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TED and inequality: The real story

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Re: TED and inequality: The real story

#131

Post by nkurz »

lukifer wrote: post #18
waterlesscloud wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Points made in an explicitly partisan manner are inherently less valuable to anyone other than the party being supported.

How many TED talks revolve around global warming, despite the fact that the right treats it not just as alarmism, but a liberal hoax? TED doesn't seem to be rushing to pull those down. I can understand their reluctance to give Fox News ammunition to smear the TED brand. But it was the parties who chose to politicize ideas and issues which should belong to all humanity. Whatever happened to respectfully listening to p…

How many TED talks revolve around global warming, despite the fact that the right treats it not just as alarmism, but a liberal hoax? TED doesn't seem to be rushing to pull those down.

I've never attended Ted, but I've been to a few TedX events in San Jose as a small sponsor. For Global Warming and some other business issues, I was happily surprised that it had a lot of diverse viewpoints, and that the after event discussions indicated that people were considering these thoughtfully.

But I still fear that there is a political correctness at play, independent of the 'partisan' aspects. Al Gore is welcome as a speaker, and clearly is a partisan giving a partisan speech. That's good. But I don't know that Steve McIntyre, who has strong non-politically correct views on Global Warming but is extremely non-partisan, would be welcome.

I'm not painting Ted as being left-wing or right-wing, or unfair to either party. But I worry that if they start playing the game of avoiding topics because they are "partisan", the give up too much room to both of the major US political parties to declare topics untouchable. I'd rather they ignore the political implications, and help the search for truth.

Re: TED and inequality: The real story

#132

Post by nl »

Gormo wrote: post #115
thaumaturgy wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gee, I was hoping to just take the time to transcribe the video and add a couple of comments here and there without having to defend its content. The necessity of demand is the 'elephant in the room' because so much of the political argument so far has revolved around increasing benefits for the suppliers, rather than increasing demand. The argument has been, "we're supposed to make the wealthy wealthier, and then --…

'Increasing demand' is itself a supplier-directed activity; it's one of the primary functions of marketing. It seems baffling to consider this from a political/macroeconomic perspective; how would you increase demand but through marketing activity, without your methods becoming coercive or oppressive? > If the necessity of demand isn't the elephant in the room, then why isn't there broad political support for higher…

'Increasing demand' is itself a supplier-directed activity; it's one of the primary functions of marketing. It seems baffling to consider this from a political/macroeconomic perspective; how would you increase demand but through marketing activity, without your methods becoming coercive or oppressive?

Wow, seriously?

As an extreme example, and something no one is proposing: give all unemployed people a $1 million cash payment. They'll spend at least some of that money, which will create demand.

More seriously as an actual example that happened, in December 2008 (during the worst of the GFC) the Australian government made cash stimulus payments to most Australian families. This is credited with stimulating spending (ie, demand) during the Christmas period[1], which of course keeps retail employment high, which in turn puts money in employed peoples pockets etc etc. A second cash payment was made in April 2009.

The Australian government also spent large amounts of money on infrastructure projects. Being government, this took longer to spend, so most of that spending occurred right as the effects of the cash stimulus was wearing off. Construction is a big employer, so that helped support employment too.

Finally, the (huge) Chinese stimulus[2] kept the Chinese economy growing, which in turn increased demand for Australian exports.

The outcome was mostly positive: Australia was one of the few developed nations to avoid recession in 2008-2010. Unemployment is at historically low levels and inflation is also low.

Note that NONE of this was supplier initiated. Businesses were worried and were laying people off, and it was increases in demand via economic stimulus that reversed that trend.

[1] http://www.canstar.com.au/global-financial-crisis/

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_stimulus_progr...

Re: TED and inequality: The real story

#134

Post by dmpk2k »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #117
kiba wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully, I think you are making an unfounded assumption about why consumers aren't buying things. I heard a news story just the other day about U.S. family savings being lower than recent history. This isn't it, but here's a similar article: http://www.standard.net/stories/2012/05/17/our-view-recessio... . i.e., consumers aren't "choosing" not to buy because they're saving the money instead, they're "choosing" n…

> It seems entirely possible that families are trying to put food on the table, whenever possible, rather than save for the future. That's actually what I was trying to say, I probably just wasn't clear. I was responding to webXL's opening sentence, "When a consumer chooses not to buy something, i.e. commerce does not take place, saving occurs." I don't think that saving is occurring, I think that people are trying t…

As an aside: are mortgages even a good thing? They seem to create their own market.

I.e. if there are no mortgages, people buy what they can afford and housing prices remain low. If there are mortgages, suddenly house prices skyrocket since buyers can afford vastly higher prices, making mortgages a requirement for owning a home.

A good position to be in if you're a bank; now you get a big slice of all action.

Re: TED and inequality: The real story

#135

Post by WalterBright »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #75

I watched the video after reading TED's response, and I'm skeptical of some of their claims, but I can also see why they didn't initially choose to publish it on their site. The video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBx2Y5HhplI Since it's short, I'll go over it point-by-point. 1. "It is astounding how significantly one idea can shape a society and its policies. Consider this one: if taxes on the rich go up, job…

His talk makes the mistake that spending money is what drives the economy. This is a fundamental error.

What drives the economy is people creating value. When people have created value, they can exchange that value for things they want from other people who have created value.

