whythawk ratings: measuring effective development

1.
(Comments)

...lity, accountability, and respect for private ownership of one\'s capital (be that labour, land or products)\" valid point, but it is unreasonable to use that as an argument not to do the things one ...

2.
(Comments)

...y have. Otherwise, I could care less if his answers and purpose seem like a vanity project, if the product is a good and useful one. Now some of the possible issues that people have been blogging abo...

3.
(Comments)

...the responsibility lies directly with the US. The onus should be on the importer to check that the product complies with that country\'s safety standard....

4.
(Comments)

...s just been found guilty of) collude to defraud the public, nor may they force people to buy their products. If net neutrality is to mean anything then it must set a platform that is neutral for an...

5.
(Comments)

... think there are significant benefits for moving towards greater formality - formal firms are more productive than informal firms and formality brings revenue to Government. There\'s a huge literature...

6.
(Comments)

...tarting a political party, you can\'t change society through parliament. Parliament is a management structure for the status quo. The decisions that matter in the world are economic decisions, and the...

7.
(Comments)

...n\'t know what it is: \"Capitalism generally refers to an economic system in which the means of production are mostly privately[1] owned and operated for profit...\" You\'re right that humans ca...

8.
(Comments)

...long suspected (though never proved) that both car guards and street vendors are subject to similar structures of \\\"ownership\\\" to those that exist in the formal economy. By this I mean that they ...

9.
(Comments)

...side a legitimate retail business (which pays rent and employs a number of staff), and obscure or obstruct the business frontage and entrance, causing financial damage to that business. This is why...

10. Overcoming the Conservation of Energy
(Analysis/Analysis)

...d allows 3 million people a day to get in and out of the city. The benefit to London of such infrastructure is incalculable and has been vastly exceeded by its original costs. At the same time, the...

11. The hazard of market dominance
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ger volumes, decrease relative costs, and so increase their profits. They can differentiate their products by going upmarket and so charge higher prices. Or they can simply go out of business. If a...

12. Netscape, the Internet and Creative Destruction
(Analysis/Analysis)

...investors. The great fortunes and great losses have been in private hands. Compare that with the products and services that governments decide are essential and that they feel are too important to b...

13. Electricity Redux - Electricity Quotas Will Work About As Well As Race Quotas
(Analysis/Analysis)

In 1998 the US state of California partially deregulated electricity production and sales. The "partially" bit is where things came ungummed. The private companies that purchased the righ

14. Funding departments instead of people cheats everyone
(Analysis/Analysis)

...tients per professional per day. No wonder doctors and nurses are exhausted and public health infrastructure is imploding under the strain, and 31% of posts are said to be vacant. The state has spent...

15. Higher food prices mean downgrading that Turkey to a Chicken
(Analysis/Analysis)

.... According to Stats SA the current inflation rate for vegetables is now 25.6%, and that of grain products – a staple for many – is 17.3%. And these rates of inflation are all increasing...

16. The Speculator: Pricing in the Future
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ew Business Process Outsourcing centre in Woodstock. It is true that South Africa's economy is structured more closely after that of high income countries, but the pressures there are significant...

17. Exports and parliamentary laziness
(Analysis/Analysis)

...t; asked Jennings, "why is it that the financial press only concentrates on mining?" The production of primary products – such as mined resources – is an easy one to cover. We d...

18. Podcast: China's expansion in Africa offers risk and opportunities
(Podcasts/Emerging Market Risk)

...tor.  They require little in the way of good governance and are aggressively creating new infrastructure in their drive to secure resources for their own industrial expansion.  This offers b...

19. Of Capitalism, Socialist Greed, Poverty and Remaining Silent
(Analysis/Analysis)

...; says Bonkosi Mncwabe, the NUM 's Regional Coordinator in Kwa-Zulu Natal. Or even: "The conduct of these construction companies is reflective of the unprincipled conduct of business in seek...

20. Searching for objective measures of value
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ir money into something stable. Once again they have chosen gold. Yet gold, too, is just another product.  It is no different from houses, shares or bonds, and – like these investments &...

21. Perlemoen and the Tragedy of the Commons
(Analysis/Analysis)

...d, a little over 100 years later, to us. Joseph Schumpeter came up with the phrase "creative destruction" in 1942; the act which destroys the old way of doing things and unlocks fantastic ne...

22. This festive season: the accumulating effects of individual activity
(Analysis/Analysis)

...recisely what the HandMade Project declares: "The accumulating environmental effects of mass production are a major cause of global warming and the poisoning of our air, water and soil." Th...

23. Trevor Manuel and the "Plunder of Skills"
(Analysis/Analysis)

... of the collective will and interests of the people who happen to be living there. Skills are not products in the same way that pocket calculators are products. Pocket calculators can travel the wor...

24. Contradictions resolve in ways you don't intend
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ound. Business success does not mean that jobs will be created. Businesses act to maximise their production and efficiency. From the invention of the wheel, to the steam engine to the microprocesso...

25. Slaves to land, the policies of Land Affairs
(Analysis/Analysis)

... selling the land they allow another farmer to combine different plots to create a larger and more productive farm, and the seller can take their profits and use it to improve their own lives in some ...

26. The Miracle of Investment
(Analysis/Analysis)

... New hospitals are not being built because the ministry has decided to issue a moratorium on new construction. The same things are true of telecommunications, energy and mining. Job creation does not...

27. Africa, China and Investment
(Analysis/Analysis)

..., or plain disregard for economic rights the most capable Africans have fled leaving shattered infrastructure behind. A mining company investing in Cameroon also has to build railroads and deepwater p...

