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Have We Learned from the New Economy?
prostoalex writes "The new issue of Fast Company magazine looks at the so-called New Economy in retrospect. There were some myths about the Internet that were not true, or could be considered true only partially in the brief history of the Internet boom, there were people who got burned and those who nicely cashed out and then there were those who had to start a new life because of the Internet."
1)Internet Hype
2)???
3)Profit!
Actually, World of End's What the Internet Isn't (previously featured on slashdot) has the ideas that can be applied to the "new economy."
the people who grasped these ideas are the long term winners.
Sure, spammers claim that they make money, but just like intrusive telemarketers their days are numbered!
Some domain name speculators made out. Some vapourware employees made out. But these are flash in the pan events.
Jeff Bezos and Co turned a profit! How? By aggregating their shipping (that free shipping option that allows them to pack more onto a truck) they are using tried and true business methods to stay profitable.
So what have we learned form the new economy? If you don't have a sustainable business model (i.e. 1)hype 2)??? 3) Profit!) then cash out quick! (however I think that business model is pretty old; Con-men have been around for years!)
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I just picked up a package from the Post Office this morning. I placed the order on the internet and when it arrived the From address was about 10 miles from where I live, I drive past it twice every day and ride my bicycle past it on Saturdays and Sundays. I paid shipping and waited, when I could have just nipped in and got the item I wanted right away. Truly, I've taken the internet for granted. Anywhere to order from might as well be another country, for the way I simply point and click.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Dont be fooled into investing in something just because it uses the internet!
.com behind the name isnt a magic formula for success!
.com!
Actually look at the business model first! Just because it has
Be aware of what the internet can and cant do, ebay is a wonderful perfect use of the internet, you pay for the servers and maintenance and everyone who uses it does the rest, however on the other hand an idea to sell toothpicks over the internet is not a good idea, even if it is a
Post apocalyptic gaming goodness
The learning curve, however, was steeper than she had anticipated. Feeling totally overwhelmed by the scope and complexity of her new position as AOL and Time Warner merged, she says she tried to quit every day for the first six weeks.
Yes, I think I'd quit, too!
I've learned that Slashdot provides a lot of resources for procrastinating at work, reading articles about how much money is lost because employees surf the web at work...while surfing the web at work.
And knowing's half the battle!
...as soon as I finish my proposal for a new social networking app crossed with an ITunes like music store...
The big lesson to learn from the new economy was that the basic rules of economics still applied. Sure there were a lot of innovations that transformed many industries, but the basic laws of supply and demand still held true. The basic requirement that businesses had to generate revenue in order to survive still held true. It seemed that every time you looked around during the 90s there was another new economy: the information economy, the digital economy, the attention economy, the experience economy etc. etc. but these were all put forward by people who didn't know anything about economics.
I've finally got around to changing my sig
Meet the new economy. Same as the old economy.
People unwilling to relocate, who thought customer orientation was beneath them, who only wanted to work on leading edge technology, funded by venture vultures got burned bigtime.
Those of us in other locations (say philly), who focused on customer-oriented services, and did work on boring old accounting systems and automating boring old work flows did fine. We were customer funded. We did fine. As a matter of fact we had to turn down work just to preserve our sanity.
I drive by them all the time. I hand deliver to their post office box (well, I give it to the guys and ladies behind the counter, THEY put it in the box!)
But by not having to support a brick and mortar Netflix lets me keep DVDs for as long as I want. And since I can drop it off at their box my turn-around time is phenomenal (a monday morning drop off results in a Wednesday delivery. A Thursday drop off can result in a Friday delivery. Kewl.)
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Article on speed-to-market that's necessary in some markets. Gives a different view than amazon=traditional (or at least a different aspect).
Reinout
Reinout van Rees
strangely enough, the titles of the magazines devoted to the internet boom: "fast company", "red herring", "wired": these were cautionary roadsigns, titles picked perhaps unconsciously as signposts of what we were all really dealing with
;-P
we were all... "slashdotted"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
for further reading i would suggest: the roaring nineties written by josepth stiglitz. stiglitz, who won the nobel prize in economics, was part of the clinton administration. i just finished it and i think it gives a great overview of what went wrong and what went right with the "new economy". he is fairly balanced-being critical of both bush and clinton. also, you dont have to be an economist to appreciate the arguments presented in this text.
-- john
8. Al Gore, former vice president of the United States
Then: "Created the Internet."
I thought it was Tim Berners-Lee.
"Until you do what you believe in, how do you know whether you believe in it or not?" -- Leo Tolstoy
suckers.
It doesn't matter what we've learned, because like every other economic bubble, by the the next one has come along everyone will either:
i) think they know why this one is going to be different or
ii) will have forgotten the lessons of this one anyway
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
As far as politics, money and corruption is concerned:
The more things change, the more they stay the same (ref: "Golden Rule" - he who has the gold, makes the rules).
