Assorted links

by Tyler Cowen on October 29, 2008 at 9:45 am in Web/Tech | Permalink

1. What consumers do in a downturn: surging vs. dwelling

4. Maybe asking people to vote doesn’t increase turnout (via Kottke)

3 comments

Cliff October 29, 2008 at 10:01 am: Re: 2, it’s not clear to me that it is illegal to trade on “insider information” regarding coups. My understand was that it was only illegal to trade based on inside information about the company, when you are someone who owes a duty to the company (employee, etc.).
oops October 29, 2008 at 11:03 am: a coup isn’t a mouse click. it involves training up opposition militia. new weapons, more ammo and all sorts of things that one could argue are no different than motley fool using observers in utah to monitor how full a chip manufacturer’s parking lot is on saturdays.

this doesn’t mean insider information wasn’t used but there are clandestine non-classified and non-insider ways of gaining information.
zbicyclist October 30, 2008 at 9:39 am: What consumers do in a downturn is worry, not “dwell” and “savor”.

Read this paragraph from the article linked to in #1 above, and see if it sounds like people you know in a downturn:

“In the dwelling modality, the consumer is not forward looking, but concentrated on the here and now. Now most of life’s pleasure comes from counting one’s blessings. This is a dwelling modality, because the individual is no longer in transit, racing towards a better tomorrow. Now the consumer is focused on what is good about what one has. The consumer stops anticipating and starts savoring.”

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