Still the Second City

Diserio.com has listed Chicago as having the second best skyline in the world. As a proud resident of Chicagoland I would have to concur. Though my favorite view is driving along the Dan-Ryan Expressway at night. When you pass around the curve and see the entire night sky lit up it still takes my breath away after 10 years.




HatTip: Catallarchy

I Guess 2 Cars, a House and a 55 inch TV Isn't Enough

In an interesting piece Sebastian Mallaby hypothesizes why American firms are outperforming their counterparts in Europe and Japan. Of course no good news can go unpunished.

So the shift from manufacturing to services; the gallop of globalization; and the rise of information technology that flattens corporate hierarchies: All these forces come together to create an American moment. But you could be forgiven for missing this, because other forces spoil what ought to be a celebration. In the midst of this American moment, hatred of President Bush has simultaneously created an anti-American moment. And in the midst of American prosperity, rising inequality has prevented American workers from sharing in the success of American firms.

Is this the same set of abused workers that own 2.5 cars and a 3000 sq foot house? Color me unsympathetic.

The truth is that more people own homes and cars than ever before in American history. We also have more toys – large screen TVs, computers, cell phones, iPods, and on and on and on. All of these things add to our total wealth and make our lives more comfortable than they ever were. This doesn’t fit into the left’s anti-success and anti-American agenda, so it gets conveniently ignored.

Are the richer far more rich than the middle class than historically true? Sure, but who cares. If second place is an SUV parked in front of a large house then I’ll gladly take the consolation prize.

HatTip: Concurring Opinions

EU Doesn't Want Microsoft to Innovate

The seemingly never-ending saga between Microsoft and the European Union took another turn on Wednesday as the EU Commission's antitrust division warned the software company not to return to its old ways with Windows Vista. The body is concerned about Vista's built-in Internet search functions and new document features

So basically the EU is going to threaten Microsoft with anti-trust charges every time they decide to offer an enhancement – presumably one that consumers want – for free. Of course if Microsoft left Windows basically unchanged and charged for every feature and enhancement they would be levied with predatory pricing anti-trust suits. Its amazing how create bureaucrats can be when they work from the assumption that success is evil.

Meanwhile Ballmer doesn’t want his kids to have choices.

In a recent Fortune interview with Steve Ballmer, the newer kinder Microsoft CEO is not only ready to take on the videogaming, search, music download and mobile markets - but he's also laying down the law in his own house. Steve says that his kids are not allowed to use Google or have an iPod.

From all the accounts I’ve read, Ballmer is an arrogant SOB, this doesn’t do anything to counter that claim. Instead of maintaining dictatorial control over his families choices wouldn’t it make sense to find out why his kids prefer non-Microsoft products? If he could answer that question maybe they could develop competitive alternatives.

But that would just lead to more anti-trust suits, so maybe its not such a good idea after all.

Linux Held Back By Dress Code

CNet is reporting that according to former Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn 'the lax dress code of the open-source community is one of the reasons behind the software's slow uptake in commercial environments.' In particular, Quinn blames the 'sandal and ponytail set' for sluggish adoption of Linux by businesses and governments." From the article: "Quinn, who faced plenty of scrutiny over his support of the OpenDocument standards-based office document format, said proponents of open source in government faced formidable opposition from vested interests if they went public."

It amazes me sometimes how dumb some people can be. Unix isn’t being widely adopted because it’s 30 year old technology and requires at least twice the administrative overhead as Windows does. Sure its been gussied up, but it is still ancient. The entire dot com boom was driven by hippies in sandles and ponytails I’m sure Google, eBay and Amazon are crying all the way to the bank that the suits don’t like their dress

Light Blogging

I am still around, but incredibly busy as my evil employer insists on sending me around the country in its pursuit of ever more dollars.Being somewhat evil myself (in pursuit of even more dollars) I have complied, but it means my blogging schedule will be very light.

NYT Misses the Point - MS Edition

The New York Times is running an article on why they think Windows is so slow. They boil it down to one key factor - legacy support - and they hold up Apple as an example of a company willing to make hard decisions around legacy support in order to provide a better product. From the article: 'Windows is now so big and onerous because of the size of its code base, the size of its ecosystem and its insistence on compatibility with the legacy hardware and software, that it just slows everything down ... That's why a company like Apple has such an easier time of innovation.

In its never-ending attempt to ad mouth Microsoft, Slashdot (and NYT) simply provides reasons why Microsoft is successful and Apple isn’t quite so successful.

It’s also part of the reason that Apple’s install base is so small. Companies want to upgrade on their own path, not Apple’s. Only by ensuring backwards compatibility can Microsoft ensure that companies adopt to the latest and greatest on something approaching a quick time frame.

Microsoft does phase technology out, but its timeline is at least ten years (which is essentially forever in the IT world). It is this long term thinking that IT departments like because everything is interdependent. If IT staff couldn’t count on this support they would be paralyzed.

Deja Vu: Transit Strike

Hours after members overwhelmingly agreed to authorize a strike, the Chicago Transit Authority bus operators' union took preliminary steps Tuesday toward staging a walkout although union officials would not say if a strike would occur.