I know the above comment is cheap, but IMO, one thing that *hasn't* changed in the "new economy" is that (white-collar) crime still pays for too many high powered execs and that corporate accountability is hard to enforce.
Again, IMO, this is one of the reasons more people lost their jobs, in high-tech or anywhere else, than was neccessary.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
...you'll love these
DataSquid.net, a little about me.
The whole notion of a "new economy" is the myth. Economics will be what it always has been: People offering something that other people want/need. The only thing that changes is what is offered.
Those who understand that have successful internet businesses. Those who don't have failed internet businesses.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Lesson: The size of the poppage will be AT LEAST as big as the bubble.
Table-ized A.I.
The whole phenomenon was down to greed. I worked on a big project, and it happened like this:
- A good idea started
- Good people got hired
- Investors dumped in a load of money
- Stuff got too big too quick
- People on stupid salaries started thinking they had to change stuff all over the place, new logo new this new that
- The web visitors just said no thanks had enough - it wasn't working like it used to
- The site that is left is no more, but you can see the changes here:
Links: what was left The new look The old look country siteThe idea was OK, but by the time a load of stupid shit like free email, instant messaging and all that was tacked on, it just didn't work any more, cost way too much money...
But we had a great launch party for Orientation Morocco, let me tell you!
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
If you think they make a decent living, you're more than welcome to move there and work for $2,000 a year.
The one thing I get to take with me after taking a job in 1999 at age 19 to make more money than I ever expected to, through being both fired and laid off in 2003, is that continued education and awareness of the outside world have been paramount towards any career success I have.
:)
The Internet continues to be my preferred source of education. I've taken online classes through a community college. Newsgroups have helped me solve most of the problems I have at work, and I look sharper for it. I've regularly used online news sources to keep me aware of what's new in the world, given that local news anchors have more brilliance in their smile than their skulls.
Aside from my service costs, the Internet remains as free as Al Gore intended
-m.
made technology startups mainstream news; focused public awareness and attention on the internet and what it can allow you to do. All of these are good things. It showed people what would work and what wouldn't. Sometimes in a stark and brutal fashion. I can't say it was an era that should have never happened, because sometime, somewhere, you need to make that leap of faith from merely thinking about a business to actually starting one. The new economy gave lots of budding entrepreneurs the chance to get their feet wet, chances that they may not have gotten before..Google came from the dotcom era, didn't it?
The best thing to come out of the whole "new economy" for me was the experience that I got.. Never jump into a project without a cold blooded analysis of risk vs reward, never go into a company because they "look" exciting; check the fundamental things out first. Feather your nest, because you never know if things could change for the worse tomorrow. In short, be conservative.
All the same, I wish I had graduated just a couple of years sooner (1997-1998) because regardless of competency or suitability, being called an "architect" fresh out of college gives you experience at that level that would otherwise take years to achieve.. Good times, good times.
Hey! Why didn't I get a "harrumph!" out of that guy!
I think that people who wants to play the market should take a class in accounting or similar courses to learn to read financial statements. I took several accounting courses in hopes of opening my own business someday and I was suprised to find that GAAP allows enough flexablility to inflate or deflate the "earnings" by the companies. I also learned that Statement of Cash Flow often times are more important the Income Statement or Balance Sheet. (A company yachet may be counted as an asset but does nothing to brining in money and most likely to be sold under the book value if company needs cash).
All the day traders I knew during the boom didn't know how to read the financial statements. They just relied on advises of some hot shot, other day traders who knew no better, and their gut feelings.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
It's more like $20,000/year. And the idea is that the cost of living is so low... $2,000 goes a long way. Besides, $2,000/year is better than $0, which is what I'd make if I DIDN'T HAVE A JOB...
It must be Thursday... I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Closing the magazine, I thought: "Either these guys deserve a Nobel Prize in Economics, or they just don't understand anything about Economics".
Late 1999, I remember talking to a friend about Yahoo and other companies offering free services over the World Wide Web. He could not understand how these companies could offer a valuable service (email, personal web space, etc) for free and (a) make money, (b) have a stock price that went through the roof.
I remember telling him: "This is not going to last. The stock market is going to crash really badly and most of these companies are going to go down in flames".
Today, I am really happy most of my money was not invested in stupid schemes such as pets.com or any other "new economy"/Internet company.
Bottom line? Here are my most basic rules for economy, new or otherwise...
One last thing: 90% of all the people who made money in the new economy where insiders, people who knew if a stock was going to go up or down. Think about that for a second.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Anyone ever heard of that company? I used to work for them back in 1998-2000. It was supposed to be a huge (as Amazon) online store where people could by gifts chosen from our catalog that had thousands of gift items from jewelry (high end stuff) to home and garden, business, kids gifts, kitchen and food items to flowers. There was a gift reminder service (a personal event calendar where you enter event b-day's, etc.) that would remind you to buy a gift for the scheduled event, it would even provide a few suggestions based on info you provided.
