- “In 1982, Deming’s book Quality, Productivity, and Competitive Position was published by the MIT Center for Advanced Engineering, and was renamed Out of the Crisis in 1986. In it, he offers a theory of management based on his famous 14 Points for Management. Management’s failure to plan for the future brings about loss of market, which brings about loss of jobs. Management must be judged not only by the quarterly dividend, but also by innovative plans to stay in business, protect investment, ensure future dividends, and provide more jobs through improved products and services. “Long-term commitment to new learning and new philosophy is required of any management that seeks transformation. The timid and the fainthearted, and the people that expect quick results, are doomed to disappointment.””
I cam across this link via Amit Paranjape on Twitter. I was familiar with Deming’s role in Japan, but hadn’t read the book referenced here, in this excerpt. Duly added to the list.
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.. - “While the Constitution provides for setting up of SFCs at regular intervals, this has
not been adhered to by the states. The paper reviews the reports of the latest SFCs of 25 states in India. This involves examining the status of constitution of SFCs, their functioning and the approach adopted by them in carrying out their task and the principles adopted by them in allocating resources to local governments both vertically and horizontally. It also quantifies the devolution recommended by the SFCs in order to get a comparative picture of funds devolved by them across states. It is observed that there is huge variation in the recommended per capita devolution across States. We do not find any relation between the recommended per capita devolution and per capita income of States, but per capita devolution is in general very low across states in India. Is it that the state governments arbitrarily reject the recommendations or are the SFCs themselves to be blamed for non-acceptance of their recommendations? The paper also examines the quality of SFC
reports from the point of view of their implementability and finds that at times state governments are constrained to implement these recommendations on the grounds of poor quality of SFC reports.”
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Financial decentralization (well, decentralization in general) has never really worked in India. Financial decentralization in particular is an important, under-rated topic in economics. This paper is not a good place to learn about these topics, but it is good analysis of how State Financial Commissions haven’t really worked at all in India.
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.. - “What is Luminary’s problem? The answer is that their strategy is not well thought out. They give all of the appearances of starting with the notion ‘Netflix for Podcasts’ and then jumping to the later Netflix model to start that (where Netflix spends $$ on its own content) rather than where Netflix started which was streaming older ad-free content.Where should they have started? They should have started with an idea — “we are going to bring expensive to produce audio content to the Internet” — and then asked who their customers would be, what technology choices they would make, what is the core of their business and who precisely will they compete against?”
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Worth reading for three reasons. One, it helps you understand what podcasts really are, and how they started. Second, because this article helps you understand how to evaluate business models. Third, because Joshua Gans is worth following in any case.
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.. - “This very short sketch of the well-known effects of the first globalization allows us to remind ourselves of both its positive and negative sides: huge technological progress as against exploitation, increased incomes for many vs. grinding poverty and exclusion for others, European mastery of the world vs. a colonial status of Africa and much of Asia.In what ways should it inform our thinking about the current globalization?”
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An important question to ask, and one that is succinctly answered in this op-ed. A good article to read to get a sense of global economic history, and what inequality means in that context.
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.. - “I haven’t studied philosophy, but from the outside it mostly seems to revolve around three basic issues:Reality (ontology)
Values (ethics and aesthetics)
Knowledge (epistemology)
Here are three basic questions, one from each field:
A. Why is there something rather than nothing?
B. Is it better that there is something rather than nothing?
C. Can we answer questions #1 and #2? If so, how?”
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A lovely, and slightly unusual post from Scott Sumner – he does return to typical topics towards the end. But enjoyable, to help you understand how to think about philosophy, economics and therefore monetary theory. And try coming up with your “three questions”!
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