Economics Category Archives
losing all restraints
6 December 2014 | Economics, Jurisprudence, Lifeform, Politics | No Comments
или вот, что пишет Глен Ли Робертс:
As one has the right to chose their Citizenship, “none” should be an appropriate choice. However, by choice or involuntary action, all people, with or without nationality should be treated with respect.
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I believe the identity of the person, the feeling of self-esteem and the value of a person comes from the person, not from the State. In my case, the State only left me feeling belittled and of no value. It is only outside the State that one can become who they are. Through the exercise of self-expression, travel, religion, association with others, can we find ourselves and our true value in life; ultimately to find peace within ourselves. When we are bound by the State all of those actions become limited and we are held back as human beings.
There are some 7 billion individuals on this planet. And, I use specifically the world “individual”. Each one of us is unique. When 7 billion people are forced to submit to one of two hundred or so States, there are bound to be a large number who don’t fit in, are outcasts, are held back. People who are repressed and unable to experience their full value as a human being, whether they are a citizen of some country or not.
All of the issues to Statelessness simply vanish when a government respects all the people within its realm.
несколько пафосно, однако исключительно верно, тем не менее. и он, или Майк Гогульски[1] — чем не примеры?
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мне нравится одна из цитат последнего:
Let’s finally recognize that financial commerce is speech, and that it is speech worthy of all the protections that ‘freedom of speech’ attracts.
определенно, если экономика — это жизненная форма, то что тогда свободная торговля, как не обмен информацией в этом мирозданьи? слова, речь? и до тех пор, пока такая коммерция не приводит к нарушению или ущемлению прав других, придерживается harm principle и не содержит hate speech, она должна быть свободна. ↩
the audience-driven music distribution
19 November 2014 | Copyright, Economics | 1 Comment
тот самый Стив Альбини о музыкальном бизнесе тогда и сегодня:
There’s a lot of shade thrown by people in the music industry about how terrible the free sharing of music is, how it’s the equivalent of theft, etc. That’s all bullshit.
и вот еще, о богатстве выбора:
Imagine a great hall of fetishes where whatever you felt like fucking or being fucked by, however often your tastes might change, no matter what hardware or harnesses were required, you could open the gates and have at it on a comfy mattress at any time of day. That’s what the internet has become for music fans. Plus bleacher seats for a cheering section.
как тут не согласшься? прочитайте или посмотрите целиком.
назло себе
10 November 2014 | Copyright, Economics | No Comments
а вот интервью Кори Доктороу о копирайтах и продажах, а так же отрывок из его последней книги, Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free:
Put it this way: it makes perfect sense that the lawyers at Universal Studios should have to talk to the lawyers at Warner Bros. when Universal decides to build a Harry Potter ride. But when a twelve-year-old wants to post her Harry Potter fan fiction or the Harry Potter drawings she made in art class on the Internet, it makes no sense for her to negotiate with Warner’s lawyers.
And moreover, there’s nothing wrong or new with making Harry Potter fanfic or drawings. Kids have been doing this forever; every successful artist learns her trade by copying the things she admires. Technically, copyright may have prohibited things like this before, but before the Internet, it was much more difficult for a rightsholder to discover that an offense was taking place, and there was very little pressure on intermediaries to police copyright on the rightsholders’ behalf. No one asked the companies that sold school notebooks to ensure that fanfic was never scribbled in their pages. No one asked art teachers to ensure their students were staying on the right side of copyright in their figure-drawing classes.
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It’s impossible to control who loans a friend lunch money, but that doesn’t mean financial regulation is dead. It just means that financial regulation has to limit itself to the kinds of transactions that take place on an industrial scale, among industrial players.
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Copyright is alive and well — as an industrial regulation. Copyright as a means of regulating cultural activities among private individuals isn’t dead, because it’s never been alive.
и дальше, вот еще один отрывок:
If you’re a publisher, label, or studio, the answer is simple: don’t let companies sell your goods with digital locks on them. And if a company refuses to sell your goods unless they can put their locks on your products? Well, you can be pretty sure that those locks aren’t there for your benefit.
иными словами, все ясно и четко: защищая свои работы DRM-like оберегами и тюремной стеной издательского права, вы ограничиваете их культурное воздействие и свою аудиторию. и совсем не факт, что даже эти оковы помогут вам заработать хоть на цент больше.
sweetheart deals
7 November 2014 | Economics, Politics | No Comments
More than 300 companies, including PepsiCo Inc (PEP.N), AIG Inc (AIG.N) and Deutsche Bank AG (DBKGn.DE), secured secret deals from Luxembourg to slash their tax bills, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) reported, quoting leaked documents.
иными словами, платить за все будет обычный средний класс. как и всегда.
чудеса изворотливости
3 November 2014 | Economics, Politics | No Comments
гоосударствм, однако, в их тайных дискуссиях никто и никогда не указка:
Hon PHIL GOFF: When the Minister has the right under Trans-Pacific Partnership rules to provide negotiating texts in confidence to relevant groups outside the Government, why has he not taken advantage of that right to ensure that core groups like medical professionals are properly informed about the issues under negotiation?
