Curt Doolittle

Theme: Productivity

  • CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS: UK VS USA (worth repeating) I always want to smack Brits

    CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS: UK VS USA

    (worth repeating)

    I always want to smack Brits for incompetence. But their view of competence is pleasing the boss, while our view is pleasing the customer while making sure the boss merely gets his cut.

    —

    It’s very interesting how much pride Americans take in customer service, and how they treat rules other than those about money as guidelines, and that rigorous attention to rules is a sign of incompetence.

    Whereas for Brits, rigorous adherence to rules is not only a civic duty, a moral mandate, but a matter of pride.

    These differences are expressions of American distaste for hierarchy and Continental fear of a vacuum of it.

    It also reflects American risk taking ( the stock market in the USA) versus British (the bond market in London .)

    And the difference in proactive rules in Europe, and reactive rules in the States.

    It explains American use of lawyers to resolve conflicts rather than European rules and processes to prevent them occurring.

    Everything is easier in the states by orders of magnitude for this reason.

    You will feel safer in Europe. You can get rich in the states just by working hard.

    It’s fascinating really.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-08 09:50:00 UTC

  • (Is there anything better in the world than a dev lead who is smarter than you a

    (Is there anything better in the world than a dev lead who is smarter than you are? I don’t think so. It’s just like a lawyer, accountant, or doctor. Same. It’s awesome.)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-08 08:59:00 UTC

  • Age Population —“In November of 2007, there were 121,875,000 full time employe

    http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2014/10/revealing-look-at-hours-worked.html#B1QvdPDk9k0dsCVh.99Working Age Population

    —“In November of 2007, there were 121,875,000 full time employees. Now there are 119,287,000.

    Fulltime employment is 2,588,000 below the 2007 peak. Meanwhile working age population, 16 and older has gone up from 232,939,000 to 248,446,000. That’s an increase of 15,507,000.

    Simply put, the working-age population has gone up by approximately 15.5 million while fulltime employment has declined by 2.5 million.

    Some of this is related to boomer demographics and retirement. A lot of it isn’t.”—

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-07 05:48:00 UTC

  • the Rich Give to New York by Nicole Gelinas, City Journal Summer 2014

    http://www.city-journal.org/2014/24_3_nyc-private-wealth.htmlWhat the Rich Give to New York by Nicole Gelinas, City Journal Summer 2014

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-06 15:15:00 UTC

  • MARX WAS WRONG ON LABOR. THE PROBLEM IS ORGANIZING PRODUCTION NOT LABOR. LABOR I

    MARX WAS WRONG ON LABOR. THE PROBLEM IS ORGANIZING PRODUCTION NOT LABOR. LABOR IS A COMMODITY WHOSE ONLY VALUE IS DETERMINED BY SCARCITY. THE MORE POPULOUS THE LOWER CLASSES THE LESS SCARCE, THE LESS VALUE.

    Organizing production is where the value is created. Potential labor is merely a commodity like wood or wheat.

    Organizing production, and in particularly organizing voluntary production using nothing but incentives, in an environment where your offered incentives are tested against other incentives, (your theory of demand for your good or service is tested), is where value is created.

    If that was not true, people would never have to look for work. When people look for work they are seeking to ‘buy’ income by participation in the organization of production that they themselves cannot organize and profit from – they are capable only of organizing their OWN labor. Property-Rights Makers(aristocracy), Investors, Bankers, Entrepreneurs, People who calculate in various jobs, down to the people who manage machines and who operate machines, each organize labor – their own and that of others. And we do this all in real time with constantly changing wants, needs, scarcity and prices.

    We are rewarded for the value of our contribution, which is determined by the scarcity of our contribution. Organizing production is more rewarding than any other activity. It is extremely difficult. It is extremely difficult and highly unproductive to organize production involuntarily in a managed economy. It is extremely difficult but highly productive to organize production in a voluntary economy.

    There is no reason that we cannot use both involuntary (the military) and voluntary (the market) organization of production in the same economy. There is no reason that the physical commons cannot be maintained involuntarily as is the military, while the more complex commons and the market itself are organized voluntarily. Only socialism and libertarianism have tried to enforce a monopoly mode of production. And while I agree that an aristocratic, highly homogenous society that that of the English once possessed could produce a libertarian order, the fact of the matter is that even in that order, we had a lot of lower class labor in oversupply, which for all intents and purposes could have been organized, like the military, for the production of commons.

    THE OBJECTIVE OF THE LOWER CLASSES MUST ALWAYS BE TO REDUCE THEIR NUMBER TO INCREASE THEIR TAKE. DEMOCRACY REVERSES THIS AND WORKS AGAINST THEM.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-09-29 05:10:00 UTC

  • Why do the turks run the restaurants in Ukraine? So obvious: – The Turks LOOK fo

    Why do the turks run the restaurants in Ukraine? So obvious:

    – The Turks LOOK for something to do. (Just like european americans)

    – The Ukrainians wait until something MUST be done.

    – The Russians ONLY do things that they they were told to, and can’t get away with not doing. (Unless it involves shoving or hitting someone, which is an opportunity never to be missed).

    Any place that is clean is not run by Turks, Ukrainians or Russians – probably americans, or in the cases I’ve seen, people from western ukraine (less russified) that have seen enough of the world to want to bring the same standards here.

