whythawk ratings: measuring effective development

1.
(Comments)

...ric rules that will favour a few web 2.0 companies at the expense of what economists call a \"contestable market\". Any market must be governed simply by this: there must be no force or fraud. Co...

2.
(Comments)

...it is presented. You may be concerned that profits may cause a company to rush an untested drug onto the market. That is where the law of consequences comes in. Companies that know they will be pen...

3.
(Comments)

... my response to this is simple: not at the end of a gun. No-one should be forced or coerced to join any market, formal or otherwise. If people voluntarily join the formal sector because their pro...

4.
(Comments)

...the Editor\'s Pick on AfricanLoft. http://www.africanloft.com/whythawk-on-zimbabwe-the-war-of-informal-markets-against-central-states-a-bellwether-of-support/...

5.
(Comments)

...Yale University). They identify four types of capitalism: 1) State-guided - government \"guides\" the market; so France and Germany with their state \"champions\" 2) Oligarchic - where the bulk o...

6.
(Comments)

...mployment and very limited amounts of poverty with virtually no starvation. So do all democratic and free-market states. The only countries where the starving exceed the well-off are disaster zones li...

7.
(Comments)

...n thread is a demand for economic democracy. Do it some justice and blog honestly. The \"efficiency of markets\" post was crap as well, by the way....

8.
(Comments)

...have to take a longer term view. I don\\\'t profess to know the answer, it\\\'s likely not to be left to market forces, perhaps some sort of new deal arrangement and tighter border controls? I\\\'...

9.
(Comments)

...laws that you mention are expensive and the very barriers to entry that attract traders into the informal market. Consumers who support street traders know that they offer no guarantees - which is wh...

10.
(Comments)

...egitimately. Car guards by comparison provide a service even if you don\'t request it (negative option marketing), and can become obstructive if you don\'t pay them. Sometimes they are actually pro...

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

...es are set on the margins, rather than from any large movement. The more power or influence a particular market actor has then the larger these deviations can be, and the greater the impact on price ...

12. When no-one is held accountable, everyone suffers
(Analysis/Analysis)

...is best for all. The Kenyan tourism industry has collapsed, tea plantations can't get their goods to market and industry is in chaos. Worse, though, is that the blameless citizens of Uganda, Rwa...

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

...re can be no action. Without action there can be no innovation. Nothing demonstrates the power of open markets more than the difference in Internet adoption rates. By the end of 2007, 71% of Ameri...

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

...nd September 2001 a series of large electricity black-outs devastated the region. It was a failure of the market, all right. But not of a free one. Since companies couldn't pass on the real cost...

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

... still, this encourages consolidation and the over-production of products that may not necessarily have a market. Producing maize for biofuels, when sugar is infinitely better, is one such distortion...

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

...ment is where manufacturing should have been. This can hardly be described as having a "mature" market. Entrepreneurs and business investors make up a very small proportion of South Africa&...

17. Exports and parliamentary laziness
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ore vulnerable. The motor industry requires an entire network of components manufacturers, distributors, marketers and agents. One factory may employ less people than a single mine, but the network ...

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

..., reaching a record $14.5 billion, 37% higher than Q2 2006, with particular strength across the key gold markets of Greater China, India, the Middle East and Turkey." These are all nations tha...

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

...one had an incentive to use up the last of it as quickly as possible before anyone else did. Modern free markets have a solution to such shortages. The price goes up. Medieval commons had no such m...

20. The Miracle of Investment
(Analysis/Analysis)

...and profit. It was a magnificent spark of that adventurism that converted the old Biscuit Mill into an upmarket office and business complex. It was an even greater dollop of self-belief that created...

21. Killing the Golden Goose, a lesson in Economic Freedom
(Analysis/Analysis)

...investors refuse to share the wealth of their companies with the "people". Last week the Free Market Foundation released the Economic Freedom of the World report for 2007. "There is ...

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

... limited property rights, knows how the influence game is played. They are also treating Africa as a new market for cheap textiles and other manufactures. Many African nations are watching, with dis...

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

...African nations can ride along on the coat-tails of these two giants by supporting their demands for open markets. If we don't we'll get left behind, and forgotten. ...

24. The spectre of loyalty over ability
(Analysis/Analysis)

...n of being monopolies or oligopolies; where a few companies are able to keep out any new entrants through market weight or legislative clout. Whenever external competition emerges – as with Chi...

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

...nment is unleashing all this loot they need to keep in mind that investment cannot happen without private markets. The World Cup may get the foreign investors here but without obvious opportunities f...

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

...e traders have already seen this and, unencumbered by any legislative overhead, they are ploughing into a market that is on our doorstep.  Chinese products are growing at 15% in the townships, ou...

