Sandeberg Rising » economics

I’m the product, not the customer

sandeberg — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 12:34:00 +0000

This has been buzzing around in my head for a few days now, since I read something about it… somewhere. Knowing what my daily reading is like, thanks to Google Reader, it was most likely Wired News. But there it is.

For some companies I, like most people I suppose, considered myself a customer even if the transaction was of zero value. Let’s pick out free newspapers and commercial radio stations here. I don’t pay for them, but I considered myself a customer and they subsidise the free distribution to me, the customer, by regretably taking in advertising. But that’s not the way it works at all. I am demographically analysed within an inch of my life, together with cross-sections of polls, letters-to-the-editor, call-ins etc etc. And all this information is packaged up and sold to the advertising companies. ‘You want access to these juicy morsels? To these eyes, ears and, sometimes, brains? That’ll cost you.’ And the wider the distribution, the greater the number of eyes and ears, the greater value the product has.

This became an issue some time ago when the console game Kane & Lynch was being promoted. Gamespot, a game review website had accepted a huge wad of cash and effectively revamped their site, splashing Kane & Lynch logos, sounds, images and labels everywhere. And then the reviewer assigned to the game completely annihilated it. And then got fired two days afterwards for a completely unrelated, yet undisclosed, reason. The outcry was huge. After all, surely the site owed it’s integrity to it’s customers? Yes. Yes, it did indeed. It’s just that we ain’t them.

Flat is sexy?

sandeberg — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 07:49:00 +0000

BBC NEWS Politics ‘Flat tax’ urged by Tory Osborne

Ever since I read the article on Flat Tax in Andy’s Economist way back in spring, the story seems to be coming up more and more often. There’s the BBC article linked to above, last week I heard that Germany’s CDU (Conservative party, likely to replace Schroeder’s SPD in a couple of weeks) is considering a flat tax scheme (I don’t know how seriously) and recently there was the news that the Treasury had censored their own report on flat tax to de-emphasise the benefits and exaggerate the drawbacks. It’s definetly a topic that won’t go away.

technorati tag: economics

Is Germany’s economy recovering?

sandeberg — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 09:17:00 +0000

BBC NEWS | Business | Is Germany’s economy recovering?

Blogged mainly for those people with an interest in economics, Germany or both. Quite an interesting report on Germany’s economy in the days before Chancellor Schroeder loses his job.

I’ve long felt that Germany needs to revamp it’s labour laws significantly to get back to being the powerful economy they were before unification. And the mindset needs to change; Most countries seek foreign investment to bolster their economy, but Germany resists this passionately, seeing it almost as an invasion. Recall when Vodafone wanted to buy Mannesman, a diverse German manufacturing company, just so it could grab it’s mobile wing and flog the rest. The entire country was up in arms, it was the first successful hostile take-over of a German company by a foreign investor. I believe this mindset must change to make the economy more dynamic.

But then I’m hardly a trained economist!