Write about your approach to budgeting.
Don’t want much. Don’t need much. And hope for the best.
PROMPT: Budgeting
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Category Archives: Economics
PROMPT: Brands
What are your favorite brands and why?
The ones that offer the best value for the money at a given time. I have no brand loyalty, and — in fact — find it to be an absurd concept. It’s corporate hacking of humanity’s proclivity for tribalism in service of profit-maximization.
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PROMPT: Spree
Where would you go on a shopping spree?
A used bookstore is the only possible answer, but even then “spree” would generally be excessive for my volume of purchases – by common usage.
I’ve never been a recreational shopper. But, as “sprees” go, I’ve gone on more of the shopping kind than the murdering kind. Funny, those are the only kinds of sprees I’m aware of. I guess something has to die to make it a spree.
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PROMPT: Shoes
Daily writing prompt
Tell us about your favorite pair of shoes, and where they’ve taken you.
Well, they were Timberland hiking boots, a pair that was comfortable and had served me well on a number of hikes in various parts of the world. Then, on the Goechala Pass Trek in Sikkim, I learned that they were only held together by some planned-obsolescent glue.
I had to hike six days with one of the soles strapped to my foot for one of the boots, and five days for the other. Yes, after so many miles of hiking in various environments, they fell apart within one day of each other. I guess the glue has a finite number of puddle steps in it, and I hit that number one day earlier with one boot than the other. That’s when I realized there’s nothing special about a shoe. It’s just a bunch of the lowest cost materials stuck together in the lowest cost assembly method and designed so you’ll have to buy a new pair every few months to years, depending upon the type of shoe, its use, and its price point. If there were a monopoly on shoe production, no pair would last more than a week. It’s only competition that allows for some halfway decent pairs to exist. I’m happy with any shoe that protects my feet, and — once it doesn’t — it’s dead to me.
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PROMPT: A Million Dollars
Daily writing prompt
If you had a million dollars to give away, who would you give it to?
That’s a tough one. It wouldn’t be an alma mater because I agree with John Mulaney that colleges are like the heroin-addicted relative who is forever asking everyone for money. Collecting money from so many sources (tuition, grants, sports team licensing, and donations — corporate & individual) and still raising tuition at a rate several times that of inflation does not speak to sound money management.
Disease research sounds like a good idea… at first. Except a huge portion of it is done in the United States, and America is number one in per capita medical expenditures (by a large margin) while being around 20th in health outcomes. This, also, doesn’t speak to great money management. If the solution was a million-dollar medicine or a billion-dollar surgery they would find it, but if the solution is a ten-dollar medicine or a free exercise, there’s not a chance.
A social program would be a great idea if I could find one that didn’t make it cheaper / easier to make more human beings. Probably the single biggest problem of the planet is that people already don’t treat the decision to have children as a decision, but rather treat it as some sort of Pavlovian response to reaching a certain birthday.
So, I guess I’m left with leaving it to a random person on the street corner who seems nice enough. Then, I wouldn’t have any expectations that it would amount to anything. Ooh… could I give it to a street dog with no human middleman? That’s the one.
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Zambia Limerick
There was a shrewd carpenter from Zambia dismayed to hear what was paid to IKEA. He took apart his shelves, said, "Make 'em yourselves!" upped his rates, but threw in a hex key-a.
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Devourers [Lyric Poem]
We were classed: Consumer.
And that became our task.
The stores grew like tumors,
and in stuff piles we basked.
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BOOK REVIEW: Artpreneur by Miriam Schulman
Artpreneur: The Step-by-Step Guide to Making a Sustainable Living from Your Creativity by Miriam SchulmanMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
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Release Date: January 31, 2023
This book is about half pep talk on selling one’s art at a higher price and half guide to marketing and selling art. “Pep talk” isn’t meant to diminish what the book does. First of all, the author does offer extensive justification for higher pricing, both from the body of research and from anecdotal experiences. Secondly, this is a pep talk that needs to be delivered and is the most important function of the book, by far. That doesn’t mean the book doesn’t do a fine job with the marketing and selling bits, but there are so many books available on that subject.
The book is directed toward graphic artists, though some of book’s message is of relevance to musicians and poets as well. (Perhaps that’s why I found the pep talk part so important, because it’s broadly germane to artists, whereas sales are quite different for media where huge numbers of copies are made versus one-of-a-kind works.)
If you’re a struggling artist or would like to avoid being one, this book is worth reading.
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BOOK REVIEW: Introducing Game Theory: A Graphic Guide by Ivan & Tuvana Pastine
Introducing Game Theory: A Graphic Guide by Ivan PastineMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
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This book is meant to provide a non-mathematical introduction to the basics of game theory, using examples that make the subject readily intuitively grasped. With this objective in mind, the book does a great job. Game Theory is an interdisciplinary subject that seeks to explain behavior in strategic games, a strategic game is one in which all players make decisions that can influence the outcome of the game. Let’s clarify, using a literal “game.” In chess, it’s meaningless to ask what the best move is without considering what the opponent has done and is likely to do – i.e. one’s best move must always take into account what the other player has done. This is in contrast to games of skill or chance (like a running race or roulette, respectively,) in which one doesn’t really need to respond / adapt to what the opponent has done (or will do) in order to win.
The reason I mention using an example that is literally a game is that Game Theory is used in a wide variety of domains, from military to business strategy, most of which don’t involve “games” in the common use of that word. The book draws from many disciplines, usually the ones where the concept at hand was initially developed – e.g. nuclear weapons strategy or marketing. While the book is a bit more heavily loaded with examples from the business world, it doesn’t ignore contributions from other sectors. Many of the games discussed will be familiar to the general reader at some level from the outset (e.g. the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Chicken, Battle of the Sexes, etc.) but one should finish reading with a better understanding of ideas like payoffs, equilibria, efficiency, sequential play (v simultaneous,) and coordination – all of which are crucial to applied strategic decision-making.
If you are interested in a starter book about strategic decision-making, this one is worth reading.
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BOOK REVIEW: The Comic Book History of Comics by Fred Van Lente
Comic Book History of Comics: Comics for All by Fred Van LenteMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
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As the title suggests, this is a history of comic books and graphic novels that is presented in the form of a comic book. This book turned out to be more fascinating than I expected (and, obviously, I thought it would be interesting enough to start reading it in the first place.) The added fascination, of all places, came from the economics nerd in me (I thought that guy was dead, but apparently not.) You may wonder what economics has to do with the history of comics, but it turns out that there was a long period of learning about how the unique characteristics of comic books should influence how they were most lucratively sold. At first, comics were sold just like other magazines, but eventually people realized that the fact that these periodicals told serialized stories (and that they were potentially collectable) made them a very different kind of product. And there were booms and busts along the way.
It’s not just economists who might find something surprisingly interesting in this book, there is a colorful discussion of intellectual property law as it pertained to comics. (As well as the more visceral human-interest story of the artists who created characters that made executives and actors billions of dollars, while said artists eked out a living.) Long-story-short, this book isn’t just for those interested in how artistic styles changed, or how various popular characters came to be, though those subjects are touched upon as well. It looks at the history of comics from many angles. One learns a little about the unique Japanese, Brazilian, Mexican, and African comic book markets, and one even sees how comic books played a roll in international relations. While it’s mostly an industry (macro-)level look, there is discussion of a few who individuals who changed the industry (e.g. Alan Moore.)
This is a quick read, but packed with interesting information for those of us who are basically interested in everything. It’s well drawn as well. Check it out.
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Tiger Riding for Beginners 