Carnival of the Capitalists In Blogcritics

Blogcritics.org is proud to host this week’s nomadic Carnival of the Capitalists, a smorgasbord of penetrating and perceptive peeks into the machinations of economic materialism and its ramifications by so inclined bloggers from around the world and down your street. My eyes were opened – yours will be as well.

Future manifestations of these weekly gatherings will appear at these fine sites (bloggers: submit articles here) :
March 14, 2005 The RFID Weblog
March 21, 2005 Beyond The Brand
March 28, 2005 The Mobile Technology Weblog
April 4, 2005 Law and Entrepreneurship News
April 11, 2005 TJ’s Weblog
April 18, 2005 Gongol.com

Cheerfully oppressing the proletariat since 2003!

And now to the meat of the matter:

Dale Franks writes in The QandO Blog (“Free Markets Free People”)of the worrisome peregrinations of the dollar, putting its current precarious state vis-a-vis massive American trade deficits into historical perspective.

Barry Welford of The Other Bloke’s Blog marvels at the efficacy of blogs for the marketing and informational needs of small and mid-sized businesses.

In Conglomerate, David Skeelcompares the Bernard Ebbers trial to the other major securities scandals of the century and find Ebbers historically wanting.

David Foster (not the famous record producer and piano noodler) of Photon Courierrelates the worldwide problem of port congestion and ponders its ramifications for domestic mnufacturing.

Jay Allen writes in The Zero Boss on the irony of get-rich-slowly authors getting rich quickly from those who carve their advice.

Gongol.com’s similarly-named Brian Gongol ponders the impact of an “unfriendly competitor” (“cheaper, faster, better”) on a stable market, and the necessity of educating the customer on comparing value rather than just price.

Yvonne DiVita of Lip-Sticking, who specializes in online marketing to women, offers Five Female-Friendly Bits and Bytes that should help you in your efforts to market to women who shop online.

On the Catallarchy site, whose high-minded motto is “eleutheria, praxis, cosmos,” Patri Friedman ruminates on the symbolic nature of poker chips.

Evelyn Rodriguez of Crossroads Dispatches (“Intersection of technology, creativity & innovation, leadership, systems, beliefs and worldviews”) digs deep into the collective psyche for a post on the meaning of blogging (authenticity) and its bearing on marketing.

Stephen Karlson marvels at the perspicacity of today’s youth as demonstrated via an annual Economics Concepts Poster Contest on his Cold Stprings Shop site.

John Beck, aka Beck (not Dr. Demento’s son), writes on Incite of his consternation and bemusement regarding Democratic swipes at Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

Rawdon Adams of Capital Chronicle follows up a previous Carnival of the Capitalists article analyzing UK-quoted investment company Guinness Peat Group on the basis of their recently announced preliminary 2004 results with a focus on international equity (and stuff).

Ego, home of “reason, egoism and laissez-faire capitalism,” finds Martin Lindeskog suggesting the adventof advertising and other sources of blog income can subsidize what is still a labor of love for most.

Does personal technology, and in particular the iPod, cut the user off from his/her environment, or does it empower the user to more comfortably insert oneself into that environment, or both? Russell Buckley, of The Mobile Technology Weblog, explains.

You’ve heard of the citizen journalist? The next hot thing is the citizen broadcaster: audio — in the form of podcasting, Internet radio, and audio blogging — is a hot trend right now, according to Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends.

Thanks to a new Ohio law, starting May 2 sellers on eBay will be required to have an auctioneer’s license, to which a lengthy and onerous process is attached. As the implications of the law become clear, even the sponsor in concerned relates Mike Pechar of Interested-Participant.

How did Jones Soda grow to become a $100 million company so quickly? Ankesh Kothari offers thoughts on their packaging and distribution on the Marketing eYe site.

Should management be a licensed profession like law or medicine in an effort to elevate ethics? Slacker Manager’s Brendon Connellylikes the idea but doesn’t see how it could be implemented.

Part-time MBA student Mad Anthony revels in his own good fortune while pointing out the absurdity of the current system of federal student loan deferments, with a brief comparison to “real” businesses.

The Tax Foundation says that there is no tax policy justification for the tax exemption for credit unions. That may be so, but Joe Kristan of the Roth & Company Tax Update site illustrates that tax policy is no match for the credit union lobby.

Why have the dismal scientists been unable to accurately discern what the employment situation is? Job growth predictions have been wronger, longer, and by a greater amount, than at any other time in the modern era of economics. The Big Picture’s Barry Ritholtz investigates.

Warren Meyer, whose Coyote Blog hosted both the Carnival of the Capitalists and the Carnival of the Vanities (the original bloggy carnival) in February, compares the experience and benefits of hosting each and gives suggestions for future hosts (hey, that’s me).

