Cyreenik Says
Today the Supreme Court upheld most of Obamacare. This was exciting news, surprising to some, and of intense interest to most Americans. The following insight was inspired by a 28 Jun 12 WSJ editorial, Henninger: The President That Time Forgot -- ObamaCare was a legislative monolith, out of sync with an iPad world., in which Henninger compares buying health care to buying other consumer goods. He notes "Electronics, foods, fashion, entertainment, apps, social media, appliances -- pretty much anything that escapes the cold hands of a public agency is laid before us in a dazzling, unprecedented array of choices."
Given this dichotomy, the question becomes why do we Americans (and Europeans, and other cultures) want to put acquiring health care in such a different category from acquiring things such as entertainment and consumer goods?
The difference is largely emotion-driven -- we feel differently about health care and consumer products. The big emotion behind Obamacare is the deep worry that someone, anyone, might not get adequate health care.
The problem with deeply emotional thinking, such as the health care issue is wrapped up in, is that while such thinking is likely well-suited to living in the Stone Age environment, it may or may not be well-suited to our civilized (now iPad) environment. This means that when we want to pay attention to what our heart is telling us to do, we also need to be looking very carefully to see if our head can show us a better way, a way that makes better use of our modern tools. That means using some cost-benefit thinking as well as our from-the-heart thinking.
In the case of Obamacare, our from-the-heart thinking is leading to many fewer choices, and more expensive choices, being made available for how we can cure the sick and heal the injured. Obamacare is not the choice that is taking advantage of the blessings our civilized living can bring us.
Medical technology has advanced and changed enormously from the days when shamans were the chief healthcare providers. This means our thinking about health care needs to be head-dominated, not heart-dominated. We need to think of health care as just another consumer product, not something magical and special.
This thought was inspired by a 23 Jun 12 Economist article, Urban research: The laws of the city, talking about the patterns of urban growth and how consistent some of them are from city to city and nation to nation. The article points out, "Regardless of size, their populations grow at the same average rate everywhere in the world. A city twice as large as its neighbour is likely to be 15% richer. The mix of green space and built-up areas tends to be equal everywhere."
What makes this article possible is that more data about city structures has become available. "The lack of good numbers used to limit such studies. Now data abound. The United Nations and other organisations make most of their statistics freely available. Data have also become more comparable between cities and even between countries. Most important, transport and telecoms networks, and social media, are spawning new data as a free by-product."
This is going to be a fun study to watch.
Running a business is a balance in many ways. One of those is: Should the business grow by exploiting new opportunities, or grow by deepening its competence and influence in core areas?
This thought was inspired by a 23 Jun 12 Economist article, African entrepreneurs: Parallel Players, which describes how many of Africa's thriving business people are involved in many enterprises simultaneously.
Parallel entrepreneurism is usually not as successful as concentrating on the core business, but there are times and places where its success is spectacular. Examples that come to mind are American entrepreneurs in California in the decade following the first gold rush, the "conglomerate era" of American business in the 1960's, and the Chaebol Era in Korean business following the Korean War. A third example seems to be happening in some African nations in the 2010's.
What these seem to have in common is a limited number of managers who have a special talent. This special talent is so valuable that spreading it around to engage in many activities makes for more success than keeping it concentrated on closely related tasks.
In the case of the 1960's conglomerates that talent was computerizing paperwork -- the special talent was knowing how to harness the newly developed mini-computers to handle back-office activities in medium-size businesses. In the case of the chaebols it was a combination of management skills plus connections with a government that intervened to jumpstart the industrializing of an agriculture-based economy. From what the article describes this latter case seems to be true of the current African situation.
In all of the above situations the thriving of parallel entrepreneurism seems to be a short-lived era -- twenty to fifty years. The era ends when the special skill set that started the era becomes widespread and concentrating on core competency once again becomes more effective. We should expect the same for the African situation.
Times change and with them relations. This 23 Jun 12 Economist article, Business-process outsourcing: At the front of the back office: How the Philippines beat India in call centres, talks about how the Philippines are grabbing lots of call center business from India.
This is a wonderful example of globalizing in action. The Filipinos speak with more American-style accents and they are a lower cost labor source than Indians manning Indian call centers. As a result the Indian companies who specialize in Business Process Outsourcing are moving some of their business off their shores, and migrating to higher value tasks with their on-shore employees.
And, ironically, they are getting American-style complaints from their Indian workers: Why aren't you hiring more of us?
The lesson here is the virtue of competition and free markets. When markets are flexible things will change, and they will change for the better for customers and ambitious workers. When cries for employment fairness equate to cries for maintaining the status quo, and get some teeth in them, then you end up with Midwest Disease, and the community where workers successfully cry out for the fairness will wither.
This thought was inspired by a 15 Jun 12 Kiplinger Letter update concerning the auto industry which started with "A big job for automakers: Convincing young buyers that cars still matter." It went on to add, "A quarter of driving-age folks under 35 don't even have a licence."
This is an example of the dream changing that comes with a recession. A recession is about the economy adapting to these kinds of changes. In the 1960's and 70's, when I was a teenager and young adult, owning and driving a car were rites of passage. (Home electronics were cool in those days, too, but they consisted of a TV and an audio system, that was it.)
In that environment the auto companies thrived. What they did mattered a lot to consumers and consumers paid a lot of attention to what they did. As this article indicates times have changed, for this 2010's generation of young adults cars are playing second fiddle to smart phones, tablets, apps, and other social networking electronics.
In Cyreenik Says terms, autos are losing much of their commodity value as tools for socializing -- where young people used to drive around to socialize they are now texting and Facebooking instead. Cars are still tools for other practical purposes and for personal expression, but part of their commodity use has been usurped by smart phones. Adapting to this change is part of what this current recession and slow recovery are all about.
And this is a great example of changing technology driving dream changing.
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