One of my favorite RSS feeds is Business Insider’s Chart of the Day. This chart came up a few weeks ago and made me think. It’s quite staggering to imagine that college tuition has outpaced inflation as rapidly as it has (~10x vs. ~4x over 30 years). The graph made me think: Has the value of a college education increased 2.5x? If it has, then there isn’t necessarily a bubble. There are three ways to think about the value of a college education to evaluate this question.

1. The most obvious is the average income comparison between an average high school graduate (only) and an average college graduate (only). Using US government statistics, we find that in 1978, a college-educated graduate made ~55% more than an individual with only a high school education. In 2008 (the last year I have data for), a college educated graduate made ~87% more – which amounts to a 60% increase in the gap. Now there are obviously nuances in that figure (which I’ll let the policy experts correct in the comments if they choose), but this 60% figure is a decent order-of-magnitude impact (and even holds true if I adjust for the change in disposable income using the individual, under-65 poverty line as the base level of expenditure), and barely covers the 2.5x increase in tuition costs over inflation.
2. Related to the above are the other effects of college education on lifetime income. It’s been demonstrated that college educated individuals live longer than those who don’t, and its commonly understood that college is a prerequisite for other income-boosting opportunities like graduate school. One’s lifetime income is also much more likely to trend upwards in life with a college education than with only a high school diploma. But there’s an interesting wrinkle here: does college education make you live longer and get promoted, or is it just an indirect way of finding individuals who tend to be wealthier and more intelligent? I unfortunately don’t have the data (or the time — this is a casual blog post after all!) to run all the calculations needed to understand the impact, but I would hazard a guess that it’s probably overly-aggressive to assume that these second-order lifetime income benefits can close the gap between tuition costs and inflation.
3. The last “source of value” for a college education is the subjective value of meeting lifelong friends, having new experiences, and expanding your intellectual horizons. Just because its last and extremely intangible, doesn’t mean there’s not enormous value here. But, the question to ask here is not whether or not college has large intangible value (of course it does), but whether or not you believe that intangible value to have increased significantly (by over 2.5x as we’ve concluded the increase in lifetime income likely isn’t enough to explain the 2.5x increase in tuition cost relative to inflation) since 1978. I personally think that’s being overly aggressive.

I can’t pretend to be the expert on this, but at this point, I’d conclude that whereas the value of a college education has increased dramatically (maybe even by as much as 75-100%), it hasn’t gone up enough to justify a 2.5x increase relative to inflation. If you accept my conclusion then the obvious question is what is causing tuition to increase so much? Two possible explanations jumped out at me:

• Tuitions haven’t caught up with the value of a college education: While my conclusion above was that the value of a college education hasn’t increased 2.5x from 1978 until today, one possible explanation of tuition price is that the value of a college education is still higher than what students pay for it, and, if that were true, we would expect tuitions to continue to increase.
• Tuitions are higher than the value of a college education and are being propped up by a combination of two things:
  1. Tuitions are being boosted by a subsidy cycle: Free money from the government is one of the easiest ways to get price increases. While we often think of the US government’s subsidized loans and tax writeoffs for college tuition as a means to help more people attend college, an equivalent way of thinking about it is that it gives colleges free rein to increase prices without worrying about reducing the number of people who enter. In a “normal” market, this would be the end of it (slightly higher prices, but more people entering college), but because college education has become such a political affair (every family always thinks its “too expensive”, and every politician promises to make it cheaper), we always get more subsidies from more politicians which feeds back into the original problem.
  2. Families have bad expectations around the value of a college education: One explanation, which is making the rounds of the policy wonk blogosphere, is that this is all a big bubble. In the same way that people felt tech stocks in the late 90s and real estate in the 2000s were a good buy, its entirely possible that families have uninformed expectations about the value of a college education and thus believe the higher tuitions are worth it. If this is true, then we could be on a collision course with a generation of families (like in the 80s) suddenly realizing “the emperor (of college tuition) has no clothes!” (which might be precipitated by a long stagnation/decline in the wages of college educated individuals) followed by a potential crash in tuitions.

What should be done? Truthfully, it depends on which of these conclusions is correct. If its just that tuitions haven’t caught up with the value of a college education, then it makes sense that tuitions are increasing, and it may even make sense to increase tuition grants/subsidized loans (as it likely means not enough people are getting a college education because they couldn’t get access to the capital to pay for it). However, if tuitions are over-valued, then it would be advisable to end the college tuition subsidy cycle and implement policies which potentially “soften the blow” of the coming college education value and tuition crash.

But to make the right policy decisions and tradeoffs, its important to first understand which of the two explanations is correct. And that’s a whole ‘nother set of data and analyses…

(Image credit – Chart of the Day)

First, I think the community overreacted. There is a lot to not like about Google’s stance, but I think there are a few things to keep in mind:

1. There are political limits to what strict net neutrality promoters can achieve. Its a fact of life that the telco providers have deep pockets (part of their having government-granted monopoly status) and stand to gain or lose a great deal from the outcome of net neutrality legislation and thus wield enormous influence over broadband legislation. Its also a fact of life that the path towards net neutrality is more easily served by finding common ground which preserves the most important aspects of net neutrality than it is to fight the telco providers kicking and screaming the whole way. What I mean to say is: we should not criticize Google for dealing with a telco or with making compromises on net neutrality. That’s an unreasonable stance typically held by people who don’t have to actually make policy. With that said, we should criticize Google for making the wrong compromises.
2. I don’t think Android was the issue here. Many people may disagree with me here, but I don’t believe Android has much direct impact to Google’s bottom line. From my perspective, Google’s commitment to Android is about two things: (a) preventing Apple from dominating the smartphone market (and potentially the mobile ad market) by empowering a bunch of phone manufacturers to provide devices of comparable (or better) quality and (b) forcing all mobile phone platforms to have decent-enough web surfing/app-running capability (by providing a free alternative which did) so that Google can provide its services effectively on those platforms and serve more ads. If anything, Google’s incentives here are better aligned with net neutrality than most companies: it benefits the most if there are more people using the web, and the best way to push that is to encourage greater content diversity. While Google TV may change Android into a true profit center, it wouldn’t be for several years, and so I think it’d be a stretch to say it is a big enough deal to significantly impact Google’s political policy moves. I can buy the argument that Google pushed a deal with Verizon because they have a closer relationship via Android, but I think suggesting that Google subverted net neutrality as a concession to Verizon on Android is taking it too far.
3. I think Google did a good job of emphasizing transparency. The proposal emphasizes that telcos need to be held to higher standards of transparency, something which is sorely lacking today, and something which we definitely want to and need to see in the future.