Simply handing people money to spend is not stimulative because it does not create value. Put another way, taking money from A and giving it to B so B can buy things from A does not (and cannot) make A wealthier.

The route to greater wealth for A and B is that both A and B specialize in creating things that the other wants. Then, they trade, and each winds up with a higher standard of living than if each tried to do both. Economies are built on the greater efficiency that comes from specialization, and the resulting trade.

Re: TED and inequality: The real story

#136

Post by pippy »

Both parties are at fault here.

* The attendee for hiring a PR firm to create commotion

* TED for not being transparent

TED's decision, based on the elections or quality is superfluous. The fact is they weren't up front about it. If TED took its reputation seriously it would be transparent in all aspects of video selection. If it isn't censorship, they wouldn't be in this situation. Personally the slides I read were thought provoking, which is what TED was about (despite some graphs not labeling their Y access correctly).

Hiring a PR firm for a smear campaign on a non profit is simply a dick move. I shouldn't have to elaborate on that.

Re: TED and inequality: The real story

#137

Post by Androsynth »

WalterBright wrote: post #135
thaumaturgy wrote: post #75

I watched the video after reading TED's response, and I'm skeptical of some of their claims, but I can also see why they didn't initially choose to publish it on their site. The video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBx2Y5HhplI Since it's short, I'll go over it point-by-point. 1. "It is astounding how significantly one idea can shape a society and its policies. Consider this one: if taxes on the rich go up, job…

His talk makes the mistake that spending money is what drives the economy. This is a fundamental error. What drives the economy is people creating value. When people have created value, they can exchange that value for things they want from other people who have created value. Simply handing people money to spend is not stimulative because it does not create value. Put another way, taking money from A and giving it t…

Thats a good point. Wouldn't the logical conclusion to that point be that it is a mistake to think that a businesses purpose is to create jobs (as opposed to value)?

Re: TED and inequality: The real story

#138

Post by JumpCrisscross »

nhaehnle wrote: post #113
webXL wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And only consumers can set in motion this virtuous cycle of increasing demand and hiring." When a consumer chooses not to buy something, i.e. commerce does not take place, saving occurs. Savings means there will be money available in the future. Money available for a small business loan. Money available to buy shares in a company, freeing up capital from the person you bought the shares from. That capital could actu…

Savings means there will be money available in the future. Money available for a small business loan. Money available to buy shares in a company, freeing up capital from the person you bought the shares from. While your statement is not entirely false, it paints a misleading picture of how the economy at large works. Outside of venture capitalism, credit for running businesses tends to be provided by banks, and banks…

>banks just create the necessary money out of thin air

This activity is ultimately underwritten by deposits.

It should also be noted that paying down debt is counted as saving from a statistical perspective. It just means value is being transported back in time versus forwards.

Re: TED and inequality: The real story

#139

Post by billpatrianakos »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #41
daniel_solano wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not the talk was politically motivated, if this article is correct about what the speaker did as a result of rejection, the speaker is an attention-seeking demagogue that uses threats and deception for self-promotion.

...or, the speaker is simply passionate about a topic that he believes needs to be discussed as openly as possible. Aren't you now committing the same mistake of guessing the speaker's motivations as everyone who criticized TED?

Well it might not be technically okay or PC to say this but if you listen to the guy's talk I'm sure you'll get the egotistical tone. Egotistical is too strong a word but he very much seemed to like calling attention to himself. Specifically I'm talking about his self introduction where he talks about the dozens of businesses he started or helped start as well as the way he really enjoyed throwing in the thing about "job creators" being not far from "The creator". Plus there were a smattering of references to himself scattered throughout.

Based on the transcript alone my argument can be pretty weak but anyone with at least one perceptive bone in their body can see what I saw if you watch the video. I agree that no one can know a person's motivations for sure and I feel like a hypocrite for doing it myself but in some cases it's just obvious. There's more to this than just what he says, watch his body language and listen to his delivery.

I actually have experience with people like this. I often give talks to different community groups and schools and such on the topic of teen drug abuse along with a father who lost his son to an overdose. This man agrees to speak whenever asked and claims to do it for the good of the youth in our community but once he starts speaking you can easily tell his intentions have shifted and his cause has now become about him instead of educating the audience. The content of his talks are definitely educational but he always gets off the subject and pats himself on the back for some great thing he did which was related to the topic but unnecessary to say along with some heavy name dropping. This TED speaker reminded me of the guy I often talk with. (Now, does ending my commend with a personal anecdote make my comment all about me now? Haha)

Re: TED and inequality: The real story

#140

Post by bjornsing »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #98
Gormo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how the necessity of demand is the 'elephant in the room' - it seems pretty obvious that you need both supply and demand in order for ongoing commerce to take place. Yes, there has to be a customer; but identifying that customer, discovering his desires, and satisfying them in a way that creates net value for all parties is the role of the entrepreneur. Doing that successfully is not a trivial task, and e…

Gee, I was hoping to just take the time to transcribe the video and add a couple of comments here and there without having to defend its content. The necessity of demand is the 'elephant in the room' because so much of the political argument so far has revolved around increasing benefits for the suppliers, rather than increasing demand. The argument has been, "we're supposed to make the wealthy wealthier, and then --…

> And, anyway, if the business people do the market research they're supposed to do first, and the demand isn't there, they won't bother starting anyway.

If that's so I can tell you quite a number of very successful companies that should never have been started. ;)

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