The Value of a Memory

"Past experience is less valuable as time goes by" - Econ of Strategy Textbook for Prof Smith

But as my friend Kelly Blaes keenly asked, "Can a past experience become more valuable?"

The Great Gatsby comes to mind. I would immediately say yes. But past experiences become less valuable for two reasons. 1) It is no longer useful to us, and 2) The service of the memory no longer fascinates us. If Gatsby had gone to war and come back to fall in love with someone else that wasn't Daisy, the memory of Daisy would have become less warm, less motivating, less...useful. And because it becomes less useful, the memory would no longer fascinate him and he would move on to create more valuable memories and slowly forget the first.
"If your wife died, the memory of her would become immediately more valuable to you. Mainly because you want to hold on to that memory, and all you have left to go off of is the past." - Kelly backing me up again. I would pessimistically remark, "Until he found someone else."

The Power of the Masses

It is commonly argued that leaders are great not solely by their own virtues and characteristics, but because of the support they received from the people around them; their family, friends, and their community. Martin Luther King for example had the support of his wife and kids, who had to sacrifice up their time with him so that he could lead his followers. On top of that foundation, are organizers who gather the masses. Then there are the people that show up to the rallies and give their time to participate in the rallies and truly take MLK as their leader for the fight for civil rights. Basically, there were many powers that brought MLK to the forefront and made him a leader.
Ghandi was basically the same. There was a dire need for a leader, people were looking to someone for guidance, and he was the man of the hour. Leadership seams to be very circumstantial. MLK once spoke about being swept into his position as a leader and this is also mentioned in Cullen's book The American Dream. You can see this happening quite easily. You become somewhat of a figure in your community, then you become the voice of a people, then you become the guiding light for a people and there you are, a leader with incredible power that you may or may not know you truly possess.
Which brings me to my next point. How much power does a leader have over his actions after a certain point in his leadership? MLK took the route of compassion and nonviolence. We could easily argue that MLK had a very effective method. But what if a leader took the opposite path? There are plenty of leaders that have.
I'm in no way trying to absolve any of the wrong-doings of these leaders because they are initially at fault, but just imagine this:
Hitler started his campaign. It was a campaign against Jews, filled with hatred and intended discrimination. Correct me if I'm wrong, (Rick I'm looking your way because you know more about this than any of us on the blog) but did Hitler intend to kill six million people at the beginning of his leadership?
What if he started his leadership with this hatred, convinced the nation to take him as his leader, and then was sucked in by the power of the masses? His method was hate, and as his nation's leader, they looked to him for direction. After a while, I could see the masses controlling him, as opposed to the other way around. After you instill a certain amount of values into a large group of people, they will look to you for direction on how to follow through with these values.
If Hitler were brave, (assuming he hadn't brainwashed himself by now), he could have told his followers that he was wrong, and killing people was not the answer, but he would have been killed himself by his people.
Which leads me to my question: If Hitler knew at the beginning of his leadership, maybe even before that, that if he took his position, it would lead to the death of six million innocent Jews, would he have taken that position? This applies to every leader in our history. If they truly knew the power they would yield, would they have taken the responsibility? It doesn't change anything, but it is an interesting way to look at history (keep in mind that historians generally hate the "what if" game).

Wealth

Is wealth zero-sum? Or in other words, "can wealth be created?"

Another genius business idea?

Ok, here's another business idea, sprung from the mother of all invention: necessity.

People in today's business world need technical support; it's a fact. Big businesses can usually afford to hire a tech team for their own company, but what about the small businesses of America? Don't they deserve technical support? The idea here is to have a general technical support team that covers varying aspects of business computing (we would upgrade our capacities and knowledge base as we grew). Then these small businesses pay a small fee per month or year to get unlimited access to these services. They'd type in a business PIN on the phone and be able to use our technical support.

