The NY Times did a nice summary today of what analysts are saying about the Microsoft/Skype deal. And I don’t think it’s nice just because it confirms a lot of what I said yesterday. I think it’s nice because the author does a good job of quickly capturing and explaining a variety of viewpoints.
FYI, if you are over your 20 article limit on the Times, just clear your cookies. Bing, got more Times!
Posted in Business, Technology
Tagged Business, economics, internet, microsoft, skype, Technology, Trends, venture capital
Here are some of my initial thoughts on why the Skype deal is a good one for Microsoft, presented in sections, like a good PowerPoint.
Cool features that won’t make much (or any) money, but might improve market share:
Ways Microsoft might use Skype to make money from businesses:
Strategic plays:
Where it won’t work, even though Ballmer thinks it will:
Did Microsoft overpay at $8.5 billion? Definitely. But they’ve got about a zillion dollars in cash, earning about zero percent interest, much of it sitting untouchable overseas, where Skype is conveniently located. So what’s a billion or two between friends?
Of course, all of the above assumes that Microsoft executes, which is a big (BIG!) assumption. After all, if Microsoft were good at executing this stuff we would all be using Outlook Live instead of Gmail.
See here and here for NY Times coverage, here for TechCrunch and here for GigaOm.
Posted in Business, Technology, Trends
Tagged Business, microsoft, skype, steve ballmer, Technology, Trends, venture capital
Yves Smith on the macro effects of oversized Wall Street pay.
I normally don’t love Paul Krugman, despite his Nobel Prize, since he is too strident and preachy and predictable, but this take on what really separates Right from Left in America is pretty interesting.
John Mearsheimer on American foreign policy and realpolitik.
John Cassidy on whether Wall Street adds value to society. Hint: it doesn’t. This is from the New Yorker, so it won’t be available online forever.
Law professor David Beatty compares American constitutional jurisprudence to how they do it in other countries. I’m no expert, but I found it fascinating.
Posted in Business, Politics, Pop culture, Trends
Tagged ayn rand, bonuses, Business, economics, goldman sachs, GOP, greed, Politics, republicans, Trends, wall street
I recently went to hear a lecture by Robert Putnam, a Harvard professor who is best known as the author of Bowling Alone, a book about the decay of civil institutions in America. Putnam has a new book out, called American Grace, about religion in America and its intersection with politics, and his lecture was a summary of that book. The book is based on both historical study and a large survey of US citizens, and has two main theses:
This post is about Putnam’s first thesis; I will add another post soon summarizing his second thesis.
Putnam started his lecture by describing the rise of the religious right and how this is a new development in America. Of course the founding fathers were – mostly – deeply religious men; that’s how people rolled 250 years ago. But historically you could not correlate a person’s religious belief with their political beliefs. There were devout Christians who were liberal and secularists who were conservative. The Democratic and Republican parties each contained a mix of religious beliefs and commitments.
Things began to change in the 1960’s, with the rise of hippies and free love and drugs and rock & roll (all the stuff my parents dug, man). In reaction to this libertine environment, conservative people moved toward more bedrock values, generally in the form of evangelical Christianity. These people got more serious about their religion and then certain church leaders (eg. Jerry Falwell) saw an opportunity to turn that movement into political power. As the religious right gained power there was something of a backlash, and non-evangelicals moved further toward secularism.
Thus you have significant movement to the poles – the religious right and secularism – without any growth in the center. And now you have, according to Putnam, significant correlation between religion and politics. Putnam says the best way to understand how someone will vote is to ask about their church-going, or vice versa. This plays right into the polarization that we are seeing in modern American politics. Of course, Putnam’s theory of religious trends is not the only explanation for the rise of the religious right and political polarization. There were also geographic, economic and racial trends at work. But religion clearly played a role, and this is Putnam’s bailiwick, so I give his theories some weight.
An interesting side note: Putnam says that according to his research, if a person’s politics and religion don’t match, they are more likely to change their religion than their politics. In other words, conservative people move to more conservative churches and liberals move to more liberal churches or to none at all. Given that religion controls your soul whereas politics affects your pocketbook, this is surprising, but the surveys say what the surveys say. Another, less interesting, side note: the waves of religion and backlashes toward secularism described by Putnam could make for a classic dialectic, with their thesis and antithesis, but there is no synthesis. Instead, the movement trends apart rather than together. This is further proof of my pet theory that Hegel was an idiot.
