Month: May 2004

The good news is that the Sicilian Mafia has slashed the rates it charges “clients.” The bad news is that it has vastly expanded its client base.

“Pagare tutti, pagare meno,” roughly translated as “everybody pays, everybody pays less,” is the new slogan Sicilian magistrates and mayors are using to describe what the Mafia is doing these days.

Here is the full story, courtesy of Craig Newmark.

A dental appliance designed to help dieters take smaller bites and eat more slowly hits the market Wednesday.

It’s the latest addition to the $40 billion weight-loss industry, which caters to millions of Americans who are trying to lose weight. Some experts say the device may be helpful in changing behaviors. Others say this shows how truly desperate Americans have become.

The small retainer-like device, called the DDS System, fits into the top of a person’s mouth, filling much of the upper cavity. The price: $400 to $500. It’s available only through dentists who have been trained in fitting the appliance.

“You can pop it in when you go out to lunch and pop it out when you’re finished,” says William Longley, founder of Scientific Intake in Atlanta, which is making and marketing the product. The effect on speech is minor [sic], and it doesn’t interfere with swallowing, he says. Longley cites a study in Japan that showed those who ate more slowly weighed less. But some aren’t convinced.

And how does it work?

The appliance was the brainchild of a woman who had torus palatinus, a bulge of bone that grows from the center of the palate. She said it helped her stay thin all her life because she had to take smaller bites and eat more slowly. She got a patent on the appliance and licensed it to Longley almost three years ago.

…Researchers found that those wearing the dental appliance on the second day ate about 25% less food (in weight) over the course of a day than those who weren’t wearing one…

It usually takes patients a couple of meals to get used to wearing it.

“It doesn’t work if you have it in your pocket,” Longley says. And patients can override the benefits of the system by drinking milkshakes or other high-calorie drinks, he says.

Just think, people used to make fun of this sort of idea.

The modest soybean:

Two years after hitting rock bottom, Argentina’s economy is on the rebound. Although the 10-month-old government led by President Nestor Kirchner has taken credit, economists are praising the soybean – a small, round legume packed with protein that is at the margin of Argentina’s beef-heavy cuisine but at the heart of its economy.
Soybean prices have soared to their highest levels since 1988, bringing in billions of dollars in foreign currency and powering the economy’s 8.7 percent growth last year.
Taxes on soybean exports, meanwhile, have been a godsend for the cash-strapped government, providing a huge chunk of its budget surplus.
In recent years, soybeans have swept across Argentina’s vast plains, replacing other crops and cattle to become the nation’s top export.
The nation’s once formidable industry is still in ruins, and widespread unemployment in sprawling, urban slums remains, but the small towns that dot the sparsely populated pampas are bustling.
An emerging group of soybean-growing businessmen equipped with cell phones and sport utility vehicles is driving the boom. They have amassed huge tracts of land, building expansive agro-industrial operations that have begun displacing the region’s gauchos and small-scale farmers.

And who is buying all these soybeans?

Most of the soybeans are exported to China and other Asian countries, where they are crushed into a meal used as feed for livestock.

Here is the full story.

I have long wondered: why don’t individual investors diversify more? OK, it is bad for a country to be so heavily dependent on one crop. But surely individual investors — most of all soybean growers — should internalize these risks and hold a more diversified portfolio. Many of them don’t.

What is the upshot? Is the resulting high volatility simply the only way to get high growth? Perhaps you need non-diversified positions to generate the proper entrepreneurial incentives. On top of that, perhaps you need volatile upswings to cover your fixed costs as you move to the next stage of progress, a’ la Andrei Shleifer. Smoother growth patterns would lead to a lower average rate of growth. Or does raw hubris cause individual investors to diversify too little, thereby leading to a social inefficiency? Or how about the old days, when Kenneth Arrow argued that individual investors don’t take enough risk? I am inclined to agree with Shleifer, but these are some of the genuinely open questions in development economics.

At lunch recently, Tyler expressed concern about how well the Google auction would work given that no one knew what the stock would open at. Robin Hanson, famed for his role in the Pentagon “terror market,” chimed in that “we could have a market in that.” True, but not necessarily helpful – surely, the regress must end somewhere? Helpful or not, Robin has been proven correct as a descriptive matter. We now have something of a market, or at least a contest, in predicting the Google IPO price. See The Google IPO Swami.

Thanks to Eric Crampton for the pointer.

While browsing at Barnes and Noble this last week, I picked up the interesting title Patently Absurd: The Most Ridiculous Devices Ever Invented, by Christopher Cooper.

What struck me was how appealing many of the inventions sounded.

OK, I’m not ready to put up venture capital for “Bird Diaper” or “Dust Cover for Dog“. And it was scary to read about “Firearm Mounted in a Shoe Heel,” patented in 1971.

But how about a combined fork and chopsticks? A “Night Light for a Toilet,” attached directly to the seat, would come in handy. I like the fork that warns when you are eating too fast. It is now well-known that slower eating is healthier and keeps your weight down. Some may prefer a wind sail for your bicycle.

The sociologist will be interested in “Interpersonal-Introduction Signaling System.” Using a small hand-held device, you broadcast a signal indicating that you are interested in meeting someone. You can be rejected without (major) embarrassment on either side.

No, contrary to the impression you might sometimes get from this blog, there are not markets in everything. If you wish to be woken by light corks falling on your face, well…they tried this idea in 1882 and it did not take off. But if there is no market, at least there is a patent. Read this short article on the recent proliferation in patents in the United States. Here are some other web sites with descriptions of absurd patents.

The book, appropriately, had been remaindered. And there is always hope for the future, as at least one of their examples has come true. Amphibious motorcycle anyone?

Addendum: Check this out, maybe there really are markets in everything.