Category: Current Affairs
The next artistic explosion?
According to the Entertainment Software Association, 50 percent of Americans over the age of six play computer games, and the industry had $11.4 billion in sales in 2003, more than the film industry. Last year, 63 percent of U.S. parents said they planned to buy a video game.
So will computer games be the breeding grounds for our next artistic renaissance? I’ve yet to see the evidence. Many people are negative on the aesthetic prospects:
Some in the industry, however, are not so sure that games will ever mature. They fear games could be a dead end like comic books – valuable as a social phenomenon, but outside a select few titles like Art Spiegelman’s “Maus,” not worth a great deal of individual study. “I seldom play computer games, because it’s such a depressing experience,” said Chris Crawford, a game designer who is building a program to create interactive stories. “I end up shaking my head in dismay at how stuck the designers are in a rut.”
Here is the full story, including a discussion of how academics are hoping to raise aesthetic standards in the area. Get this:
The field has its own research group (the Digital Games Research Association) and peer-reviewed online critical journal, Game Studies, where one writer, discussing the horror and splatter-fest PlayStation game “Silent Hill,” wrote that it “favors syntagmatic causality over descriptive explication. Its distinct chain of puzzle solving and conditional progression enable it to instigate and maintain pace and tension, and so fuel its unnerving visions of death and possession.”
Imagine if Motown or be-bop jazz had been studied in these terms, in their heydays. If that is our best hope, I am skeptical too.
The best case scenario is that game designers are breeding aesthetic wonders in their highly commercial and competitive environment, and outsiders such as myself simply don’t know it yet. The worst case scenario is that computer games unbundle “fun” and “the aesthetic,” and sell us the former at the expense of the latter. Mozart gives us both beauty and entertainment, but in a world with very low fixed costs, perhaps these two qualities will be sold separately from now on. Perhaps computer games, and books such as The Da Vinci Code, can damage the arts by hindering entertainment from cross-subsidizing beauty.
I’ll bet on the best case scenario, since I think enough people prefer indivisible cultural goods that bundle many different qualities, including aesthetic quality. But I’m still waiting to see the payoff.
Addendum: Here is a review of an < href="http://www.gameforms.com/features/misc/bang/">art exhibit of video games, thanks to Hei Lun Chan for the pointer.
Cell phones in Japan
About 70 million Japanese — 55 percent of the population — have signed up for Internet access from their cellular phones, a threefold increase from 2000. Cell phones, or keitai in Japanese, are closing in on computers as the device of choice for surfing the Internet. While the Japanese are using their cell phones in the same way many Americans use their laptop computers or personal digital assistants, they also are pulling out their phones to watch TV, navigate labyrinthine city streets with built-in GPS systems, download music, take and transmit home movies, scan bar-coded information, get e-coupons for discounts on food and entertainment, pay bills, play Final Fantasy, even program karaoke machines.
Here is the whole story.
The Wrath of Khan
Peter Gordon has a new blog which will focus on the economics of urban planning. Peter is insightful on many topics, however, as this recent post indicates.
Intelligence agencies consume a lot of money (actual amounts unknown) and they often fail miserably. Perhaps worse than the Iraq WMD failure by all of the Western intelligence agencies was their inability to detect 15 years of nuclear secrets sales by Pakistan’s Abdul Qadeer Khan. Yesterday’s WSJ featured an op-ed by Bernard-Henri Levy whose best-seller in France, “Who Killed Daniel Pearl?” seems to have been closer to reality than anything else. Levy argued that Pearl was murdered because he was on the trail of the Pakistani clandestine nuclear secrets sales. The Khan confession (and his strange public pardon by Pres. Musharraf) gives Levy’s version some substantial corroboration.
One free-lancer upends armies of professional spooks. Is anyone surprised?
Food for thought
In case you were getting too bullish about the prospect of a Comcast buyout of Disney, Variety magazine (Feb.16-22, p.67) throws some cold water on the idea:
A hefty 34% of Disney’s operating income is derived from its Theme Parks & Resorts division, a business which is struggling against a range of cyclical economic woes. Theme Parks is slated to eat up nearly 70% of Disney’s total capital expenditure ($900 million) next year. And Comcast has no expertise in this area.
The Disney retail stores have been on the sales block for some time, with no potential buyer identified. Plus Disney just lost its deal with Pixar, the source of its big animated hits, and much of Disney’s income comes from overseas. Comcast has virtually no experience in the international arena. Well, there is always ESPN…
Should we raise taxes?
