Economics – Page 90 – artdiamondblog.com

Incandesce

(p. A11) When I am asked if I want a Compact Fluorescent Light, the only thought I have is that I don’t want my light to be compact, nor do I wish it to be florescent. I want a light that will incandesce across my room, filling it with a familiar yellow surf, and remind me that it was not with wax or kerosene, but with incandescent bulbs that man conquered the night.
. . .
I imagine what will happen when the filaments in my final incandescent bulbs grow weak, and I can hardly read my notes before me. Will I no longer be able to write at night? Or worse, will living with CFLs and LEDs make every day feel like I have just spent nine hours plastered before a computer screen? One day, soon, I will turn on my light and hear for the last time the signature, explosive death rattle of an incandescent bulb, and I’ll hold a vigil for the light that shaped and witnessed more than a century of human history. Tender is the light, Keats might say.
In my lightless room, I’ll sit for a moment and wonder how many more times in my life I’ll watch a bulb go out again. As I look to my dead bulb, I’ll think of the poet again and whisper: Darkling, you were not a piece of technology born for death.

For the full commentary, see:
ALEXANDER ACIMAN. “Tender Is the Light of My Incandescents; Bracing myself for life once the filaments in my beloved bulbs grow weak.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., Jan. 31, 2014): A11.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Jan. 30, 2014.)

It Does Not Take a Government to Raise a Railroad

(p. A17) . . . , All Aboard Florida (the train will get a new name this year), is not designed to push political buttons. It won’t go to Tampa. It will zip past several aggrieved towns on Florida’s Treasure Coast without stopping.
Nor will the train qualify as “high speed,” except on a stretch where it will hit 125 miles an hour. Instead of running on a dedicated line, the new service will mostly share existing track with slower freight trains operated by its sister company, the Florida East Coast Railway.
But the sponsoring companies, all owned by the private-equity outfit Fortress Investment Group, appear to have done their sums. By minimizing stops, the line will be competitive with road and air in connecting the beaches, casinos and resorts of Miami and Fort Lauderdale with the big airport and theme-park destination of Orlando. Capturing a small percentage of the 50 million people who travel between these fleshpots, especially European visitors accustomed to intercity rail at home, would let the train cover its costs and then some.
But Fortress has a bigger fish in the pan. Its local operation, Florida East Coast Industries, is a lineal progeny of Henry Flagler, the 1890s entrepreneur who created modern Florida when he built a rail line to support his resort developments. Flagler’s heirs are adopting the same model. A Grand Central-like complex will rise on the site of Miami’s old train station. A similar but smaller edifice is planned for Fort Lauderdale.
The project is a vivid illustration of the factors that have to fall in place to make passenger rail viable nowadays. If the Florida venture succeeds, it would be the only intercity rail service anywhere in the world not dependent on government operating subsidies. It would be the first privately run intercity service in America since the birth of Amtrak in 1971.

For the full commentary, see:
HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR. “BUSINESS WORLD; A Private Railroad Is Born; All Aboard Florida isn’t looking for government operating subsidies.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., Jan. 15, 2014): A17.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Jan. 14, 2014.)

Carnegie Said “Socialism Is the Grandest Theory Ever Presented”

More on why Andrew Carnegie is not my favorite innovative entrepreneur:

(p. 257) “But are you a Socialist?” the reporter asked.

Carnegie did not answer directly. “I believe socialism is the grandest theory ever presented, and I am sure some day it will rule the world. Then we will have obtained the millennium…. That is the state we are drifting into. Then men will be content to work for the general welfare and share their riches with their neighbors.”
“‘Are you prepared now to divide your wealth’ [he] was asked, and Mr. Carnegie smiled. ‘No, not at present, but I do not spend much on myself. I give away every year seven or eight times as much as I spend for personal comforts and pleasures.”

Source:
Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed pronoun, in original.)
(Note: the pagination of the hardback and paperback editions of Nasaw’s book are the same.)

Twitter Founders Were Outsiders and Unafraid of Risk

Source of the book image: http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-AF602_bkrvtw_GV_20131031131314.jpg

(p. 20) . . . “Hatching Twitter,” a fast-paced and perceptive new book by Nick Bilton, a columnist and reporter for The New York Times, establishes that uncertainty and dissension about its true purpose has characterized Twitter from its inception.
. . .
The company was financed by Williams, who made a bundle selling Blogger to Google and was intent on proving he wasn’t a one-hit wonder. It rose from the ashes of a failed podcasting enterprise, Odeo, which Williams had bankrolled as a favor to his friend Noah Glass. Bilton sketches the founders’ backgrounds and personalities in quick, skillful strokes that will serve the eventual screenwriter, director and storyboard artist well; these are characters made for the big screen.
None came from money. Ev Williams was a shy Nebraska farm boy whose parents never really understood their socially awkward, computer-obsessed son.
. . .
Having known hardship, none of the four founders were afraid of risk. To join the ill-fated Odeo, Stone walked away from a job at Google, leaving more than $2 million in unvested stock options on the table.
Twitter began with a conversation. Dorsey and Glass sat talking in a car one night in 2006 when Odeo was on the verge of collapse. Dorsey mentioned his “status concept,” which was inspired by AOL’s Instant Messenger “away messages” and LiveJournal status updates that people were using to mention where they were and what they were doing. Glass warmed to the idea, seeing it as a “technology that would erase a feeling that an entire generation felt while staring into their computer screens”: loneliness.