With that said, though, there are definitely things to criticize Google’s agreement on:

1. Wireless: I can sympathize with the argument that wireless is different from wired networks and could require more aggressive traffic management. I even went so far as to call that out the last time I talked about this. But, given the importance of wireless broadband in the future, it doesn’t make any sense to exclude explicit protections around neutrality for wireless. The arguments around competition and early development strike me as naive at best and Verizon PR at worst – whatever provisions exist to protect neutrality for wired networks should be applied in the wireless space. Competition and the development of more open gardens make it possible to compromise, but not necessarily throw caution to the wind.
2. Wording weirdness: I’m concerned that the proposal contains phrasings which seem to give avenues for telcos to back out of neutrality like “prioritization of Internet traffic would be presumed inconsistent with the non-discrimination standard, but the presumption could be rebutted” without clearly explaining what are reasonable grounds for rebuttal. Even parts of the compromise which I accept as valid (i.e., letting telcos do basic network quality of service management, prioritize government/emergency traffic, fight off malware/piracy, etc.) were framed in terms of what telco’s were permitted to do, but not without clearly laid out restrictions (i.e., network service quality management must be subject to FCC review). For a document meant to safeguard neutrality, it sure seems to go out of its way to stipulate workarounds…
3. “Additional online services”: I understand (and agree with) the intent – carriers may want to provide special services which they want to treat differently to meet their partners’/customers’ needs like a special gaming service or secure money transfer. The language, however, is strange and not imminently clear to me that there aren’t “back doors” for the telcos to use to circumvent neutrality restrictions.

Truthfully, I think most of the document rings true as a practical compromise between the interests and needs of telcos (who would bear the brunt of the costs and should be incentivized to improve network quality and provide meaningful services and integration) and the interests of the public. But, I would ask Google or whatever legislator/FCC member who has a voice on this to do two things:

• Not compromise on content neutrality on any medium. The value of the internet as a medium and as a platform of innovation comes from the ability of people to access all sorts of applications and content without that access being discriminated against by the network operator. Not sticking to that is risking slower innovation and choking off a valuable source of commentary/opinions, especially in a setup where large local players hold enormous market power because of their government-granted monopoly status.
• Create clear (but flexible enough to be future-proof) guidelines for acceptable behavior with clear adjudication and clear punishments. No squirrely word weirdness. No “back door” language. You don’t need to browbeat the telco’s, but you don’t need to coddle them either.

I recently spent a couple of hours organizing and pruning the many feeds that I follow in Google Reader. It’s become something of a necessity as my interests and information needs (and the amount of time I have to pursue them) change. But, this time as I found myself trying to figure out which news sites to follow, I found it easier to drop websites which didn’t have sub-feeds.

Most major blogs and websites today use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to let subscribers know when the site’s been updated without having to check the site constantly. While this is extremely convenient, the enormous number of updates that major websites like the New York Times issue per day make subscribing to their RSS feed an exercise in drinking from the firehose.

So, what to do? Thankfully, some major websites (the New York Times included) figured this out and now provide sub-feeds which provide only a fraction of the total content so that a subscriber can not only avoid RSS information overload but get a focused feed on the information that matters to him/her. The New York Times, for instance, allows you to only get RSS updates from their tech column, the Bits Blog, or even just the Venture Capital section of the New York Times’ Dealbook coverage.

Sadly, not every website is as forward-looking as the New York Times. Many sites don’t offer any sort of sub-feed at all (much to my dismay). Many sites who do offer it, offer a very paltry selection with very limited options.

And, given the choice between an information deluge which I mostly don’t want vs an alternative information source which gives me only the information I do want, I think the answer is obvious. As a result, with the exception of two feeds, I dropped from Google Reader every blog which posted more than once a day which didn’t give me a targeted sub-feed option.

In a world where its getting harder and harder for publications to hold on to readers, you’d think these sites would learn to offer more flexibility (especially when such flexibility is practically free to support if you have even a half-decent web content management system) in how their content is pushed.

But, I guess those sites weren’t interested in keeping me as a reader…

(Image credit)

The few Japanese dramas I’ve seen actually end. They build to an end and then just stop. They don’t drag it out for season after season, allowing different seasons to suffer based on actor/actress-negotiations and writers having off-years. They don’t end on ridiculous season cliffhanger-after-season cliffhanger. They have  a well-defined endpoint and, by building to it, they keep the story fresh and force it to have a suitable length.

This isn’t to say that the Japanese dramas I’ve seen don’t go on for multiple seasons. But, I would assert that sequels (should) only happen when there is sufficient audience demand for one and when the storytellers think they have another story to tell.

Contrast that with American TV – the seasons are built not for any plot reason, but because a TV studio needs to have sufficient content to fill the months of September to May/June. Seasons are renewed, not because of a deep creative reason or even necessarily because of audience demand, but because of a misguided sense of momentum. This doesn’t always turn into a disaster (I believe House MD, despite its traditional  has maintained a reasonable level of quality each season through the quality of its casting and writing), but even series that I thoroughly enjoy like Smallville have had their fair share of “useless filler” episodes and bad seasons.

In my humble opinion, it’d be far better to adopt the miniseries format. It prevents writers from creating ridiculous plot devices to keep a story going way past its prime (and past when its actors begin leaving for greener pastures), and it maintains a quality of production which only a purpose-driven creative process can lead to.

Given the challenges of the TV business, I’d say its at least worth a shot for an American TV studio to try.

1. Use the fact that Microsoft’s operating system/productivity software is used by almost everyone to identify key customer/partner needs
2. Build a product which is usually only a second/third-best follower product but make sure it’s tied back to Microsoft’s products
3. Take advantage of the time and market share that Microsoft’s channel influence, developer community, and product integration buys to invest in the new product with Microsoft’s massive budget until it achieves leadership
4. If steps 1-3 fail to give Microsoft a dominant position, either exit (because the market is no longer important) or buy out a competitor
5. Repeat

While the quality of Microsoft’s execution of each step can be called into question, I’d be hard pressed to find a better approach then this one, and I’m sure much of their success can be attributed to finding good ways to repeatedly follow this formula.

It’s for that reason that I’m completely  bewildered by Microsoft’s consumer electronics business strategy. Instead of finding good ways to integrate the Zune, XBox, and Windows Mobile franchises together or with the Microsoft operating system “mothership” the way Microsoft did by integrating its enterprise software with Office or Internet Explorer with Windows, these three businesses largely stand apart from Microsoft’s home field (PC software) and even from each other.

This is problematic for two big reasons. First, because non-PC devices are outside of Microsoft’s usual playground, it’s not a surprise that Microsoft finds it difficult to expand into new territory. For Microsoft to succeed here, it needs to pull out all the stops and it’s shocking to me that a company with a stake in the ground in four key device areas (PCs, mobile phones, game consoles, and portable media players) would choose not to use one of the few advantages it has over its competitors.

The second and most obvious (to consumers at least) is that Apple has not made this mistake. Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch product lines are clear evolutions of their popular iPod MP3 players which integrate well with Apple’s iTunes computer software and iTunes online store. The entire Apple line-up, although each product is a unique entity, has a similar look and feel. The Safari browser that powers the Apple computer internet experience is, basically, the same that powers the iPhone and iPod Touch. Similarly, the same online store and software (iTunes) which lets iPods load themselves with music lets iPod Touches/iPhones load themselves with applications.

That neat little integrated package not only makes it easier for Apple consumers to use a product, but the coherent experience across the different devices gives customers even more of a reason to use and/or buy other Apple products.

