Jane Jacobs has published Dark Age Ahead (Random House, 2004), in which she targets “five crucial weaknnesses in the foundation of contemporary life in the West” — one of which is “dumbed down taxes.”
Author, activitist, social theorist and renowned urban planner, Jane Jacobs defined an increasingly influential way of looking at cities by opposing “slum” clearance and “suburban sprawl,” and advocating the “restoration” of urban centers. Still in print 40-plus years after publication, her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) revolutionized urban planning.
Jacob’s later works explored her fundament ideas for different perspectives: urban economics in The Economy of Cities (1969) and Cities and the Wealth of Nations (1984), and political philosophy in Systems of Survival (1992). More recently Ms. Jacobs argued that economic life obeys the same rules as those governing the systems in nature in The Nature of Economies (2000).
About her latest work, Publisher’s Weekly wrote “Witty, beautifully written–the culmination of Jacobs’ previous thinking, and a step forward that deftly invokes a broader philosophical, even metaphysical, context.” Via Taxprof.
Category: Business
Grand Haven, Michigan offers Full-City WiFi!
Grand Haven, Mich., makes a splash with full-city Wi-Fi coverage: This seems like yet another city announcement, but it might be the first city with this scale of access that 100-percent live and commercially available
Biotech, Community Colleges & Jobs
Jason Gertzen on Wisconsin’s fledgling Biotech industry, including the growing demand for community college grads.
Wisconsin State Priorities?
The State Journal editorial page takes Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager to task for joining with six other states and New York City to sue five of the country’s largest power producers to force them to cut carbon dioxide emissions. This is the same organization that, under Democrat Jim Doyle signed us up for the Matrix personal data mining project – then later withdrew.
Keeping the environment clean is certainly important, but the WSJ raises some useful issues on this topic. I believe that our state leadership is ignorning (for political reasons) the most important economic issues of our time, such as the construction of true high speed networks.
High speed data networks are the rails and roads of the future. Yet, today, we are saddled with slow services supported by local telco monopoly SBC.
Verizon just announced that fiber to the premises (“fttp” or to the home) will be available in Keller, Texas, parts of Southern California and Florida. Prices will range start at $40/month for 2 to 5mbps service; with optional speeds up to 30mbps. (Currently, many state residents can choose from 384kbps to 1.5mbps DSL or cable service – 1/10th the speed, or less of the fibre based products).
These speeds make high quality personal video conferencing a reality (family & friends), new small businesses from the home possible and most importantly, will reduce the cost of true high speed access for all residents.
Nice to see our politicians are paying attention.
David Isenberg has some useful examples of “value-subtracted” telco business models. Isenberg also discusses a May, 2004 study that shows a dramatic reduction in telco operating expenses after they switch from a copper wire based network to a fibre system.
Maytag Skybox Blog
Maytag recently introduced a “personal beverage vendor”! Thinking ahead, they have a business blog devoted to the product. (the product is not for me, and has been slammed as a “product for people who can’t get off their ______ and get a cold drink in the kitchen”.
This is another example of the changing advertising and customer relationship game.
Monopolies, Microsoft & Newspapers
Barry Ritholtz nicely summarizes the monopolist’s modus operandi:
Microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop — and because of that, there are certain behaviors they are legally restricted from engaging in (at least, in legal theory). Microsoft should not be able to disadvantage competitors by leveraging that monopoly in a way that restricts competition.
Search is a perfect example: By setting the default to MSN search, and making it extremely awkward to change it, they automatically become one of the top 3 players in that space. What would take any other company billions of dollars to do, they get for, oh, about nothing.
Clearly, in the case of newspapers, protected by the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970, it’s rather simple to create additional print publications, that for others would be expensive. Similarily, they can use this monopoly postion to give away advertising products & content, if necessary, to kill competition (just like Microsoft gave away Internet Explorer, to “cut off Netscape’s air supply“).
Microsoft Monopoly Tactics in the Newspaper Business (“Old Media”?)
Local print media monopoly, Capital Newspapers (prints and generates advertising for the Wisconsin State Journal and the Capital Times) has announced a new weekly publication that targets long time, successful weekly Isthmus. Capital Newspapers, protected by a federally sanctioned joint operating agreement (Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970: the JOA allows two newspapers to “share” advertising, overhead and printing costs) is using those monopoly derived funds to compete with a traditional, non protected business – Isthmus publishing.
This is similar to a tactic that Microsoft used, illegally, to squish Netscape. See Lee Enterprise’s (owns 50% of Capital Newspaper) 2003 10-K (286K PDF) for a look at the Capital Newspapers (formerly known as Madison Newspapers Inc) local revenues (112M!) and net income of $16M (14%!).
Perhaps this is simply a negotiating/acquisition tactic? Capital Newspapers would likely enjoy acquiring Isthmus Publishing and thereby solidify control of the local print advertising business. This tactic has been used before, with a local business weekly and a children’s (Dane County Kids) publication.
What to do? Vince and Linda and the Isthmus have done a superb job for the community. Send a note to our representatives (Representative Tammy Baldwin | Senator Russ Feingold | Senator Herb Kohl) telling them that the time is long past to repeal the Joint Operating Agreement Statute. And cancel your subscription (if you have one) to the State Journal or Cap Times.
UPDATE – the act is certainly not helping quality, as Glenn Reynolds points out.
UPDATE2 – Perhaps this is the natural manifestation of the Clear Channel effect in Radio – played out in the newsprint business. Madison is fortunate to have two dailies – BUT – they should compete like anyone else, which would change things, significantly.
The Cost of Executive Perks
Perk Hoggs on the cost of executive perks.
The problem is not the cost of the perks themselves; at a ten-billion-dollar corporation, they?re hardly even a rounding error. It?s what they are symptomatic of. Perks and rigid management hierarchies tend to go together; perks are designed in part to reinforce status divisions, and rigid hierarchies do not lend themselves to intelligent decision-making, since they isolate executives from the rest of the company. Also, C.E.O.s who indulge in perks are likely to be profligate in general with shareholder money.
There are problems in both the private and public sector. Our senators have incredible health care AND average much better investment returns than us poor taxpayers. There are plenty of examples of corporate excess. Hoggs makes some useful points. Via John Robb.
Journalism vs Advertising at the LA Times
Tribune owned LA Times recently announced layoffs, just after winning a couple of Pulitzer prizes according to this story by Jacques Steinberg.
“Look at USA Today; how many Pulitzers have they won?” Mr. Janedis added, singling out the flagship of the Gannett chain, which has yet to win one. “But they sell a lot of advertising and get good rate increases.”
The article also compares major publisher cashflow margins (from Banc of America Investment Securities):
- Tribune’s publishing division: 25.9%
- Gannett: 31.3%
- Lee: 27.4%
- Journal Register: 27.3%
Lee publishes the local Wisconsin State Journal and co-owns the federally sanctioned monopoly (newspaper joint operating agreement: whereby overhead and advertising are shared among two or more “competitors”): Capitol Newspapers.
Vacation in Orbit?
The idea is to create a new tourist industry: “For the last 30 years, people have thought that space flight is only for a select number of government employees,” said Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and president of the X Prize Foundation, the competition’s organizer. “We want to change that mind-set.”