The Chinese government recently started handing out licenses to private Chinese companies wanting to launch low-cost airlines. In China Stock Blog, Ezra Marbach argues that not only will these so called budget airlines not be able to operate as low-cost airlines similar to JetBlue in the United States, but they probably won’t pose competition for the major Chinese carriers in the foreseeable future either.

Have you ever wondered why why all movies at a multiplex have the same price rather than variations based upon demand? David Tufte of voluntaryXchange analyzes the question from financial and economic viewpoints (you mean there’s a difference?).

Don’t let the birds steal your papayas! Rosa Say of Talking Story relates a short story to help us all think about the people we work with every day: indifference is not something people thrive on in vibrant business environments.

On his Political Calculations site (“Interactive Tools for Interactive Politics”), Ironman (not his real name) compares various Social Security calculators for making decisions when comparing traditional benefits against proposed reforms.

On Steve Shu’s Blog (“Perspectives on Management, Consulting, Technology, Marketing, and Corporate Blogging”), he asks if corporate blogging is a skillset yet? In a separate post, Steve poses the question of whether traditional management consulting firms are a bunch of laggards when it comes to blogging even though the rest of the industry is starting to show signs of life for corporate blogs.

The Blogging Airman launches a preemptive strike against those who would doubt the freedom bonanza that is a high-end washer-dryer combo on his The Rantings of a Part-Time Air Force Dood, Appliance Salesman & Musician site.

The merger of May and Federated department stores is a fine example of the “dinosaurs mating” behavior of large companies in declining industries. It won’t change fate, says Greg Manter on his Retail Store Blog.

David Strahlberg’s Media Stock Blog offers looks into who will bear the burden of a proposed increase in wholesale music download prices, and this summer’s offerings at the Imax theaters, including the latest offering in the Batman film series.

The alphabetically apellated FCH writes in the Ideas in Motion blog that “blogs are free enterprise capitalist expressions of communication”: the day when the number of blogs equals the number of people in the US cannot be too far off. Blogs solve a great deal of the tragedy of commons problem.

In new Millenium Minds, Rob Thrasher is very enthusiastic about the prospects of forthcoming online shopping search engine Become.com, founded by Michael Yang and Yeogirl Yun of MySimon fame.

Google’s new movie search tool has already received a lot of attention, but David Jackson of The Internet Stock Blog looks more carefully at who provides the underlying content and transactions for Google Movies, which other companies gain and lose, and what the broader implications are for the Internet sector.

Does open source translate into anti-capitalism? How Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera compete to the benefit of the average internet user, according to AnyLetter’s Andrew Hughes.

James Cherkoff of Collaborate Marketing spends a lot of time explaining to corporate types what the blogopshere may or may not mean to them – he compiled this experience into a primer on blogging for the curious marketeer.

You want more visitor traffic to your business blog but you’ve found that you’ve tried all of the usual avenues. Perhaps you should consider talking people into surfing over to your site. All you have to do is get yourself interviewed, as an expert in your field, according to Wayne Hurlbert of Blog Business World.

Abnu of Wordlab takes a look at the Big Apple’s newest slogan “The World’s Second Home” and cantankerous commentator Lewis Black’s “I Loves New York” rant from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Gill Blog’s Tony Gill, a workplace continuity specialist, previews a survey showing many companies are unprepared for significant threats to their business operations: 20% of businesses still do not have disaster recovery plans, despite respondents believing that terrorism, fire and flood present significant threats to their business operations.

Few business bloggers have given even scant attention to ensuring their sites are accessible to handicap visitors. Everyone assumes that all visitors will be able to see the flashy graphics, watch a video, hear an audio message, and then move a mouse to open additional eye and ear candy. Timothy Lee gives the critical basics of site accessibility on his Land of Opportunity site.

In a typically fine essay, Arnold Kling suggests that the over-emphasis on high-level math in economics graduate schools tends to filter out students with other talents and knowledge that would be useful in economics.

A recent store opening in his former home of Fairbanks, Alaska, leads Kevin McGehee to ruminations on how a small and isolated town simultaneously experiences exciting new growth and persistent blight.

We have more than one newspaper to provide us with our unclassified information. Why not have more than one CIA to provide us with our secret and top-secret information? We would have two chances of getting the information right, and two chances of avoiding a dysfunctional bureaucracy, writes Michael Higgins of the Chocolate and Gold Coins site.

AuburnPR Blog’s Melanie Sollid provides a nice view of the basics that make a business blog interesting, readable and attention-getting to a public who may not be blog savvy.

Rami’s Tennis Blog notes that acquiring a skill, any skill, also teaches the invaluable meta-skill of learning how to learn.

In any given year, 27-30% of the Medicare budget is spent on the 5-6% of beneficiaries who die that year. Daniel Altman proposes that Medicare save money by eliminating end-of-life care. Different River carries this argument to its logical conclusion, noting 100% of the Medicare budget could be saved by eliminating care for anyone who actually needs it.

Fred Ottley helps break the tedium of the business day with humor on his Funny site.