Here is a photo of someone bowling, possibly alone:
Nixon bowls, possibly alone
Posted in Philosophy, Politics, Pop culture, Religion
Tagged bowling alone, civil society, jerry falwell, Philosophy, Politics, Pop culture, Religion, religious right, robert putnam, Trends
Slate recently ran an article by Anne Applebaum claiming that the division that now matters in Europe is no longer east vs. west, but instead north vs. south. According to Applebaum, communist east vs. capitalist west no longer matters. The important division is austere northern countries that manage their budgets and affairs vs. profligate southern countries that spend like drunken sailors, hoping others will pick up the tab.
As Applebaum puts it:
“The South contains all those countries whose political classes have not been able to balance their national budgets, whose bureaucrats have not been able to reduce their numbers, whose voters have not learned to approve of austerity….The North contains the budget hawks”
After reading the Slate article, I read Michael Lewis’ article in Vanity Fair about the Greek financial crisis. Lewis describes Greece as less of a country than a national pool of corruption in which the entire populace knowingly plunders the government treasury.
Pairing these two articles really made me think about this dichotomy between governance and chaos, between bureaucrats who do their jobs and those whose job is merely a path to a bribe. And it’s really just a small leap from governance vs. corruption to civic good vs. selfishness and then to democracy vs. despotism. But once I started expanding Applebaum’s dichotomy into a broader range of behaviors, I started to wonder whether her north vs. south division could be expanded beyond Europe. I think it can be.
After all, the northern hemisphere is generally a lot better managed than the southern: Canada vs. Venezuela, Estonia vs. Syria. Of course, Russia is really far north, but it acts south. And North Korea vs. South Korea reverses the pattern. But I think if you were to average across the hemispheres, Applebaum’s north vs. south dichotomy holds. Germany is to Greece as Greece is to Zimbabwe? Even within the US, the southern states tend to be far more profligate than the northern, as in this awesome blog entry, or this table showing which states spend more federal dollars than they pay in taxes.
In a recent post on why Americans don’t like soccer, I alluded to an overarching theory of sports which would provide a broader explanation. That theory is called the Hierarchy of Sports, and was originally promulgated by my college roommate Otis Hammer. The theory is really quite simple: the best athletes gravitate toward the sports that provide the most rewards. Different athletes may value different rewards, of course, but they will all play the sport that generates the most of their favored reward.
In high school, for example, where most athletes decide what sport to focus on, the reward is unlikely to be monetary. The potential for future money in a pro career may have some influence, but for the average 15 year old, the most powerful rewards are more immediate: the adulation of peers. In short, getting laid. What about the joy of playing, you ask, or the fun of teamwork? Yes, sure, those are great, but for most teens those ephemeral rewards pale beside the opportunity to have sex with one of your school’s hotties. If you are the top athlete in your high school, you will play the sport(s) with maximal potential for sex.
At most American high schools, this means football, basketball and baseball. Which, not coincidentally, are the big pro sports in this country. Here is a table from the US Census listing the most popular high school sports. Football, then basketball, then track, then baseball. Of course there are regional and economic variations. Lacrosse or tennis could be the big sports at some schools (Exeter) or swimming at others (Southern California). In some areas, football might trump everything else (Friday Night Lights and all). But generally speaking, if you are a good enough athlete to choose your sport, you’ll choose the one that will help you get some action.
Think I’m crazy? Don’t take my word for it. Listen to Zoltan Mesko, placekicker for the New England Patriots, who came to the US from Romania when he was ten. From a Wall Street Journal article: “A couple years later in high school, Mr. Mesko had to decide between playing soccer, which only parents watched, or football, which everyone watched, including cheerleaders. “No brainer,” Mr. Mesko says.”
The implication of this theory is that sports in the upper reaches of the hierarchy tend to attract better athletes. A great athlete will focus on high-reward sports rather than low-reward ones. Which again means, in much of America, the big three: football, basketball and baseball. Generally speaking, players in the big three are going to be better athletes than players in lower sports. If the guy on the high school tennis team had been a good enough athlete to join the basketball team, he would have, because it would have improved his social standing. Of course, international athletes have a totally different hierarchy, so comparing Roger Federer to LeBron James isn’t relevant.
But in America, the Hierarchy of Sports explains why pro athletes in the big three tend to be so good at other sports. For example, pro basketball player John Lucas was an All-American in tennis at University of Maryland, and even played a few pro matches. Or, going back a little further in time, pro football Hall of Famer James Brown was All-American in lacrosse at Syracuse.
Before you go all counterexample on me, of course this is a generalization. As noted above, how sports rank in the hierarchy can vary, and people can vary too. Maybe some great athletes loved tennis so much that they kept playing it even if playing basketball would have gotten them more action. And maybe the best looking girl in your high school dated the president of the chess club because she liked his brain. But this is a blog, so I get to generalize, and looking across the many data points of life I continue to claim that the hierarchy theory holds.