An alternative/parallel idea would be to have simply free customer service, with advertising while they waited on hold, rather than stupid muzak. We'd have to try to limit the accessibility to the service somehow, though. A probable way of doing this is requiring a signup feature online that generates the user's PIN. If we can manage to weed out all but actual businesses, we'd probably get some good advertising rates, as well.

One of the best aspects of this idea is the relatively low cost of implementation. Aside from general infrastructure (like phone lines, etc.), the labor would be cheap, thanks to the tech bubble burst, which has left hundreds if not thousands of over-qualified tech people jobless. Also, the level of genius doesn't have to be amazing: we could probably even use college kids who have the same qualifications as an LTA. We can even include in our marketing that all our representatives live in the United States (not India), which may be a selling point.

Alright, Claremont brains, let's here what you got to say about this.

Lightbulb

Ok, well since no one else is taking this blog by the reins, I figured I'll throw an idea out there to gather some inertia. What do you think about an online service that basically provided all of the comforts and benefits of a hotel front desk? It would provide services like dry cleaning, room service (in the form of take-out, probably), maid service, wake-up calls, etc. all at exorbitant hotel rates. You could call it frontdesk.com or concierge.com or something along those lines. Obviously areas of service would be limited, and extremely so at first, but with the internet causing more and more people to stay at home, this sort of multi-purpose service (which would have 1-click billing to make things all the more convinient) could really capitalize on laziness.

Modern-Day Meno

So, in D.C., I'm working for the Public Forum Institute. Right now, their main project is to work on the National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship, made possible by a grant from the Kauffman Foundation. Our task is to promote debate and deliberation on policy issues relating to entrepreneurship, using methods such as explaining regulatory burdens, discussing rising costs of health care, etc. Aside from the issues of running a business, the main philosophical thrust of the Kauffman Foundation is the attempt to spur on entrepreneurship. This goal lies on one premise which I'm not sure is a totally valid one: that entrepreneurial ability can be taught.

Now, as Socrates asked Meno to do, in order to answer this question, we must first examine the nature of entrepreneurial ability; ist est, what is it? Is entrepreneurial ability a high-falutent way of saying motivation, drive, tenacity, and all those other qualities that are highly dependent on individual will? Or is it more along the lines of knowing what tools one can employ in order to see an idea through, ensuring that it will succeed because of proper prior planning? Most would probably say it is an inextricable mix of the two; without one, the other is useless. An excess of the first qualities leads to the types of businesses that you'll see creating objects in infomercials and probably represents a majority of failed entrepreneurial ventures. An excess of the latter results in risk-adverse individuals who make safe bets and end up becoming bankers.

"So, if it is indeed a mix of individual will and a tool set to know how to best apply that will, what good is simply increasing entrepreneurial education going to do? You can't simply instill the drive to succeed in someone," our hypothetical interlocutor might say. The response to this is yet another question, following the typical Socratic formula: "Are we certain that all those who already do have the will have the toolbox, though?" This answer MUST be a resounding no.

The status quo of America, which entrenches minorities and those in lower socio-economic conditions further down the Darwinian totem-pole, stifles those who could achieve in many ways. Firstly, by failing to give these children proper education, their wills are invariably stunted, having been born in an environment where the only ways out of the ghetto are "slinging rocks, shooting hoops, or telling jokes," according to Dave Chappelle. Students, like serfs in feudal societies, have no concept of a better life because none is presented to them as a viable possibility. Pop culture, which idolizes gangsters and otherwise unsavory characters, only provides them with negative role models and a vision of the American Dream that is unattainable, except through extreme luck, which is no basis for building a society.

Entrepreneurial education admittedly does little on its own to improve these root causes of social disparity. What it does do, however, is solve the proximate problems of students who have not been stifled to the point of hoplessness; it does provide the toolbox for those who have the drive and perhaps better than a high school diploma. These people, who sit on the margin and may have been pushed down without such programs, are invariably helped by being pushed up, instead. These individuals can go on to provide good, responsible role models for children with ghetto tunnel vision. Entrepreneurial education can provide the first step out of entrenchment, and for that alone, it is worth trying.