Hon TIM GROSER: We are trying to make this negotiation a success, and the member is well aware that there is some quite heavy politics here and that full disclosure to certain parties is likely to lead this to go immediately into the public debate on an ill-informed basis.
ну, как говорится, охренеть можно.
при этом, только благодаря Wikileaks, уже сегодня очевидно, что Транс-Тихоокеанское партнерство опасно для всех нас не меньше любого иного бандитского сговора.
bank secrecy is no more
3 November 2014 | Economics, Politics, Privacy | 2 Comments
а деньги, тем временем, заканчиваются совсем серьезно:
Finance ministers and tax chiefs from 51 countries signed an agreement on Wednesday to automatically swap tax information, which Germany’s finance minister said heralded the end of tax evasion via secret bank accounts.
on adaptation
2 November 2014 | Economics | No Comments
и еще немного: в то время, как разработчики месторождений сланцевой нефти ждут будушего роста цен (Китай, потребность в топливе — кхм… — нет альтернативы, вот это все), стоимость разработки тоже, в общем-то, падает:
However, their costs have already fallen sharply, and could fall further. The median North American shale development needs a US crude price of $57 a barrel to break even today, compared with $70 a barrel in the summer of last year, according to IHS, the research company.
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Accenture, the consultancy, believes the average cost of a US shale well could be cut by up to 40 per cent by better management of factors such as planning, logistics, and relationships with suppliers[1].
но вот и другая сторона все той же медали:
Downward pressure on costs will heighten if the oil price continues to fall. Drilling rigs and other equipment such as pumps for fracking tend not to be tied up on long-term contracts, meaning that producers can adjust their spending quickly in response to oil price movements.
In a deepening slump, the service companies providing services such as drilling and hydraulic fracturing are likely to come off worst, according to Steve Wood of Moody’s, the rating agency.
узнаете своих? впрочем, что-то такое мы уже проходили:
There could be a parallel for US oil in shale gas production. When prices fell to a 10-year low in 2012, it seemed that most US shale production would be uneconomic and output would collapse.
As it turned out, production did fall in higher-cost areas such as the Haynesville shale of Louisiana and Texas, but it continued to rise in the Marcellus Shale of Pennsylvania.
The best companies were able to produce at costs that were much lower than many people had expected. Cabot Oil and Gas, for example, says it has a cash cost in the Marcellus of just 75 cents per thousand cubic feet, compared with a benchmark US gas price of about $3.70
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well… совершенству логистики и планирования, ясное дело, нет предела, но цифры все же смотрятся чересчур энергично, на мой взгляд. ↩
о транзакциях
29 October 2014 | Apple, Economics, Technology | No Comments
так же вот хорошо — и в деталях — про Apple Pay:
One of the objections I’ve seen to Apple Pay is “How is it faster/easier than just sliding my card?” The truth is, it isn’t always. It’s rarely going to take longer than sliding a card, but it’s not always going to be radically faster either. However, it is much, much more secure. Merchants simply can’t be trusted with your card number, and the only real solution is to never give it to them [emphasis mine].
ага.
добавим угара
28 October 2014 | Economics | 2 Comments
Mohsen Ghamsari, director for international affairs at the National Iranian Oil Company, also said Iran should base its budget for the 2015-2016 Iranian year on an oil price of $70-75/barrel.
и не он один, конечно:
[Goldman Sachs] says the benchmark price of North American oil is going to fall even further, to $70 US a barrel by next spring <...> for both West Texas Intermediate and Brent crude — the two most common types of oil used and sold in North America and Europe.
Goldman Sachs says WTI will go for $75 a barrel in the first three months of 2015. Brent, meanwhile, will change hands at $85 a barrel. Both forecasts are down $15 from what the bank was last expecting. And both are forecast to slip even lower in the second quarter — historically a seasonally low time for oil prices — before rebounding a little in the summer of 2015.
always seems impossible until it’s done
28 October 2014 | Apple, Economics, Technology | 1 Comment
тем временем ритейлеры на все лады сопротивляются[1] внедрению Apple Pay и разрабатывают взамен собственную платежную систему CurrentC — там много интересного, и я бы, например, не был так уж уверен в словах Кука, что “people like their credit cards”; при должном предлагаемом удобстве можно заменить любой существующий инструмент. вот только способны ли на это торговые сети? сегодня CurrentC предлагает использовать облачную авторизацию и QR-коды, а не NFC, что звучит несколько абсурдно, если не сказать больше — достаточно вспомнить недавние взломы или посмотреть на то, как торговцы работают прямо сейчас (и представить себе чудесное будущее).
иными словами, пока у CurrentC для пользователей нет ни одного плюса, а сама процедура выходит куда муторнее и может привлечь разве что очередными скидками — или, точнее, спамом. но разве кто-то удивлен?
At last year’s BAI Retail Delivery conference, I hosted a meeting of CMOs from large FIs, which featured Lee Scott, the former CEO of Walmart (who is a member of MCX). I asked Mr. Scott why, in the face of so many failed consortia before it, would MCX succeed?
He said: “I don’t know that it will, and I don’t care. As long as Visa suffers.”
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при этом банки, разумеется, всячески поддерживают. ↩