    Although I gotta say that americans here, in general, annoy the hell out of me. (it’s the ideology). But they work hard and are obsessively honest, and that’s still so rare and wonderful no matter where on earth you find it.

    I keep running into Brits that are such catholic-marxists in atheistic robes that I want to make them disappear in the night to save these people from them.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-09-27 11:10:00 UTC

  • THE “WHAT IF” OF UNIVERSALISM What if all companies compete in the market with t

    THE “WHAT IF” OF UNIVERSALISM

    What if all companies compete in the market with the same strategy? Those with the most credit will eventually accumulate the talent and other resources to defeat the rest. So companies specialize in market tactics.

    What if all states compete in the market with the same strategy? If everyone competed on meritocracy, the most technologically advanced state would capture a disproportionate amount of the wealth. If on violence, the strongest would capture a disproportionate amount of the wealth, territory, and control. The most vocal the most influence. This is why states specialize in different tactics. Because meritocracy is only beneficial to the meritocratic. war is most beneficial to the strong. and everyone else engages in criticism and complaint as moral rebellion.

    What if all tribes compete in the market with the same strategy? If all compete on meritocracy, the smartest, strongest, most trustworthy, and most technologically advanced will capture a disproportionate percentage of the wealth. If on strength, the strongest, and fastest, willing to make the greatest sacrifices will capture it. The rest will rely on gossip criticism and complaint and negotiate whatever possible ends they can. So tribes specialize in reproductive and social tactics.

    What if all families compete in the market with the same strategy? if families competed in the polity using the same strategy the wealthy would prosper under meritocracy and the poor would prosper under communism, and the powerful would prosper under authoritarianism. This is why families politically compete using different political preferences: it is in their interests to do so. Classes vote as classes because classes share reproductive strategies. As much as we do not like it, humans use three different strategies (gossip/criticism/guilt, violence, remuneration) to compete, and they do so because the upper classes are literally genetically superior to the lower classes in both intelligence, ability, and reproductive value.

    An homogenous polity, an homogenous moral code for a political system, is a disadvantage to some and an advantage to others. The state isn’t the only monopoly that’s ‘bad’. As an artifact of an extended family of aristocrats, it is adequate for the representation of their interests. A multi-house government is merely a market for constructing social contracts – as long as they are contracts that expire, rather than laws that do not. The mistake we made was in not adding the church as the lowest house of the state, and requiring that aristocracy(the land), merchant and banker (commerce), the common folk (the church and care-taking) were not separated into individual houses. Each with their own requirements for entry, and taxes paid, and all of which participated in exchanges.

    Even as such, a division of those preferences does not solve the problem of the demand for totalitarianism on one end and demand for liberty at the other. The problem is that property rights must exist as universally atomic (private) but that we can use those rights under a political contract, to construct whatever political order best suits our reproductive interests.

    Any order that constructs a market for exchange between those of us with dissimilar interests and abilities is a moral one. However, any order which favors one house or the other through parasitism rather than exchange does not.

    The fallacy of the enlightenment is that of equality, since equality is a code word for monopoly, and monopoly is a code word for tyranny, and tyranny is a code word for parasitism. And under no condition is cooperation rational under parasitism. And if we are not cooperating then violence is on the table.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-08-29 04:31:00 UTC

  • I invest in my staff – a lot. When it doesn’t pay off I move on. When it does pa

    I invest in my staff – a lot. When it doesn’t pay off I move on. When it does pay off I’m always absolutely thrilled. The best way to invest in your staff is to negotiate decisions with them, until their decisions are as good or better than yours. You must never lose control in the sense that decisions are ‘deals’ between you and your staff. The deals must persist. But at some point they begin to understand the overall deal structure (they have adopted your goals) and you are really able to rely on them for stopping you from making mistakes rather than you stopping them from making mistakes.

    So, the best approach is to constantly consider how to spend your time. It is much more time consuming to negotiate (train) your staff so that they make good decisions, but it is a much larger long term payoff to try to train everyone to make good decisions. When they do, they have sovereignty, and are in control of their lives and we all desire that. They feel respected, and are respected, because they participate. I dont do this for purely warm and fuzzy reasons – even though the sociology of the work place is something very important to me. I do it because I am, at all times, trying to invest now, so that I can tackle other problems later without the fear of absorbing risk by doing so.

    My staff has hit a sort of critical mass since the spring, but particularly since we sent them to work together in a villa for the spring and summer. When you are that close to people, all sorts of external influence and posturing eventually disappears from the daily work and a level of trust develops that is something beautiful to behold.

    Managers can really be separated into those who do such things and those who either don’t or can’t, because they aren’t craftsmen. This is one of the things I’ve learned from the ‘good to great’ research: that you really must build people from within, and from craftsmen, mature them into managers.

    Otherwise nobody respects those managers, and they are right not to. They’re just bureaucrats. And no trust can develop in that environment. And thats why it doesn’t.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-08-28 05:42:00 UTC

  • Entrepreneurship. Identify and satisfy demand. 🙂

    Entrepreneurship. Identify and satisfy demand. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2014-08-22 07:21:00 UTC

  • When Might Apple Begin To Decline?

    When the profitability of the iPhone is sufficiently diminished that a new income stream must be developed, yet Apple execs are unwilling to conquer the desktop market that is sitting there for them to just take away from Microsoft on a scale not seen since Microsoft did the same to IBM.

    https://www.quora.com/When-might-Apple-begin-to-decline