Marty Manley on economics, politics, technology, and culture

Competition

Is Amazon Inside Apple’s OODA Loop?

John Boyd was a legendary US fighter pilot during the Korean War who later became a fighter pilot instructor. He had a standing bet with his students: he would meet you in the air at 30,000 feet and you would get on his tail. He would reverse the positions and get you in his guns in [...]

Lenin’s Rope: Universities Help Disrupt Universities

Lenin famously bragged that “Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” It would surely gall him to learn that the art of destroying capitalists with their own products has been mastered not by a militant, vanguard-led proletariat but by entrepreneurial capitalists. It appears that even universities, finally, are getting the hang of [...]

Draw This…

Henry Blodget is the former head of Internet research at Merrill Lynch. (Background: once upon a time there was something called Internet research. And once upon a time there was something called Merrill Lynch).  NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer convicted Blodget of touting stocks in public while sending emails disparaging those same securities. Spitzer was [...]

Peak Apple: Understanding the Foxconn Deal

Apple has quickly raised worker wages to address the highly publicized problems with working conditions in its supplier network. The decision protects Apple’s pristine brand and costs the company next to nothing. It cleverly exploits the high-minded principles and low-level economic literacy of those of us who are its devoted customers. A series of well-researched [...]

Will Technology Burst Higher Education’s Bubble?

Imagine a market with incumbents whose core processes are unchanged since medieval times that is held together by huge federal subsidies and protected by a system of self-accreditation designed to exclude rivals. Imagine that the resulting enterprises exploited their monopoly power by overcharging customers and wasting the revenue that resulted on guaranteeing senior employees lifetime [...]

Protection That Makes You Weaker

I have taken up running and, like boomers everywhere, I worry about hurting myself. Data suggest that between a third and half of runners get hurt running every year, making running a surprisingly high risk exercise. Why is this? Journalist Chris McDougall wondered why he was getting hurt when humans have been running for two [...]

Amazon.com: America’s #1 Tax Evader?

== Update: On September 7, Amazon relented and made a deal to pay sales taxes on shipments to California (no doubt the trenchant analysis that follows persuaded them to do the right thing). For details of the deal see http://goo.gl/kNwjQ. Now every other state in America needs to make a deal with Amazon — even if they [...]

“We are Going to Pass” -10 Reasons VCs Turn Down Startups

Every few years, Silicon Valley grows strong, flies high, makes beautiful music and then, like the Phoenix of ancient myth, burns to ashes and starts the cycle again. At the moment, the Valley is a frenzy of startups. The rest of the country may be in the economic doldrums, but dozens of technology companies are being [...]

Kwik Fixin’ Oakland

I love Oakland. It is immigrant, black, and blue collar. The town has a great history and a solid soul. Ours were among the first neighborhoods in America where all of the whites did not move out when blacks moved in. Of course, along with a heart of oak, the town also has a brain [...]

Public Unions 3: The Price of Job Security.

This post is the third of a five part series on public sector unions.The opening post argued that political attacks on public sector unions are more likely to worsen fiscal or political problems than solve them. The second article asserted that low public sector productivity is primarily a management failure. The third article notes that efforts by unions to [...]

Public Unions 2: Management, Productivity, and Pay.

This is the second of a five part series on public sector unions. The opening post argued that political attacks on public sector unions are more likely to worsen fiscal or political problems than solve them. The second article asserts that low public sector productivity is primarily a management failure. The third article notes that efforts by unions [...]

Mills College: Women’s Education in a Post-Male World

Towards the end of last year’s hit movie, The Kids are All Right, Nic and Jules (Annette Benning and Julianne Moore) drop off their daughter Joni (Mia Wasikowska) to begin her freshmen year at an attractive, unnamed college. The campus was gorgeous — its stately buildings and lawns captured the promise of a nourishing and provocative [...]

The Long Slide: Amazon Sells More Digital than Printed Books.

I have always loved printed books. I like discovering them and reading them. I like how they look, feel, and smell. I like rooms filled with books like the reading room of the British Museum or the New York Public Library or the rare book room at Shakespeare’s. I like the cluttered shelves of professor’s [...]

When will China overtake the US as the world’s largest economy? Place your bets…

The Economist has a useful tool. Plug in the variables and see when the Chinese economy gets larger than ours. (Hint, if you get a date before 2015 or after 2020, you are dreaming…)

Brad DeLong: Seven Reasons That Markets Work Well — and Seven Reasons That They Don’t.

Brad DeLong is an accomplished economic historian at Berkeley, a former Clinton official, and a pioneering blogger. His posts are a mix of uncommonly intelligent economic policy thoughts, useful links to other economists, and reflections about about technology. DeLong recently gave his students some well thought out advice: What Econ 1 Students Need to Remember Most from the [...]

Wave Goodbye to Traditional Telcos

A third wave is about to hit the telecommunications industry. It is very unlikely to damage the industry, but it will force some of its biggest players to once again become dull and regulated. Consumers will celebrate because telcos that provide only dumb pipes are not a problem, they are a solution.  The first wave to [...]

A Whitman Deer in California Headlights

It’s a good time to live in the Bay Area. Not only do you get to watch the Giants absolutely pulverize the Texas Rangers, but you get to watch Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina spend a great deal of their own money on vanity campaigns. Politico reports that as of last week, Meg has spent [...]

Inside Job: Charles Ferguson Brings his Camera Home

Charles Ferguson has done it again. His second film, Inside Job is a good movie and an extremely important one. Whether you enter the theater Democrat or Republican, you will leave it ready to man the barricades against Wall Street. You will also leave the theater much smarter: despite an MBA and more than a [...]

A Tribute to Our New Apple Masters

I praised Steve Jobs for his presentations, his products, and his audacity. I have criticized him for his imperiousness, his meglomania, and his high control business strategy. Like you, I shoulda bought the stock when it fell to $80 during the crash (“Apple is trading for it’s friggin’ CASH!” I yelled at my wife and myself at the [...]

Ben Horowitz: High Tech’s New Andy Grove

If Silicon Valley is rich, how come it ain’t smart? How is it that we consistently generate innovative companies but rarely produce management thinkers of consequence? Part of the problem is that many technology leaders are neurotic. They need to be: nobody really knows what is going to work and your idea will most likely [...]