Contrast that approach with Microsoft’s. Not only are the user interfaces and product designs for the Zune, XBox, and Windows Mobile completely different from one another, they don’t play well together at all. Applications that run on one device (be it the Zune HD, on a Windows PC, on an XBox, or on Windows Mobile) are unlikely to be able to run on any other. While one might be able to forgive this if it was just PC applications which had trouble being “ported” to Microsoft’s other devices (after all, apps that run on an Apple computer don’t work on the iPhone and vice versa), the devices that one would expect this to work well with (i.e. the Zune HD and the XBox because they’re both billed as gaming platforms, or the Zune HD and Windows Mobile because they’re both portable products) don’t. Their application development process doesn’t line up well. And, as far as I’m aware, the devices have completely separate application and content stores!

While recreating the Windows PC experience on three other devices is definitely overkill, I think, were I in Ballmer’s shoes, I would recommend a few simple recommendations which I think would dramatically benefit all of Microsoft’s product lines (and I promise they aren’t the standard Apple/Linux fanboy’s “build something prettier” or “go open source”):

1. Centralize all application/content “marketplaces” – Apple is no internet genius. Yet, they figured out how to do this. I fail to see why Microsoft can’t do the same.
2. Invest in building a common application runtime across all the devices – Nobody’s expecting a low-end Windows Mobile phone or a Zune HD to run Microsoft Excel, but to expect that little widgets or games should be able to work across all of Microsoft’s devices is not unreasonable, and would go a long way towards encouraging developers to develop for Microsoft’s new device platforms (if a program can run on just the Zune HD, there’s only so much revenue that a developer can take in, but if it can also run on the XBox and all Windows Mobile phones, then the revenue potential becomes much greater) and towards encouraging consumers to buy more Microsoft gear
3. Find better ways to link Windows to each device – This can be as simple as building something like iTunes to simplify device management and content streaming, but I have yet to meet anyone with a Microsoft device who hasn’t complained about how poorly the devices work with PCs.

(Image credit – Ballmer) (Image credit – Zune HD) (Image credit – Apple store)

About a year ago, I met up with Teresa Wu (of My Mom is a Fob and My Dad is a Fob fame). It was our first “Tweetup”, a word used by social media types to refer to meet-up’s between people who had only previously been friends over Twitter. It was a very geeky conversation (and what else would you expect from people who referred to their first face-to-face meeting as a Tweetup?), and at one point the conversation turned to discuss our respective visions of “Web 3.0”, which we loosely defined as what would come after the current also-loosely-defined “Web 2.0” wave of today’s social media websites.

On some level, trying to describe “Web 3.0” is as meaningless as applying the “Web 2.0” label to websites like Twitter and Facebook. It’s not an official title, and there are no set rules or standards on what makes something “Web 2.0”. But, the fact that there are certain shared characteristics between popular websites today versus their counterparts from only a few years ago gives the “Web 2.0” moniker some credible intellectual weight; and the fact that there will be significant investment in a new generation of web companies lends special commercial weight as to why we need to come up with a good conception of “Web 2.0” and a good vision for what comes after (Web 3.0).

So, I thought I would get on my soapbox here and list out three drivers which I believe will define what “Web 3.0” will look like, and I’d love to hear if anyone else has any thoughts.

1. A flight to quality as users start struggling with ways to organize and process all the information the “Web 2.0” revolution provided.
2. The development of new web technologies/applications which can utilize the full power of the billions of internet-connected devices that will come online by 2015.
3. Browser improvement will continue and enable new and more compelling web applications.

I. Quality over quantity

In my mind, the most striking change in the Web has been the evolution of its primary role. Whereas “Web 1.0” was oriented around providing information to users, generally speaking, “Web 2.0” has been centered around user empowerment, both in terms of content creation (blogs, Youtube) and information sharing (social networks). Now, you no longer have to be the editor of the New York Times to have a voice – you can edit a Wikipedia page or upload a YouTube video or post up your thoughts on a blog. Similarly, you no longer have to be at the right cocktail parties to have a powerful network, you can find like-minded individuals over Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook.

The result of this has been a massive explosion of the amount of information and content available for people and companies to use. While I believe this has generally been a good thing, its led to a situation where more and more users are being overwhelmed with information. As with the evolution of most markets, the first stage of the Web was simply about getting more – more information, more connections, more users, and more speed. This is all well and good when most companies/users are starving for information and connections, but as the demand for pure quantity dries up, the attention will eventually focus on quality.

While there will always be people trying to set up the next Facebook or the next Twitter (and a small percentage of them will be successful), I strongly believe the smart money will be on the folks who can take the flood of information now available and milk that into something more useful, whether it be for targeting ads or simply with helping people who feel they are “drinking from a fire hose”. There’s a reason Google and Facebook invest so much in resources to build ads which are targeted at the user’s specific interests and needs. And, I feel that the next wave of Web startups will be more than simply tacking on “social” and “online” to an existing application. It will require developing applications that can actually process the wide array of information into manageable and useful chunks.

II. Mo’ devices, mo’ money

A big difference between how the internet was used 10 years ago and how it is used today is the rise in the number of devices which can access the internet. This has been led by the rise of new smartphones, gaming consoles, and set-top-boxes. Even cameras have been released with the ability to access the internet (as evidenced by Sony’s Cybershot G3). While those of us in the US think of the internet as mainly a computer-driven phenomena, in much of the developing world and in places like Japan and Korea, computer access to the internet pales in comparison to access through mobile phones.

The result? Many of these interfaces to the internet are still somewhat clumsy, as they were built to mimic PC type access on a device which is definitely not the PC. While work by folks at Apple and at Google (with the iPhone and Android browsers) and at shops like Opera (with Opera Mini) and Skyfire have smoothed some of the rougher edges, there is only so far you can go with mimicking a computer experience on a device that lacks the memory/processing power limitations and screen size of a larger PC.

This isn’t to say that I think the web browsing experience on an iPhone or some other smartphone is bad – I actually am incredibly impressed by how well the PC browsing experience transferred to the mobile phone and believe that web developers should not be forced to make completely separate web pages for separate devices. But, I do believe that the real potential of these new internet-ready devices lies in what makes those individual devices unique. Instead of more attempts to copy the desktop browsing experience, I’d like to see more websites use the iPhone’s GPS to give location-specific content, or use the accelerometer to control a web game. I want to see social networking sites use a gaming console’s owner’s latest scores or screenshots. I want to see cameras use the web to overlay the latest Flickr comments on the pictures you’ve taken or to do augmented reality. I want to see set-top boxes seamlessly mix television content with information from the web. To me, the true potential of having 15 billion internet-connected devices is not 15 billion PC-like devices, but 15 billion devices each with its own features and capabilities.

III. Browser power

While the Facebooks and Twitters of the world get (and deserve) a lot of credit for driving the Web 2.0 wave of innovation, a lot of that credit actually belongs to the web standards/browser development pioneers who made these innovations possible. Web applications ranging from office staples like Gmail and Google Docs would have been impossible without new browser technologies like AJAX and more powerful Javascript engines like Chrome’s V8, Webkit’s JavascriptCore, and Mozilla’s SpiderMonkey. Applications like YouTube and Picnik and Photoshop.com depend greatly on Adobe’s Flash product working well with browsers, and so, in many ways, it is web browser technology that is the limiting factor in the development of new web applications.

