It’s always good to be ahead of the power curve. I see that the eminent Paul Krugman had an editorial in the New York Times about the very issues that I’ve dealt with in this blog, his example in this case being Amazon. This is just one of many articles that have been raised about the monopsony power as a result of the Hatchette controversy. In The New Republic Franklin Foer also addresses this issue at length in the article “Amazon Must Be Stopped.” In my last post on this topic I discussed public monopsony, an area in which I have a great deal of expertise. But those of us in the information world that are not Microsoft, Oracle, Google, or one of the other giants also live in the world of private monopsony.
(more…)Dean Baker
Family Affair — Part I — Managerial Economics of Projects, Microeconomic Foundations, and Macro
A little more than a week ago I had an interesting conversation on a number of topics with colleagues in attending the National Defense Industrial Association Integrated Program Management Division (NDIA IPMD). A continuation of one of those discussions ended up in the comments section of my post “Mo’Better Risk–Tournaments and Games of Failure Part II” by Mark Phillips. I think it is worthwhile to read Mark’s comments because within them lie the crux of the discussion that is going on not only in our own community, but in the country as a whole, particularly in the economics profession, that will eventually influence and become public policy.*
(more…)My Generation — Baby Boom Economics, Demographics, and Technological Stagnation
“You promised me Mars colonies, instead I got Facebook.” — MIT Technology Review cover over photo of Buzz Aldrin
“As a boy I was promised flying cars, instead I got 140 characters.” — attributed to Marc Maron and others
I have been in a series of meetings over the last couple of weeks with colleagues describing the state of the technology industry and the markets it serves. What seems to be a generally held view is that both the industry and the markets for software and technology are experiencing a hardening of the arteries and a resistance to change not seen since the first waves of digitization in the 1980s.
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Life, Project Management, and Everything 