The only problem was that the owners allegedly sold private shares of stock illegally. (A court Minnesota ruled against the company is several lawsuits brought by shareholders). The bankruptcy still lingers on. The thousands of shares I received for being an employee are worthless. My belief now is that the owner never intended to make money or operate a successful business. All he talked about was 'going public' and how rich we (he) were going to be.
The "New Economy' taught me a lot. After working to two other companies with the same business model I now work for an 'Old Economy' business that actually believes in making a profit, serving it customers and taking care of it employees. There is no IPO in sight for this company and that's fine with me.
I'll take a steady paycheck today instead of the promise of stock pay offs tomorrow.
...that a Fast Company subscription is a waste of money?
One of the key indicators of just how well the ruse worked is that 60% of the working public was in one way or another invested in "Wall Street" during the late 1990's. The last time this many of the "regular working public" invested was during the 1920's.
Another, perhaps clearer indicator of how well the ruse worked is looking at just how much money was drained from the US economy (ie: your wallets and mine): $3.3trillion.
It's tragic, really. The technology was in some cases quite good. eBay roars along. Dell digitized their entire business model. And governments around the world have started to adopt Open Source works as the foundation from which to build upon. But greed extracted a huge price on the economy and our ability to reinvest those dollars in continued Research and Development.
Dock that Slashdotter a day's pay for nappin' on the job!
Me and some expert internet technologists are starting a revolutionary new company called e-BS. This new company will revolutionize how the world uses and produces BS. Our website BS distribution system will allow BS generators from accross America to deliver their BS to the masses at cut rate prices. If you would like to invest in this great new company please contact me immediately. The intial blocks of shares are going to be sold for 1 million USD each. Thank you.
all that was old is new again. there was no such thing as a new economy, just repackaged hype. See here Economists have predicted this behaviour repeatedly.
Really? Judge for yourself...
n/t
Nothing beats the 17th century tulipmania . The power of human greed is always amazing.
Save the bandwidth. Don't use sigs!
Face it, programming got romanticised to the bejebus in the 90s.
At least liberal Arts students go into degrees saying "I wanna be a writer of novels, but I will probably end up being a copywriter or a clerk - maybe a journalist if I am good"
Just as comp/sci ppl SHOULD say "I wanna work on kernel/major program devel, but really I will end up being admin / script writers of one kind or another - or a medium size program maintainer if I am good"
Wake up, not everyone can be linus or arthur c clarke. So many of you flooded comp sci in the last 8 years that the market for grads is flooded and that has gnawed through the middle ranks - only CEOs keep their salaries, as they always do.
It depends on how you define a "decent living". Indian programmers don't make as much as their American counterparts (they average about $10K/year, AFAIK), but by all accounts their wages allow them to live extremely comfortably.
This is my sig.
The thing most out-of-work programmers and undergrad students haven't yet grasped is that programming is not an ends of itself. You don't make a decent living as a programmer; you make a decent living using programming to develop something that has utility to someone willing to pay money for it. Simply pronouncing your C++/Java skills and hoping someone gives you a problem to solve doesn't qualify you for an $80k/yr job. People who will succeed in software from here on out will have to be focused on finding innovative things to do (hint: more free software ain't it) and hoping nobody has patented it first.
Unfortunately, most of the low-hanging fruit has been picked and society's need for programmers is much, much less.
That is exactly what the "oursourcing jobs to poor countries is the corporations' way to rip off the natives!"-nutjobs just don't get.
I can't understand why.
They don't seem to get two very important things: a) having a paying job is always better than not having a job and b) $2000 may be peanuts in the USA but is most likely a royal salary in another country.
You might want to have a look at Manias, Panics and Crashes by Kindleberger (ISBN: 0471389455). I thought it lended some insight to the process, although from a broader context. It has nothing to do with the latest crash, of course, but looks at financial irrationality.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
... is that self employment is the safest way to build a career. Why? The fundamental unit of trust is another person, not another company. As self-employed, I've insulated myself from most, if not all, of the stupid crap that companies do. While I have friends who have been laid off and rehired several times, I'm now for the first time confident in my financial future because I have a list of clients who all really need my services. They now trust me to get the work done. I trust them to pay on time. And that (to me) is worth more than a fat 401k because in ten years my work will be inflation-adjusted and grows with my clients (all of whom have been selected in part because they are likely to grow and already have a good pattern of it.)
And when I get ready to hire? The number one thing I'll be looking for on those resumes is a history of self-reliance and individual responsibility. There are a lot of professional committee-manipulators out there who like their comfortable BigCorp positions, and good for them. I'm confident that in twenty years, when we both look back and to see where we stand, my contributions to the world will be both worthwhile and significant.
