Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts

Introduction to Transportation Systems (Artech House Its Library) Review

Introduction to Transportation Systems (Artech House Its Library)
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Introduction to Transportation Systems (Artech House Its Library) ReviewIt was my recommended text for the introductory course on transportation in my postgraduate study.
Well written to link all the various aspects of transportation and logistics as well.
Introduction to Transportation Systems (Artech House Its Library) OverviewA survey of modern transportation systems, written by an architect of the US Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) programme. It provides the 30-point framework underlying most major transport systems, and it closely examines current and emergent activity to improve both freight and passenger transportation. Using the 30-point framework as a guide, transportation professionals can analyze existing and proposed systems. The book also explains ITS concepts along the same 30-point frame. Featuring an extensive explanation of common transportation systems, this work is designed for transportation professionals in general, and newcomers from the fields of electronics, computer science and civil engineering in particular.

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The Rights of the People: How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberties Review

The Rights of the People: How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberties
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The Rights of the People: How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberties ReviewThis is the kind of civics book that everyone who isn't well versed in the Fourth Amendment should read. Mr. Shipler lays out the long arch of our devolving civil liberties in America. The erosion of our privacy rights and protections under the Bill of Rights have grave implications. This book has helped me connect the dots to understand both the scope of the problems we face and, in a palpable way, the personal effects these issues have on individual citizens. The book is written by a layman for layman. It is very engaging reading.The Rights of the People: How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberties Overview

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The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage Review

The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater and Every Business a Stage
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The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage ReviewThe book takes a very logical, reasoned approach towards the theoretical next steps of economic expansion. It reasons that margins drive profits and that by constantly searching for higher margin offerings, a company will naturally improve and increase its profitability.
The logic is understandable... Commodity goods have small margins, as they are undifferentiated from each other and relativly easy to reproduce. Manufactured goods take things one step further, providing higher margins due to some level of product differentiation and brand specificity. Above that are Services, where the products don't last long enough to be copied and are customized enough to prevent easy manipulation. The higher margins should lead to higher profitability and better staying power. Fair enough.
Where the book's logic becomes strained, however, is where it strethes out towards the next generation of higher margin offerings, "Experiences."While it is true that experience companies my be able to provide higher margins than can older economy companies, experience companies tend to suffer from a fatal flaw that has infected many of the companies praised in the book. That flaw is the utter lack of repeat business generated by most experience economy companies.
Take two of the companies mentioned in the book as companies to emulate -- Planet Hollywood, the restaurant chain, and Peapod, the online grocery store. Planet Hollywood is under bankruptcy protection, because people are simply unwilling to pay through the nose repeatedly for the same experience over and over again. Peapod ran out of cash and is limping along only after being bought out by a Dutch firm. Hardly two stellar companies to emulate when searching for ever expanding profits.
Throughout the book, by expounding the virtues of ever expanding margins, rather than focusing on goods, services, and 'experiences' that people would be willing to repeatedly pay to have, the authors make the mistake of ignoring the overall forest for the sake of a single tree.
In the real world, experience companies know their limitations and create their pricing scheme to represent that fact. Amusement parks sell season passes for less than the cost of two visits -- acknowledging the fact that people may pay more for experiences, but only once, and repeat business depends heavily on making the repeat worth the cost.
Had the book focused more on successful ways for experience economy companies to thrive, rather than spending its time drolling on about the virtues of failing companies with the right plan, it would have been far more believable and enjoyable.The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage Overview

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Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History Review

Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History
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Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History ReviewWow, what a wonderful piece of depressing work. Matt Taibbi writes like the manic offspring of Hunter S. Thompson and William F. Buckley, his prose has a wicked, glinting edge, he pulls no punches in his tirades, and he lays the blame for the current economy squarely at the door of unparalleled Wall Street greed and White House collusion.
The American economy has been hollowed into a huge funnel, and everything poured into it is sucked out the other end by the rapacious maw of Goldman Sachs. Why Goldman? Well, as Mr. Taibbi points out, they are the only ones left. Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail, Bear Stearns was swallowed, and AIG burned down for the insurance money. There are now fewer entities to siphon off the profits, and curiously enough, Goldman had former executives posted throughout both the Bush and Obama administrations, not to mention the Fed and the governorship of NJ!
The three major bubbles that recently struck the economy all emanated from Wall Street. The tech, commodity, and housing bubbles were engineered to squeeze every last dime out of America regardless of the future.
Wall Street has responded to Taibbi's Rolling Stone articles by disapproving of language that describes various CEOs as "mf"ers, and their websites as "BS.com" and other colorfully correct terminology; but Wall Street forgot to refute the facts, they haven't attempted to dispute what they did. A few CEOs have tried to blame the mortgage meltdown on subprime, complaining that lower income folks were socially engineered into housing--a swipe at both people and policy--but as Taibbi correctly points out, you can find maybe 1.4 trillion in subprime, but another 13 trillion is still missing.
There must be a few one star reviews up for 'Griftopia' by now, as Mr. Taibbi skewers everyone from the tea party to Ayn Rand and her evil disciple, Alan Greenspan (his chapter is entitled "The Biggest A--hole in the Universe.") But the author blames Washington rather than any one party, and admits that the tea party has some valid points, even if they don't know it themselves.
Matt Taibbi also has a great talent for explaining fiendish investment instruments like credit default swaps and tranches, none of which I fully understood, but now have a better grasp of. He uses analogies ranging from burgers to cars as he explains commodities, CDO squares, and other arcana that have reached directly into our pockets and pension plans and ended up as mega-yachts floating off the Hamptons. Finally, there's no remedy offered, no ten recommendations, Taibbi sticks to his investigative guns, epilogues out, and leaves your jaw hanging in disbelief at the extent of the scams that have sent America to the poor house.
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