Guerilla Economics

Outward Insights

Nice ">collection of papers at Outward Insights (a Scenario Planning, and Competitor Intelligence consultancy). I like the one on short range scenario planning(PDF). Although SP is classically a long range approach, there is by no means any requirement (Requirements would be a bit contrary to the ethos of SP) to restrict SP's use to time horizons longer than 10 years only. It's a matter really of making sure that the horizon matches the problem. I would not want to use SP for instance to model an individual use of a technology in say, software, over the 25 years that Shell looks at. On the other hand, I don't see why a three year, three month or three week time horizon ought be ruled out if that were appropriate to the industry or sector. It might even be a good exercise to think about the long range planning exercises as the envelope of the shorter range exercises and practice concurrently. There are few rules here.

More on Happiness

The happiness debate continues. There's a good dissenting article on growth at Prospect, by Will Wilkinson who makes some very pertinent and sensible points. From TFA

The trouble with happiness research is that it is too often a mirror: we look into the data and see our ideology reflected. No one emerges from the happiness literature politically transformed. A dispassionate inquirer with no preconceptions would find that the happiness data say both too little and too much to build a usefully specific politics. Mostly he or she would find that liberal market democracies are where happiness flourishes most. But we already knew we wanted one of those. We already have one of those. Yet the happiness data don't tell us whether we ought to prefer the Swedish or the American type of liberal democracy, which is pretty much the main debate.

Point taken. Oliver James, meanwhile also has a book to plug a point to make in the Guardian, 23rd October:

The greatest crime of the Blatcherites has been the spreading of the affluenza virus among the rest of us. They seem to despise mothers who care for their small children - or anyone else whose work is not paid. They use education to create good little consumer-producers, not to set minds free. They lock students into debts, then impose an insecure, workaholic working environment and a bloated property market that keeps the young on a hedonic, consumerist treadmill. Above all, their talk of "opportunity", "choice" and "freedom" is just Americanised material aspirationalism.

Point taken, again.

I have some reservations about both. Wilkinson, for instance, cites a couple of studies on the empirics of reported happiness in support of his view, but the evidence is a little more nuanced. The quote from Benjamin Friedman is true, but it's not actually too difficult to construct a behaviuoral model from pretty simple consumer choice theory that would say that the utility one gets from having a position of status is what one values, and since status is essentially only a relative concept it is pretty obvious that one is setting oneself up for battle or frustration by doing so.

James, on the other hand, also feels broadly right, but has an alarming tendency to go off on one (this individualist capitalism thing at the end just didn't smell right to me).

I think there's something economists can do to help here, which is to make sure when we tell people about utility maximisation, we are a) not doing so as a prescription and b) making it clear that utility is not necessarily identified with any particular concept. We could also be more honest about the failings of the standard model and more careful about the conclusions we draw from it. And we can also, pace Wilkinson, be clear that relative factors are important to people too.

What would I advise? I'm not a psychologist and don't have any training in psychology, but my guess would be that happiness as a whole can only be achieved indirectly. If you try to be happy, you're almost certainly doomed to fail. If you can get beyond the whole concept, to the extent that it doesn't matter, it's more likely to come, in a similar way to the known fact that people who are desperate to pull never do....(OK, it's a fact. There's absolutely no evidence for it but it is a fact and both of you know it). Does growth matter? Well for a lot of reasons, yes. Do other things matter (like community, family, human respect), equally yes.

Result: My call is James, narrowly, on penalties.

Beijing v Pyongyang

From todays Grauniad, an interesting view of what Beijing is up to in dealing with the Dear Leader's barmy cult nation.

On Sartori and Polarised Pluralism, redux.

On the Italian First republic, The Italian First Republic: ‘Degenerated Consociationalism’ in a Polarised Party System by Matthijs Bogaards in West European Politics (Volume 28, Number 3 / May 2005)

Learned Journals

Found this and I thought of me.

Jonathan I Katz: Deception and Denial in Iraq

In the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. I am heartened that there is a learned journal of spookology.

From the Strategist's Brain

Great article on Porter's return to Strategy and competitiveness.

Von Clausewitz homepage. (The great Prussian military strategist has a lot of interesting stuff to say about business.)

Art of War online. (Note this was originally an eidetic text and has a hell of a lot of stuff that's not immediately comprehensible. It's also got some stuff in it that was meant to be incomprehensible to all but adepts)

Deposed CEO has something interesting to say

From Wired, A really good interview with Carly Fiorina, former CEO of HP.

Of course, numbers are important in a business too. But I think frequently people don't understand that numbers are usually lagging indicators. The results that a business posts in the quarter or the products that a business puts on a shelf are the result of decisions that have already been made.

Whilst I'm at it

So, a part of the brain governs selfishness. (Science, via boing^2). Tested using behavioural Game Theory experiments.

Really good coverage as ever at mindhacks. , waiting for neuroeconomist to chip in.

Google not Juche, Kim is

So using my current Juche obsession, I will express my Chajusong, creativity and conciousness by conflating the two top stories of the day, other than Colleen McRooney's new Bentley and Jade Goody winning a Celebrity of the Year gong that is.

Firstly Kim demonstrates the power of Chajusong by building a bomb. Brilliant. Look Kim, nobody within range of Pyongyang is at all interested in nuking your short arsed hide (Oh I'm on safe ground attacking Kim alright. hardly controversial.). They're all too busy being or becoming well off. Just like the Juche economy? Breaking away from the world is clever? in 1914 Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world. Then they either elected a succession of one eyed populists or got juntad by them, broke away from the rest of the world and got into an almighty mess. That's what happens when you try. Even the old Soviet bloc were insulated from the worst damage their economic systems caused by the fact that they traded as a bloc, and once the Wall fell, Cuba, for instance, was plunged well and truly into the dudu. But hey, nobody's died of malnutrition in Pyongyang. And, so you've got a bomb? You've been trying for years. Japan could probably have one in weeks if they wanted and it'll be smaller and cheaper than yours.

For no better reason than I just want to believe he's as ridiculous as he looks, the picture's how I think of Kim.

OK now Google, they don't follow this old fangled Juche thing so well, for all their wonderful chajusong, which hath served us so well with means to get information and detect egregious plagiarism. The reason I say this is that their acquisition of YouTube is recognition that their own video service sucked a monkey's ass, and that the market would eventually be right. Not Juche, but correct.

On the $1.6 Bn figure. Hmmm. Not sure. The terms of the deal aren't fully out yet, but I wonder whether the more important bit to watch is the content deals with Warner, CBS et al. As important as the shiny technology and widespread user base that Google bought is the third leg of the stool, the content. A deal that satisfies all three parties is increasingly looking to be the real dealmaker, as copyright starts to move from the legal realm to the realm of customer relations management.

That's what I think is worth watching!

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