Really, it all boils down to trust. That's what underlies the economic viability of open source: you're dealing with people and standardized network protocols and not organizational entities or proprietary lockin.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Don't blame your bad investments on bad people running the companies you invested in. Next time do the due diligence or invest in paper.
Interesting topic, though I would characterize Fast Company as the "Cosmo" of tech/business publications. I found some of the articles non-researched, ill-conceived and sophmoric. In one section Fast Company continues to propagate the myth that Al Gore claimed he 'invented the Internet'.
I was one of the folks who stood around scratching his head at the explosion of IPOs for "dot coms" that had no legs to stand on. Why the imposion occurred shouldn't have surprised anyone who was paying attention, but it played on many peoples' sense of greed at the expense of their common sense.
I was one of the people who was there in the early days with technology and services that were way ahead of their time. OTOH, I was one of those that didn't run out, sign up a bunch of pimply-faced MBAs for a management team and then rush to do an IPO. Today, my company is far from the largest, but we're very stable and have a solid client base. I don't have a personal helocopter, but I did get my small slice of the dot-com pie when I sold a domain I registered in 1994 for an insane amount of money. That was exciting and depressing at the same time. It wasn't what I ever imagined would be one of the big payoffs relative to what we were doing. I suspect there may have been at least a few other companies who really wanted to build an honest solid net-based business model, that were overshadowed by the parade of spineless, over-hyped dot-coms run by people who perhaps a month before were selling life insurance.
tax the rich their fair share
You know, I see this a lot from the leftie types, but none of them ever seems to have the knowledge to be able to put an explicit percentage on exactly what "fair" is to their little minds, or exactly what "rich" is for that matter. Let us take the IRS data for 1999, the newest date Google finds in its top ten links:
A) Do you think "rich" is "the highest 1%"? Well, they earned 19.5% of income, but paid 36.2% of income taxes. What would you think "fair" for that 19.5% is, if different than 36.2%?
B) Do you think "rich" is "the highest 10%"? Well, they earned 44.9% of income, but paid 66.5% of income taxes. What would you think "fair" for that 44.9% is, if different than 66.5%?
C) On the other hand, the bottom 50% of taxpayers earned 13.2% of income, but paid only 4% of income taxes.
Now, precisely what in this profile do you find unfair? What target percentages would satisfy you as being satisfactorily "fair" then?
the list is huge, but here are a few leading contenders: Fast Company, Wired, Henry Blodgett, Mary Meeker, any VC firm, Wall Street, and on and on...
i think the lesson to take from the internet boom/bust is don't get taken for a ride by some body who wants to build a next-generation, new-paradigm ecommerce portal (or a monorail) with other people's money...
There was some grave apprehension "selling out" at the time, like I was going to lose what I had worked on for three years. Also, I was making low six figures on advertising on the site over the past three years, so I was worried that I might be cashing out when I could have had continued money for years on end... of course the DOT COM crash allayed those concerns. But when the company that bought it went under, well, it was like, "There goes three years of my life." But I rationalize it by saying, "It's like I was paid $350k" for those three years, way more than I would have been making in industry.
But should I have hung on to the site, and not sold out? Yes, the money I was making prior to the crash would have curtailed in a major way, but advertising is picking up again today. Granted, it's not back up to where it was pre-2000, but it's gaining steam.
Why do you Libertarian types never
factor that in when you talk about
taxes. You'd think the US Federal
income tax was the only tax paid.
Cripes. The rich benefit the most from
the US government. They can afford to pay for
it.
Man!
She's no Kim Kommando for sure, but she isn't hard to look at either. A plain, moderately attractive looking girl would be my take on her. I wouldn't kick her out of my bed.
For example, there was (and still is) clear preferrential allocation of shares, thereby allowing only a select few to gain the benefits of an IPO. What we need is non-preferrential allocation of shares, akin to what Bill Hambrecht is doing with the OpenIPO system.
Nonetheless, the (historical) "new economy" was a lot more riskier than the "old economy", not less. There is a lot more reliance on innovation and high-risk investments to drive growth, which is great when the innovations work out in the long run. However, when big gambles, such as the dotcoms, fail to pay off (eg: no revenues, or costs exceeding profits), then the whole economy suffers.
This is likely the largest mistake that investors made. They failed to understand the high-volatility nature of the "new economy", and took far greater risks than they should. They failed to realize that by investing in new IPO's, they were effectively taking the same risks that venture capitalists do.
International Paper (NYSE:IP) is down 20 points off its peak in 2000. Its low in 2000 was down by 50% of it's peak. Its P/E ratio is over 60. If all the "new economy" stuff is hype, then that means it's ridiculously overpriced.
Paper as an investment sucks.
People buy what they want or need! India offers services at cheaper costs than US. Corporations get services with view towards a larger profit. Quality and US employment ignored.
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
I'm still in business. I started building content-rich websites in 1996.