Posted in Pop culture, Trends
Tagged baseball, basketball, cheerleaders, football, lebron james, new england patriots, patriots, Pop culture, roger federer, soccer, sports, Trends, zoltan mesko
Disgraced New York governor Eliot Spitzer has a great article in Slate about how Americans have lost their commitment to shared sacrifice, referencing Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and the exhortation to all Americans to work hard so that the soldiers of the Civil War “shall not have died in vain.” I know it’s ironic to be lectured on sacrifice by someone who couldn’t even sacrifice his own orgasm for the good of his family and his state, but he makes some excellent points.
Spitzer talks mostly about taxes and energy, discussing for example how reading the Gettysburg Address makes investment bankers arguing for millions in additional compensation seem petty. But I would go further than Spitzer; the need for all of us to sacrifice to solve some pretty big problems could be extended from investment bankers to union members. Shared sacrifice should apply to those who sue for millions when they trip in the grocery store, those who are always looking for a government handout, those who hate sharing. During World War II women stopped wearing stockings because the silk was needed for the war effort. My guess is that we all have a metaphoric stocking we can give up for the good of the country.
Posted in Business, Philosophy, Politics, Pop culture
Tagged Business, culture, deficit, eliot spitzer, patriotism, Politics, sacrifice, Trends
Check out this totally cool map that shows the top 10 Netflix rentals by zip code for 12 metropolitan areas.
Posted in Business, Pop culture, Trends
Tagged Business, culture, culture wars, entertainment, geographic differences, movies, netflix, Trends
It turns out that I am not the only person who thinks that Malcolm Gladwell is overrated and often wrong. Here are three more articles taking him to task:
I’ll let you all follow the links and read the articles, but I am feeling good about no longer being alone on the anti-Gladwell plank.
Posted in Business, Pop culture, Trends
Tagged Business, culture, malcom gladwell, new yorker, publishing, statistics, Trends
If I am going to blog about anything as controversial as gay marriage, I should state at the outset that I fully support the right of gays to marry. Two people in love should be able to marry. Period. The claim that gay marriage will weaken traditional marriage is, in my opinion, ridiculous. Here in California, I have voted for gay marriage every time it has been on the ballot (which may only be one time…I can’t really remember) and will continue to do so.
Yet while I completely share the goals of the gay marriage movement, I am going to recommend a change in tactics: stop pushing on marriage, at least for a while, and focus on strengthening civil unions. I say this in the wake of Maine – flinty, individualist Maine, state motto: “I lead” – voting against gay marriage. As we have seen in state vote after state vote (including super liberal California), the populace of this country is simply not ready to support gay marriage. Gay marriage laws have been put to the vote in 31 states and have lost every time. As the graph below shows, this is changing, and over time will continue to change, but for now, gay marriage is a losing vote.
Gay marriage attitudes over time
While some might argue for continuing to push ballot initiatives until they win, I posit that strategy is counter-productive, because it riles up the opposition. As the NY Times reported, Maine’s vote attracted all kinds of outside money and support, including from the National Organization for Marriage and the Catholic Church. Civil unions, on the other hand, do not attract that kind of organized opposition. Marriage itself is the bright line that conservatives clearly intend to hold. The more we push gay marriage initiatives, the longer it will be until they pass, because we will continue to inspire the opposition.
Civil unions are clearly not as good as marriages. They don’t address federal laws like taxation and social security. But they do, or can, address many important issues: health care decisions, wills, community property, adoption, etc. And they can be made stronger because, as noted above, they attract less conservative opposition. So my argument is to spend the next few years focused on passing and strengthening civil unions, state by state, and wait for the citizenry of the country to catch up. As the graph below shows, they ARE catching up. As older people die and kids (who are used to seeing things like Eric come out of the closet on Gossip Girl) become eligible to vote, the tide will turn and gay marriage initiatives will be able to pass.
Attitudes toward gay marriage by age
I recognize that this is all easy for me to say as a straight man. I don’t have to settle for the inferior civil union, nor do I have to live every day feeling like my society is not treating me fairly. While I can imagine that feeling, I can never completely understand it, since I can’t live it. I readily concede that saying that we should delay fairness is awful. So when gays say that they have to fight for their civil rights now, I get it, and I don’t mean this post to argue against it. This post is purely about tactics, and about what I think is the quickest way to achieve the gay marriage goal.
Posted in Politics, Pop culture, Trends
Thoughtbasket 