For the full review, see:
MAUD NEWTON. “Four Characters.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., November 3, 2013): 20.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date November 1, 2013.)

Book under review:
Bilton, Nick. Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal. New York: Portfolio, 2013.

70 Percent of Current Jobs May Soon Be Done by Robots

Kelly may be right, but it does not imply that we will all be unemployed. What will happen is that new and better jobs, and entrepreneurial opportunities, will be created for humans.
Robots will do the boring, the dangerous, and the physically exhausting. We will do the creative and the analytic, and the social or emotional

(p. A21) Kevin Kelly set off a big debate with a piece in Wired called “Better Than Human: Why Robots Will — And Must — Take Our Jobs.” He asserted that robots will soon be performing 70 percent of existing human jobs. They will do the driving, evaluate CAT scans, even write newspaper articles. We will all have our personal bot to get coffee. There’s already an existing robot named Baxter, who is deliciously easy to train: “To train the bot you simply grab its arms and guide them in the correct motions and sequence. It’s a kind of ‘watch me do this’ routine. Baxter learns the procedure and then repeats it. Any worker is capable of this show-and-tell.”

For the full commentary, see:
DAVID BROOKS. “The Sidney Awards, Part 2.” The New York Times (Tues., December 31, 2013): A21. [National Edition]
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date December 30, 2013.)

The article praised by Brooks is:
Kelly, Kevin. “Better Than Human: Why Robots Will — and Must — Take Our Jobs.” Wired (Jan. 2013).

Artificial Intelligence Is a Complement to Human Intelligence, Not a Substitute for It

Source of book image: http://img2-1.timeinc.net/ew/i/2013/11/05/Smarter-Than-You-Think.jpg

(p. 11) Clive Thompson, a Brooklyn-based technology journalist, uses this tale to open “Smarter Than You Think,” his judicious and insightful book on human and machine intelligence. But he takes it to a more interesting level. The year after his defeat by Deep Blue, Kasparov set out to see what would happen if he paired a machine and a human chess player in a collaboration. Like a centaur, the hybrid would have the strength of each of its components: the processing power of a large logic circuit and the intuition of a human brain’s wetware. The result: human-machine teams, even when they didn’t include the best grandmasters or most powerful computers, consistently beat teams composed solely of human grandmasters or superfast machines.

Thompson’s point is that “artificial intelligence” — defined as machines that can think on their own just like or better than humans — is not yet (and may never be) as powerful as “intelligence amplification,” the symbiotic smarts that occur when human cognition is augmented by a close interaction with computers.

For the full review, see:
WALTER ISAACSON. “Brain Gain.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., November 3, 2013): 11.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date November 1, 2013.)

Book under review:
Thompson, Clive. Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better. New York: Penguin Press, 2013.

Peck Shows that Job Interviews Do Not Identify Good Hires

(p. A18) Don Peck looked at how companies assess potential hires in an essay in The Atlantic called “They’re Watching You at Work.”
Peck demonstrates something that most of us already sense: that job interviews are a lousy way to evaluate potential hires. Interviewers at big banks, law firms and consultancies tend to prefer people with the same leisure interests — golf, squash, whatever. In one study at Xerox, previous work experience had no bearing on future productivity.
Now researchers are using data to try again to make a science out of hiring. They watch how potential hires play computer games to see who is good at task-switching, who possesses the magical combination: a strict work ethic but a loose capacity for “mind wandering.” Peck concludes that this greater reliance on cognitive patterns and game playing may have an egalitarian effect. It won’t matter if you went to Harvard or Yale. The new analytics sometimes lead to employees who didn’t even go to college. The question is do these analytics reliably predict behavior? Is the study of human behavior essentially like the study of nonhuman natural behavior — or is there a ghost in the machine?

For the full commentary, see:
DAVID BROOKS. “The Sidney Awards.” The New York Times (Fri., December 27, 2013): A18. [National Edition]
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date December 26, 2013, and has the title “The Sidney Awards, Part 1.”)

The article praised by Brooks is:
Peck, Don. “They’re Watching You at Work.” The Atlantic (Dec. 2013).