/. can claim the same kind of (limited) success. Nevertheless, my accountant once called me a "survivor" and it always astonished me how people would plunge headlong into the next new thing without thinking about their "survivial" at all?
1. I saw that "information" on the web is still just "information". I'm a librarian so I knew I could do something with it.
2. I hired sharp, 20-something MLIS grads, promised them that they wouldn't get rich but that they might get to do something interesting, and told them, "throw out the rules you learned in Library School, but keep all the concepts."
3. I tried *very hard* not to spend more than I brought in in a given year and we usually succeeded.
4. I never got rich but I'm still paying the mortgage on my house and liking (for the most part) what I'm doing.
5. We constantly looked for new and better ways of doing our stuff but *never* through out the previous iteration if it seemed to still do the job.
How I did this shouldn't be a secret and I know lots of others on
dcobbler - www.digitalcobbler.com
Is your post a joke? I'm not sure. When I said that the original poster should have invested in paper, I meant cash, government bonds, CDs, et al.
There will always be booms and busts until The State stops inflating the monetary supply. In other words, until we get The State out of money, and go back to allowing the free market to choose money. This would almost certainly result in a gold and silver standard, with banks issuing bank-notes redeemable in certain weights in gold or silver. Fraudulent note-issuing would be checked by bank-runs (banks would no-longer be protected) triggered by customers and other banks. Also, fractional reserve banking is a fraud in which banks loan out assets they don't have title to, while still claiming to be able to redeem at any time (in other words, there is no way they could possibly meet all of their obligations, thus are insolvent at all times). See this article.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
At least in the USA, and probably in other developed countries, is the demise of the old model where a widespread increase in the standard of living was not only possible, but economically sound, as long as wage increases were no larger than worker productivity increases. Letting wages rise faster than productivity was a recipe for inflation.
Lately, productivity has been climbing spectacularly. That's good, very good. But the benefit has not been translated into increased wages.
Why?
Because of globalization of the labor market. It's not just because owners of capital are mean and greedy (although I'm sure some are). Until workers in China and India and every other place with workers capable of doing the same job as workers in developed nations catch up in terms of wages, then the best most developed nation workers can hope for is not to lose too much ground from the status quo.
Unless you're lucky enough to already own a lot of capital, your only recourse is to do something that cannot be done by someone thousands of miles away willing to work for a fraction of your wage.
That means specializing and it means providing local service (eg, cooking, warehouse worker, health care provider, on-site IT support, custom programming for a business).
But it sure doesn't mean working on an assembly line or, increasingly, reviewing health insurance claim forms or debugging some widely-used computer program.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Greed and the media. When they were running the "dotcomcrash" financial news it convinced enough people to pull enough money out of the tech sector to make it collapse, so only the large players would survive and buy up all the little guys.
If you look at human nature, I mean really look at it and how it behaves in a system that advertises to them, teaches them how money works, expects them to be greedy and spend money to make money, then turns the whole economy upside down on them we see that this is natural for capitalism.
It will happen over and over and over again until we either decide to value eachother more than money or get rid of money itself. Personally I feel like managing all this money is inefficient in a digital world. But most people don't understand what it means to live in a digital world where a computer connected to the internet can replace a TV, telephone, Postal service, library, newpaper, and many other things for most common uses. And these internet-connected computers can be made smaller than a cellphone or a walkman.
That's why we're in such bad shape. We've got everything, but no incentive to use it because we only wanted the money.
To those interested in this "new economy" ; you might be interested in The Economist free newletters. They're great summaries.
http://www.economist.com/email/
Animoog.org
Its about time someone finally wrote an article discussing what went wrong with the
The former Dotcom Bible, The Industry Standard, has returned with daily news and Guest Blogs. The assumption that the Internet has fundamentally changed business is still true, perhaps more true today than before the crash. Somebody needs to chronicle this story again.
So let's take a look at how "fair" even the most "fair" tax rate, the flat tax, is.
The richest 10% made 44.9% of the income, and thus pay 44.9% of the taxes. The lowest 90% made 54.1% of the income, and thus pay 54.1% of the taxes. This doesn't look fair to your numbers game either.
There are benefits of taxes that the rich are privy to but the poorer are not. Like tourism and promotions budgets that help local businesses. Or government-sponsored research and selective tax breaks on new industries. Infant-industry protection. Or government-sponsored invasions. Take your pick.
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
Comparing how much different households pay in taxes by looking only at the federal income tax is like contrasting how much food people consume by counting only their breakfasts. To see who pays what, we need to look at the entire tax system, not one component in isolation.
In our federal system, households pay taxes to the federal government, state governments and local governments. As we broaden the scope from the federal income tax to include the rest of the federal tax system along with state and local taxes, the tax burden shifts more and more to the middle and the bottom.
