Lie More, as a Business Model
economix.blogs.nytimes.com
economix.blogs.nytimes.com
Now I really think MBA / todays managerial wisdom is slowly destroying the world. The business climate in most corporations is plain awful and most people don't even realize because they don't know what a healthy business environment looks like.
It seems that these days that as long as your numbers on your spreadsheet match up, it doesn't matter how you got them to match just as long as they match up somehow. Lying is just one of the many unethical techniques that are now common tools to deliver shareholders "value".
i've seen some outrageous misrepresentations made by startups/founders. not talking about random guys off the street either- these have been funded by well-known VC's and accelerators. as an investor, i've learned to be very wary..
It never works. If you want to incentivize something, you need to be measuring that actual thing and giving incentives for that measurement. If you can't measure it, your incentives are doomed.
gasp
Someone fetch the smelling salts, I think I may faint!
I'm actually curious to know.
If anything it's member's only laissez-faire, where only those with enough money to buy lobbying influence are given carte blanche.
That thought experiment doesn't help though, since at the level of abstractions we are talking on, just having courts to enforce normal contract law can be construed as "intervention" of a kind. Wolves of various kinds typically decry shepherds for not allowing them the liberty to eat of the flock. The whole point of this civilization thing is to pull us a bit above/out of the state of nature. So "no government intervention" isn't a viable setting for a civilization.
I suppose I could have stated it better by saying that the regulation that's in place is merely a puppet for the lobbyist, providing the facade of regulation, when it's 'laissez-faire' since those paying the lobbyists are allowed to do what they wish.
Clearly the earlier financial upsets, which were caused by them lying to the public, were not really their fault.
The problem then (as now) was charlatans claiming similar properties from substances which lacked the original's active ingredient: high Omega-3 oils.
I see this as the fundamental Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance problem: what is quality, and how does one identify it?
People weren't stupid -- it definitely made them 'feel better'.
No, as long as the money kept rolling in, a blind eye was turned to the kind of behaviour described. Hard times has changed what is acceptable practice.
It's very hard to fight this sort of thing, as an individual, much like it's hard to avoid Barclay's (or its larger competitors, like Bank of America or Chase).
Unfortunately the press has been gutted and all the old white men with years and years of experience have left being replaced by people like Catherine Rampell (attractive, young, and only 5 years out of Princeton).
This is not a rant against woman (I've seen this pattern with both young men and young woman) and it's not a rant against young people (there are some areas where you want a young person personally I don't feel that economics (while not brain surgery) is one of them).
http://www.linkedin.com/in/catherinerampell
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r...
Here is Catherine on TV:
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/300818-6
Most interesting is that she actually founded the economics blog 1 year out of Princeton.
Edit: Not to mention the money to keep an eye (and hire experienced people) is also not there anymore, not supported by legacy advertising monopoly.
Or oppressive states (curious how RT and XinHua are growing at present).
Johnson is the real deal I have no issue with him obviously.
Catherine Rampell is founding editor of the Economix blog.
"ad-hominem attack against a reporter" It's an attack against the New York Times the paper of record not Catherine.
"has nothing to do with this story" afaik she decides what gets onto the blog or not. She is the gatekeeper.
"you apparently know a lot about for some reason"
Not really. Just what I've linked to. Took a second to do the links after a search.
"It's kind of weird."
Why?
Edit: I might add also I love people who imply someone isn't being nice to someone "ad-hominem" by not being nice ("it's kinda weird")
In Dante's Inferno, the penultimate (8th) circle of hell is for the fraudulent (the 9th and innermost is for traitors -- another form of fraud, if you like): http://www.wolfram.demon.co.uk/rp_dante_hell.html
The liars tend to win, because they make the superior claims. And for whatever reason, the customers can't give up on the idea that maybe this ONE outrageous promise, this ONE time, is actually for real.
It's like playing the lottery: Statistically you're better off running outside and screaming "THROW MONEY AT ME". But people still play.
On Sand Hill Road, these days, that seems to work.
The only reason the bankers are lying is that government meddling is making their capitalistic process illegal. Of you want bankers to be 100% truthful, don't tie their hands behind their backs with quaint concepts like usury, proper underwriting of loans, etc.