Is it any wonder, then, that Google, who views web applications as a big piece of its quest for web domination, created a free browser (Chrome) and two web-capable operating systems (ChromeOS and Android), and is investigating ways for web applications to access the full processing power of the computer (Native Client)? The result of Google’s pushes as well as the internet ecosystem’s efforts has been a steady improvement in web browser capability and a strong push on the new HTML5 standard.

So, what does this all mean for the shape of “Web 3.0”? It means that, over the next few years, we are going to see web applications dramatically improve in quality and functionality, making them more and more credible as disruptive innovations to the software industry. While it would be a mistake to interpret this trend, as some zealots do, as a sign that “web applications will replace all desktop software”, it does mean that we should expect to see a dramatic boost in the number and types of web applications, as well as the number of users.

Conclusion

I’ll admit – I kind of cheated. Instead of giving a single coherent vision of what the next wave of Web innovation will look like, I hedged my bets by outlining where I see major technology trends will take the industry. But, in the same way that “Web 2.0” wasn’t a monolithic entity (Facebook, WordPress, and Gmail have some commonalities, but you’d be hard pressed to say they’re just different variants of the same thing), I don’t think “Web 3.0” will be either. Or, maybe all the innovations will be mobile-phone-specific, context-sensitive, super powerful web applications…

(Image credit) (Image credit – PhD comics) (Image credit – mobile phone) (Image credit – Browser wars)

• Not following the directions – This is top of the list for me, and it almost warrants a complete disqualification of an applicant from my perspective. This is your one chance to prove to the company you’re applying to that you’re a great choice – and you can’t even follow the clearly stated directions? If the instructions say, “submit two applications through two different websites” – I don’t care if one website is poorly designed, if you want the job you’re going to submit it twice. If the instructions say “include your SAT score”, and you don’t because of some sort of moral objection – I don’t care, because apparently you don’t want this job enough to overcome that objection. Please, people. Most companies aren’t trying to make this difficult.
• Cover letters that make you sound like someone I’d rather throw darts at than work with – Don’t get me wrong. To get hired you’ll probably have to do some gloating. And, there’s nothing wrong with using your cover letter to try to explain away a deficiency or two in your application. But, when your cover letter does nothing but convey either how you are someone who thinks you’re better than all the people around you, I find myself asking, “do I really want to work with someone like you?” and answering “No, I’m going to pass on this one.” It may be a little petty, but remember, its more important for a business to not hire bad people than it is for them to make sure every good candidate gets his/her fair chance.
• Purpose statements – Your purpose is self-obvious. Its to get a job at the firm you’re applying to. If your resume doesn’t establish that you have the qualifications and passion to do the job, either change your resume so that the “purpose statement” becomes a waste of time/space or don’t apply for the job.
• Skill: I’m great at Microsoft Office – Really? Unless you are super-super-kickass at using Word and PowerPoint and Excel (and I mean, you could teach the hardcore investment bankers and consultants a thing or two), don’t mention this. Nobody really cares (when’s the last time you heard a company hire a banker/consultant/analyst because of their Office skills?), and everybody knows you’re just pretending to have more computer skills than you actually have.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging.

The first is that I’ve been very impressed with President Obama’s efforts. This may come as a shock to my more liberal friends who have been reading my Google Reader shares on the subject, many of which have been critical of Obama’s plans. But, as someone who was not terribly impressed with Hillary Clinton’s efforts in healthcare in the 1990s, I have been pleasantly surprised by the different strategy that Obama has taken. At least from this blogger’s perspective, Obama’s process has been much more open, allowing the plan to receive input and win support from the numerous groups which need to be won over (i.e. pharmaceutical companies, doctors and nurses, insurance companies, hospitals, etc), and much more driven by Congress rather than force-fed from the Executive Branch.

The result? In my opinion, a much more nuanced policy than what I’m used to hearing from pie-in-the-sky single-payer advocates and market fundamentalists with a promising focus on addressing access and cost concerns with a combination of regulatory/government directives and market-based methods.

The second is around the balance between using government initiatives and using private markets to solve the US’s healthcare problems. I tend to be biased towards the latter, given my lack of faith in the ability of central organizations to solve the coordination, innovation, pricing, and customization challenges which markets are more adept at solving. With that said, anyone who is not a free-market fundamentalist is probably also aware of the coordination challenges that markets face (i.e. one of the reasons why we don’t trust the market to be entirely responsible for national defense or international treaties) and the blindness to equality/access concerns that markets can have.

From that perspective, I think the Obama plan does a relatively good job of balancing the two. After all, I can list at least two “market failures” that are abound in the American healthcare system:

1. One can probably assign blame for many of our current complaints about American healthcare to the fact that there is a very poor market for health insurance (David Leonhardt at the NYTimes does). After all, why would insurance providers increase quality while lowering cost when most US healthcare coverage decisions are made by employers who don’t have the incentive or the information to shop around between plans and the fact that, in many markets, there are very few insurance companies who a consumer can choose between.
2. Holding concerns of access aside, not enough people get health insurance. This is true for three reasons. First, people oftentimes underestimate the “safety net” that they may actually need to deal with sudden illnesses and accidents. Without the bargaining power of a large health insurance company on your side, the costs of seeing a doctor and obtaining treatment are astronomical – something which many uninsured find out when they suddenly need treatment. Second, the fact that the uninsured are able to still get government-funded care or emergency room care, while morally praiseworthy, means that extra costs are added to our healthcare system (and hence our insurance premiums and copays) which could be avoided had those individuals originally been covered. Finally, there are a number of conditions (e.g. breast cancer) which are more easily and cheaply dealt with if detected and treated earlier. Individuals without health insurance oftentimes are less likely to find and treat these conditions early on, resulting in greater costs and more difficult problems for doctors to treat.

That Obama is pushing for a regulated “insurance exchange” and a requirement that all individuals have health coverage is, to me, a step in the right direction to addressing these two issues. The devil is of course in the details, but the fact that Obama is leaning towards these provisions is very encouraging.

I am much less enthusiastic about the “public option” that has been thrown around because I don’t believe it manages the public/private divide very well. The theory is that the government will step in and provide coverage to individuals who are not happy with any of the options on the table with the hope that this “public option” will help “keep the insurance companies honest.” While the theory is appealing on the level that everyone would like to have an extra safety net which helps to prevent market failures, I think the “public option” idea is based on a flawed premise.

There are three possibilities that I can envision for the public option. The first is a world where the initiatives that Obama is proposing create a strong market for insurance. In that case, in the same way that the low prices in the used car market cause a self-fulfilling doom loop where they attract only bad cars (the “lemon problem”), the public option will doom itself to be a high cost, inefficient solution that attracts all the patients which insurance companies don’t want to cover (e.g. those with difficult pre-existing medical conditions).

The second and third possibility that I can see have the same outcome. Either Obama’s market initiatives fail to create a strong market for insurance or the a strong market is created, but to bolster the public option, the government heavily subsidizes the public option and protects it from competition from the private sector. In both cases, the result is that insurance companies are unable to compete with the government plan, resulting in the market for insurance becoming even less robust than it is today, effectively converting the health insurance market into a single-payer model whereby the government takes on all health care. I’ve discussed many reasons why this would be undesirable, but the two biggest ones that come to mind are governments being generally bad at innovation (due to central planning being notoriously bad at allocating resources between different uncertain technologies) and the politicization of the rationing of healthcare rather than relying on medical and personal factors.

