Weight Watchers is suing a local casino to recover monies gambled there by an employee who embezzled them from the company. Read the story in the Clarion Ledger.
Weight Watchers doesn't mind if you get the idea they're a health related non-profit organization. They're not.
They make a lot of money. So much money, that one of their employees could embezzle almost a million bucks from a local franchise before anyone noticed.
Weight Watchers is one of the more effective weight loss programs out there, but it still pays to look into what they are and who they are before giving them your money.
The Life Of Boyd Campbell Jackson Mississippi
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Protectionism for the Right Reasons
A lot of people are looking at how and why America lost so much manufacturing to Asia and that discussion always leads to protectionism. Protectionism is the act of adding taxes or quotas to imported items to favor locally produced items.
Protectionism isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is one of those things where it's a lot easier to do it for the wrong reason than for the right reasons.
The Wrong Reason
There really is just one wrong reason here and that's to protect local companies who aren't competitive due to poor management or greed on the part of either the owners or the workers, which especially happens when the workers belong to a union or the owners make large political donations.
It's bad because companies use this shield to avoid meeting consumers' needs and wants. Invariably they start out a little less competitive, but entropy sets in and they grow to become a lot less competitive.
Since it's such a bad idea to use protectionism in this way, and it's so easy to fall into, a lot of people favor prohibiting protectionism all together and letting market forces do as they will. While this is tempting, it abandons the use of protectionism for some very valid reasons.
The Right Reasons
Some countries, like the United States, work very hard to protect the consumer, the worker and the environment from irresponsible business practices. This protection isn't free. It adds considerably to the cost of the final product. Emerging economies will often abandon these protections to give their products a competitive edge in pricing.
China, for example, enforces very few commercial laws to protect the environment. As a result, China has become the world's center for manufacturing, but they're also arguably the most polluted country on earth.
During last summer's Olympics, China prohibited much of the automobile traffic in Beijing in a desperate attempt to clean up their air before the world showed up for the games. Even with that, many athletes chose to wear particulate masks to try and protect themselves from the polluted air so they could perform at their peak and all the athletes avoided locally produced food and water because of its reputation for being tainted.
The thing is, pollution doesn't recognize national boundaries. China's pollution becomes the world's pollution instantly and we in the United States are culpable for China's contribution to world pollution because we're the ones consuming the goods made in these polluting factories.
Not to pick on China, but they also have a really bad record when it comes to protecting the consumer. From tainted foods to lead paint in toys, everyone knows there are risks inherent in consuming goods made in China.
Better For Us All
In these instances, the world would be better off if we used protectionism to make products produced in countries that have laws to protect the environment, the consumer and the worker more competitive than products produced in countries that don't.
For instance: it's much more expensive to produce paper and steel in ways that protect the environment than it would be not to protect the environment. In the U.S., we force companies in these industries to be environmentally responsible, but China doesn't.
Not only the U.S., but the world would be better off if we consumed more paper and steel produced in this country rather than China, but because the U.S. produced goods are more expensive, the only way to achieve this would be to use tariffs and import quotas on these goods coming in from Asia.
China won't like this. It's the kind of move that can cause a trade war or even a real shooting war, but I think it's we're extremely careful to use protectionism only for the right reasons, it can still work.
A Level Playing Field
If we use protectionism in this way, then eventually emerging nations will be forced to enact similar laws to protect the environment, the consumer and the worker just to sell their goods on the world market. When that happens, we'll have to learn to compete on a level playing field.
If we don't employ protectionism for these reasons though, then emerging nations will avoid enacting these types of regulations until their local environment gets too polluted to live in or their reputation for consumer safety is so bad nobody is willing to buy their products and there never will be a level playing field.
Protectionism isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is one of those things where it's a lot easier to do it for the wrong reason than for the right reasons.
The Wrong Reason
There really is just one wrong reason here and that's to protect local companies who aren't competitive due to poor management or greed on the part of either the owners or the workers, which especially happens when the workers belong to a union or the owners make large political donations.
It's bad because companies use this shield to avoid meeting consumers' needs and wants. Invariably they start out a little less competitive, but entropy sets in and they grow to become a lot less competitive.
Since it's such a bad idea to use protectionism in this way, and it's so easy to fall into, a lot of people favor prohibiting protectionism all together and letting market forces do as they will. While this is tempting, it abandons the use of protectionism for some very valid reasons.
The Right Reasons
Some countries, like the United States, work very hard to protect the consumer, the worker and the environment from irresponsible business practices. This protection isn't free. It adds considerably to the cost of the final product. Emerging economies will often abandon these protections to give their products a competitive edge in pricing.
 Image: Air Pollution in Beijing; Source ABC News |
During last summer's Olympics, China prohibited much of the automobile traffic in Beijing in a desperate attempt to clean up their air before the world showed up for the games. Even with that, many athletes chose to wear particulate masks to try and protect themselves from the polluted air so they could perform at their peak and all the athletes avoided locally produced food and water because of its reputation for being tainted.
The thing is, pollution doesn't recognize national boundaries. China's pollution becomes the world's pollution instantly and we in the United States are culpable for China's contribution to world pollution because we're the ones consuming the goods made in these polluting factories.
Not to pick on China, but they also have a really bad record when it comes to protecting the consumer. From tainted foods to lead paint in toys, everyone knows there are risks inherent in consuming goods made in China.
Better For Us All
In these instances, the world would be better off if we used protectionism to make products produced in countries that have laws to protect the environment, the consumer and the worker more competitive than products produced in countries that don't.
