Sunday, March 30, 2008

People matters

One thing to discuss might be how insularity comes out of proprietary practices. We see examples being made of people who go outside with inside knowledge without approval or who just get a company involved in unexpected ways with issues (Oops!?!, let us count the ways) because of blogging, structuring, or the like (one comment to this report points to a talk given in 2006 in which there was this statement: do we have a culture of silence — don't ask the tough questions?).

Okay. One can see disclosures being bad, if not controlled, given that a company's future resides on what it knows. Yet, what it knows is really encapsulated in the people.

We also see an example of extreme farming out that ought to demonstrate to us that limits do exist and ought to be understood. This type of thing has to presuppose that the people don't matter. Too, there is an erroneous take on just what computer systems bring to the table.

From another angle, most firms that try to impress peers, mind you , peers, not customers, by getting into this thing of comparative analysis. That is, there is supposedly a thing called 'industry practice' which those who are successful in some industry know and against which firms can measure themselves.

Yet, if something is really proprietary, will it be amenable to comparison? That is, is any measure beyond its demonstration in the market of any use? These are not meant, cynically.

So, it may be that we need to expect the insularity that we observe; perhaps, understanding how this relates to how people are treated is something that is necessary.

You see, capitalism thinks that 'labor' is something that is there to be exploited. Why haven't those in the thralls of capital's grasp realized that 'knowledge' is capital? Too, is it not obvious that 'labor' has morphed to something else that is very much knowledge related?

So, would not a proper model let those who found their abstractions on the 'capital' myth and on the financial gaming that has emerged play (perhaps in a sandbox that we, the people, control) and, at the same time, allow true evolution of knowledge of the types that somehow eludes the grasps of those who ascend the management hierarchy?

With whom would the 'knowledge' ownership reside? That is, if we can show that people found the phenomenon, those people surely are not chattel for fat cats alone. Yet, we seem to let that happen; the counterpoint offered by entrepreneurship is only a chimera.

The discussions will continue.

Remarks:

08/01/2013 -- Ben cannot unwind or taper downhe has too many Doves. We'll have to get back to the king thing (yes, the divine rights of the CEO, new royalty, in other words) and dampening of these types by a new outlook (Magna-Carta'ísh).

09/12/2009 -- Sandbox was used without definition. Let's discuss that concept.

04/24/2009 -- We'll start to re-look at this and related subjects.

02/03/2009 -- Islamic economics, supposedly, looks to improve their people's lives.

01/18/2009 - We even need to look at why we need finance.

11/12/2008 -- Well, things feel apart fairly quickly, starting in September of 2008. By N0vember, there was general spooking. Starting in September, movements toward nationalization sped so fast that it was easy to forget that a Republican administration was still in the White House. Talk about rewarding hubris and moral hazardness!!!!

Modified: 08/01/2013

Thursday, March 20, 2008

2008 Q2 or not

bet2give's stock about whether or not the 787 will test flight in Q2 2008 took a drop. Both the flightblogger and the Seattle P-I report possible delays.

It's interesting that the 4th Poll here showed that 79% of the 34 voting saw delivery to be after May of 2009 with a good 50% looking at the fall of 2009.

Remarks:

01/20/2013 -- Change link for bet2give.

12/30/2008 -- See 5th and 6th Polls. Also, will the 787 test flight in Q2 2009?

Modified: 01/20/2013

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Another oops generator

One 7'oops7 thread, related to finance, uses gaming as a metaphor with 'fiction' being a major element. Types of trading as have evolved in the commodities markets are problematic. Why? Well, there are several reasons, but chief ones would be the spread of the computational flavor with its complexity and no accountable resource except for the poor suckers who lose.

William F. Buckley was right. "Stop!"

A recent WSJ article on the problem quoted research results and used the example of wheat. It is estimated that for a particular crop (future crop, mind you), there are twice as many holders of contracts for this crop than can be met.

Got that? Let's say the crop is going to be 100 bushels, and we have 1 bushel per contract. Well, there are 200 contracts that think that they own the crop, collectively.

How has such idiocy come about? Such spiraling is a natural consequence of taking speculation too far (see Minsky's ideas about this).

And, we do not know how wide-spread is this type of foolishness. You see, it goes way beyond those physical things we deal with as commodities.

In finance, thankfully, we had SOX to address this type of fictional book cooking. That the underlying mechanisms are supposedly founded on advanced mathematics does not remove the fiction, actually it exacerbates the problem.

One irrationality involved here is that when the crop does come about, what we will have will be higher prices due to the shortage of supply. Oh yes, the market works it out is the tenet.

Folks, those who like to line their pockets play the same sort of game with leverage. That is, from a finite collection of items with value (and these can be many types), they blow up to states that claim to be hyper-values and that are essentially hot-air. Perhaps, those who use the adage that the 'whole is greater than the sum of its parts' understand.

By the way, a physical product, and its development, can have similar problems; yet, engineering, hopefully, can keep things more grounded.

The financial folk can be similarly reined in, given that we apply the proper insights.

Remarks:

11/04/2010 -- Big Ben is still putting us at risk and trashing the savers.

01/27/2009 -- Lessons to be learned (as opposed to learnt), including, by necessity, Ponzi.

11/26/2008 -- The mess grew and grew, fairy dusting indeed.

08/24/2008 -- An example where we saw a 9 to 1 increase off of $100K was equivalent to a reserve ration of 10% which can be considered a historically low figure for the reserve or a high multiplier. This notion is related to leveraging in the sense of creating something out of nothing from one view. Of course, as argued before, the lowering of the reserve ration goes hand in hand with increasing use of mathematics through growing computational prowess which can exacerbate the Minsky ponzi tendencies, as we've seen of late. If we're going to model the economy via computation, why not base it on some physical analog, like energy (no endorsement intended)?

Modified: 11/04/2010