Hilight Online

You're reading this online right now. Millions of people read articles and obtain knowledge and facts online. Once an article is read, if it's good, people will pass the link to others, but for the most part, the article is forgotten about.
My proposal is this. Create a program that will allow people to hi-light articles presented online. It would probably have something to do with cookies and the browser, and it would work for mostly established sites but quick remedies to problems would arise soon after. Allow people to store all of their read articles in a little file on their computer so that they can go back to it and gather whatever it is they need. This would help us out in both the office and the academic realms.

Where else could a product like this be used? And how would we get the most value out of it?

The Line and Social Mobility

Standing in a line at a fast food restaurant, I realized that the front of the line is the optimal place to be at any given point assuming that cutting was not a viable option (or was kept to a minimum) because the front of the line allows you the most mobility. You can move backwards in the line, but you cannot move forward in the line unless you someone up front wanted to move back and was willing to trade you for a position behind the line. The other thing that could move you up front as Zafar stated, is if someone in the back of the line offers something else, in Zafar's example: CASH. This model of the line immediately creates other influences to think about. Zafar brought up that someone up front could continually sell his position for one that is only slightly behind, and continuously make money with his monopoly. (This would give that person a natural monopoly because no two things can occupy the same space at once, meaning that someone always has to either be behind you in the line, or in front of you, again assuming there is only one line and you have to be in the line at all times). What else would naturally occur in this scenario? More importantly, What would happen if there was no regulation of the line and people could cheat and cut all they wanted to?

Economics & Rationality

Hype HERE - Are actors really rational? According to economists of the neoclassical school, yes. But their perceptios of human behavior may be antiquated as the name (classical) implies. People go across town to save $10 on a clock radio but not to save $10 on a large-screen TV. Richard Thaler, our speaker at the Ath tomorrow, highlights this society wide irrationality. I think it has been given for a very long time that people are irrational. But what Thaler highlights is that people are not irrational in an everyday sense; people go to the supermarkets and choose lower priced products; people choose efficient routes on an everyday basis. Classical theory holds that if your irrational, and don't act in your best interest, you will be corrected by the market and learn from your mistakes. Thaler's response is that the most important decisions we make in our lives are without a market check-and-balance since we don't really have the opportunity to repeat the decision and therfore habituate a "rational response." How many times do people get married in life - love is irrational for most and rational for few. According to the "classical" theory, people who irrationally fall in love and get married, and then divorce, are likely to learn from their mistakes and remarry more responsibly and rationally next time guaranteeing a more efficient (or succesful) outcome. How does this theory explain that most of the divorces in our country are concentrated in a group of people who repeatedly get divorced over and over again. Yes you can argue that the more often you get divorced, the more likely you are willing to do it again - there are lower psychological barriers to entry and less information costs in finding a marriage lawyer (since you probably retained one from the previous marriage) and also a greater likelihood you learned from your past marriage and now have a pre-nup therefore lowering the costs for your next divorce. But if you learned from your mistakes, shouldn't you narrow your rational preferences for a partner the second time and guarantee a greater success to marriage? Here is my question to all you wannabe intellectuals: What can make marriage markets more efficient?

Welcome to CMC Lab

This is a blog started by Zafar Jafri (CMC '06) and Steven Kim (CMC '06). The purpose of this web log is to get a place where we can write down our thoughts and ideas. The plan is to come up with ideas or thoughts and post them. The reader will then do what he/she can to improve on the ideas presented. Our goal is to strengthen our ideas and intuitions with the help of everyone involved in this blog community, and to learn from each other as much as possible. We find too often that the lessons learned in school go to waste because we do not exercise our knowledge. We hope that this blog will put an end to this problem. With that in mind let's start the learning process.