The Future of Information Work: Economics

The Work of Sports - The First Outsourcing

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 03:52:36 GMT

Last night I went to a Seattle Mariners game. They lost 2-0 to the Blue Jays. As I was sitting there, not in such rapt fascination at the sport of baseball, I looked around at the rather happy, mostly out of shape fans that surrounded me. And in that pattern of blue jay and compass covered fans, it struck me that American had outsourced its exercise.

Researchers wonder why American's waste lines are getting bigger (but yet we seem fairly happy according to a recent survey (gross national happiness). One of the reasons? We outsource out exercise. We live vicariously through athletes who perform amazing feats, and suffer the consequences of their work. But we can scream and yell, we can, in short, participate in sports while eating hot dogs and drinking beer. Thus, we have a correlation between weight and sports. The ones funding it get bigger, while the ones performing get richer.

The economics are pretty simple and pretty market driven. Those who dislike sports salaries should stop patronizing sports, and those who complain about our pre-occupation with the couch should realize that we are participating in sports, albeit in a rather passive-aggressive way. We are getting what a free country deserves - the consequences of its decisions are manifest in the people making those decisions - for good and for ill, but mostly for good, because if we cared that much about the ill we would have more real athletes and far less income in sports.

And who's to say that the time spent by a smart programmer not exercising makes us less economically well off, if he or she is unhealthy, they are probably create more contribution early in life to that pursuit - so if they worked out all of the time, that great idea might never make it to the compiler. And besides, we can always exercise later. For now, a game is on, and if not, we can just whip on up on the Xbox. Its not about good and bad, its just about how things are because of the choices we make.

Capital Commerce - Where the Jobs Went

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 07:10:18 GMT

In Best of the Blogosphere: June 20, 2008 - Capital Commerce (usnews.com) Daniel Drezner says:

Yes, globalization is responsible for some job losses and wage compression, but its contribution is pretty damn small. Obama—or his advisors—are being disingenuous when he says that jobs have left Michigan for China. Those jobs have disappeared into the ether, period. Technological innovation has yielded so much in the way of productivity gains that even though manufacturing jobs are shrinking in the United States, manufacturing output in this country has more than doubled since 1980. The same process has caused the global number of manufacturing jobs to shrink as well.

Drezner understands what the presidential candidates do not. If we keep applying the industrial age to the information age and the knowledge economy we will continue to lose jobs around the world because we will be all about making things cheaper, and cheapening our relationships and our innovation. Productivity is fine, but it isn't everything. If we want to create jobs we need to fund things that may not be efficient. Learning and innovation are messy because they involve mistakes, and productivity is about eliminating mistakes.

The biggest mistake our politicians of this new age could make is getting us to vote for the industrial economy one more time. This isn't about being green, its about being creative. Being green will be a by-product of solving real problems again - of making mistakes and learning and moving forward rather than trying to make the past ever more efficient.

Surowieki and the Politics of Globalization

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 04:46:22 GMT

James Surowieki has nailed an important political issue the May 26, 2008 New Yorker (read it here). One of my litmus tests for political candidates is their ability to see the working work in a real way. Most of them haven't work real jobs in years, so they are pretty disconnected from the workplace, or even the economics of work in America. A good thing about prolonged campaign period for the democrats is the necessity for them to get out with people and understand what is going on. That doesn't mean doing everything they are asked to do, but they are promising things they were asked to do, like bring jobs back to America. Sure we want jobs, but we want good, high value jobs - not low value manufacturing jobs. Not that there is anything wrong with manufacturing, but we also want low cost goods and American manufacturing can only compete on niche manufacturing - making things of special value - not commodities where the cost needs to be very low to even be competitive.

There are ways that commodity manufacturing could return to American, but as Surowieki points out, we probably don't want to live in those futures, because it would mean that our economy can no longer compete. I'm torn between a return to more liberal social policies, which also seem to go with protectionism and isolationism.

What we need is to drive innovation. To create new niches that go beyond our borders. Green is a bit of a fantasy, but if we are innovative, it may not stay that way - but we can't put all of our solar panels in one basket - we should also be looking at innovation in every area we can imagine. And I don't hear that kind of inspiration from any of the candidates.

