Brad DeLong has a wonderful post on his two-month infatuation with Keith Tribe and, by extension, Foucault and what their errors taught him about Adam Smith. I won't try to summarize. Just read it and, if possible, read Adam Smith. (Liberty Fund has put searchable versions of The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments online, but you're better off buying the real books. Nice, inexpensive, and authoritatively edited copies are available from Liberty Fund's main site. Along with the obvious classics, I also recommend Smith's Essays on Philosophical Subjects.)
Like his friend David Hume, Smith was, as Brad says, a rare genius, and he is far too little read. You don't need P.J. O'Rourke
to translate. The 18th century was a great era for English prose and while the sentences are a lot longer than contemporary conventions advise, they're a lot easier to read than plenty of academic writing--whether from postmodern theorists or neoclassical economists.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on February 21, 2007 • Comments
Australia will ban incandescent light bulbs by 2009. I guess the bulb-smuggling problem is easier if you're surrounded by water.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on February 19, 2007 • Comments
The LAT's David Colker tells the story of how the last soap factory in town has managed to survive despite low-cost competition from China. It's clear that soap-making doesn't have a big future in Los Angeles, but the story also a tribute to the ingenuity that has allowed the company to find new markets and new operating methods.
Hoping to trim one of his biggest remaining expenses, electricity, he contacted the Department of Water and Power. "They told me if I could shut down by 1 p.m., they could give me a much better rate," Shugar said. He moved the plant's starting time back to 5 a.m. to meet the cutoff time, resulting in 40% savings.
One of his most valuable assets was his mechanical engineer, Cheng Lim, who came to Shugar from Jergens when that company closed its Burbank plant in 1992. Lim could have stayed with the giant company, based in Cincinnati, but "my wife did not want to go," he said. "Too cold there."
Lim adapted the Shugar production line for use by fewer employees.
For example, a worker once stood at a conveyer belt to pick up the finished bars of soap, one by one, and turn them 90 degrees in preparation for the wrapping machine. Lim divided the belt into two strips, with one traveling slightly faster than the other. The bars thus turned without human intervention.
"Without him," Shugar said, "I would have to move to China."
Posted by Virginia Postrel on February 19, 2007 • Comments
Following Strunk & White won't make you a great writer, but it will make you a not-bad writer. This site promises to do the same for men's clothes.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on February 19, 2007 • Comments
MSNBC's Allison Linn reports, with before and after pictures: "From the wood and metallic design touches to the occasional greenery, the intent is clear: Wal-Mart wants to be thought of as a pleasant place to shop, not just a massive warehouse for snapping up bargains."
UPDATE: MSNBC reader comments suggest a lot of people think Wal-Marts need more customer service staff and more frequent cleanings.
UPDATE: Peter Hoh explains why he prefers Target. One comment that echoes those posted on the MSNBC site: "Line length at checkout is a big deal. Bigger than price, as far as I'm concerned. When a Target store has long checkout lines, I can tell that managers are trying to scramble to remedy the problem. I never get that sense at Walmart." Wal-Marts are, I suspect, traditionally organized for customers who have more time (or patience) than money. Maybe they'll change that along with the decor.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on February 15, 2007 • Comments
With a photo...
Posted by Virginia Postrel on February 14, 2007 • Comments
I personally wonder how meaningful the poll can be, even as a measure of PJM readers' attitudes, as it gets less and less new and exciting. But apparently some people think it's worth spamming for their favorite candidates. You libertarians at Boeing should find a better use for your time.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on February 13, 2007 • Comments
My latest Atlantic column is the result of seeing one too many Dove commercials suggesting that every woman is beautiful (provided she uses the right thigh cream, of course) and that any teenage girl who has doubts about her gorgeousness suffers from low self-esteem. (Link is good for three days.)