In fact, for the bottom 80 percent of households, personal income tax is only 28 percent of their federal tax burden, according to Citizens for Tax Justice. The payroll tax for this group is more than twice as large, representing 59 percent of their federal tax burden. At the top of the income distribution, in contrast, the 20 percent of households with the highest incomes pay 61 percent of their federal taxes as personal income taxes while payroll taxes take up only 26 percent.
(from http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/7392)
NB: the parent post is just more evidence that Libertarian propaganda on slashdot gets auto-modded upward
from http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/7392
The lesson I learned is IT changes in the blink of an eye. One year theres a shortage in networking, the next a major surplus. One year programmers get paid 60k, 5 years from now probably 1/2 that. The lesson I'm taking from this is to pay off my house early and save everything I can. My job in IT may not exist in 10 years.
Really?
A P/E of 303 seems overvalued to me.
Blame the 1995 Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. It relaxed the rules enough to allow much of this fraud.
It's detractors warned about this.
The president vetoed it.
Money-grubbing market fundamentalists paid off their congressmen to override the veto.
And the result?
Enron. Tyco. Worldcom. etc.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Cash as an investment is almost always a loss as are the vast majority of savings accounts. If the interest gained on an investment is below inflation, one is losing buying power, and therefore value. Cash is useful if you wish to make sure you have some money later on to fall on, and you're willng to tolerate the loss. Otherwise, spend your money or invest it proper.
You like splinters in your crotch? -Jon Caldara
I could not take my EYES off that fine piece of real estate. Kim who?? LESSIG BABY!! Mmmmm don't shave that throat for me, nuh uh, daddy likes a little prickly patch!
What I learned during the boom years was to not trust anything I read in "Fast Company".
They were a significant part of the hype engine for those years, and it's slightly galling for them to pose as a source of wisdom for the ages.
this page seems to be missing some important dates. Anyone know (yes, ITLTG*) when eBay, Amazon, and Yahoo! had their IPOs?
* I'm Too Lazy To Google
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Agreed. I'm saving. If things look bad, I'm going into nursing.
I got a (computer) science degree from Drexel university. The nursing shcool can't be harder than that.
I don't mind taking care of people. I help a relative with that now anyway.
Political correctness is the newest form of slavery.
Ask Howard Dean, Mr. Dotcom Redux.
I define, in my own head, the "New Economy" in this way: In the 90's many executives and investors newly realized you can make much more personal profit (and more quickly) by choosing a path that will certainly lead to a company's short-term failure, than by choosing a path that may lead to a company's longer term success.
During the .com boom I invested heavily in NASDAQ and watched my stock go up significantly. However, I only invested in viable companies with an actual product (primarily Cisco), and I COULD smell the trouble with the insane IPO's of the .COM's. I knew they would crash. How could they not? They had lots of VC, fancy buildings, scooters, arcade rooms, and free soda...but no business plan.
.com without a business plan. There is a difference between investment and gambling, and when gambling, remember that the house always wins.
What I DIDN'T count on what that they'd take the rest of the NASDAQ with them. I lost quite a bit of money, but that's the way it goes in investments. And also with investments, if you are in it for the long haul you have nothing to worry about unless you made a stupid investment decision. In my case, I invested more in Cisco after it bottomed out at $10 or so, now it's back up to $25, and I've pretty much made all my money back that I lost in the crash.
IMHO, the only people who lost their ass in the crash are the day traders, the people who pulled out of the market early hoping to cut their losses, and the people who smelled quick money and made a sucker bet on a
-R
"I'm still not happy with my last chapter," That would be chapter 11, I presume?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
We have moved onto i-B2BS. It's the only way to go. It's collaborative, intuitive and more importantly new.
The Libertarians attempting to suppress
the truth by scoring posts critical of
their ideology as flamebait is proof of their
tendencies to censorship.
This is OT but it has always bugged me when someone describes something difficult as having "a steep learning curve". If you graph mastery of a subject vs. time, the curve would be steepest for EASY subjects not hard ones. Am I missing the obvious? Most people that I ask about this just think I am a crank.
Really.
She looks sweet.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
The people who designed the internet technology were not running about with stories of how much money was going to be made, nor were they talking about "revolutionary economies" or other such crap.
The system that evolved was not and is not, and hopefully will not be, designed as a system for the generation of enormous amounts of profit. It is designed to be a communication, publishing, and media-distribution system that enables all comers to take part based on their willingness to learn the techniques.
The internet bubble was not created by techies, it was the creation of assholes from wall street and their MBA bearing offspring who saw the geeks working late on something they did not understand. Being typical assholes, they figured that there must be a lot of money to be made, otherwise why would Poindexter be spending all of his spare time and losing so much sleep over this hobby of his. So they came forward with offers of money, and Poindexter, surprised as he was, accepted the money in return for writing code to implement these poorkly though out and vague ideas.
