Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Michael Perelman Needs Help ASAP

The school invited me to give the annual lecture on December 8. I'm trying to copyedit The Invisible Handcuffs, finish two articles before a December 1 deadline, and grade papers before school starts next week.

My idea is to show how ideas evolve with my books, paralleled with both the course of the economy and the course of higher education, particularly in California. I don't have much data on education yet.

I have roughed out the first draft of the talk, which I'm sure will have a lot of problems. If anyone has any these suggestions for improvement, I would be more than grateful.

http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com/files/2009/11/lecture.pdf

2 comments:

Myrtle Blackwood said...

Michael P:
"industries with high fixed costs and a small cost of producing an extra unit of output cannot easily survive in a competitive economy. Many of the innovators in the dot.com era seemed to have enormous profit-making potential -- at least until others duplicated their business model.....Investments in capital goods represent economic adaptations in an environment that is not stable. Investors can only guess about what the future environment will be. New
technology can rearrange much of the economic landscape within a short period of time, often well before many investments can repay their initial outlay.

In biological systems a few unhelpful mutations means that a small number of members of a population will fall by the wayside. As Keynes explained, because of the absence of knowledge about the future, investors in capital goods tend to rely on either habitual
decision-making or succumb to the influence of the general business climate. This latter option means something like irrational herd behavior...."The Farm Worker Paradox," in which the people who do the work that is most vital for society get paid the least, while the superfluous are among those who prosper the most....
"

This explains a lot about why a huge dirty paper pulp mill is being promoted and planned for Tasmania.

I have no comments about this article except to say that I enjoyed reading it. Thanks!

peritropist said...

"As Keynes explained, because of the absence of
knowledge about the future, investors in capital goods tend to rely on either habitual
decision-making or succumb to the influence of the general business climate. This latter
option leads to irrational herd behavior, which can engulf an entire economy."
Where does he explain this?