DAS KARNTOL

Penmanship has never been my strong suit, the doodlings of my pen having been described both blandly as chicken scratch and more memorably as looking like those of a serial killer. Little did all my critics realize this little “flaw” of mine would give me insight and empathy into one of history’s most influential minds!

From The Worldly Philosophers, a thus far great book:

Marx had no work–except his never-ending stint in the British Museum from ten o’clock every morning until seven o’clock at night. He tried to make a little money by writing articles on the political situation for the New York Tribune, whose editor, Charles A. Dana, was a Fourierist and not averse to a few slaps at European politics. It helped for a while, although it was Engels who bailed Marx out by composing many of his pieces for him–Marx meanwhile advising by letter as follows: “You must your war-articles colour a little more*. “ When these articles stopped, he tried to get a clerical job with a railway, but was rejected for his atrocious handwriting.

p. 150

‘Tis true, however, that my horrid handwriting is sometimes a burden. The wine business for example requires me to make several bank transactions every week, and all the forms must be handwritten. How the tellers interpret my name, which I both print and sign on most of the forms, can be amusing:

The interpretation can also confound:

That last one had me puzzled for longer than I care to admit as to who exactly this Jeff Ildnes was and how he had gained access to the account.

*German syntax much?

Perfectly Pointless

One cannot walk a long distance down a Kigali sidewalk without running into yellow jersey-clad young men hocking plastic cards containing codes with which to refill a mobile phone’s airtime. I’ve read elsewhere that the business can be lucrative, but whatever the economics before, they’re now a little less attractive:

MTN Rwanda airtime distributors and vendors have since last week hiked airtime voucher cards citing increment in prices at which they purchase the cards from the company.

(…)

“The management of MTN wishes to categorically state that there has been no increase in their tariffs,” said Andrew Rugege, the company’s Chief Operations Officer.

However, in a mini survey conducted by Business Times vendors and distributors decried MTN’s position, saying that the company is the root cause of the problem following an increase in wholesale prices at which they purchase the cards from the cards [sic--they mean "the company"].

“We are expected to sell the airtime at the old price yet the wholesale price has been increased this is not practical,” a distributor at Kacyiru who preferred anonymity for the interest of his business said.

In the Econ 101 model of perfect competition, sellers are price takers. In other words, the market is so competitive that for a seller the price is given–any attempt to charge higher than the market price will quickly send buyers to competitors. When facing an increase in costs, therefore, a seller must swallow them despite his natural desire to pass on the plate. If he can’t stomach them, then he’s out of business.

The phone card business seems to exhibit many of the properties of the perfect competition model: each card is the same as the next, barriers to entry are small, there are many buyers and sellers, and since the “market price” is printed clearly on each card, sellers have no information advantage with which to dupe buyers. Regrettably for the card sellers, what this all means is that their increased wholesale cost is relevant only to them and not to their customers, and any attempt to charge a higher price is ultimately doomed.

Got to give them (phone?) credit for trying, though.

Jeff’s Semi-Regular Aphorisms (VII)

Management guru edition:

When one deviates greatly from the norm, the golden rule loses its hue.

Fenced Fourth Estate

How could you not take subversive pleasure in this letter-duo found in the week’s Economist?

SIR – Philip Bowring’s account of the Far Eastern Economic Review’s encounter with the Singapore government is inaccurate (Letters, October 17th). In 1987 the government restricted the circulation of the Review after it had engaged in Singapore’s domestic politics. But an advertisement-free version was distributed widely at bookshops and supermarkets, and sold more than 1,000 copies. In March 1988 the Review applied to produce a similar version. The government agreed, subject to a ceiling of 2,000 copies, but the Review refused its offer. Would this have happened in Maoist China and North Korea?

Michael Eng Cheng Teo
High commissioner for Singapore
London

SIR – You will be tempted to give the Singapore government the last word on its censorship strategy—as its “right of reply” policy demands—but this will neutralise the criticism of Mr Bowring and others. Readers will simply assume you agree with the government. Assuming you don’t, please print this alongside its next rebuttal, to expose this subtle yet powerful manipulation of the press.

Duncan M. Butlin
Chichester, West Sussex

The Wrong Path

Everything reminds Milton of the money supply. Well, everything reminds me of sex, but I keep it out of the paper.

So said Robert Solow of Milton Friedman. I’ll beg Solow’s and your indulgence, Reader, for these days I have wine on my mind, and I can’t keep it out of the blog.

A few days ago I read the following passage in The Alchemist, which I’ve now finished:

Page 60

The old man continued, ‘You have been a real blessing to me. Today I understand something I didn’t see before: every blessing ignored becomes a curse. I don’t want anything else in life. But you are forcing me to look at wealth and at horizons I have never known. Now that I have seen them, and now that I see how immense my possibilities are, I’m going to feel worse than I did before you arrived. Because I know the things I should be able to accomplish, and I don’t want to do so. ‘

A fun coincidence, reading this when I did, as it came just after a disappointing meeting with a restaurant owner. Despite a drawn-out conversation, the owner to the end held the position that while our wines were better than her limited selection and reasonably priced, she thought her customers were content with what she had and couldn’t be bothered to care about something better. Perhaps she was right, but to me her position smacked of a certain cognitive dissonance, as if she felt she would be better off by denying a choice existed rather than having to make one.  Even still, I doubt this business owner, unlike the one in the book, felt worse afterward.

***

As for my thoughts on the book itself, in short, I didn’t like it. Too easy, simple, trite, thoughtless, contradictory. It reminded me of this bit of data showing Americans, particularly better off ones, like to use the metaphor of a journey to describe their lives. Like Tyler Cowen, I wonder if just reveals “our tendency to impose a false or misleading narrative on events.”