consumer revolution in media

"That emphasis on giving readers what they want to read, as opposed to what lofty notions of civic responsibility suggest they ought to read, is part of a global trend."

An efficient economic system is putting the power in the hands of consumer.. The technology is enabling those changes by reducing information asymmetry .making it easily available to people. This is supposed to do better price discovery and hence a more efficient system,

The current changes in media where newspaper and TV news media are succumbing to perverse form of free media, focussing on what is popular taste rather than the real issues can be seen in enabling more powers to consumers rather than intellectuals who used to suggest what shall be read as part of civic responsibility.

The argument against such an efficient system will lead to a "Race to the bottom". The news media will compete against each other to cater to the shot term needs of consumer and in process affecting the long term future.

Media in a democracy are supposed to be the guardian of opinions and enabling check against government power. Even now media has in crisis taken the responsibility of delivering second objective but first have taken a beating due to inability of doing a deeper analysis of the situation.

Newspaper like leaders need to be leading the curve of public opinion and not always following it.High competition in short term will make newspapers following the public opinion curve, catering to instant needs.

So is everything dark out there. Ford, Apple and many other corporate examples have proved to be forming opinion and these are result of efficient economic systems. We shall expect to see similar revolution in media where some agencies will form a niche and cater to intellectual taste rather than crash public taste.

Swedish family values

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/world/europe/10iht-sweden.html?ref=general&src=me&pagewanted=all

In Sweden, the revolution from pay to family friendly environment is taking place big time. The parental leave reserved for fathers, free education etc are making the society gender neutral . The cost of this is higher meddling of government in family affairs, higher taxes. but even after these, Sweden has maintained fiscal prudence with low debt to GDP values and productivity keep on rising. Sweden is a prime example of how even large government interference in economy and large taxes has not hampered productivity growth. The point is whether this model is dependent on Swedish culture and hence can't be exported to other countries. and whether this is scalable enough for a larger country like ours!!

why it is so difficult for judges

During MBA, I took this course Business, Government and Law. There we get to know that Constitution is finally a living document. One need to interpret constitution in the light of incidents that happens today. The boundaries of law henceforth shall change and any robust constitution needs to have the flexibility to allow that change but in the process protecting the core values.

Another aspect is creation of institutions which can keep checks on each other and doesn't grant unilateral power to anyone for it to be finally abused.

The third part is what Justice Souter states here.
"A choice may have to be made, not because language is vague, but because the Constitution embodies the desire of the American people, like most people, to have things both ways. We want order and security, and we want liberty. And we want not only liberty but equality as well. These paired desires of ours can clash, and when they do a court is forced to choose between them, between one constitutional good and another one. The court has to decide which of our approved desires has the better claim, right here, right now, and a court has to do more than read fairly when it makes this kind of choice."

One can appreciate the difficulty that judges face when they have to decide between good and good. The choices are more difficult and one has to keep decisions in perspective of future, how will those decisions be interpreted in future.

Constitution will always have general guiding principles. Having set of rules for every current and future circumstances is impossible to achieve.

democracy in action

why we don't need power located in one hand because it will be invariably abused by someone. Even very intelligent, great , purer than thou soul once given power will be enamored by the possibility of using power for his/her own agenda.

the other thing is the risk of relying on a single person, its all about diversifying risk by taking opinion from a group and finally deciding on what to do .. one can always say that it finally leads to horse-trade, bullying, cheating to do things your way . but we are comparing this to a system where one person takes decision .. expected value of taking a right decision over a long time will be higher in democracy . no hard number proof , but this is sociology, so will be difficult to do so..

In democracy , one intend to come up with institutions which can cancel each other powers. so judiciary is a check on executive and one will hence want judiciary to be independent of executive . but making them too independent will concentrate power in their hands which will be also an undesirable state.

I see judiciary are in a position where they can take unpleasant decision which will be good for long term where the political class fails a lot..

Fama in his interview said that regulation fails because it is driven by political affiliations which are not efficient rather than prices which are efficient because of its ability to gather information from all places. Politicians are driven by short term greed/political favor and hence will enter in bubbles of under and over regulation. As we have seen that prices can also be irrational , so there are limits to both .

Prices are the most democratic institution from a point of view . They get inputs from all and finally decide on one ..

Interesting bit on inflation

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/core-logic/

Beating up the speculators

Gary Becker on usefulness of speculation

"Applied to the financial crisis, if when housing prices were rising so rapidly, more speculators had been shorting the housing market, or shorted mortgage-backed securities whose value depended on what happened in the housing market, their actions would have reduced the sharp increase in housing prices, and reduced the subsequent steep fall in these prices. Therefore, it was the absence of sufficient short speculators when commodity and asset prices were rising sharply that helped widen the run up and eventual collapse in these prices.

No amount of writing by economists will eliminate the hostility to individuals who make lots of money when times are bad."

Interesting bit as part of news about Euro Debacle

"Yet even as it predicted the trouble, Germany failed to anticipate that the countries running a trade surplus would inevitably need to finance the southern states’ shortfalls. The five most heavily indebted euro members owe German banks an estimated 700 billion euros (nearly $900 billion), and these German surpluses, once regarded abroad as a symbol of great strength, have emerged as a dangerous source of vulnerability. Most sickeningly for the Germans, the indebted nations are likely to say that their debts need to be reduced or restructured in the name of European solidarity."

China shall be looking at how Germany has to fund his neighbors to save European union future , china would be in similar danger sometime if they keep on running trade surpluses and US decides to default.