Business
Legalization and Regulation
Marijuana prohibition currently costs American taxpayers almost $42 billion a year. Compare this negative cash flow to the projected tax benefits of legalization – between $2.4 and $6.2 billion annually – and it becomes obvious why Milton Friedman and more than 500 other respected economists publicly support the legalization of marijuana. | via Reality Catcher
Impacts of the Financial Crisis
Only a small fraction of funding by investment banks, mortgage companies, brokerages, equity funds, hedge funds, commodities futures speculators, etc., comes from actual investor capital. The rest—up to ninety-seven percent, in the case of commodities futures contracts—is credit self-created by the banks.
Where did the banks get this credit? The answer is that they simply cranked [...]
Google and the power of words
The dominance of Google is radically changing written language on the internet – through their search engine and advertising programmes such as AdSense they are homogenising the meanings of words. This provides a strong impetus for newspapers to ignore whatever editorial ethics they had left in their desperate rush towards the money from online advertising. [...]
Ah, Freedom
In all of these cases, U.S. multinationals have offered the same defense: Cooperating with draconian demands to turn in customers and censor material is, unfortunately, the price of doing business in China. Some, like Google, have argued that despite having to limit access to the Internet, they are contributing to an overall increase of freedom [...]
Gin, Television, and Social Surplus
So I tell her all this stuff, and I think, “Okay, we’re going to have a conversation about authority or social construction or whatever.” That wasn’t her question. She heard this story and she shook her head and said, “Where do people find the time?” That was her question. And I [...]
Design conversations, not products
For designers, the task at hand is to listen to all these crossover conversations and design the conditions for them to take place in hybrid forms and formats, enabling, facilitating, and curating them without creating them.
via Matter/Anti-Matter
Exactly.
But there is something about messes that lead to great successes. I think it often has to do with teams that focus almost exclusively on the product and the market to the exclusion of everything else. They don’t build the rest of the infrastructure that it takes to be a stable well executing business and [...]
Getting Real Digest
Outside money is plan B
The first priority of many startups is acquiring funding from
investors. But remember, if you turn to outsiders for funding,
you’ll have to answer to them too. Expectations are raised.
Investors want their money back – and quickly. The sad fact is
cashing in often begins to trump building a quality product.
Constraints force creativity
Run [...]
Flying Off the Shelves by Paul Constant
In my eight years working at an independent bookstore, I lost count of how many shoplifters I chased through the streets of Seattle while shouting “Drop the book!” I chased them down crowded pedestrian plazas in the afternoon, I chased them through alleys at night, I even chased one into a train tunnel.
The Beauty, Secrets and Utility of Twitter
The Beauty, Secrets and Utility of Twitter for Business
Lots of people laugh at Twitter, call it a waste of time and worse, and, that’s just fine with me. While they’re laughing, I’m learning, listening, meeting, and enjoying a global view of an endless flow of creative thought – 140 characters at a time…[Continue reading [...]
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