you probably won’t agree with this because I sense that you’re a firm supporter of the NUJ [National Union of Journalists] – mainly of her dealings with the unions.”
“How do you feel about her now?”
“I think she is a very brave woman.”
“Hitler was brave.”
“Yes, but… she was right about terrorism. She was right about the IRA.”
“Do you think Britain would be a better place if she’d never existed?”
“No. I think Britain benefited from her having been there. Britain was becoming so arthritic with labour restrictions.”
“Good Times, Bad Times is an unforgiving portrait of Rupert Murdoch.”
. . .
(p. 13) [Evans] has called Rupert Murdoch elitist, anti-democratic, and asserted that the Australian cares nothing about the opinion of others, so long as his business expands. This is the same man who refers to “the gratifying defeat of the Luddite unions by Rupert Murdoch”.
. . .
“So how do you feel about the Murdoch empire now?”
Evans pauses. “I’m not that familiar with the British… OK. Let’s take an alternative scenario. Murdoch never arrives. I manage to take control of The Sunday Times with the management buyout. Then I get defeated by the unions. The Independent wouldn’t be here. Rival papers survived because they got the technology. Thanks to Murdoch.”

For the full interview, see:
Robert Chalmers, Interviewer. “Harold Evans: ‘All I tried to do was shed a little light’.” The Independent on Sunday (Sun., June 13, 2010): 8 & 10-13.
(Note: free-standing ellipsis, between paragraphs, added; internal ellipses in original; italics in original; bracketed name added in place of “he.”)

The Crucial Invention that Cro-Magnon’s Had and Neanderthals Lacked: the Eyed Needle

(p. 13) Both Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons coped effortlessly with abrupt climatic changes from near-temperate to extremely frigid conditions. How well, however, the Neanderthals were able to deal with deep snow cover and long months of subzero temperatures is a matter of ongoing debate. They lacked what was, perhaps, one of the most revolutionary inventions in history, and an inconspicuous one at that: the eyed needle, fashioned from a sliver of antler, bone, or ivory. If their expertise with antler is any guide, the Cro-Magnons must have been adept woodworkers in the more temperate environments of southwestern Asia. When they moved north, they settled oil a continent where antler and hone were potential replacements for wood, and where mammoth and other large animal hones had to be used as fuel in more treeless environments. With brilliant opportunism, they used small stone chisels to remove fine splinters from antler and bone, which they then ground and polished into slender needles. Carefully fashioned stone awls served as drills to make the holes for the thongs that served as thread, substitutes for the vegetable fibers used with wooden needles in their ancestral homes.

Every Cro-Magnon, man, woman, and child, must have been aware that protection from clothing came in layers, that warmth escaped from the head and extremities. As we will see, an indirect source of information on the garments they wore is the traditional clothing used by Eskimo and lntuit in very cold environments–the argument being that there are only a limited number of ways in which layered, cold-weather clothing can be fashioned from hides and skins. The needle allowed women to tailor garments from the fur and skin of different animals, such as wolves, reindeer, and arctic foxes, taking full advantage of each hide or pelt’s unique qualities to reduce the dangers of frostbite and hypothermia in environments of rapidly changing extremes.

Source:
Fagan, Brian. Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010.