I'm sure the article will enrage many readers, since lots of people seem to believe that recognizing the excellence of others requires denigrating oneself. But it shouldn't be any more offensive to say some people are more beautiful than others than to say that some people are taller, or smarter, or more agile than others. The genetic lottery isn't fair, and the truly beautiful are genetic freaks. Nor do I see how pretending that everyone is beautiful or, worse, that beauty is the same as personality or character or goodness makes for more happiness. You certainly won't fool teenagers with the former lie--they take their cues from each other, not Oprah--while the latter one is likely to backfire, giving undue moral weight to physical appearance: "If you really had a nice personality, people would think you're beautiful. If they don't think you're beautiful, there must be something wrong with the inner you."
Dove has gotten a lot of positive press from (Miss Black Tennessee 1971) Oprah Winfrey's enthusiastic endorsement of its campaign. What you rarely hear is that Dove is paying for that support. In a WSJ interview published October 5, 2005 (online only if you pay for it separately), Silvia Lagnado, who was then Unilever's global brand director for Dove, said, "Just last week, we started a relationship with Oprah. We are sponsoring her show. She mentioned the Dove products on the show and had the women in our ads in their underwear on the show." (Emphasis added.) I'm sure Oprah really does like the ads, but I doubt that the "Dove girls" would be on the show without Unilever's advertising checks. Dove also just happened to choose Oprah's best friend, Gayle King, to receive the first Dove Real Beauty Award.
And how effective are the ads at actually moving Dove products? Here's a bit of business reporting that wound up on The Atlantic's cutting room floor:
After it rolled out the U.S. campaign, sales of [ Dove's] health and beauty products jumped 12.5 percent, to $535 million in 2005 from $476 million the previous year, according to Information Resources Inc., which tracks consumer packaged goods. That's impressive--except it isn't clear that the campaign is the cause. For the same period, competitor Olay's skin care lines enjoyed a sales increase of 24.5 percent, to $386 million from $310 million in 2004. The comparison is inexact, but it's safe to say that 2005 was a good year for the whole category.
New products probably had more to do with growing sales than did high-profile advertising.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on February 12, 2007 • Comments
Or so they say. Now for my afternoon snooze...
One of the nice things about the free-agent life is that I can work at night, go to bed late, and take naps--a much better rhythm for me than the normal workday.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on February 12, 2007 • Comments
Yesterday's NYT featured a report on how farmers in Niger have reclaimed land that was threatening to become permanent desert. Given the inaccurate photo caption about planting trees, I expected to read about a foreign-aid program that provided seedlings. Instead, it turns out that the farmers figured out what to do the old-fashioned way--by using their powers of observation and what they had on hand.
Severe drought in the 1970s and '80s, coupled with a population explosion and destructive farming and livestock practices, was denuding vast swaths of land. The desert seemed determined to swallow everything. So Mr. Danjimo and other farmers in Guidan Bakoye took a small but radical step. No longer would they clear the saplings from their fields before planting, as they had for generations. Instead they would protect and nurture them, carefully plowing around them when sowing millet, sorghum, peanuts and beans.
Today, the success in growing new trees suggests that the harm to much of the Sahel may not have been permanent, but a temporary loss of fertility. The evidence, scientists say, demonstrates how relatively small changes in human behavior can transform the regional ecology, restoring its biodiversity and productivity.
The new attitude toward trees also changed local customs and institutions and, eventually, official law.
Another change was the way trees were regarded by law. From colonial times, all trees in Niger had been regarded as the property of the state, which gave farmers little incentive to protect them. Trees were chopped for firewood or construction without regard to the environmental costs. Government foresters were supposed to make sure the trees were properly managed, but there were not enough of them to police a country nearly twice the size of Texas.
But over time, farmers began to regard the trees in their fields as their property, and in recent years the government has recognized the benefits of that outlook by allowing individuals to own trees. Farmers make money from the trees by selling branches, pods, fruit and bark. Because those sales are more lucrative over time than simply chopping down the tree for firewood, the farmers preserve them.
Note that the behavioral change came first and was ratified by law--a process that is more likely to succeed than a new property-rights regime imposed from outside. This success story is a good example of what William Easterly calls "Searchers" (versus "Planners") in The White Man's Burden, which I reviewed in the NYTBR.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on February 12, 2007 • Comments