Nels Lindahl — Functional Journal

A weblog created by Dr. Nels Lindahl featuring writings and thoughts…

Category: Economics

  • A block of attention

    All around us the air quality in Colorado has been impacted by several wildfires. Just walking outside the door makes everything smell like a campfire. Having lived in Colorado for over a decade, I have some basis for comparison to say that this is by far the longest period of this type of smoke filled horizon I have ever seen. The Waldo Canyon fire (2012) came and went much quicker than whatever is happening now. 

    Anyway… 

    One of the things that happened yesterday was that I spent a lot of time thinking about nonaligned manufacturing techniques within certain industries. Some markets are driven by similar goods with similar inputs, but some production output differences exist. Nothing really separates one output from another except quality and process. One example of this market condition seemed to stand out to me as highly irregular. I first focused on and thought about how some markets face conditions where the same initial goods being put into the product result in dramatically different outcomes for the producers. One such market is the American bourbon market. Some producers face extreme scarcity in the market with products that barely make it to the shelves and other products exist that are really good at taking up shelf space. A lot of other examples exist, but the American bourbon market is one where relatively similar inputs exist and the outcomes create extreme price stratification in the marketplace. Some outputs are worth 10x their relatively similar counterparts. I started to wonder if this was a failure of certain producers or a case of exceptulaism within the market. I wondered about the hypothesis, “How could some producers be so much better at the craft of making American bourbon than other producers?” All of that questioning centered around my thoughts on nonaligned manufacturing techniques within certain industries could create such different demand within the market. You would think that every producer would attempt to align to the highest possible outcome, but that does not appear to be the case. 

    Yeah I’m not sure why I spent so much time wondering about that yesterday, but that is what happened and it was a good old fashion pondering session. Obviously, I’m supposed to be spending my time thinking deeply about the intersection of technology and modernity. That was not really within that intersection based wheelhouse, but it was something that caught a block of my attention. Really deep and focused thought has to be at the forefront of the things I’m trying to actively achieve on a daily basis. Being able to focus on something with a relentless passion and focus is very important. Going all in to focus on one thing to conduct research and write is an important part of the process. Generally I have found that nibbling on concepts along the way does not produce meaningful results.

    A 99-day publishing streak continues…

  • That one big idea

    This very weblog post started with the title. Things just sort of expanded from that point. It is always that one big idea that drives things forward. Somebody once told me about the great ideas and grand schemes of politics. Outside of politics, most of the time that one big idea is not something that gets shared right away. Those big ideas are generally related to starting business or inventing things. That type of idea creation is highly incentivized within our market based economy. We live in a constitutional republic and I keep wondering if politicians are incentivized for having that one big idea to help society. A lot of politicians were lawyers before running for office which is essentially a profession designed to teach normative routines and guide rails. That does not really help answer the question that I’m curiously pondering at 05:00 hours this morning. I’m curiously wondering about the best method to incentive that one big idea to help push things forward along the path to that perfect possible future. Those are the questions that are at the forefront of my mind this morning. Sunrise is still 12 minutes away and my thoughts are already deeply fueled by two shots of espresso and a sincere interest in figuring out how to push things forward. 

    Intellectual sharpshooting is a type of problem saving based sport. At least I view it that way.  Generally the practice of intellectual sharpshooting is an unexpected method of taking a look at a set of problems and trying to work out the best possible single method solution. Sitting down to work on a Rubik’s Cube or work on problem solving games is one type of effort. Sitting down to deeply think about and try to work out solutions to complex problems is another type of effort altogether. To my left is about 24 square feet of whiteboard that is ready for advanced exploration. By ready I mean that it is entirely blank. My Expo brand markers are ready to go explore that very blank space. Thinking out loud is something I generally accomplish by sitting down and writing like I am doing right now. This is just me writing with a little bit of music (Warren Zevon Radio on Pandora) in the background before sunrise. Sometimes the things that need to be considered are beyond the written word and need to be drawn out on the whiteboard to begin to size up a strategy or to breakdown the idea in terms of my traditional deconstruction framework that includes understanding the form, function, structure, and assumptions (FFSA) of the topic under consideration. Typically, that involves creating some type of diagram that helps evaluate the trajectory of the things and the pressures on the curves within that trajectory. Most of the time that type of exploration is about a series of false starts that help refine my thoughts to something that can endure a writing session. 

    Getting to the point where a whiteboard session is required usually means that I’m deeply engaged in some type of problem solving. A lot more of my time should be spent in that mode. Behind me on the shelf is a stack of maybe twenty notebooks full of all sorts of nonsense and false starts. My written records are easier to search and work with since they are for the most part all sorted by the date they were written. Stored a few different places I have a repository of my written works sorted by year going back to 2002. Apparently, it was not until later in my college career as an undergraduate that I started opening up a word document every day and writing. I guess that means that for the last 18 years I have been actively doing what I’m doing right now. Given that many hours of practice at the craft of writing you would think I would be more proficient. My idea generation process has not changed all that much. At that time, I did not have a whiteboard on my wall. Ideas got sketched out in a notebook by hand the old fashioned way. If I had more time, then I might go back and see what things were drawing my interest almost two decades ago. That begs the question is my present self would even put up with the nonsense that was generated almost two decades ago. I already know the answer based on my actions. I’m not reading that content. Sometimes I will go back and search for something, but for the most part all of that content remains in the past. It is probably better that way. Sunrise happened at some point and the view out my window is already a promising start to the day.  

