Felix Salmon:

None of these distinctions is hard and fast, of course, but at least it’s a start; basically, it all comes down to who writes the content in question.

Was the material written by a professional journalist, writing a piece for an editorial outlet? In that case, any advertising message embedded within it falls pretty squarely into the realm of public relations. But what happens when the publication in question syndicates that content for use on some brand’s website? In that event, it becomes content marketing: independently-produced material, repurposed by the brand in question.

On the other hand, was the material commissioned by the brand itself, rather than any editor? In that case, it’s sponsored content. It might be written by a group on the ad-sales side of the publisher; such groups have existed for as long as there have been advertorials. Or it might be written by some group within the brand’s ad agency. The distinction between sponsored content and native advertising is a bit squishy, but it you do need to make a distinction, then I’d say that sponsored content is material designed simply to convey information to the readership of the publication in question, while native content tends to aspire more to going viral, and being actively shared by that readership.

:

In a healthy society, people acquire wealth by making stuff people want. Farmers till a plots to provide for their nutritional wants. Workers assemble motorcycles for consumers who pay money because they find the motor bikes valuable. Perhaps the worker serves a philanthropic organization and earns a salary by serving the official goal of the organization. Or perhaps the worker earns money by creating crafts that others in the community value.

A society structured as the above has two great benefits. First, incentives are aligned to produce more output. A person can only acquire wealth by producing wealth. Thus the production of wealth is encouraged, as man’s natural greed is channeled towards productive ends. Second, humans are innately goal seeking creatures. It makes us fundamentally happy to strive towards a goal – whether that goal be winning a football game, learning a new song on the piano, leveling up in Warcraft, or producing a product that people want.

In a dysfunctional society, people acquire wealth via corruption, rent seeking, and theft. Perhaps they steal it at the point of a sword. Perhaps they acquire wealth through outright corruption. Perhaps they acquire wealth through holding a position in a completely dysfunctional management structure that requires internal politicking and Kabuki make work rather than actual performance.

As Adam Smith wrote, “there is a great deal of ruin in a nation” Corruption has always existed in America. But in the past decades it seems as if the dominant paradigm has shifted, so now more and more income comes via dysfunctional rent seeking rather the net creation of new wealth. 1

A most severe case of a rent seeking economy was described by the historian Rostovtvzeff, who wrote of the late Roman empire:

Rolf Dobelli:

In the past few decades, the fortunate among us have recognised the hazards of living with an overabundance of food (obesity, diabetes) and have started to change our diets. But most of us do not yet understand that news is to the mind what sugar is to the body. News is easy to digest. The media feeds us small bites of trivial matter, tidbits that don’t really concern our lives and don’t require thinking. That’s why we experience almost no saturation. Unlike reading books and long magazine articles (which require thinking), we can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes, which are bright-coloured candies for the mind. Today, we have reached the same point in relation to information that we faced 20 years ago in regard to food. We are beginning to recognise how toxic news can be.

News misleads. Take the following event (borrowed from Nassim Taleb). A car drives over a bridge, and the bridge collapses. What does the news media focus on? The car. The person in the car. Where he came from. Where he planned to go. How he experienced the crash (if he survived). But that is all irrelevant. What’s relevant? The structural stability of the bridge. That’s the underlying risk that has been lurking, and could lurk in other bridges. But the car is flashy, it’s dramatic, it’s a person (non-abstract), and it’s news that’s cheap to produce. News leads us to walk around with the completely wrong risk map in our heads. So terrorism is over-rated. Chronic stress is under-rated. The collapse of Lehman Brothers is overrated. Fiscal irresponsibility is under-rated. Astronauts are over-rated. Nurses are under-rated.

We are not rational enough to be exposed to the press. Watching an airplane crash on television is going to change your attitude toward that risk, regardless of its real probability. If you think you can compensate with the strength of your own inner contemplation, you are wrong. Bankers and economists – who have powerful incentives to compensate for news-borne hazards – have shown that they cannot. The only solution: cut yourself off from news consumption entirely.

Brad Stone:

Over the last decade, the Internet has seeped into that bedrock of the U.S. economy: the housing market. A group of growing and mostly profitable websites have sprung up to help guide consumers through what in many cases will be the largest and most nerve-wracking transaction of their lives. Four sites—Redfin and Zillow (Z), based in Seattle, and Trulia (TRLA) and Realtor.com, based in the San Francisco Bay Area—attract 61 million of the 67 million visitors to real estate websites each month in the U.S., according to ComScore (SCOR). They also generate hundreds of millions in revenue and have helped turn buying a house into entertainment—a spectator sport that can be enjoyed without darting surreptitiously into random open houses. Ninety percent of consumers now start their real estate journeys on the Web, according to the National Association of Realtors.

It all looks at first glance like the same kind of electronic marketplace that has eliminated travel agents, decimated classified ads, depressed stock brokers, and taken the swagger out of car dealers, but it hasn’t dented the fortunes of real estate brokers. A majority of buyers and sellers still wind up working with traditional brokers, one on each side of the deal.

