I just watched the two seasons of HBO’s Rome on DVD and absolutely adored it. I am biased as I am a huge Roman history aficionado and Octavian (Augustus) has always been my role model/idol.
Their depiction of Roman life – the social mores, the politics and daily life – are exactly how I envisioned them to be. The story is well known, but its telling is extremely well done and the intrigue is fascinating.
I recently came across an article entitled “How Capitalism is Killing Democracy” by Robert Reich. The article is an adaptation from his book “Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy and Every Day Life”.
He argues that while capitalism and democracy seemingly went hand in hand for most of the 20th century, the link has been broken by the rise of an undemocratic, but capitalistic China and by growing income inequality.
I could not disagree more on almost every point!
Capitalism is dependent on the respect of property rights, the dissemination of information and the rule of law. As such, capitalism has not only made China much richer in the past two decades but a lot more liberal than it has ever been. Foreigners and the press essentially have the right to move around. There are thousands of local newspapers who now criticize corruption, cover ups, etc.
Capitalism can exist without democracy as it has in China for the past two decades. It also coexisted with dictatorships for long periods of time in South Korea and Taiwan. As Maslow pointed out, political freedom is usually not at the top of people’s priorities when they are struggling to feed themselves. However, as people meet their basic requirements in health, lodging and food, they strive for higher level aspirations and start to worry about political freedom.
Moreover, as a middle class emerges that has a lot to lose from arbitrary rulings and confiscations, it starts clamoring for representation. I suspect that over time, the ever growing middle class in China will demand greater political representation. Baby steps in that direction are already appearing with the welcoming of entrepreneurs and businessmen in the communist party.
South Korea and Taiwan have shown how countries can transition relatively peacefully to democracy as they become wealthier. I hope that the same will happen in China in the coming decades, though I am aware of the risks of internal conflict given the diverse ethnic and linguistic differences in the country, not to mention the old guard’s desire to retain its power.
In the last 15 years in-country income inequality has increased dramatically. However over the same period of time, global income inequality has sharply decreased as GDP per capita has grown faster in developing countries than the developed world. China alone has taken over 400 million people out of poverty. Yet China has gone from being one of the most equal countries in the world to one of the most unequal. However, few would argue against the benefits of its prosperity.
Moreover, quality of life inequality, measured in terms of life expectancy, life satisfaction, height, leisure and consumption patterns, has narrowed dramatically as the gains of the lower classes have been far greater than those experienced by the population as a whole.
The more relevant finding is that inequality is acceptable if there is social mobility. On that account many countries are failing. Around the world, including in the US, elites are entrenching themselves, public education systems are not serving the needs of the lower classes and opportunities for them to climb up the social ladder are disappearing. However, those are not innate flaws of capitalism but rather specific failings in the way public school systems are run and labor markets regulated which can be addressed with the proper policies.
Conclusion:
Capitalism is not the enemy of democracy, quite the contrary, it is its emissary and will lead most undemocratic countries down the path of liberty and democracy.
One of the ways OLX has grown has been by partnering with other sites to run their classifieds channel. This strategy has proven successful because OLX is rather good at monetizing traffic. When you look at the distribution of Google revenues, a small percentage of searches account for the bulk of the revenues. The car, jobs, real estate and general merchandise searches are particularly successful. Given that those are some of the categories that OLX focuses on, the site generates much higher average eCPMs than the average site, especially internationally.
This provides an opportunity for a win-win partnership with partners: we monetize their traffic well, offer their users a great service, take away all the hassles of customer service, scam/spam control and localization while giving them the bulk of the revenues generated.
Our first large partnership was with Friendster (http://olx.friendster.com) and we now run the classifieds channel for Fotolog (http://fotolog.olx.com). Fotolog is huge with over 3.5 billion page views per month, its geographic footprint nicely aligns with that of OLX and its communal spirit also aligns with the free, local and community oriented focus of OLX.
You can see the press release at:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/071106/nytu001.html?.v=96
As it is clearly unbearable to have to split the screen with friends for games of Halo, Call of Duty and Gears of War, I decided to install 3 plasma TVs side by side in my bedroom, each with its own Xbox 360 :)
As part of the process, I extensively researched all of the TV options on the market. The Samsung FP-T5884 provides by far the best price/performance ratio on the market: 58” screen, 1080p, 1920*1080 resolution, 3 HDMI slots and a 15,000:1 contrast ratio for $3,100 including shipping!
I also bought a 63” Samsung FP-T6374 to join the 50” Panasonic I already had. I bought the two Samsungs from LCDTVs.com. I highly recommend them: the price is low, they are friendly, and the TV was delivered 2 days after I ordered it with free shipping!
Most importantly, the gaming experience is gaming to none!
Non sequitur: I hope Call of Duty 4 is going to be great (it’s coming out today)!
The Financial Times just ran a very interesting article on the pitfalls of marrying an entrepreneur.
As they point out:
This sounds exactly like my dating life :)
Read the full article at:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3707a03a-8754-11dc-a3ff-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1
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