Martin Feldstein says no. Brad DeLong says yes, at least once the economy recovers further. Alex Tabarrok says maybe, if we can cut the right deal. I would say that taxes, real taxes, already have been raised, the Bush Administration just hasn’t admitted it yet. Milton Friedman has long insisted that the level of government spending is the best measure of what government is taking from the economy.
Addendum: Co-blogger Alex agrees, read his very nice statement of the argument.
Insourcing: the current trend
Michael Walden writes:
While outsourcing has captured current attention, it is not a new phenomenon. If the term is defined as jobs operated by U.S. companies in foreign countries, the current total is 10 million positions, or 7 percent of domestic U.S. employment. Further, there’s been an upward trend in the number of outsourced jobs since the mid-1990s, when trade barriers were significantly reduced following the signing of the NAFTA and GATT agreements.
What is less well publicized and understood is that “insourcing” also occurs in our economy. Insourcing happens when foreign companies establish jobs in the United States.
The latest statistics show insourcing accounts for over 6.5 million jobs nationwide. Although this is less than the number of outsourced jobs, the gap has actually narrowed in the past quarter century. That is, there’s been a recent trend of foreign companies adding jobs in the U.S. faster than U.S companies have increased jobs in foreign countries….
The scorecard on job outsourcing versus job insourcing has actually moved in the favor of the U.S. in recent decades, and policy-makers must consider both when evaluating the worldwide movement of jobs.
Thanks to Daniel Drezner for the link, read his accompanying discussion of the Europeans are dealing with outsourcing.
If pigs had wings
The Disney board just turned down the current Comcast offer. Of course Comcast is free to come back with better terms. The first bid was considered no more than an opening salvo in a longer bidding battle. Disney already has hinted it would consider a better offer.
Now if a better Comcast offer for Disney made sense, what would this imply?
1. It would mean that cable operators are correct in wishing for an earlier release of films to television. DVD releases would end up speeded up as well. Moviegoing would become more of a social event, rather than the only means of seeing a given film. Date movies and large screen spectaculars probably would become more popular in the theater, as they would offer a more unique product. Moviegoing as a whole might well decline in popularity. Large-screen televisions would increase in appeal.
The big gainers would be the cable companies, who would capture a share of the revenue currently going to DVDs. The big losers would be Hollywood and, to a lesser extent, companies such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy, which sell large numbers of low-priced DVDs (they would make back some money on TV sales). In part the offer is an attempt to yank DVD revenue away from movie producers and put it in the hands of a company that pipes movies into your home. The age of video on demand would finally arrive, Comcast is known for its strong promotion of this concept.
2. A takeover would signal a final end to the privileged position of the major networks. Don’t forget that Disney owns ABC, so the biggest cable company would now own a major network. Network programming would end up driven by the demands of cable television. Cable and satellite TV already account for the bulk of American viewing; only 14 percent of the American viewing public does not have either cable or satellite TV. In addition local news would continue to decline in importance and TV will become racier, given the looser role of the FCC in supervising cable content.
3. A takeover would later be seen as a turning point for the convergence of all media with the Internet. Cable supplies most of the bandwidth, and the ascendancy of cable companies will enable your TV, Internet connection, and other electronic devices to talk to each other. With a cable company leading the charge, and controlling and owning the relevant content, it could more easily internalize these benefits and charge you for the integration.
But reread the first word of the title of this post, “If.” Here is Rudyard Kipling’s poem If.
Can’t all this happen without Comcast buying Disney? If these outcomes are value-maximizing won’t arms-length transacting get us to the same place? You can bet on this question with a phone call to your broker. But before making your bet, read about this attempt to use stem cell technologies to grow pig wings.
Questions of the day
You say the rich do not pay enough taxes. In 1979 the top 1 percent of earners paid 19.75 percent of income taxes. Today they pay 36.3 percent. How much is enough?
From George Will’s excellent “The 1st 28 Questions for Kerry.” The entire article makes for compelling reading.
How about this one?
You say the federal government is not spending enough on education. President Bush has increased education spending 48 percent. How much is enough?
These questions are an object lesson in the virtues of divided government.
Addendum: For the tax data, here is a relevant link, thanks to Paul Barriere.
Coatless Girl
In his stump speech, John Edwards is fond of empathizing with the plight of a 10-year old girl “somewhere in America,” who goes to bed “praying that tomorrow will not be as cold as today, because she doesn’t have the coat to keep her warm.”