For instance: it's much more expensive to produce paper and steel in ways that protect the environment than it would be not to protect the environment. In the U.S., we force companies in these industries to be environmentally responsible, but China doesn't.
Not only the U.S., but the world would be better off if we consumed more paper and steel produced in this country rather than China, but because the U.S. produced goods are more expensive, the only way to achieve this would be to use tariffs and import quotas on these goods coming in from Asia.
China won't like this. It's the kind of move that can cause a trade war or even a real shooting war, but I think it's we're extremely careful to use protectionism only for the right reasons, it can still work.
A Level Playing Field
If we use protectionism in this way, then eventually emerging nations will be forced to enact similar laws to protect the environment, the consumer and the worker just to sell their goods on the world market. When that happens, we'll have to learn to compete on a level playing field.
If we don't employ protectionism for these reasons though, then emerging nations will avoid enacting these types of regulations until their local environment gets too polluted to live in or their reputation for consumer safety is so bad nobody is willing to buy their products and there never will be a level playing field.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Well, Crap
Thanks to Frank Melton, my favorite city now looks pretty stupid on my favorite blog.
Boing Boing (how's that for a title) reports on Melton's threat to ignore the constitution when it comes to baggy pants. They also report on how nicely he folds a handkerchief.
Boing Boing (how's that for a title) reports on Melton's threat to ignore the constitution when it comes to baggy pants. They also report on how nicely he folds a handkerchief.
Print is Dead, and I Don't Feel So Good Myself
In the 1984 film, Ghostbusters, mousy secretary Janine tries to sex up uber-nerd scientist Egon Spengler by impressing him with the books she's read, to which Egon replies: "Print is Dead."
It's no secret I get frustrated with electronic journalism. Conservative, liberal, politics, showbiz, lifestyle, all of them, they just disappoint the crap out of me sometimes. When I was a kid, there were some truly great journalists working in the electronic media, but, the only one left in the business is Barbara Walters and she's a hundred and eight(sorry, Barbara).
For fifty years, print journalism was able to compete by offering more depth, and better quality. Newspapers survived by doing the same things TV and Radio news did, only better, even though they were less convenient. They were even pretty profitable.
Then along came the web, and you could get the same data (the exact same articles in many cases) without having to deal with a stack of printed pages. It could have been really cool. Newspapers could do pretty much what they always had, but without the expense of having to print anything.
The problem was, it's a lot harder to sell advertising on the web. Most advertisers only want to pay for web advertising if the end user actually clicks on their ad. Nobody wants to pay just for the exposure without somebody clicking on the ad, even though anybody who's ever studied advertising will tell you, exposure is the most valuable part of advertising. There's also no way to insert a whole page of advertising in the middle of the news on the web.
Newspapers are in the business of publishing the news, but they made their money by selling advertising, which gave the end user the expectation that the news itself is either free or nearly free. Double that on the web where almost all the non-pornographic content is free and it became almost impossible for newspapers to profitably make the transition from printed paper to the internet.
I think you'll see many of the best writers and comic artists and some of the most fleet-footed mastheads successfully make the transition over to web journalism, but it will be a painful transition and the newspaper printed on paper itself will be an anachronism in fifteen years. Ironically, I think we'll probably retain the term "newspaper" for text based journalism long after there's no actual paper involved.
This will be painful, and I can't promise that what we'll get will be nearly as good as what we had, but I don't think there's any way to change the path we're on either.
Seth Godin makes an interesting blog entry on what he'll miss about newspapers. He's kind of an asshole about it, but he makes some good points.
Brownie points and kudos if you can name the newspaper writer I ripped off for the title of this article.
It's no secret I get frustrated with electronic journalism. Conservative, liberal, politics, showbiz, lifestyle, all of them, they just disappoint the crap out of me sometimes. When I was a kid, there were some truly great journalists working in the electronic media, but, the only one left in the business is Barbara Walters and she's a hundred and eight(sorry, Barbara).
For fifty years, print journalism was able to compete by offering more depth, and better quality. Newspapers survived by doing the same things TV and Radio news did, only better, even though they were less convenient. They were even pretty profitable.
Then along came the web, and you could get the same data (the exact same articles in many cases) without having to deal with a stack of printed pages. It could have been really cool. Newspapers could do pretty much what they always had, but without the expense of having to print anything.
The problem was, it's a lot harder to sell advertising on the web. Most advertisers only want to pay for web advertising if the end user actually clicks on their ad. Nobody wants to pay just for the exposure without somebody clicking on the ad, even though anybody who's ever studied advertising will tell you, exposure is the most valuable part of advertising. There's also no way to insert a whole page of advertising in the middle of the news on the web.
Newspapers are in the business of publishing the news, but they made their money by selling advertising, which gave the end user the expectation that the news itself is either free or nearly free. Double that on the web where almost all the non-pornographic content is free and it became almost impossible for newspapers to profitably make the transition from printed paper to the internet.
I think you'll see many of the best writers and comic artists and some of the most fleet-footed mastheads successfully make the transition over to web journalism, but it will be a painful transition and the newspaper printed on paper itself will be an anachronism in fifteen years. Ironically, I think we'll probably retain the term "newspaper" for text based journalism long after there's no actual paper involved.
This will be painful, and I can't promise that what we'll get will be nearly as good as what we had, but I don't think there's any way to change the path we're on either.
Seth Godin makes an interesting blog entry on what he'll miss about newspapers. He's kind of an asshole about it, but he makes some good points.
Brownie points and kudos if you can name the newspaper writer I ripped off for the title of this article.
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