Living La Vida Local

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 05:51:07 GMT

Carol Lloyd of the San Francisco Chronicle's Surreal Estate did a great column this week (read it here) examining the assumptions and observations in Richard Florida's new book, "Who's Your City." The book explores why, in a world of infinitely open travel, and rapid collaboration, why people still care where they live. My feeling is, that in an open world, at some level, all you care about is where you live, because you can get anything else you need off the net. What you can't get are great sunsets, warm afternoons for basketball, or great snow. And for many, access to those things locally, not via travel is great. Sure it rains in Seattle, but we have great snow, great places to hike and some pretty good weather during the summer.

Richard Florida has done some great work rethinking how we think about populations and markets and segments. I'm glad I feel like I fit into his world, and into Seattle. Now let me go see if it has stopped raining yet :)

Personal Economics: Learning to Sustain

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 00:14:37 GMT

It wasn't a drop in population that lead America to the brink of a sustainable economy talk, nor was it the increasingly false note of greenness in everything. No, it was the sub-prime lending debacle and crashing home prices. People are cutting back, so several reports report (see a summary at The Week Daily here). Not eating out, not buying new clothes, moving on down from Nordstrom to Walmart.

Of course, the government is being silly in an election year, trying to buy people back to consumerism with checks that most pundits suggest people save or apply to credit debt rather than spend on new stuff. Good advice.

So what should the government be doing: trying to learn to live within its means too. I'm good with tax cuts, the demise of corporate well fare and along with it, the end of corporate taxes. Simplify people. Design is about utility and function. Out tax system doesn't function and its utility is highly suspect.

Now, I have no illusions that if we all of a sudden start making tons of money that this current dip into reason will become just another memory of momentary frugality - and our spending will reassert itself. I do, however, wonder, how many more cycle the US economy has left in it. We need to get serious about real new jobs, not mythical manufacturing based on the green economy.

I find it fascinating that we are talking about a manufacturing reassurance driven by the implementation of environmentally friendly products. We have already failed fast, so I hope, on corn-based fuels. Didn't somebody do the math before we jumped down that silo?

We need to be serous about innovative industries that don't just attempt to adjust our lifestyles to new lower consumption consuming, but to co-existing consumption cycles. We need to see the feedback loops and live within sustainable constraints. The housing crisis may be forcing us to realize we can live with less new stuff - so perhaps we should make sure our policy makers make this memory sustainable: living within your means can make you feel good, perhaps better, than buying a big screen TV, and then suffering from both an environmental and a personal economic hangover after you get it home and realize you can't afford the digital TV connection. Bummer dude.

Energy Security and a Lumpy World

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 07:20:55 GMT

Council on Competitiveness President Deborah L. Wince-Smith applauded President Bush's call for a an energy security policy (read it here). In a purely nationalistic world, this is a fine call, but we live in a global economy that has a very lumpy distribution of natural resources, human capital, wealth, and many other factors. If the United States wants energy independence, it is going to need a drive toward rapid technology developments in alternative energy, and not just the conversion of big oil into big something else, but emergent and organic options that will, I hope delight and surprise us. If we don't do it, one of the emerging economies is going to trump us, and then they will be the next source of lumpiness.

American still posses vast resources to tackle problems, but we often fail to tackle long term problems if short term answers keep the status quo alive a bit longer. On energy we need radical rethinking on everything from sources to infrastructure. And we need to look at the problem holistically, so our growing reliance on corn (an unsustainable a reliance) doesn't drive up global prices for tortillas and beef.

Calculating the Future

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 00:21:20 GMT

People predict the future because they want people to change their behavior in the present. The 3 November 2007 issue to New Scientist estimates that we are now on pace to require 1.4 Earths to sustain us. 21.9 hectares per person, on average, vs. the 15.7 hectares available. All of this according to UN Environment Programme's Global Environment Outlook (GEO).

If this is true, then the world needs a fundamentally different model, one that emphasizes sustainability over growth: in energy, in agriculture and diets and in several other areas of our lives. In the same issue, the magazine explores the Survival of the Selfless. This article discusses new insights into how morality plays a role in the success of communities. Humanity, it seems, has lost its instincts about how to behave under stress. Selfishness is a benefit in groups, but among groups, altruism wins.

We predict the future because we want people to change behavior. It appears that we need to be more altruistic or watch the world close in around us. Nature has no ability to be selfish or altruistic. Nature is a limited resource we need to manage, and the economic models we employ today are not aligned with the management of a limited resource. As company after company adopts innovation as its watchword, it is important that they drive the innovations toward new values that don't just ensure a more profitable future, but a livable future as well.