In all three cases, the public option not only leads to undesirable costs, but distracts the government from the solution which should be implemented: creating a strong insurance market with good options for consumers and using subsidies/regulations to expand coverage. That’s the only solution that provides the coverage, the level of cost, and quality of care that we want.

The final thought that I had revolved around additional steps which I hope the Obama plan will eventually take. I outlined them in a previous post I made on healthcare policy, but they include two things:

• Universal coverage for children – Morally and practically (as there’s no better way to improve the long-term health of the country by making sure that children at an early age are vaccinated, have routine checkups, and are taught good health habits), I see no reason why every child should get quality healthcare coverage.
• Making health insurance actually act like insurance – “Health insurance” is only insurance in name, not practice. You don’t expect your car insurance to pay for every tune-up and every time you fill up at the gas station. Why should you expect your health insurance to pay for every drug and every visit to the doctor’s office? The fact that so much of this payment is handled by someone else means that individuals don’t need to control their own healthcare costs, which makes insurance premiums higher for everyone. This fact also means that insurance ceases to be the “safety net” that protects you from catastrophic losses that its supposed to be, but instead becomes a significant drag on your earnings potential.

It is certainly an exciting time for anyone interested in healthcare policy, and hopefully, we leave this process with a set of initiatives and proposals which make us all better off.
(Image credit – Dr. Obama) (Image credit – Flag + stethoscope) (Image credit – Public Option pin)

Of course, thinking about it, is very different from actually trying it, something a band of citizens calling themselves “the Allegiance of Heroes” have taken on themselves to do (via WLWT news):

He calls himself Shadow Hare, and he wears a mask and a cape to conceal his true identity. He’s Cincinnati’s own version of a superhero fighting crime and injustice where he finds it.

“We help enforce the law by doing what we can in legal standards, so we carry handcuffs, pepper spray … all the legal weapons,” said Shadow Hare. “We will do citizen’s arrests. We will intervene on crimes if there is one happening in front of us.”

The man behind Shadow Hare’s mask is 21 years old and from Milford. Those are the only clues to his true identity that he will reveal. Shadow Hare said he was abused as a child and grew up in foster homes, perhaps leading him to a life helping others.

“My message to Cincinnati is that there is still hope and all we have to do is stand together,” he said.

It’s touching and refreshing to see that there are citizens who are not apathetic to the injustices around them and, in the case of Shadow Hare, not willing to inflict the scars they were faced in their upbringing on others. However, good intentions aside, I’m not too sure I can be supportive of this. It’s not that I don’t think the justice system has its own serious flaws or that I don’t want to encourage people to take action when they feel that something needs to be done. But, I am concerned mainly with accountability.

To take a very nerdy but pertinent example, recently the Marvel Comics line had a big story event called Civil War (the cover of the first issue is on the left) – which saw the US government, in response to a group of immature superheroes botching up a rescue operation and causing the deaths of many schoolchildren, pass a law to register every single costumed crimefighter in the United States. The idea? If you want to fight crime, you register with the government so that you can (a) get trained and equipped properly, (b) have some system be accountable for your actions and any damage you may cause, and (c) better coordinate the efforts of multiple crimefighters.

In the comic book, this was an interesting debate, as many of the superheroes that picked a side were those who were well-established (had been doing this for years if not decades), well-trained, and well-liked. Do Iron Man, Captain America, Wolverine, and Spiderman really need to register with the US government? Probably not. The government would probably slow them down.

But, I took a different lens to the issue – what about the many other costumed heroes that we don’t know? Who aren’t trained, aren’t accountable, and haven’t learned all the rules that keep guys like Spiderman and Iron Man responsible? After all, while Batman knows that he needs to collect evidence when he captures a criminal, and Spiderman knows that there are limits to what he can morally do, does the random 21-year-old who’s been bounced from foster home to foster home know? Has he or she been trained to minimize property damager or the consequences to innocent people, or how to collect sufficient evidence to put someone away? What if the well-intentioned, civilian misinterprets evidence and assaults an innocent?

When a police officer screws up, they are punished and either re-trained or dismissed. As a result, they follow rules that they are not only trained to follow but are better able to produce convictions which are legal (and ethical). It’s not the most exciting or even necessarily the most effective way to do it, but it is the accountable way to do it. No one can deny the good that Shadow Hare and his brethren have been able to do, but I hope they can extend that by joining up with the police or the legal system and share their unique insight and expertise that way.

(Note: if you’d like to read more about the Civil War, I’d strongly recommend Iron Man/Captain America: Casualties of War; the other issues of the story primarily deal with the conflict between the two sides, this one issue actually lays out the arguments and justifications between the two)

(Image credit – Justice League) (Marvel Civil War Issue 1 cover)

I am a gold medalist in the macho Sleepless Working Olympics.  I once worked a 60-hour shift without sleep.  (Yes, that’s 2.5 days without any shuteye.)  One stormy February, I put in 468 hours, almost 120 hours a week for four weeks straight, sleeping an average of less than 4 hours a night.  I have enjoyed all the exciting side effects of prolonged sleep deprivation, like uncontrollable “microsleep” which once almost caused me to walk into the path of a cab, or the hallucinations that set in after 48 hours or so–not fun hallucinations, either, just long conversations with co-workers who turned out to have left the building hours or even days before.  I was essentially dreaming with my eyes open.  

So I know whereof I speak when I think about interns training on gruelling regimens.  And you know what I learned on all those sleepless nights?

Well, actually, not much.  It turns out that adequate sleep is crucial to memory formation.  But I did manage to process and retain one fact:  when you have not had enough sleep, you. are. stupid. 

Your attention span shortens.  Your decision making process slows down to a crawl.  Your emotions fray–towards the end of that fateful February, I burst out crying when I learned that the delivery of a hot-swappable backup drive had been delayed.

And, what I think is the most telling argument:

I understand that against this, you have to set the benefits of continuity of care.  But there’s a funny thing:  if continuity of care were really that great, attendings would only have four days off a month, instead of the sybaritic five or more that McNamee is deploring.  Most doctors I know work really hard.  But they don’t work a lot of 36 hour shifts, and they don’t think that two weekends a month off is the height of decadence. 

Let me propose something a little different for all those attending physicians who think that residents should be hazed work in 36 hour shifts. Why don’t you work 36 hour shifts with only 4 days off per month? I mean, don’t you care about your patients and their continuity of care?

I was not impressed. The WSJ article cited three unconvincing arguments against resident hours reform:

1. Lack of improvement in patient care from reduced hours
2. Hospitals may need to hire more residents, and this will be expensive
3. Patient hand-off increases medical errors

The first argument asserts that the reduction in hours is not a good thing because there hasn’t been a significant improvement in patient care. This makes absolutely zero sense to me. In the business world, if I could achieve similar results but with much lower worker burnout and hourly commitment, I’d call that a great victory. Odd that these doctors think the exact opposite?