  • A lot of online selling

    A recording of my blog post from November 29, 2019

    Well today is a day where a lot of people are trying to sell me things online. My inbox had no less than 100 offers this morning for a wide variety of things. From guitars to sunglasses the deals are everywhere today. Google put a ton of them in the Spam folder today. The one thing I have noticed over the last 6 months is that the algorithm Google is using is getting pretty aggressive to deflect improper communications from hitting my inbox. I’m wondering if it is a false positive problem or if it is a problem based on the number of people submitting subscriptions they no longer want. That is an interesting world of online content management. The economics of attention deflection are very real. Some folks call it a bubble or an insulated curated world full of only a certain slice of content.

  • Oh Thanksgiving

    This is an audio recording of my blog post from November 28, 2019

    I was going to spend part of last night writing a review of the Google Stadia sitting downstairs, but at this point it feels like everybody already knows all they need to know about the new controller and services. For me it was something that I purchased and ultimately did not need to have at all for any reason. I shared my review on Twitter so that the great algorithm that collects sentiment will at least know of my disdain for Stadia. Which I still contend is the future of things. All of the processing power seems to be moving away from devices and into data centers. That is pretty much the whole notion of Google Stadia. They don’t want people to buy the next generation of gaming hardware in favor of cloud first gaming.

    Thanksgiving is happening today. Right now I’m sitting in the family room jamming away on the Google Pixelbook Go keyboard watching the Lions and Bears play some football via the over the air (OTA) Fox Sports broadcast. The OTA broadcast is really pretty decent quality video. Apparently today will be filled with three different games. For the most part the entire day will be wall to wall football games. It does look like all 3 games are on broadcast television channels which is one of the ways football is very different from hockey. You cannot easily watch the Colorado Avalanche play hockey on television. This year it has been even harder given how a dispute is playing out this year with the Altitude sports channel broadcast rights.

    Content distribution is changing rapidly. It may be one of those things where it might be easier for the leagues to just sell streaming rights to watch all the content verses trying to join some subscription package. Without question the economic models of sports broadcasting is changing based on changes to the distribution systems. Right now I am paying for YouTube TV to get access to ESPN for the express purpose of being able to watch University of Kansas basketball games. Seriously, from October to April, I want to be able to watch basketball games which right now are strongly tied to the ESPN family of networks. That is the primary motivating factor in my decision to pay for a subscription television service. Outside of basketball season we cancel the television subscription and things are just fine. Really college basketball is the only live sporting event that pulls me into buying territory on the decision making scale.

    One of the things I’m going to start doing more is just sitting down and writing on my Google Pixelbook Go. I have learned I’m way more likely to sit on the sofa and write than sit at my desk and make with the magic of prose creation. Sure it should be one of those things that you are just compelled to do as a writer, but we all know that from time to time the writing magic that matters needs a little bit of encouragement.

  • All those tempting black Friday deals are out of control

    Throughout the last week — deals, previews of deals, and leaks about deals have flooded my inbox. Overall, the sheer volume of deals competing with each other during this window of time is really out of control. The public mind only has so much attention to behold and process all these deals. It really is about the attention merchants trying to grind out their share of a highly finite commodity. Beyond just getting people’s attention the matter of translating that attention into financial action still exists. People only have so much bandwidth to buy things during the now two week long black Friday deal window. That makes it even more problematic for the companies trying to convert deals into transactions. At this point, I just sort of look at the emails and sometimes click the links. The only deals I ended up buying were for a couple 4K movies from Best Buy. They were pure impulse purchases. I probably ended up purchasing them due to the sale price. The content at the regular price had never compelled me into making a purchase before. To that end I guess the email and the deal worked. Apparently, the market for selling physical entertainment media is shrinking. For better or worse, I still buy Blu-ray discs and probably will keep doing so until our cable company removes the monthly data caps. 

    Sitting down to write a second paragraph seemed an inspired thing to do. It may not have been the best decision of the day. At the moment, I’m watching a video on YouTube from Andertons music company featuring some black Friday deals on Jackson guitars. They look pretty amazing, but my next guitar purchase is pretty much set in stone at this point. I have been looking at the Chapman guitars ML3 BEA for some time. Sometime next year it will be mine. Right now, my arsenal of guitars includes three that I play on regular basis. First, my main guitar is a modified Fender Stratocaster. Second, for those times that I need a Les Paul guitar one sits next to me in my office. Third, now recently repaired my original circa 1995 Jackson Kelly modified guitar is up and running. The Floyd Rose on that one needed a couple new parts to get back to a reasonable floating state. A ton of tempting black Friday deals are out and about today. I just cleared around 30 of them out of my Inbox before writing this paragraph. Sure, this one was not as creative or constructive as my normal blocks of prose, but it was here and now it is done.  

    Generally, within my weblog (blog) posts I do not insert direct links to things. I try to use all the words necessary to describe the linked item. That should help anybody with a reasonable understanding of searching the internet locate the link or item. These works will remind the same, but the internet is a current of ever-changing content that inevitably will leave my links broken and otherwise stale. For things in the moment my platform of choice is Twitter. That seems to be a good platform for in the moment shouting into the grand public commons that is the internet. At the moment, Twitter seems to be the largest public commons dedicated to people shouting at each other. Everything else is smaller in size at the moment or dedicated to other purposes. 

    Oh yeah, I forget to mention that yesterday a viewing of, “Ralph Wrecks the Internet,” was on the agenda. If you enjoyed the first movie, or the Lego movie, then you probably will enjoy the film.