Regulators Forbid Doctor from Curing Dentist’s Pelvic Pain

“Dr. Daniel Davidson, an Idaho dentist, has pelvic pain so severe that he cannot sit, and can stand for only limited periods.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A18) After visiting dozens of doctors and suffering for nearly five years from pelvic pain so severe that he could not work, Daniel Davidson, 57, a dentist in Dalton Gardens, Idaho, finally found a specialist in Phoenix who had an outstanding reputation for treating men like him.

Dr. Davidson, whose pain followed an injury, waited five months for an appointment and even rented an apartment in Phoenix, assuming he would need surgery and time to recover.
Six days before the appointment, it was canceled. The doctor, Michael Hibner, an obstetrician-gynecologist at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, had learned that members of his specialty were not allowed to treat men and that if he did so, he could lose his board certification — something that doctors need in order to work.
The rule had come from the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology. On Sept. 12, it posted on its website a newly stringent and explicit statement of what its members could and could not do. Except for a few conditions, gynecologists were prohibited from treating men. Pelvic pain was not among the exceptions.
Dr. Davidson went home, close to despair. His condition has left him largely bedridden. The pain makes it unbearable for him to sit, and he can stand for only limited periods before he needs to lie down.
“These characters at the board jerked the rug out from underneath me,” he said.

For the full story, see:
DENISE GRADY. “Men With Pelvic Pain Find a Path to Treatment Blocked by a Gynecology Board.” The New York Times (Weds., December 11, 2013): A18.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date December 10, 2013.)

Carnegie Created “Plausible Fictions” on the Future Demand for Minor Railroads

Economists and historians continue to debate the importance or unimportance of railroads in the economic growth of the United States. This is a debate that I need to explore more.

(p. 129) It is doubtful that either [Scott or Carnegie] . . . truly believed that the new railroads, when built, would carry enough traffic to earn back their construction costs. A great number of them were along lightly traveled routes, which, like the Gilman, Springfield & Clinton Railroad in Illinois, connected small cities that did little business with one another. The roads were being built because money could be made building them. Carnegie profited from the commissions on the bond sales; Scott from diverting funds earmarked for construction into the hands of the select number of investors, himself included, who were directors of both the railroad and the improvement companies.

To raise money for roads not yet built and probably not really needed, Carnegie and Scott trafficked in what Richard White refers to as “the utilitarian fictions of capitalism.” Together, they constructed “plausible fictions” about the railroads, the passengers and freight that would ride them, the tolls that would be collected, the villages that would grow into towns and the towns into cities, creating new populations, products, and commerce.
Carnegie, a consummate optimist, took naturally to the task.

Source:
Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
(Note: bracketed words and ellipsis added.)
(Note: the pagination of the hardback and paperback editions of Nasaw’s book are the same.)

Patent Allows Mechanic to Profit from Invention to Ease Births

“With Jorge Odón’s device, a plastic bag inflated around a baby’s head is used to pull it out of the birth canal.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) The idea came to Jorge Odón as he slept. Somehow, he said, his unconscious made the leap from a YouTube video he had just seen on extracting a lost cork from a wine bottle to the realization that the same parlor trick could save a baby stuck in the birth canal.

Mr. Odón, 59, an Argentine car mechanic, built his first prototype in his kitchen, using a glass jar for a womb, his daughter’s doll for the trapped baby, and a fabric bag and sleeve sewn by his wife as his lifesaving device.
. . .
(p. A4) In a telephone interview from Argentina, Mr. Odón described the origins of his idea.
He tinkers at his garage, but his previous inventions were car parts. Seven years ago, he said, employees were imitating a video showing that a cork pushed into an empty bottle can be retrieved by inserting a plastic grocery bag, blowing until it surrounds the cork, and drawing it out.
. . .
With the help of a cousin, Mr. Odón met the chief of obstetrics at a major hospital in Buenos Aires. The chief had a friend at the W.H.O., who knew Dr. Merialdi, who, at a 2008 medical conference in Argentina, granted Mr. Odón 10 minutes during a coffee break.
The meeting instead lasted two hours. At the end, Dr. Merialdi declared the idea “fantastic” and arranged for testing at the Des Moines University simulation lab, which has mannequins more true-to-life than a doll and a jar.
Since then, Mr. Odón has continued to refine the device, patenting each change so he will eventually earn royalties on it.
. . .
Dr. Merialdi said he endorsed a modest profit motive because he had seen other lifesaving ideas languish for lack of it. He cited magnesium sulfate injections, which can prevent fatal eclampsia, and corticosteroids, which speed lung development in premature infants.
“But first, this problem needed someone like Jorge,” he said. “An obstetrician would have tried to improve the forceps or the vacuum extractor, but obstructed labor needed a mechanic. And 10 years ago, this would not have been possible. Without YouTube, he never would have seen the video.”

For the full story, see:
DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. “Promising Tool in Difficult Births: A Plastic Bag.” The New York Times (Thurs., November 14, 2013): A1 & A4. [National Edition]
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date November 13, 2013, and has the title “Car Mechanic Dreams Up a Tool to Ease Births.”)