I wouldn’t doubt that was his initial motivation for making the suggestions.
I also remember that he tried to back out of buying Twitter multiple times. While doing so he was pretty public about all the crazy crap he would do with Twitter.
Despite all that Twitter went to a judge and got them to force Musk to complete the sale. He’s a crappy CEO for Twitter but it’s kind of on the former Twitter leadership for forcing that situation.
I can’t guess what individual people will do but, as a group, shoppers end up spending more this way. Supermarkets and grocery stores typically sell many things besides food; toys, magazines, beauty products, etc.
The store also doesn’t need you to eat all the food you buy. If you throw out a bunch of food, as many people frequently do, the store still gets paid for all of it.
They do it to make you spend more time browsing. Shoppers typically get the same stuff every time they get groceries. Over time people learn the layout of their local store and develop efficient patterns to move through it and get everything they want. When the store shuffles everything around they force shoppers to wander around the store and to look at all the shelves carefully for the stuff they actually want. Some percentage of them end up finding new things to buy and spend more money.
I have to applaud David Nolan on some next level marketing for this one.
He invented the predecessor of that chart as a way to promote libertarianism. It’s very clever in how subtly it introduces a loaded question.
The phrasing asks the viewer to consider if they want more or less political freedom and if they want more or less economic freedom. Obviously, most people want more freedom. Therefore Libertarianism is the best form of government. QED!
But that makes two big assumptions that are almost certainly incorrect:
It’s a little frustrating that unabashed marketing is so frequently trotted out as though it were an established fact.
Primarily because it’s really difficult to move countries. Even when an other country is “better”, by whatever metric you may choose, the high switching cost makes the move worse for individuals unless staying in a country is really really bad. That threshold is typically when subsistence in the country of origin becomes untenable, often due to war or famine.
Didn’t know it had a name.
That once stopped me from registering a video game title.
I was feeling silly so I figured I’d go for a nonsensical contrast. “Evil Grape” got rejected. After several failed attempts it eventually dawned on me that some dumb algorithm thought it was a reference to sexual violence.
It kind of annoyed me but I just picked an other fruit. It wasn’t until later that I considered that “Evil Banana” was probably more sexually evocative but it was too late by then.
So if you’re ever playing a video game and shoot (or get shot by) “Evil Banana”, know that, if it weren’t for the Scunthorpe Problem, it could have been “Evil Grape,” but either way, it wasn’t intended as a sexual reference at all.
Robespierre has entered the chat.
This isn’t about own vs rent, it’s about house vs apartment.
Open flames are dangerous and smoke is annoying to neighbors. Condos and coops typically won’t let you grill. Some of them have designated grilling areas and those often have restrictions on how you can use them. Even many apartments with fireproof balconies won’t allow them because not all the neighbors want a balcony full of smoke.
Every house I’ve ever rented, allowed grilling. Even the cheapest one, a row-house in Baltimore, let you grill in the back “yard”.
Light intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. A light that’s only a few microns away from your cornea would look incredibly bright even with minimal power.
It’s functionally close enough to a conglomerate though.
I’m not exactly sure what ‘“free market” cultist’ is or if you’re accusing me of being one. Modern economists don’t normally align themselves with simplistic ideologies like “free market”, “communist” or “capitalist”. They’re aware of the historical and modern usage of these terms but they tend to focus on areas that are far to specific for those terms to even make sense. You won’t find a lot of economists that argue for complete Laissez-faire capitalism any more than you’ll find real economists arguing in favor of classical Marxism.
There is general agreement that conglomeration benefits management more than shareholders. There’s general agreement that they are more likely to arise under some economic conditions and that those conditions usually aren’t associated with socially optimal economic policies.
It’s a bit complicated.
The CEO and the other shareholders aren’t the same.
For the CEO, it’s a good way to diversify since they can’t diversify the normal way.
For the regular share holders it’s a way to diversify but it’s not as good as being able to buy and sell the individual components.
I’ll skip a lot of the math but the upshot is that their Sharpe Ratio (expected return divided by risk) is higher if they do their own diversification than if they buy one company that tries to diversify within it.
These weird combinations look fun but they’re generally the result of having conglomerates, companies that have gobbled up a bunch of smaller, unrelated companies.
Conglomerates are tricky to pull off because managing a lot of disparate business lines. A CEO who knows all about how to market construction equipment is likely to miss that one of their other products became an iconic sex toy years ago. The big problem is that more focused companies can typically outmaneuver you in their area of focus.
Theoretically, there might be synergies that make your company more effective but normally, conglomeration is drag on the risk-adjusted rate of return on your company. It’s much easier to pull off when your government has strong protectionist policies or if there are officials you can bribe to keep out the competition.
Why would a company do something that’s generally bad for the company? It’s generally good for the CEO. A CEO often has a very concentrated investment portfolio. Changes in the value of the company they’re running can have a huge impact on their personal wealth. Conglomeration allows a single company to be a diversified asset. It does it in a way that’s objectively worse for shareholders but better for the CEO.
tl;dr I was wrong.
I used to go to a restaurant that I was sure was a front.
Years ago I was walking home from the gym and I got peckish. I was in one of the less fancy areas of Manhattan so I didn’t think twice about just walking into the first place I saw.
The second I walked in I decided it was a big mistake. This place looked fancy. Nice place settings, real wood furniture, etc. I was dressed like a bum and probably smelled bad.
But the head waiter came out and treated me like royalty. Fresh baked bread, a sauteed flounder that he filleted right at the table and all around baller service at a very reasonable price. I was the only person there but it was early so I didn’t think much of it. I figured that if their food and service was this good when they thought I was a bum this is the place for me. I dropped a 100% tip and decided I’d go once a week and if I ever found a date I’d impress the hell out of her when we roll into a nice restaurant and the head waiter greets me by my first name and treats me like a big shot (aside: the first and only girl I brought there didn’t like their vegetarian options but ended up marrying me anyway).
Ever time we went the place was practically empty. This was one of the less fancy areas of Manhattan but they were still paying Manhattan rent. The food was always top notch and did I mention how awesome the service was? Mooci, the waiter once came back from vacation and insisted that I try some of the moonshine from his Sicilian Mother. Constant freebies too.
We decided there’s no way they could be turning a profit and assumed it was a mob front. Some older NYers may remember when the story broke that SPQR was a mob front, so it seemed pretty likely.
Well a few years ago we went back after moving out of state. The restaurant was under new management and everything sucked. Crappy place settings, shitty generic food and I didn’t recognize anyone there. It turns out they weren’t a mob front. They were just great cooks that sucked at running a business and ran out of money :(
I keep wondering if information like this will change anyone’s mind about Disney.
It seems like all Iger has to do is throw a little shade at Trump or DeSantis and everyone instantly believes that Disney is some sort of bastion of progressive thought that doesn’t have a vile history of exploitation.