#economics (71 links)
- Why Valve? Or, what do we need corporations for and how does Valve’s management structure fit into today’s corporate world? | Valve blogs.valvesoftware.com
The current system of corporate governance is bunk. Capitalist corporations are on the way to certain extinction. Replete with hierarchies that are exceedingly wasteful of human talent and energies, intertwined with toxic finance, co-dependent with political structures that are losing democratic legitimacy fast, a form of post-capitalist, decentralised corporation will, sooner or later, emerge. The eradication of distribution and marginal costs, the capacity of producers to have direct access to billions of customers instantaneously, the advances of open source communities and mentalities, all these fascinating developments are bound to turn the autocratic Soviet-like megaliths of today into curiosities that students of political economy, business studies et al will marvel at in the future, just like school children marvel at dinosaur skeletons at the Natural History museum.
- New Statesman - The tax haven in the heart of Britain newstatesman.com
One of the biggest, most silent players behind so much offshore activity has been identified: a Teflon-like, medieval institution, wrapped around the neck of Britain and dedicated to keeping finance strong and free.
- The Great Olympic Tax Swindle ethicalconsumer.org
Without these tax sweeteners the IOC would simply take their corporate circus elsewhere and so begins a race to the bottom in a bidding process that echoes the offshore system. New tax rules ushered in as part of the winning Team GB bid include ‘a temporary exemption from UK Corporation Tax and UK Income Tax for certain non-resident companies’.
- Why People in Cities Walk Fast - Jobs & Economy - The Atlantic Cities theatlanticcities.com · Archived on
"With the exception of Nairobi — insert joke here about Kenyans crushing everyone at the New York City Marathon — the fastest walking cities were from wealthy nations. The statistical analysis confirmed this general perception: two of the three strongest social predictors of walking speed were a country's G.D.P. and its purchasing power parity (the other was its individualism). Indeed, when Levine considered all his "pace of life" metrics, he found that pace of life was swifter in "economically productive countries" like Western Europe and Japan than in undeveloped countries."
- Republicans: we don't need no regulation guardian.co.uk
Taking this tack has allowed the renaissance right to do a very remarkable thing: to pretend to be an enemy of big business, on the grounds that big business is insufficiently capitalist.
This suggests that success in manufacturing will depend less on scale and more on the quality of ideas. Brilliance alone, though, will not be enough. Good ideas can be copied even more rapidly with 3D printing, so battles over intellectual property may become even more intense. It will be easier for imitators as well as innovators to get goods to market fast. Competitive advantages may thus be shorter-lived than ever before. As with past industrial revolutions, the greatest beneficiaries may not be companies but their customers.
- The Cynical Musician » What the “new music experts” don’t tell you. thecynicalmusician.com
This is brilliant. But argh, Farmville. "The secret to Farmville’s popularity is neither gameplay nor aesthetics. Farmville is popular because in entangles users in a web of social obligations. When users log into Facebook, they are reminded that their neighbors have sent them gifts, posted bonuses on their walls, and helped with each others’ farms. In turn, they are obligated to return the courtesies. As the French sociologist Marcel Mauss tells us, gifts are never free: they bind the giver and receiver in a loop of reciprocity. It is rude to refuse a gift, and ruder still to not return the kindness."
- Microloans in Hackney | Feature | Society | The Observer guardian.co.uk
When you start dealing with people with unpredictable lifestyles and with income that might be variable month by month, you can't just use the same computerised systems of default and interest that you use for people in regular salaried employment. Muhammad Yunus's microfinance model, which operated in parts of the world where everyone's lifestyle was precarious, had shown that. You had to know exactly who you were lending to, and establish more intimate and flexible models based on that knowledge.
#microfinance #development #london #money #poverty #uk #economics #hackney #community #banking#credit At a time when the limits of the more traditional capitalist model of shareholder ownership stand cruelly exposed, John Lewis's ongoing success is increasingly prompting all three main political parties to point to it as a possible template – for other companies, for schools, hospitals, even local councils.
Via markrocky.
- Charlie's Diary: Jeff Bezos Eats Kittens antipope.org
Today's big news is that Amazon are going to start selling Kindle ebook readers world-wide. Let me explain why I think this is very bad news for writers.
- The dark side of Dubai - Johann Hari, Commentators - The Independent independent.co.uk
Once the manic burst of building has stopped and the whirlwind has slowed, the secrets of Dubai are slowly seeping out. This is a city built from nothing in just a few wild decades on credit and ecocide, suppression and slavery. Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised world that may be crashing – at last – into history.
Via tomtaylor.
What would I do if my business allowed me to do in a downturn? Keep ahead of the curve. Get myself to any and every relevant show, event and conference, meeting and networking opportunity. Get up to speed with what’s coming down the pipe from all of the technologies. Understand their priorities and where they think we will be in the coming months and years.
A new report out today appears to confirm that a broad economic slowdown in the United States is starting to negatively effect the online ad industry.
"The rise of "freeconomics" is being driven by the underlying technologies that power the Web. Just as Moore's law dictates that a unit of processing power halves in price every 18 months, the price of bandwidth and storage is dropping even faster."
- Kevin Kelly -- The Technium kk.org
When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied. Well, what can't be copied?
- The wiki way | Technology | Guardian Unlimited guardian.co.uk
Don Tapscott, the author of an eye-opening new book called Wikinomics, says that we have barely begun to imagine how the internet will change the way we live and work.
- Corporate Watch : Home : HOME corporatewatch.org