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

...source information as well as the methods used to calculate those claims. The UCT Unilever Institute of Marketing has come up with a whimsical and compelling brand: the Black Diamonds.  These,...

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

...st of the continent. However the question conflates symptoms with causes. For starters, how do informal markets even come to be? The break-down of property rights A centralised state exists largely...

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

...y time and keep my email address. No compromise necessary and it improves service levels and expands the market, since I don't mind making a bad initial choice when I can change my mind later. T...

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

...tain 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 the overall benefit to s...

31. Atlas Shrugged at 50
(Analysis/Analysis)

...then are surprised when it falls to pieces. Consider the ultimate perversion of the US sub-prime mortgage market: ninja bonds. You don't need a job, assets and any qualities to get a loan to purch...

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

...estoring the state - the failure of Iraq was punishing people most able to restore stability. Informal market efficiency: the extent of informal cash transfers home as well as importation of low...

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

...irthday party GBP 5 each in order to draw their blood. He gave one child a measles drug he was hoping to market in order to test the drug. His research was not authorised and he was not qualified to...

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

...he Economics of Growth and Prosperity", is a healthy attempt to contextualise the different forms of market economics. It extends the theories espoused by Francis Fukuyama in his controversial &q...

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

...tors around the world should be celebrating. Robert Mugabe's government has taken those against free-markets at their word. Over 1 300 business owners have been arrested across Zimbabwe. Their ...

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

...le chance of migrating his business out of it and into a national presence. Each township community is a market on its own. They aren't connected even though we talk of the "informal sector...

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

...urrency in circulation must represent the underlying value of the economy. Foreign currency entering the market has a solid, negotiable value. Each wave of remittances acts to further deflate the va...

38. Getting Home in Zimbabwe: The impossibility of public transport
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ced the state's ability to pay for fuel imports. The official price is Z$ 300 per litre but parallel market fuel prices were Z$ 100 000 per litre a week ago. With unofficial inflation rates at 1...

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

...? Who knew. Are they more efficient now than they were 100 years ago? Yes, they are. The same is true of market-led capitalism, large-scale industrialisation, patent regulations, copyright, democracy...

40. Dave Bullard and Graham Knox: "We can't walk on water so why not try wine?"
(Analysis/Analysis)

...o the current global wine glut. As any economist would tell you: subsidies attract more producers into a market than the market can sustain; they go on to produce more goods than their market can buy...

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

...me? From the outside in Business owners, by and large, are extremely conservative. They look for proven markets and familiar environments in which to do business. If the market is dramatically and ...

42. The efficiency of markets and how protectionism leaves the poor behind
(Analysis/Analysis)

There is something magnificent about the way that modern, market-driven businesses get ever more efficient. How they are able to derive ever more from ever less. Agriculture used to be a matter of p

43. When equality becomes unfair: South Africa's two economies
(Analysis/Analysis)

... proves this. The poor are not just there to make things for rich people.  The poor are themselves a market.  While they are not wealthy relative to the rich, their markets are growing signi...

44. Do you hate the poor enough to be charitable?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ompetition for these people and companies respond by offering competitive benefits. This happens even in markets filled with unskilled people. Chinese wages are rising dramatically as the population...

45. The future of newspapers II: of shock-jocks and self-made media-stars
(Analysis/Analysis)

...rs include Arianna Huffington of the left-wing political Huffington Post, Seth Godin who writes on modern marketing techniques, and Mark Frauenfelder of Boing Boing who collects odd stories. These se...

46. The future of Newspapers, journalistic integrity and the battle for Google's soul
(Analysis/Analysis)

... print media - continue to flourish with a combined 42.3% share of the US$ 425 billion global advertising market." The newspaper industry appears financially secure; it was Rupert Murdoch who b...

47. Islam, Shari'ah Law, and Cultural Capitalism
(Analysis/Analysis)

...g Stock Exchange all-share index return of 23.7% for the same period.  Remember, this is an emerging market.  You have to factor in that the Rand fell by 12 - 18% in the past year, so your D...

48. Melamine, China, and the peril for emerging markets
(Analysis/Analysis)

... Trade Organisation). France declared that they were simply preventing toxic products from entering their market; citing evidence that Costa Rica used harmful pesticides and degraded the environment t...

49. Internet Bubble 2.0: the future of dotcom depends on the mobile phone
(Analysis/Analysis)

...so in South Africa) is simply a matter of politics. In Europe and Japan, the other two important Internet markets, local governments have given protections to their historically state-owned telecommun...

50. Unlearning helplessness: how donors reinforce poverty and dependency
(Analysis/Analysis)

... Companies in South Africa concentrate on that wealthy component under the impression that the poor are a market not worth pursuing. And so the poor are left paying more for services received by the ...