DFW

News of his death brought a dark cloud to an otherwise happy weekend. David Foster Wallace's piece on Roger Federer made me get a grounds pass for my first US Open in 2006.

After a couple aborted attempts, and a rendering of the book into three physical parts, I read The Infinite Jest in 2004 while studying public finance at Wagner. Both dealt with our desires and how to measure and realize them. I used to be a bit embarrassed to claim the Infinite Jest as one of my favorite books, as being a bit macho, but after reading the Memories at McSweeney's, there's no need to apologize for loving the work of a modest man who left a giant footprint.

Update (9/18): Jason Kottke provides a great collection of DFW links.

Competing With Low Cost Competition

The current war budget show down brought this to mind: when big corporations compete with smaller competitors with lower fixed and lower variable costs... they'll lose (Or at least they need huge subsidies and protections like the old integrated steel mills... and then lose).

So consider this paragraph:

The bill approved by the House would provide $42.8 billion total, with about $30 billion directed to the war effort for the next two months. It requires the president to report by July 13 on how the Iraqi government is performing in building its military and moving toward achieving political unity. Congress would then vote a second time on whether to give the administration the remainder of the money — about $50 billion — to maintain operations in Iraq through Sept. 30 or to restrict that money to deployment.

$30 + 50 equals $80 billion for war operations through September. What are the insurgents spending for their share of the conflict?

Reading Off The Syllabus

Each semester I attempt to maintain some personal reading with my course reading. I've had mixed luck in the past, but one home run was reading the Infinite Jest while in my Public Finance class. Both ultimately came down to the understanding the pursuit of happiness, whether its public goods & market failure or addiction & the junior tennis circuit.

I'm taking a class in Public Finance in Developing Countries now, and had the fortune of landing Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins from my book swap just before classes began. Confessions of an EHM is an anecdotal autobiography (with a several endnotes) on how he, as an forecasting economist for MAIN (think Bechtel, Carlyle & Halliburton) inflated estimates to convince developing countries and the World Bank to enter in huge debt agreements. A twist of how the pitch was always based on how great the endeavor would be for the county, and keeping on the low down how much more insured is the profit of his firm. While his style is over the top and didactic, its evident he really is trying to clear his conscious.

Contrast this with public finance theory, where between the lines there are implications of the winners and losers, but the text reads in a scientific neutral. The last two things to come to mind are:

1) how developing countries, whom have relied heavily on taxes on international trade, have been advised to reduce rates in order to spur growth and reap higher revenues. But now research shows that revenues have not increased for developing nations. They fail to mention how corporations are enjoying paying less in tax;

2) Venezuala keeps popping up in the news. Mostly Victor Chavez, and how he's painted as a socialist dictor threatening their stability. Pat Robertson called for his assassination. He survived a coup in December 2002. But what we don't get a sense of is a) how popular and charismatic he is, and b) how oil wealth was bypassing the country before his rise to power, and how contracts we rewritten to put more mineral wealth into the national treasury. Why is the news down on Chavez? Because he has not let Big Oil do as they please . The Documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is a great perspective on how distorted our view of Venezuala is (and can I get a shout for my man Gil Scott Heron and my favorite cut!?!).

I'm moving on to Dominique LaPorte's History of Shit A look at human waste disposal from a Marxist perspective. I'll keep you posted on how it all comes out.

Pension Fund For Artists

Wired has an interesting piece on the Artist Pension Trust. The concept:

Create a pension plan for artists by gathering a collection of their works and gradually selling them off to build a cash account. Over the course of their careers, some artists would succeed wildly; most would fail miserably. By spreading that risk of failure among a large pool of artists, Shniberg figured he could provide financial security to a group of workers unaccustomed to a safety net.

Legacies are an anchor, by which I mean: a drag

Last Wednesday, I breifly mused on on how legacy features in Corp. IT helps keep Mac integration out, thus making those shops more vulnerable to changing technological environments. In this week's Times Magazine, Tom Friedman considers the "flattening of the world" by globalization, in part aided by freedom from legacy features:

That is why there is nothing that guarantees that Americans or Western Europeans will continue leading the way. These new players are stepping onto the playing field legacy free, meaning that many of them were so far behind that they can leap right into the new technologies without having to worry about all the sunken costs of old systems. It means that they can move very fast to adopt new, state-of-the-art technologies, which is why there are already more cellphones in use in China today than there are people in America.

Over dependance on oil, microsoft, a strong dollar (dare I include social security?), these are some of our economic legacies, grown strong from maximizing profit yields in the short term, but perhaps a drag overall in the long term. The one thing we can count on is change, not the legacies that we try so desperately to hold on to.

Looking at the wrong costs

I'll admit that I like my Mac a lot. I read about it online, I got one for my folks, and I'm going to bring one into our office. A while ago there was this musing in techworld about corporate IT opening up to Macs. Among the cited barriers to adoption are needs for serial ports, scsi,tape drives and floppys, also known as legacy features that maintains compatiblity with older equipment.

It seems to me 1) that Corp. IT is looking at the wrong costs, the sunk costs; and 2)that they haven't learned all the lessons there were to be learned regarding necessary reduncancy and diversity. In age of spyware, viruses and trojans, it seems clear that having a mixed shop of Wintel & Macs are a good defense, especially if Macs have far fewer known issues.

Furthermore, when I entered the job market I used my dual profieciency as a strength, IT should do the same. If Macs 10 years out face more problems, and linux is more stable, then an IT shop should be able to respond, that seems like good business to me.