Category Archives: Economics

PROMPT: Job

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Daily writing prompt
What job would you do for free?
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To pick nits, I think the defining characteristic of a job is that one earns money for one’s time and effort. Otherwise, it’s volunteering or a hobby — both of which are fine activities in which I’ve participated over the years — but they’re not “jobs.” In the case of a hobby, one should do it because one loves it and / or gains from it. In the case of volunteering, if you’re doing the work only because you love the activity, you’ve probably missed the point of the undertaking.

PROMPT: Budgeting

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Write about your approach to budgeting.

Don’t want much. Don’t need much. And hope for the best.

PROMPT: Brands

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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.

PROMPT: Spree

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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.

PROMPT: Shoes

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Daily writing prompt
Tell us about your favorite pair of shoes, and where they’ve taken you.
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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.

PROMPT: A Million Dollars

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Daily writing prompt
If you had a million dollars to give away, who would you give it to?
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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.

Zambia Limerick

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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.

Devourers [Lyric Poem]

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We were classed: Consumer.
 And that became our task.
  The stores grew like tumors,
    and in stuff piles we basked.

BOOK REVIEW: Artpreneur by Miriam Schulman

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Artpreneur: The Step-by-Step Guide to Making a Sustainable Living from Your CreativityArtpreneur: The Step-by-Step Guide to Making a Sustainable Living from Your Creativity by Miriam Schulman
My 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

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Introducing Game Theory: A Graphic Guide (Introducing...)Introducing Game Theory: A Graphic Guide by Ivan Pastine
My 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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