Innovation and the Small

Innovation often comes from the small, the small business, the individual entrepreneur.  But innovation often disadvantages the small, the established small farmer, the small store owner, the small theater.

One example is the change from film to digital in movie theaters, which the Rural Blog posts on here.

It reminds me of when our farm went from horses to a tractor, turned out we needed to invest in other implements, all of which required capital.  Those who can't access or accumulate the money can get left behind.

(Having said that, the local Reston theater is under new ownership and is renovating, including all digital projections.  We saw "War Horse" there, which has great cinematography, and the experience was great. )

Communitarian Liberalism as Zero Sum

Ross Douthat in the NYTimes sets up a strawman, communitarian liberalism, on his way to attacking the Obama administration.

But there are trade-offs as well, which liberal communitarians don’t always like to acknowledge. When government expands, it’s often at the expense of alternative expressions of community, alternative groups that seek to serve the common good. Unlike most communal organizations, the government has coercive power — the power to regulate, to mandate and to tax. These advantages make it all too easy for the state to gradually crowd out its rivals. The more things we “do together” as a government, in many cases, the fewer things we’re allowed to do together in other spheres.

Sometimes this crowding out happens gradually, subtly, indirectly. Every tax dollar the government takes is a dollar that can’t go to charities and churches. Every program the government runs, from education to health care to the welfare office, can easily become a kind of taxpayer-backed monopoly.

 His specific point is the rule providing that health care facilities which offer healthcare insurance must include contraception, etc. among the benefits.  This is particularly offensive to those facilities run by the Catholic church.

What he fails to acknowledge in his lead-in are the ways in which the government encourages those "alternative expressions of community".  For example, contributions to religious and charitable organizations are tax-deductible; property owned by such organizations is tax-exempt.  From my point of view, rather than there being a zero-sum game played between government and NGO's, there's a complex interweaving of interests, sometimes symbiotic, sometimes parasitic, among all the players.

His argument would be more effective if he offered an example of a government monopoly in education, in health care, in welfare.  I can't think of one.  

Why James Stewart's Production Is Down

James B. Stewart, the prize winning author, and NYTimes columnist sat down with a calculator to compute his tax rates and reports here.  The results:

I paid 24 percent of my adjusted gross income in federal taxes and 37 percent in combined federal, state and local income taxes. I paid 49 percent of my taxable income in federal income tax, and 74 percent of my taxable income in combined federal, state and local income taxes. My totals include federal payroll and self-employment taxes.

 No wonder his productivity over recent years has been down--he pays too much in taxes--that's the logic conservative economists would use.  His picture reflects his self-employment and living in NYC.  I'm too lazy to check but I think the usual figure for comparison is the AGI percentage (i.e., Gingrich paying 30+, Obamas 25+, Romney 14+).

This led me to a thought though: Mr. Stewart may well have slowed down some recently, but is that more the effect of incentives/taxes or is it the effect of aging. Much discussion of the impact of taxes on incentives omits any correction for age.

[updated: corrected typo]

GHWBush Shows Age

No, George W. Bush's dad isn't greying much, particularly when you realize he was born in 1924, but he is in a wheelchair according to this picture of him and son Jeb with Obama this weekend. 

A Base on the Moon

I bow to no one in my disdain for Mr. Gingrich.  But, there's always a but.  I do have to admit to just a tad of regard for his pushing the idea of establishing a base on the moon. He's wrong, of course. He pushes the base as a national enterprise, redounding to the glory of the American nation.  What the President elected in November should do is make a major push to internationalize space, try to get the Chinese participating, open our efforts up to other nations.  Obama, and Gingrich, seem to want to commercialize space, relying mostly on private enterprise. That's well and good, but.

This but is the problem of space junk. Space, near-earth space,  is a "commons", and the human race is currently engaged in its destruction. The only way to prevent polluting space is with international governance, plus funding of engineering solutions, a space garbage collector.

Back to Newt. I grew up in the classic age of science fiction: Heinlein, Asimov, Anderson, Clarke, et. al. While I know better now, it's hard to abandon one's childhood, hence my attitude towards Newt and his base on the moon.

Future for FSA Software

Haven't discussed FSA in relation to the farm bill recently.  There's discussion that it will be impossible to pass a new farm bill this year, given the election year politics, the debate over the deficit, etc. That would be good; it'd allow more time for FSA to implement their new software systems.  There's also discussion, as here in Farm Policy, about having crop-specific programs, rather that one program which covers what we used to call "the program crops", the major field crops.  That's bad.  Newly designed programs don't take on their final shape until the last minute, making it very hard to implement software for them (see ACRE), and having to implement 3 or 4 differently shaped programs for different crops further complicates the matter.  Add to that the loss of historical memory and expertise from the loss of Washington program experts. End result: "interesting times" ahead.

McDonalds in France

Via Ezra Klein, here's a study of how McDonalds has succeeded in France so well that it's their second most profitable market (the Klein post says "second biggest" but the study says profitable.

I've linked to Dirk Beauregarde posts in the past, most of which show France as a very centralized country.  But the lesson of McDonalds in France seems to be adaptation to local customs and suppliers, in contrast to their centralized and standardized operations in the US.  In part it's an attempt to recognize the French enjoy their food, and linger, while the Americans grab and go.

How Good Is FSA's Management?

Federal Computer Weekly has a piece on a GAO report which analyzed why seven big IT projects were successful. 

• The most common factor was the involvement of program officials, particularly in ensuring the participation of internal and external stakeholders. 
• The next most factor was the knowledge and skills of the program officials and the support of senior management.

Are FSA Employees Federal?

That was my question when I saw this Post item, reporting OPM will survey all federal employees to assess their job satisfaction.  Now for some purposes county FSA employees who aren't farm loan officers are considered federal, for some purposes not.  I'd hope OPM includes them in this survey, but my guess in the normal course of events they won't.

Being Flexible: Chinese Versus US Versions

The NY Times had a long article on why Apple manufactures in China, focusing on Steve Jobs demand for the iPhone to have a glass screen rather than plastic.

One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”

Meanwhile, Google Operating System has a post on how the Gmail logo was designed, including this quote from a book:

Dennis Hwang spent the day before the launch coming up with ideas for a logo and trying to make it work in conjunction with the clown-colored Google brand. (...) Even after four years at Google, I found it astounding that one twenty-something guy was sitting alone at his desk, sipping tea and developing the main branding element for a product to be used by millions of people - the night before it was scheduled to launch.

This fits our long-time image: China excels in throwing masses at a project; America is the home of the individual doer.