Profit for free
How do you turn a free product into a profitable enterprise? That’s normally the challenging issue to be faced in today’s increasingly competitive online market. Internet giant Google continues to have issues attempting to monetise its expensively acquired YouTube daughter. Yet game developer Turbine is looking to do exactly the opposite, converting their current business [...]
Bucking the trend
President Truman famously kept a sign on his desk that said “The buck stops here”, a gift from an avid poker player. Yet whilst we might appreciate the imagery and the sentiment, should we really rely on there being a ‘buck‘ to pass? Is there always a man in charge, someone with whom the ultimate [...]
Capital for the third world
I recently came across a wonderful idea for providing peer-to-peer lending to entrepreneurs in developing countries. The idea seems akin to the principles of the Grameen Bank, providing microcredit in this case primarily as a form of aid. The system allows people with spare cash to browse potential applicants and offer them money in the [...]
Market games
There are very few today who would deny that the quality of our food has dropped, partly as a result of the change embodied by the death of the local shop and the rise of the supermarket. Where once the only change was that our food was pre-grown, now we find it has been pre-grown, [...]
BT and the cost of money
How much does it cost to pay? That might appear to be an odd question, but it is a seldom acknowledged hidden attribute of the market economy. Paying costs. If one only imagines the contingencies required to handle the coin money which filters through any system of minor payments, such as a road toll booth, [...]
Whose National Trust is it anyway?
A visit to Threave Gardens near Castle Douglas in Dumfriesshire, one of the National Trust for Scotland’s many well-kept properties in the south of Scotland. Beautiful weather, the height of the summer, and the chance to explore a well-kept garden and the fully restored Threave House. As the NTS website even offers: Visit the Countryside [...]
Currently Reading
Planned books:
- The Affirmative Action Empire by Terry Martin
- The Age of Capital, 1848-75 by E.J. Hobsbawm
- Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
- History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
- Rising ’44: The Battle for Warsaw by Norman Davies
Current books:
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Der Untergang des Abendlandes. Umrisse einer Morphologie der Weltgeschichte. Band 1 by Oswald Spengler
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Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
Recent books:
- Uni-Wissen Anglistik /Amerikanistik: Introduction to English Language Teaching by Andreas Müller-Hartmann, Marita Schocker-von Ditfurth
- The Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick
- Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod by Bastian Sick
- We the Living by Ayn Rand
- Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod by Bastian Sick
Links
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