Yet, as John Tierney points out, “clothing has become so cheap and plentiful (partly because of textile imports, which Mr. Edwards has proposed to limit) that there is a glut of second-hand clothing, and consequently most clothing donated to charity is shipped abroad. The second-hand children’s coats that remain in America typically sell for about $5 in thrift shops.” (emphasis added)
Rewards for Justice
The State Department’s Rewards for Justice program has been quite successful. At the twenty five million dollar level we captured one ourselves (Saddam) but paid a reward for the capture of Al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Qusay and Uday Hussein were located due to a reward as was Ramzi Yousef and the terrorists responsible for the destruction of Pan Am 103. Know where a terrorist is located? The Rewards for Justice homepage is available in Arabic, Hindi, Pashtu, and Swahili among other languages.
British national patrimony
Thirty years ago the British government drew up a list of 35 privately-owned paintings, on British territory, that should be kept in Britain for reasons of national heritage. The pictures were deemed “of such outstanding quality that they should not under any circumstances be allowed to leave the country.” Many were hanging in country homes, and many have since been acquired by British public sector museums. The British government will help institutions bid more heavily for such pictures, to keep them in the country.
N.B.: Not a single British work is on the list.
Here is the full story.
My take: On one hand, the cosmopolitan British perspective is to be applauded. But why oh why does the British government feel it is a superior artistic investor? Taxpayers never see this money again and most of them never go see the pictures. Don’t cite museum visitorship statistics to me, most people never see the pictures or would know if they are gone. And with the Louvre just a few hours across the Chunnel, it is really necessary to stop a Poussin from going to the United States? Odd that a national patrimony policy should grant its biggest subsidy to foreign tourists and to the reputations of foreign artists.
Winner’s curse revisited
1. Cable giant Comcast offered $54 billion to buy Disney.
2. Comcast shares fell eight percent yesterday.
Need I say more? Furthermore the evidence suggests that Comcast later may be dismantled or itself become a takeover target.
N. Gregory Mankiw vs. John Kerry
Free-trader Daniel Drezner offers full coverage of Mankiw’s pro-outsourcing testimony before Congress. Brad DeLong defends Mankiw, free trade and outsourcing. John Kerry attacks Mankiw’s words and his campaign. He also dismisses a voter-calling service that had been routing its phone calls through Canada.
My idea: Unless a candidate supports free trade, his party can only drive supporters to the polls with American-made cars.
Update: The Kerry family fortune operates 57 factories in foreign countries.
More common sense from Andrew Sullivan
Why are deficits a problem today? Read here.
Andrew also offers this scary tidbit about liberal bias in academia.
Markets in everything, part III
Had your fill of match.com? But lacking in guts today? Try an on-line break-up. Did you know you can hire someone to do it for you?
Breakupservice.com, founded in 2002, offers a range of options for heartbreakers who have $50 but not, as cofounder and president Ren Thompson puts it, “the nerve, or the know-how,” to write their own good-byes. According to Thompson, between 1,200 and 1,500 men and women annually turn to the Dublin, Calif.-based company for a custom-tailored “Dear John” or “Dear Jane” letter with that special admixture of grace, verve, tact, and distance.
For the less old-fashioned, Thompson or one of his six breakup representatives also break the news by means of a “Happy Ending counseling call” lasting roughly 15 minutes on average. The conversation doesn’t always begin on a happy note. The most common reactions, Thompson says, are “Is this some kind of joke?” or “Are you recording this?” But once people get over the skepticism, Thompson says, it’s a learning experience. “They have an inkling there’s a problem. Now they have some real closure with real answers. We try to help them look at it as a new beginning.”
Starting afresh is also behind the philosophy at LadyLoveWriter.com and its male-oriented counterpart LoveWriter.com. For $89, New Jersey-based scribe Erica Klein (who works by day as a direct-mail copywriter) will conduct a telephone consultation and compose “The Gentle Breakup Letter,” which she e-mails to the client to write out in his or her own handwriting. Would-be heartbreakers answer eight key informational questions on the order form and then choose from three “emotional styles”: “Light and Casual,” “Straightforward But From the Heart,” or “Super-Romantic” (though Klein can’t recall any client opting for the latter).
“We’re good at caring and compassion,” noted Klein.
Just look at one company’s client testimonials:
I met what I thought was a sweet girl. We dated a couple of times then I realized she was completely psycho. She would not take any of the hints I gave as I didn’t want her around but one phone call with a follow-up letter from breakupservice.com did the trick I never heard from her again. Thanks! Charlie M.
One of the companies also performs furniture and pet retrieval, for fees ranging up to $400.
Here is a previous installment of Markets in Everything.