The MBAs began to get restless during the mid 1990s, wondering when the return on this interweb thing was gonna come rolling in. They began sending their offspring to college for CS degrees, because obviously Poindexter was doing something wrong. He seemed happy whenever his code worked well, but never seemed concerned about the money (why should he be, he was getting paid). The MBAs figured it must be a cultural thing, and seeing that they knew what clothing was in style (and Poindexter did not), and they drove the right SUV (and Poindexter did not), that their own children would be better for running this interweb thing, and they would have to find a way to take it away from Poindexter (because he was obviously not doing it right, as he ghadn't made them their billions like that other Poindexter out in Redmond had). Their children came back from school and began starting internet businesses left and right, they knew how to talk to venture capitalists (as that was their culture) and how to play the media. Their businesses gathered money from investors and they paid themselves (and each other) high salaries until the money ran out.
A few of them, who had somhow discovered a clue by spending tiome with their classmates (in the process discovering their own inner Poindexter), created strong businesses that were based on rather mundane things, like selling fasteners or books, or providing usefull services for free to the public that could be sold a specialized services to companies, such as non-biased searches.
The rest of the children of the MBAs folded their companies, while wiping a crocodile tear from their eye, fired all their Poindexters on short notice, and drowned their sorrows in the huge amounts of money they had scammed from their parents and their parents business partners (because, of course, that was the way of their culture). And they complained about it. Obviously, Poindexter must have done something wrong.
Now the investors, the MBAs, the venture capitolists are all crying "foul! foul! Where are the billions you promised? Why did you not make me even more rich than I am already? There must be something wrong with that internet thingy, and I'm gonna get my congressman to fix it for us."
Poindexter shrugs. His code is working fine. It does exactly what it was intended to do, and given enough time it might possibly be possible for a guy to make a living without being harassed by a bunch of venture capitalists and MBAs wearing the latest ugly suit and driving those ugly road hogs. Meanwhile he'll just sit at his computer, and design yet another application protocol or device that the assholes will finance never understanding that the internet is not designed to make the money people rich.
It is designed to diminish their control.
Read, L
Try Dot.Con
0 20 800512775/
http://www.unixreview.com/documents/s=1357/uni1
Great book.
Worked for a CEO who spent most of his time bashing Microsoft, instead of running a business. He claimed to be a victim of Microsoft's evil business practices. He ridiculed other dot coms for being mere hypes. In the end, fake business, accounting scandal, CFO bailed right before the fallout (Fastow?!), COO fired and under FBI investigation (scapegoat?!), company collapsed, $400 million wasted, CEO ousted. The ex-CEO, $30 million dollor richer for running a company into ground, is still bashing Microsoft, at least this time he can't blame Microsoft for his business failure. Lesson: a lot of anti-Microsoft heros are human scums.
Allow me to outdo your skepticism. In ten years, if I spent that time pursuing the buildout of a 100+ employee firm, I'd be MORE of an asshole than our current generation of bosses. Why? I've learned their tricks at their hands, and have a few of my own. But I'm not out to outcompete or destroy my competition. They can win as far as I care. I know when to say when. I eat well. I live well. My bills are paid. And now I get to work because it will make the world a better place for my children. A 100 person non-profit organization would be cool. I would need to make enough money first that the tax breaks would justify it though.
I think I need to make this my sig: " The fundamental unit of trust is another person, not another company. "
IISSCC Corollary: Security transcends technology.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
He is an articulate and very learned writer. I highly recommend his publication as well. (Guess I should do a book review....)
That is because you are a sad computer geek.
There's no reason for this to be at -1!
We should all be so lucky as to live through another bubble, identify it when it happens, and get out while we still have the time.
Looking back at the internet boom, various mineral (including oil and gas) booms in the Western US, here is what I have learned:
1) Early on a number of folks find potential. E.g. a new gold field or new technology.
2) Usualy at that point enterance barriers are low, so a lot of small organizations enter, flooding the field.
3) Large organizations tend to be risk averse and slower so they may miss the initial 'pop', but they have huge resources.
4) The survival stragegy for a small outfit is 2 fold:
a) get big fast and survive. THis was the AOL, Amazon et. al. approach.
b) get bought out. A strategy used by many in the I-Boom days.
5) As the area gets saturated, many smaller operations die off. See the I-Boom for many examples. This makes implementing your strategy fast critical.
6) For a large company your best bet is to wait. Do not buy at the top but wait for a shake out. THen cherry pick the companies which you think are good. This means the small companies essentially take all the risks.
7) One way to grow is to buy out competitors. GM did it as did Microsoft.
8) As a company grows through market increases and buy outs, if you control an important resource you can use restrictives contracts to lock up a market. Standard oil did it in the 1800's and Microsoft did it in the 1900's.
9) As an individual, use the boom to get out of debt. If you have any money at all, wait for the bust and then buy low (real estate, equipment, stock in solid companies etc.).
