Another Nice Thing about a Recession

Mark J. Perry, whose day job is making lemonade out of lemons, argues that another nice thing about recession is that it is a wide open opportunity for entrepreneurship. He's actually onto something here if you don't overdo it, but he picks a couple of funny examples to make his point.

One is Bill Gates who got his start (as Perry says, picking his words carefully) "after the 1975 recession," (my emphasis) although it is hard to identify any one thing that Gates might have done differently had he come of age in a healthier economy. One might just as plausibly say that he got started just in time to run into the firewall of Paul Volcker interest rates. Perry also mentions Gates' highly equivocal role as in "inventor"--more bluntly, the fact that he never "invented" anything, unless you count the means and technique of capturing and exploiting economic rents (this is too strong: in the very early days, he did write some code. But his fortune relies almost entirely on stuff done by others--or by suppressing competition)

The other is the game of Monopoly which Perry says (with carefully crafted nuance) "was patented during the Great Depression."

Hm. In the narrowest sense of the term, that appears to be true; Monopoly was patented in the middle of the Depression. One could go further and say that the "inventor," Charles Darrow, had time to pursue his project because he was otherwise un- (or under-) employed. You could say that Darrow (unlike Gates) actually did some of the "creation" that went into the final product.

The trouble is, as even the most superficial observers now knows, Darrow was only the lucky latest in a long line of "creators," extending at least back to the turn of the century. Parker Brothers spent most of a generation warding (or paying) off competing claims.

So both Microsoft and Monopoly are stories about the capturing and enjoying economic rents. They have little or nothing to do with creativity in general. If that is what a recession facilitates, we can well do without.

While I was Away ...

Stuff I would have blogged about, had I been blogging last week:

Charles Tilly: the distinguished sociologist who died at 78 said he never held office in a professional association, never chaired a department, never got chosen for a jury (link). Hey, that’s me to the life! Okay granted, I never wrote 51 books, either…

The awfulness in Upper Austria: the last thing I want to do is to seem to be flippant about the irredeemably dreadful story of the guy who kept his daughter in the basement as his sex slave—and of how this is kind of the second time this sort of thing has happened lately, in the same neighborhood. But just a brief two cents’ worth: could it be the architecture? I mean—how many houses do you know of where they even have a basement where you could hide somebody that long and that well? Where they even have a basement?

The Rev. Wright (aka, Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy): I really haven’t caught much of his act, but from what little I hear/see, I’d say he is smart and entertaining in a Rush Limbaugh sort of way. My concern is not that Obama hangs out with him—as a listless nonbeliever, I have to forgive worse nonsense than Rev. Wright, almost every day. My concern is that Obama should not have been blindsided by this: it’s one more proof (there have been too many) that this truly attractive human being may just lack the killer instinct.

Historical footnote to the above: I used to know a guy who trained urban organizers for the Saul Alinsky community development movement. One thing about these black preachers (he said), they never let you see their mailing list. They may cooperate with you, and they may do you a lot of good. But they have their own agenda and they know they are going to be there when you’re gone. Obama should have known that, too.

Best blog entry of the week: James Fallows, on why Bill Gates never learned the truth about Clippy (link).

BBC: Bill Gates' Bitch?

I’m not competent to say much of anything about technical computer stuff, but it seems to me this story must be huge (link):

With today's launch of the iPlayer, the BBC Trust has failed in its most basic of duties and handed over to Microsoft sole control of the on-line distribution of BBC programming. From today, you will need to own a Microsoft operating system to view BBC programming on the web. This is akin to saying you must own a Sony TV set to watch BBC TV. And you must accept the Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) that the iPlayer imposes. You simply cannot be allowed to be in control of your computer according to the BBC.

… No chance then for the millions of the worlds poorest children who are about to receive the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) computer to be able to view BBC educational programming. The OLPC runs only Free Software and Free Software is, of course, the main competitive threat to Microsoft. I don't expect we will see an iPlayer built to the principles of free software whilst this incompetent BBC governance is maintained. …

Turns out (per DefectivebyDesign.org) that Bill Gates has locked up the British Labour Party brass:

You may not know this, but Gordon is tight with Bill, and the Labour Party is tight with Microsoft. And after 10 years of one party rule, the UK is a politically tied up Microsoft shop. Everything else that follows in relation to the iPlayer can be connected to this corrupting political association. No one in the ruling Labour party is really going to question the corruption of the BBC. I predict the outcome of the petition to Gordon Brown http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/iplayer/ that has over 12,000 signatures and calls for the iPLayer to be available to all operating systems, will be the wooly, "The BBC is committed blah blah". Meantime Microsoft has been given a monopoly for distribution of BBC programming. …

HT: Boingboing (link).