The second point sounds convincing at first glance, but has two big problems with it. First, the estimated cost of hiring additional residents (~$1.6 billion) is a tiny drop in the ocean of total healthcare spend ($2.2 trillion in 2007). To argue that this is a ridiculous burden is to argue that $5.33 per person in a year or an increase of 7 cents on every hundred dollars of healthcare spend is an unconscionable amount to spend to reduce resident burnout and fatigue-related error. Secondly, this point assumes that we currently don’t need/want additional doctors. Given the shortage of doctors in the US, you’d think that hiring more residents could actually be a good thing. Again, to use business as an example, if all our clients could fix their staffing shortage and morale/fatigue problems by increasing their budget by 0.07%, my job would be very easy.

Lastly, the same tired argument is rehashed about hand-off errors. I’m too lazy to come up with new points, so I’ll simply re-quote what I said before:

1. I strongly prefer a resident who is rested and slightly unfamiliar with my case over a resident who is half-asleep and is probably not all that familiar with my case anyways given that he/she is probably dealing with many other patients and was probably half-awake/running-on-adrenaline during those patient visitations as well.
2. Really? Handoff errors are occurring at such a high rate that they are compensating for decrease in fatigue-related errors? I find that really hard to believe. 
3. Even if handoff error rates are close to fatigue error rates, it suggests that we aren’t training doctors correctly at all. After all, while fatigue error is practically impossible to control (if you’re tired, your brain doesn’t think properly — there’s not much you can do about that one), handoff errors are. I fail to see why training doctors to communicate more effectively, to learn to collaborate with other doctors more effectively, and to take better records (Obama is committing $19B to developing better healthcare IT) is something that is unfeasible or undesirable or an unnecessary burden.

Although we didn’t settle the debate (it takes time to convince the uninitiated), I had three basic responses:

1. Speed – Services like Twitter are now so fast that there is even some talk about leveraging Twitter as an early warning system/communication system for disasters. And, Wikipedia is now so ubiquitous that one can find informative updates within hours of major events.
2. Insight – As I’ve alluded to before, news agencies don’t provide insight or analysis. They relay talking points and soundbytes. They wrap it up with fancy marketing “wrapping paper.” But they don’t provide useful insight. Blogs provide insightful commentary and background — things that are out of scope or out of the reach for many traditional news sources.
3. Reputation – One issue my coworkers had was that nobody was regulating what bloggers said. “Why should you trust what a blogger has to say?” I replied, “Why should you trust what the New York Times is saying?” The answer, of course, is to only read blogs which you trust. “But how do you know who to trust?” You don’t. But, while you might not know if you can trust a single random journalist from a single newspaper, thanks to the power of blogging, I can quickly read blog entries by Ezra Klein, Greg Mankiw, Megan McArdle, and Tyler Cowen and not only get four insightful accounts (often with sources for me to get more information) from people I trust more than a random economics reporter for a newspaper, but compare their accounts and perspectives to formulate my own informed opinion. Not so easy to do with even a newspaper editorial section. (Disclaimer: I actually do read a fair amount of the Financial Times, Bloomberg, New York Times, and the Economist – because those four publications have achieved the reputation hurdle for me)

Oh, did I say three? I forgot the fourth and most important: its not like the traditional media aren’t using Twitter/Wikipedia/blogs to do their own research: (HT: PhysOrg)

An Irish student’s fake quote on the Wikipedia online encyclopaedia has been used in newspaper obituaries around the world, the Irish Times reported.

Shane Fitzgerald, 22, a final-year student studying sociology and economics at University College Dublin, told the newspaper he placed the quote on the website as an experiment when doing research on globalisation.

Fitzgerald told the newspaper he picked Wikipedia because it was something a lot of journalists look at and it can be edited by anyone.

"I didn’t expect it to go that far. I expected it to be in blogs and sites, but on mainstream quality papers? I was very surprised about," he said.

(Image Credit)

I was a little bummed that I had arrived at the theater late (my girlfriend’s classmate foolishly chose not to take the cab with us and got lost trying to find the theater), forcing us to sit in the front (which doubly sucks when you’re watching a movie in massive IMAX). But those “issues” were quickly laid to rest.

Long story short – I think the movie was very good and well worth seeing (even for the IMAX premium). There was plenty for old-time fans (e.g. Leonard Nimoy’s reprisal of his role as Spock, many references to the “Original Series” characters and accomplishments, the Spock/Kirk dynamic, etc.) showing that the creators at least tried to re-boot the continuity with respect/deference to what had come before.

There was also plenty for newcomers and casual fans. On the most basic level, there was plenty of special effects and sci-fi eye candy (e.g. a new visual and tactical take on torpedo’s). And, on a character level, the series was a good primer on the legendary Captain James T. Kirk and his “merry” crew (Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Sulu, Chekhov, and Scotty).

But, what I found most astonishing was that JJ Abrams was able to do all of this – stay true to the original and still be able to bring in new/casual fans – without taking itself too seriously or resorting to too much camp. For a movie to be able to do this with a space opera (with all of the sci-fi and philosophical trappings) with a decades-long backstory is impressive, and defies all the expectations I had.

And, all I can say is, when is the sequel?

Why so big? I trace it to three things:

• No politician ever wants to raise taxes. When’s the last time voters wanted to pay more in taxes? This is the most basic pitfall of liberal politics and politicians who have to find ways to defend or structure their tax proposals as “falling only on the rich/companies/lawyers/bad doctors/immigrants/[some other unpopular target group]”.
• No politician ever wants to cut programs. After all, every program/spending outlay has at least one big, well-funded fan. This is the most basic pitfall of conservative politics and politicians who have resorted to arguing that some programs are “wasteful” or “expensive or “bureaucratic” or “unnecessary”.
• Politicians aren’t rewarded for the state of the government years after their term. You don’t ever see a politician seriously campaigning on “I know my proposals are hurting your wallet today, but I swear, in 20 years, the economy and the budget will be awesome.”

So, liberal politicians fight a little less hard when Congress/the President/local governments cut/stem the rise in taxes, and conservative politicians fight a little less hard when Congress/the President/local governments spend more money on new programs, resulting in a (generally) growing budget deficit (depending on the rate of economic growth). And, depending on who controls the Executive/Legislative branches, one party will complain a little more loudly about the national budget deficit – at least until the parties switch positions of authority.

After all, does anyone remember when the Democratic Party (accurately) accused the Bush administration/Republican Party for causing record-high budget deficits, and the Republicans argued that budget deficits were necessary during a recession and could be controlled in the future? Funny how that’s changed more recently…

Now, before someone gets angry at me for attacking their favorite politician/policy proposal/political party, let me make it clear that this is not meant to criticize a particular politician or policy proposal. This is a criticism of a democracy where voters don’t want to engage in actual policy debate and are content with “debates” which amount to little more than liberals hurling “why do you hate the poor/minorities/the environment/healthcare” insults at conservatives and conservatives hurling “why do you love hurting businesses/taxing the American people/wasting taxpayer dollars” insults at liberals. This is a “debate” which has no purpose from an “intellectual” perspective (do you learn anything from hearing two politicians rip into each other with three-second soundbytes?) or from the perspective that a democracy ought to be formulating the best policy by combining the best ideas from the people (so if liberals love wasting taxpayer dollars and conservatives hate healthcare, what does that mean we do about expanding healthcare coverage?).

