Jeff's Blog

Spotify:  Good or evil?   The point of view that I have heard expressed recently - primarily by artists (musicians and songwriters), but also from other people is that Spotify is the second coming of the devil.  There is a littiny of criticism , much of it alleging that Spotify is unfair to artists.  This may be true to some degree, but my thesis is that the issues being cited are not Spotify's "fault" but a direct consequence of digital music economics.  I will explore this topic in this blog post.  Let's go back to the good old days, long before Spotify.  Before CDs and digital music.  Records were vinyl and analog.  Recording your tune meant paying an exorbitant amount for studio time, record manufacturing, distribution, inventory, marketing, channel costs, etc. A recording was a physical good, something you could touch, hold, keep, trade or sell.   Economists call such a thing a rivalrous good .  If you possess a rival...

I heard on the news this morning that Ford was slowing down production of their F-150 line.  This is the crown jewel of the company's offerings, and has been the best selling model of any make of car or light truck in America. For almost four decades.  (Note that last year, GM's Silverado and Sierra models combined just barely outsold F-150 for the first time.) Why would Ford slow production of their most popular offering, especially when they are neck and neck with a fierce competitor?  Was it slackening demand?  Production problems?  Reliability issues?  No, none of the above. They were missing a chip. A tiny, little, piece of silicon, perhaps the size of your fingernail, brought the Ford Motor Company to their knees.  They can't produce an F-150 truck without it. There is an average of 3000 chips in each and every car which is manufactured these days.  And these little pieces of silicon are needed not only for cars and trucks, but for refrigera...

In 2021, for the first time ever, the United States Congress and the President of the United States may not hold 100% of the power to govern. How can this happen? Well, I am 100% sure that Joe Biden will be sworn in as President on January 20, 2021, and that a new 117th Congress of the United States will be seated a few weeks earlier, on January 3rd.   And that Donald Trump will retire to Mar A Lago. However, once he arrives in Florida, Mr. Trump will be in an excellent position to continue with his highly disruptive but extremely effective approach to politics and governing (without actually being President).   While sitting in Mar A Lago, Mr. Trump will: Be able to significantly influence, slow down and/or propose new Congressional legislation in Washington DC Have a meaningful impact on law making and policy within red states   Remain as a kingmaker for the Republican party, dramatically impacting the careers of elected officials Continue with an undimin...

Seven years ago today, Kim Jong-Un's uncle (#2 in North Korea) was forcibly removed  by state security in the middle of a meeting with high level party leadership, and executed several days later by firing squad.   His crime?  Stating publicly that he thinks economic development should take priority over the military.   Mr. Kim evidently disagreed. Note that not one person in the entire cadre of North Korean party leadership objected. Today, December 8, 2020, also marks one full month after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump at the polls by more than 6 million votes.  Mr Trump continues to challenge the election with ballsy, highly public maneuvers (court challenges, fraud allegations, appeals to state leaders to change the electoral college vote, etc.) that stand absolutely no chance of succeeding.  And, as of today, December 8, 2020, the vast majority (222 out of 249) of Republican members of the US House and Senate (including leaders su...

This morning, Pfizer and BioNTech announced some very positive results regarding the trial of their messenger RNA-based Coronavirus vaccine.  The efficacy was found to be above 90%, which vastly exceeded expectations.   The implications are profound, and include a proof point that genetic vaccines (a brand new highly extensible technology) can be very effective.  In addition the medical community will now have a much higher confidence that the human immune system will respond to coronavirus vaccines with some form of lasting immunity.   Further, the invention of messenger RNA vaccine technology (and genetic vaccine tech in general) will have highly impactful medical uses in the future.  Some applications may include the treatment of diseases where the body can't make a proper version of a particular protein (such as sickle cell anemia among many others).  This invention is perhaps one of the most impactful of the decade. The Dow is up over 1200 po...

My last post described what I referred to as the Enraged Engagement of America , which focused on the role of Cable TV News in the polarization of our country.   Today, we will see how social media companies are adding gasoline to this fire - the fire that Fox News and MSNBC have already started.   As you may have seen in the recent Netflix production " The Social Dilemma ," the technologies and business models used by Facebook and Twitter are fueling the most extreme polarization that our country has seen since the Civil War, and we have yet to experience the full impact.  It All Starts with a Suggestion to Watch a Movie Many of my readers are undoubtedly familiar with Netflix's uncanny ability to recommend movies to you that you'll actually enjoy.   The technology powering the Netflix recommender system is called collaborative filtering and it is one of the reasons that the company now has a market cap of $212B. Netflix's Movie Recommendatio...

Here is an observation that Yogi Berra might make if he were alive today:  Nobody watches cable news anymore, it is far too popular. Whether we admit it or not, many of us get our news from popular sources, including FOX, CNN, MSNBC and even Facebook and Twitter.  It seems like we all get drawn into their worlds whenever we feel like we need to catch up. When we tune in, we quickly get fully engaged... and fully enraged too! (Especially if what is being reported strikes a chord that fits our preferred narrative.)  And whatever is reported always reinforces our very cynical and angry view of the world.  These days, everyone seems to be pissed off!  Could it be cable news?  Maybe Facebook and Twitter?  The president? Kenosha Many of you know that last week was a rough one in Kenosha, Wisconsin.  One person (Jacob Blake) was shot seven times by police officers (leaving him paralyzed from the waste down) and two people later lost their lives in a p...