28. China, Toys And The Tragedy of Xenophobia
(Analysis/Analysis)

... and the US. Mattel, the world's largest toymaker, has recalled more than 20 million of their products, including Fisher Price and Barbie. The cause? Toys with paint containing too high a lead ...

29. Investment cannot happen if the market isn't private
(Analysis/Analysis)

...apital. A tender being fought between state-owned Transnet and privately-owned iPayipi over the construction of a fuel pipeline which was originally to be decided by Nersa, the independent regulator,...

30. Black Economic Empowerment, like charity, is not investment
(Analysis/Analysis)

... gone into empowerment.” He pointed out that rising prices at the till have a lot to do with production shortages.  Companies should have been building new plants and factories to take adva...

31. Black Diamonds and the trouble with statistics
(Analysis/Analysis)

...s.  They got inflation wrong.  They got the rate of job creation wrong.  They got production numbers wrong.  And it wasn't until others pointed out inconsistencies that the ...

32. Black Swans, Cost Overruns and Industrial Tariffs
(Analysis/Analysis)

...eed the extra schools or hospitals. The latest on this is that government is to reduce tariffs on products needed for its R 400 billion infrastructure development programme. The products affected in...

33. Ending poverty means abandoning charity and accepting reality
(Analysis/Analysis)

.... By that I mean that, any contractual dispute (whether about the ownership of property, ideas or products, or a legal wrangle) can be sorted out by a recognised third-party whose decision is recogni...

34. Scrogues Converse: Open-space, Identity and the Missing Web
(Analysis/Analysis)

...In as the premier destination for business networking. Now, while Facebook may be the superior product when it comes to social networking that leads to business opportunities, LinkedIn is still ...

35. Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal, and Rupert Murdoch
(Analysis/Analysis)

...f weaker firms and maintain their competitive advantage. Customers and society win as inefficient products are removed from the market and the base standard rises. There are losers, of course, but t...

36. Atlas Shrugged at 50
(Analysis/Analysis)

... why they do it, as society turned the name "businessman" into a curse. The book was a product of its times. Communism was raging through Europe, South America and Asia and Africa. People&...

37. Department of inJustice: the corruption of high office
(Analysis/Analysis)

...rs. Tshishonga’s troubles began when the former Minister, Mr Meduna, phoned Tshishonga and instructed him to meet one of his (the Minister’s) friends. The friend wished to discuss the all...

38. Zimbabwe: the Hollow State
(Analysis/Analysis)

...s printed on Zimbabwe is short of everything and produces virtually no food on some of the most productive farmland in the world 80% of the population depends on the informal sector for jobs and...

39. Science gone wrong: when self-delusion leads to death
(Analysis/Analysis)

It's popular to loathe mainstream pharmaceutical companies. Big Pharma has been accused of profiteering at the expense of the poor. Of not doing enough to find solutions to the diseases of the p

40. Everything is coming up Capitalism
(Analysis/Analysis)

At the tale-end of the Cold War, as the Berlin Wall fell, as Glasnost gave way to the crumbling of the USSR, Capitalists celebrated. As the wall fell, as the unhealthy, drably dressed, survivors of t

41. Zimbabwe: recovering the irrecoverable
(Analysis/Analysis)

...r. He printed cash and gave it to veterans and the rural destitute. He fixed prices on essential products at low prices to benefit the poor. And, when business owners flouted those rules, he arrest...

42. South Africa's two tiers
(Analysis/Analysis)

...s. Taxi ranks are filled with tiny stalls paying staff R 200 per month. Despite the ululating of the UCT Unilever School of Marketing that companies that neglect the Black Diamonds will see their pr...

43. People, Planet and Profits: the complexities of corporate governance
(Analysis/Analysis)

...he student board members are meant to consider the best interests of the University but they were instructed, by students, to vote in specific ways on certain issues," continues King. In other w...

44. The war of informal markets against central states; a bellwether of support
(Analysis/Analysis)

...fying the difficulty. For starters the informal market is not a nation-state. There is no central structure. Rather it is a regression to the past of city-states. Each community makes up its own m...

45. After Enron: the Corporate Governance of Corporate Social Investment
(Analysis/Analysis)

...directors wait until the press have uncovered wrong-doing or embarrassment before putting oversight structures in place. By then a firm's reputation may already have been damaged. Besides the d...

46. The tragedy of innovation: how brilliant ideas are criminalised
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ynthetic fertilisers to increase crop yields. He points out, in the Economist, that global cereal production tripled between 1950 and 2000, but the amount of land used increased by only 10%. Using tr...

47. Suburbanise! How aid and trade obliterate unique cultures
(Analysis/Analysis)

... at every international gathering. They demand aid to support their diseased, illiterate, and infrastructurally barren nations. They take this cash. Perhaps it even gets spent. A year later they&#...

48. Start your business in Johannesburg but hire your advisor in Cape Town
(Analysis/Analysis)

...business support voucher programs, such as the Umsobomvu Youth Fund, do not require consultants to conduct follow-ups, guide their clients through the loan application or implementation phases post-in...

49. Two Frontiers: wars of liberation and of determination
(Analysis/Analysis)

...gulf of ability and talent. It has not yet happened but the orgy of consolidation and layoffs and restructuring we see in the media is a chaotic attempt to regain that high ground. Never so asymmetri...

50. The Golden Pen, Yahoo, and the worst country in the world to be a journalist
(Analysis/Analysis)

...still want to speak frankly on the issue of press freedom here in South Africa, and I do so in a constructive and friendly way." George Brock, President of the World Editors Forum, who presented...