It is not sufficient to hear “this bill will give every American healthcare”. We must aspire to hear “this bill which costs $XX billion aims to give every American healthcare; it does so by doing A, which impacts proposals B and C, and limits our ability to spend money on the War on [Drugs/Terror/Juvenile Delinquency/Swine Flu]”. And until the public hears that type of information from policymakers, they are merely blind passengers on a car that someone else is driving.

So where does that leave us? I see three ways forward:

1. The public needs to demand more from their politicians and the press. Mainly, less soundbytes/talking points, more discussion of tradeoffs, numbers, and consequences.
2. Education in statistics and basic policy analysis needs to be introduced in high school. Governments lie, numbers don’t. But you can’t have a government by the people when said people have no idea how to look at numbers.
3. People should capitalize on the fact that policy wonk/wonk-lites of all political persuasions now blog and use the internet as a medium to engage in much more productive debate and discussion than traditional media outlets allow. People like Megan McArdle, Ezra Klein, Nate Silver, Gary Becker & Richard Posner, and Tyler Cowen (among many others) maintain blogs which provide insightful commentary on the big policy debates/discussions of the day. They, of course, each have their own biases and perspectives to sort out (and what better way than to read other bloggers with dissenting opinions?), but the point is there is a way to get better information and insight than what the media currently provides and the public would be remiss to not use it.

Here’s hoping for that day when political soundbytes become a thing of the past…

(Chart credit) (Image credit)

I spoke with Dr. Thomas J. Nasca, the chief executive of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, and asked him about resident duty hours, patient safety in teaching hospitals and the implications of further duty hour changes to the doctor-patient relationship.

Q. What have been some of the effects of decreasing duty hours on patient safety?

A. We know there have been a lot of unintended consequences, some of which have not been good for patients. One of these unintended consequences, for example, has been an increased number of handoffs between doctors leaving their shift and new doctors coming on. The handoff period is the most vulnerable period for a patient, not because the people handing off data are not doing their best or because institutions don’t have systems in place. It’s a vulnerable period simply because one cannot predict what will happen when a patient is ill, and the doctors left caring for those patients don’t know them.

Handoffs are when most errors occur, and most of the potential reductions of error based on fatigue have been replaced by an escalation of errors related to handoffs.

Really? And this guy is responsible for making trade-off decisions that affect patient’s lives? Let’s ignore just for a moment that incumbents never want change (after all the people who went through hazing processes oftentimes become the biggest advocates of said hazing processes), but I think most patients would agree with my take:

1. I strongly prefer a resident who is rested and slightly unfamiliar with my case over a resident who is half-asleep and is probably not all that familiar with my case anyways given that he/she is probably dealing with many other patients and was probably half-awake/running-on-adrenaline during those patient visitations as well.
2. Really? Handoff errors are occurring at such a high rate that they are compensating for decrease in fatigue-related errors? I find that really hard to believe. 
3. Even if handoff error rates are close to fatigue error rates, it suggests that we aren’t training doctors correctly at all. After all, while fatigue error is practically impossible to control (if you’re tired, your brain doesn’t think properly — there’s not much you can do about that one), handoff errors are. I fail to see why training doctors to communicate more effectively, to learn to collaborate with other doctors more effectively, and to take better records (Obama is committing $19B to developing better healthcare IT) is something that is unfeasible or undesirable or an unnecessary burden.

The Chinese government has begun a concerted campaign of economic threats against the United States, hinting that it may liquidate its vast holding of US Treasury bonds if Washington imposes trade sanctions to force a yuan revaluation.

Two Chinese officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning, for the first time, that Beijing may use its $1,330bn (£658bn) of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress. Shifts in Chinese policy are often announced through key think tanks and academies.

Barack — or do you prefer Jesus? or Kal-el, last son of Krypton? – let me get this straight. The bill that is sitting before you from Congress has many flaws and many strengths, like all bills. There are economists and policymakers for and against many parts of it.

But, there’s one part of the bill which strikes me, and nearly all economists as utterly ridiculous – the “buy American” provision. Think about the consequences:

1. It forces the federal government to buy potentially more expensive goods, wasting taxpayer dollars which could have gone into creating more jobs or helping to shore up US banks.
2. It poisons the ability for US companies to export their goods overseas, worsening the economic crisis we are in. Do the words, Smooth-Hawley Tariff ring a bell? You know, that massive trade restriction that was passed during the early days of the Great Depression that made everything worse?
3. A very strong sovereign “strategic ally/competitor”, who provides cheap labor and cheap goods to the US, is now threatening to (a) destroy the US dollar and (b) stop buying US debt even though it costs their country immense taxpayer funds which they could have funneled into their own country’s well-being but have instead chosen to give to the US so that the US will continue to buy Chinese goods

Here’s hoping your advanced schooling see’s the obvious choice and talks your party into backing down on that one little clause.

(Image Credit)

But, when I saw these pictures (taken from Daphne’s LJ), I had a reaction which I can only describe as “disgusted.” What they depict is an original classical piece of art (on the right) and the version which you can order from a catalog/museum gift store (on the left):

“Venus with Apple”

“Birth of Venus”

Notice the difference? My sense of shock left me fairly speechless, so I have to rely on Daphne’s words here:

“It’s not just the supermodels on the cover of Cosmo, it’s not just Oprah, it’s not just Kira [BEN’S COMMENT: it’s Keira] Knightly or whatever her name is, being stretched and elongated on her movie posters. Oh, no! Even Botticelli’s Venus and the Thorvaldsen Aphrodite are "too fat" and not bobble-headed enough to sell in today’s market. They’ve been Slim-fasted and Photoshopped (or had ribs removed) because in someone’s opinion, even neo-classic art lovers who would be looking to decorate their homes with reproductions of their favorite pieces would not want to look at such chubby women as artists like Botticelli chose, as models.

Can you BELIEVE this? The catalog is full of these, the "Three Graces", Rodin’s women, and a poor "Hebe, Cupbearer of the Gods" who looks like she’s been given silicon breast implants.

It’s revisionist art history, as done by the Photoshop-happy editors of Vogue.”

To me, this isn’t progress or a casual redefinition of societal standards. This says something about how society feels about women. And, call me a hypocrite for choosing one form of “progress” over another, but I am definitely not a fan of this sort of “progress".”

First, as I pointed out in a previous post, it’s counterproductive to try to blame one party for something as complex and massive as the failure of Detroit’s auto manufacturers, not only because multiple parties are “to blame”, but also because all the involved sides need to get together to come up with a credible solution.

Secondly, while I think its well-established that the oft-quoted $70/hour difference between UAW wages and non-unionized wages is not representative of actual worker salaries (UAW workers are not paid $70 more per hour than their non-unionized counterparts – that reflects the cost of paying off pensions), I think this point is irrelevant, because at the end of the day, who cares where the “$70/hour” labor cost differential comes from? It could be wages or pension costs or even college tuition subsidies for children of union members – it doesn’t matter. We’re still talking about a $2000/car cost disadvantage due to a union labor agreement (according to Mitt Romney’s column in the NYTimes). In business, you don’t have the luxury of explaining away a “$2000 price difference” or “$2000 less features/quality” by arguing its a technicality.