Union officials said they will meet with management on Friday to discuss the scheduling of bus runs, which is at the heart of the union unrest. After the meeting, the union will decide whether it should continue with strike plans, a union officer said.

Perhaps taking a note from the kinda-successful NYC strike, the Chicago union is threatening an illegal strike.  I’m convinced Daley will probably put pressure on the CTA to meet whatever demands the union is presenting, so it’s doubtful that they will actually walk off the job.  If they do I don’t expect Chicago commuters to treat them any kinder than NYC commuters treated their transit workers.

More to follow if they actually walk out.

Union Logic

Workers at Ryerson's Chicago and Burns Harbor, Ind., facilities, who have been without a contract since Feb. 1, authorized a strike Feb. 12, the Chicago Sun-Times said Tuesday.

The 540 employees, represented jointly by United Steelworkers and Teamsters Local Union 714, want to end a concession made to management in the last three-year deal that had employees cross-trained for jobs and allowed management more flexibility in shifting employee job assignments without regard for seniority, a Ryerson spokesman said.

Normally I wouldn’t find a strike to be very newsworthy.  Union members typically just want more money – we all do – they just happen to choose a coercive method to accomplish that goal.  What strike me odd about this strike is that it doesn’t appear to be about money – it’s about self-destruction.

These workers don’t want their employer to be flexible.  They don’t want their employer to be able to respond quickly to changes.  They want plumb work assignments to be decided by the workers themselves instead of the employer being able to assign jobs based on ability.  

In short the union does not want the company that they work for to be successful.  Simply mind-boggling.

Krugman Thinks You Are Stupid

Of all the reasons to be for socialized medicine, I find it difficult to believe that people are too stupid is a compelling argument. Yet that is exactly what Paul Krugman is saying.

But the case of diabetes and other evidence suggest that a third problem with health savings accounts may be even more important: in practice, people who are forced to pay for medical care out of pocket don't have the ability to make good decisions about what care to purchase.

How exactly does third-party medicine fix this problem? In fact, it exacerbates the problem in some areas. We are grossly over consuming antibiotics. So much so that we are forcing them to evolve into antibiotic resistant strains. How many thousands of unnecessary and risky operations are performed each year? How many people rush off to the doctor at every sign of a runny nose to get treatments that they don’t need? When doctors propose a new fangled procedure that they are just dying to try, how many patients take the time to find out more about it?

Since our wallets are never any lighter we have been trained to not ask any questions. And because we do not pay the costs we do not think twice about asking for medicine and procedures that we do not need. We heard that our neighbor Suzie had a brand new operation to cure her back pain so we rush to the same doctor and ask to get it too. Why would the doctor say no – he wants to make money after all. We see fancy new advertisements on TV about some WonderDrug – not that we know what it does – so we rush to the doctor to get it. If he says no, we just try another doctor. Most communities have a resident pill pusher, so it’s not like it’ll be hard to find someone to prescribe it. If we can’t find someone we will just it online.

Would free-market medicine fix these problems? Perhaps, though perhaps not. I do know that if people had a larger stake in the decision making process (i.e. how much is coming out of my pocket) they would be more likely to start asking questions. It’s likely that people would seek out more second opinions and I know, for a fact, that prices would start coming down on medical devices at the very least.

How can I be so sure? Because the prices for medical devices are all over the map now. A friend of mine broke his ankle and the hospital told him the walking cast would cost $500. (Needless to say they were a bit taken aback by being asked how much something cost) Being the frugal sort (and we have a high deductible) he told them to shove it. He did some online shopping and found it for $95.

Admittedly that is a single anecdotal case, but I challenge you to search for some medical devices online and witness how widely the prices vary and think about how many billions of dollars are wasted because there is no price sensitivity in the current system.

HatTip: Café Hayek

NYT: Dog Bites Man

Today the New York Times ran a story on how Wal-Mart is using bloggers to build its reputation.  Of course by “using” I mean feeding information to bloggers that have been sympathetic to Wal-Mart in its never ending battle with the left.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that some bloggers are more than a little lax about citing sources, I mean there are almost 30 million bloggers, an infinitesimal number of them have any journalistic training.  Heck, I’m not even sure that most of them can spell (I know that I can’t).  

In a world where real life journalists – you know the ones that get paid for writing – get caught making up stories, inventing sources and get paid for their opinions, I don’t see where the story is.  Bloggers are, by and large, amateur pundits that enjoy writing, opinion making, arguing or some combination of the above.   The internet is a vast place, so when Wal-Mart sends positive news about itself, or negative news about its opponents to parties that they know may be interested, they are providing a free service to bloggers (including myself) that may have otherwise overlooked the news.

One thing that I find telling about the whole story is that the NYT fails to mention any of the special interest groups and grass-roots organizations that send newsletters to members and interested parties highlighting news stories and press releases that fit within their own agenda.  If you looked hard enough I would be willing to bet that a significant number of bloggers that receive that information fail to cite sources as well.  NYT is bending over backwards to portray the ties between PR and the blogosphere as something that only evil corporations engage in.  Because, you know, Wal-Mart is evil and stuff.