Virginia Postrel:

Ron Johnson, fired as chief executive officer of J.C. Penney this week, failed not because his vision was necessarily wrong, but because in executing it he forgot the first rule of retailing: To sell people things, you first have to get them into the store.
The frequent sales and coupons Penney’s used before Johnson arrived are just one possible way to do that.
Wal-Mart, after all, built its business by offering branded merchandise at everyday low prices. Although it runs sales, it doesn’t depend on them. Instead, Wal-Mart consistently offers low prices on consumer packaged goods that require frequent replenishment. Customers come in for toothpaste, Tide and toilet paper and walk out with T-shirts, candy and discounted DVDs as well. The impulse items make the company hyper-productive, but the staples drive traffic. And for all the headlines Target attracts with its designer collaborations, that chain, where Johnson first made his mark, pulls in regular customers much the same way.
Penney’s, however, doesn’t sell consumables. It’s strongest in home goods – -linens, pillows, window treatments — that often last for years. So Johnson’s strategy of simplifying pricing and cutting back on sales required offering customers some other reason to come into the store. The usual alternative is fresh new merchandise. By quickly turning over their inventories, fast-fashion retailers like Zara or Forever 21 and discounters like TJX’s Marshalls and T.J. Maxx give customers a reason to check in frequently.

Toomas Hendrik Ilves:

The changes in the digital world today represent a dramatically sped-up version of the changes the world underwent in a century of industrialization. It is a paradigm transformation of our world: Notions of a nation’s size, wealth, power, military might, population and G.D.P. mean something altogether different from what they meant a generation ago.

These relations are in constant flux, and old assumptions no longer hold. Today, a small, poor East European country can be a world leader in e-governance and cybersecurity.

In February, the United Nations praised Estonia’s e-Annual Report system, by which entrepreneurs can submit annual reports electronically, as the “best of the best” e-Government application of the past decade. Last autumn, Freedom House ranked Estonia first in Internet freedom for the third year in a row (the United States and Germany were second and third).

Cybersecurity needs to be taken seriously by everyone. We continue to think of cyberthreats in military or classical warfare terms, when in fact cyber can simply render the military paradigm irrelevant. The whole information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure must be regarded as an “ecosystem” in which everything is interconnected. It functions as a whole; it must be defended as a whole.

Matthew Garrahan:

He has first-hand experience of the ascetic life. As a young man he wanted to become a priest and attended a Jesuit seminary for three years. “We could only read the lives of Jesuit saints – not Franciscan saints, only Jesuit saints. The day was Latin, mass, meditation, menial work. The Jesuit upbringing was tantum quantum: you take what you need. Less not more. It’s almost a Buddhist thought, a Greek thought. There’s a balance.”

He calls this “proportionality” and it has become a philosophy that, over the years, has shaped his world view – particularly what he regards as the excesses of market-based capitalism. “The capital game, the market game is: is there ever enough money? No … how can there be enough? But take your body – you need so much salt, but not too much. [You need] some calcium but not too much. There’s an optimum range. The right proportions. But money? No. It never stops.” He suggests a fix that ties together strands of Buddhism and Jesuit Catholicism. The market system, he says, should “be embedded in the cultural biological system”.

………

There were reports in the years that followed of a feud between Brown and Clinton but Brown disputes this. “There was no feud,” he says. “No permanent enemies, no permanent friends … only permanent interests. Somebody said that. A Frenchman?” His press secretary is sitting nearby on a long, worn table that Brown calls the “monastic bench”, where he often holds meetings. “Lord Palmerston,” calls the aide, after consulting his smartphone.

“What?” says Brown.

“He said ‘no permanent enemies, no permanent friends’.”

“I’ll give you another maxim, because it’s so shocking,” says Brown, turning back to me and picking up a small red book. “This is the 12th rule of the Jesuit order.” He opens it at a page and points me to a passage that stresses the “abnegation and continuous mortification of all things possible”. “Abnegation – negate, go against. Mortify – make dead. That’s strong! That’s not the vibe of today.”

Brian S Hall:

U.S. teens’ passionate embrace of smartphones and a “mobile first” mentality to the Internet shows no signs of slowing down. According to the latest Pew Research on teens and technology:

37% of teens in the U.S. have a smartphone.

25% of those aged 12-17 access the Internet “primarily” via a cell phone or smartphone.

Among teens with a smartphone, however, 50% access the Internet primarily via the mobile device.

Girls are more likely than boys to rely on their smartphone as their primary Internet access device.

Maggie Severns:

Vernon Hugh Bowman, a 75-year-old Indiana farmer, says that switching to Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soybeans “made things so much simpler and better.” Monsanto’s patented beans can survive when they are sprayed with the herbicide glyphosate, also known as Roundup, which makes pest control much easier. Monsanto is less impressed with Bowman: The Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday on a lawsuit that the company filed against him in 2007, accusing him of violating its patent on Roundup Ready soybeans.

Here’s what happened: Bowman bought seeds from a grain elevator that sold soybeans for animal feed, industrial use, or other nonplanting purposes. The elevator contained a lot of “second generation” Roundup Ready seeds—the spawn of original seeds that other farmers had bought and harvested from Monsanto. That’s not surprising, since “[Roundup Ready soybeans are] probably the most rapidly adopted technological advance in history,” said Seth Waxman, who is representing Monsanto. “The very first Roundup Ready soybean seed was only made in 1996. And it now is grown by more than 90 percent of the 275,000 soybean farms in the United States.”