Lastly, the true cost of the UAW is not the $2000/car figure (which represents only a ~7% of the average selling price of $28000), but the cost of increased complexity that comes from the union contracts. Take a look at the 22 pound, 2215-page “epic poem” which is the Ford-UAW contract:

Now, I’ll admit that I haven’t read all 2215 pages, so its entirely possible I missed the magical section which talks about how the UAW enhances Ford’s productivity and causes rainbows and unicorns to appear, but for the most part the pages that I’ve looked over fit three categories:

1. Relatively “meaningless” paper (e.g. title page, contents, signed pages, etc.)
2. Rules/procedures that Ford must follow
3. Benefits that Ford must provide

Imagine running a company with very complicated manufacturing facilities around the world, a very complex supply chain, and innovative and cutting-edge competitors who have captured the eyes of your customers. Now, imagine on top of all of that, you need to deal with several hundred pages of rules that your competitors don’t, stipulating which employees can work on which parts of the assembly line, what you need to do when employees have conflicts or confusion, how senior employees need to be in order to get certain responsibilities, etc etc.

You would need to institute all sorts of additional processes to deal with these new rules and regulations. You would need to hire new people to help administer these processes. You wouldn’t be able to quickly change your operating procedures and strategies because you need to wait to get the proper sign-off from the proper union members (that is if the union allows it). You would lose out on time and efficiency and productivity as you keep unproductive workers longer and are required to factor in union rules when doing anything. You would chase away more productive, younger workers who don’t get greater responsibility and pay due to union protocol on seniority. You would ignore more product flaws as the cost of fixing them would be too high.

The true cost of the UAW is not the (fairly marginal) labor cost differential, but the cost of complexity. This is not to say Detroit doesn’t have other complexity issues (e.g. Japanese car companies define their product families and product options a lot more rationally than Detroit’s, which makes them harder to manufacture and customize and sell), but my argument from the beginning is that the labor cost differential, while something to address, is only the tip of the iceberg of inefficiencies which have hit Detroit. To focus so much attention on labor costs ignores the massive productivity, quality, and time-to-market costs which have really hurt Detroit – and that’s something lawmakers, management, and the UAW need to sort out to dig themselves out of the hole they’re in.

(Image Credit) (Image Credit – Ford-UAW contract)

What impresses me the most about projects like Folding@Home and SETI@Home is that they have defined some brilliant new ways to do science:

• Use the internet – It’s a common theme on Bench Press, but with more and more people having faster and faster access to the internet, the potential for distributed computing becomes greater and greater. As Folding@Home demonstrated, such approaches can produce computing systems as powerful (or potentially more powerful) as leading supercomputer systems at a fraction of the cost.
• Mobilize the public – We’ve discussed ways for the scientific community to reach out to the public like using social media and creating interactive applications/tools for the public to use, but efforts like Folding@Home illustrate a way to not only reach out to the public but to get them vested in science. In a world where high school science teachers find it difficult to get teens interested in science, initiatives like Folding@Home have created a system where teams of individuals compete on who can contribute the most to the effort! Instead of simply hoping that the public will continue to fund and listen, why not borrow a page from the many existing cancer-walk-a-thons and make it easy for the public to get involved?
• Leverage new technology – It may not come as a surprise to our readers that a significant amount of the computational power at Folding@Home comes from graphics cards and Playstation 3’s. But, while many “mainstream” supercomputers ignored the new power afforded by these new chip types, Folding@Home developed software so that volunteers could quickly and easily use these powerful chips to boost their Folding@Home scores. The Folding@Home initiative also developed software to take advantage of innovations AMD and Intel included in their chips (new multi-core architectures and special instructions to speed up calculations). Is it any wonder, then, that Sony, NVIDIA, and AMD have all publically announced support for the initiative with their products?

For more details on distributed computing and some of my thoughts on how the scientific community can better adopt these, check out the post at http://blog.benchside.com/2008/12/distribute-compute/

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“Barack thinks with his mind open,” said Charles Ogletree, a law professor at Harvard. “Larry thinks with his mouth open.”

Aides to President-elect Obama say a top administration role for Mr. Summers once would have seemed to be a remote possibility because of his controversial tenure at Harvard, during which he angered women and members of the faculty.

From the moment he stepped down, Mr. Summers, advised by powerful supporters who said he had been unfairly maligned, worked hard at repairing his reputation. He defended his time at Harvard but admitted mistakes; wrote a column that repositioned him politically and predicted the coming trauma; helped build a research group that supplied Mr. Obama with economic ideas and aides; and strengthened ties to women who helped dispel the accusation — stemming from a 2005 talk in which Mr. Summers wondered out loud about a relative lack of women in top academic science and engineering posts — that he thought poorly of their scientific abilities. He helped practically anyone who asked for advice, like undergraduates, economists and candidates.

But it was the financial crisis, or a series of phone calls about it, that almost instantly resuscitated Mr. Summers’s career. 

And some predict that Mr. Obama’s style could mellow that of Mr. Summers. 

Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor, said Mr. Obama’s “affability and inclusiveness might help nurture those same qualities in Larry, even though those haven’t been among Larry’s notable strengths.” 

And, some thoughts on this article’s sheer ridiculousness in hyping meaningless trivialities to the verge of lying:

• Everyone seems to re-use this picture — Larry, why would you look so evil while the whole world is watching you get nominated to join Barack “Jesus Christ” Obama’s superstar economic team?
• The media really loves to hype up everything. It’s nowhere near that dramatic:

• Summers never said he felt that women were stupider — he was commenting on the standard deviation of standardized test scores being higher for men rather than women as a hypothetical thought exercise on why there were more male faculty. Doesn’t mean the analysis was right, nor does it justify the president of a national university saying such a controversial thing, but get the facts straight.
• Larry Summers does not just walk around spewing forth prejudices and judgment, as is charaterized here. At least, not around me — think about it, he held senior positions at the World Bank, in the Treasury Department, and was a top professor — you learn a little tact after all of that.
• Larry Summers has always been incredibly helpful and reachable to undergrads, economists, think tanks, etc. This wasn’t a sudden change inspired by some desire to get back in the public’s good graces.
• Summer’s career did not need “resuscitating” — he was making a ton of cash at D.E. Shaw, doing a lot of good by joining the board for Teach for America, and getting a great deal of popularity while writing for the Financial Times … the phone call from Obama? Definitely kicked his career up a notch — if you define “career” solely from a Washington DC perspective.
• Summers has not suddenly “moved to the left”. He’s always been center-left, and I fail to see how his new role has suddenly made him a bleeding heart as characterized in this paper?
• I liked Larry. But, seriously — its not like I had pizza with him every week (and my year was the year when he did that). I gave him a standing ovation at commencement, yes, but unless my memory fails me, my class gave standing ovations to lots of people… this doesn’t make him uniquely popular/suited to undergrads.
• “poor at reading others” — the only people who say that are Harvard faculty who care more for their ego than for meaningful reform. Greg Mankiw (who sits on the opposite side of the political spectrum) thinks very highly of Summers. There’s a reason, President Faust hasn’t really changed any of Summers’s agenda…
• Obama is awesome — and yes, he may just be Jesus or Superman or whoever, but Summers doesn’t need “mellowing” and I highly doubt that a career politician will suddenly make Summers into something he’s not — he survived the Clinton years and the World Bank years after all…

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