So basically, if you stay 'heads up' and don't get swept up by the hype you can come out quite well.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
when someone references The Who on Slashdot.
fs
I was talking in '97, but everyone called me some sort of Luddite who didn't understand the new economy. (Though not in those words) The only difference is some (few) of them got their money out in time, most lost a lot of money, while I never had money in it; and now nobody understands the new economy.
If you had been listening there were plenty of people talking about how stupid a lot of these online businesses are. So, will you pay attention to my new words of wisdon: Pay attention to the nay-sayers, they might have wisdom worth listening too. Hopefully you will read that correctly, and not see it as "listen to all the nay-sayers and follow their path".
"Perceived" value on the free market.
The New Economy was based on wacked perceptions. That's the problem to solve. Ignorance in the free market.
Oh really...
Then you're ready for the nursing imports to begin?
http://www.glomedic.com/about.shtml
Give me a break, Rush Limbaugh is right wing hypocritical organziation. It's like quoting George Bush on fiscal responsibility.
f _w age_earners_pay_96_09__of_income_taxes.guest.html
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/menu/top_50__o
Rich
NT
The implication is that we should tax people based on how much they own. That's a good way to get people to clean out their garage, but I don't think it's a good way to tax.
Plus, owning things does not make one rich. If I win the lottery and spend my $236 million on a warehouse full of footballs, am I rich? The footballs aren't exactly legal tender; I couldn't trade 10,000 of them for a car. You're only rich if the things you own are generating money for you.
Hamster
Unidomatic dropping of the definite article.
walfare ?
pragnent?
medicate and welfare ?
benifits?
This is what happens when we stop supporting
public schools, folks.
Further proof the Libertarians have failed.
If there are any economic nerds out here this could be the basis of a lot of discussion. The current wave of "corporatism" is overdue for some shaking up; perhaps the USA is about ready to re-examine its role in the world.
The article is about 20 pages long; good reading. Note that Harper's tends to be left-leaning; but then, so am I.
There are a couple of problems with your argument.
Number one is that the airline industry subsidies are probably a good thing. If the three largest airlines were to collapse and disappear, the USA (and a good chunk of the world) would enter a 2-year recession. While it would probably be replaced by a more efficient airline industry, millions would suffer in the meantime.
Number two is that most corporate entities don't pay any income tax (since they're smart enough to spend their income on assets that will generate more money), and subsidies are so rare as to be practically nonexistant. Plus, who cares? A corporation can't be "rich," can it?
Hamster
I've learned from the new economy that if I could rollback the clock to 10 years ago (knowing what I do now), I wouldn't chose to go into IT as a profession. Health care of some type would have been a better choice, with more flexibility on where I work. Oh well.
Too right, there is no real new economy. Th fundamentals do not change. There was though a lot of hype that disrupted things for a while. Thse hype/bust cycles are not new. In the 1950s when synthetics generated a "New Fibre Economy" there was a huge panic amongst the farmers making natural fibres like cotton and wool. THe buyers stopped buying because thy thought they'd get stuck with useless stock. The farmers could not sell thm wool and panicked. My grandfather, a sheep farmer producing high quality wools, sent all his sheep for slaughter. By the next year popl had ralised that nylon was not going to take over and everyon was buying again. Peopl lik my grandfather now had no sheep to fill the orders and prics went up.....
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I'd suggest you look at the following articles:
http://www.mises.org/money.asp
http://www.mise
http://www.mises.org/fullarticle.asp?control=14
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
was that Fast Company magazine was full of crap.
A magazine for the people who thought the generation of hype was a valid way to make a living and contribute to society. It always seemed created by, and targeted at the, "wanta-get-rich-quick" MBA types who never actually created or produced any worthwhile contributions to our society or economy.
Creating Powerpoints and spreadsheets and making money off of other people's greed and stupidity are hardly worthwhile goals for mankind, IMHO.
I don't know how many times I have seen someone with the title of "consultant" regurgitate the plainly obvious for a large fee. The saddest thing was to see all the supposedly intelligent people who felt they had to pay these people large sums of money to solve problems that traditional principles and ideas applied properly would take care of.
I started to look, but you should try to point with a finer grain. It's hard to muddle through the presentation to get to the objectives....
In any case, you cannot separate the monetary system from the governing authorities. It makes no sense.
Everyone is under authority, one way or another. Authority has the ability to cause change in the system. That's why they call it authority.
I agree that some tweaking of the system has backfired, due to unwise decisions of those in power. But, to suggest eliminating the influence and responsibility of government is foolish.
BTW, I am in favor of "necessary and sufficient" gorvernment, in case you were wondering.
...is that Venture Capitalists should not give money to anyone who writes their Business Model on a napkin.
Dolemite
______________________
Save the World! Use a Quote!
Suck.com.
Then: Hilarious, thoughtful, well-written social commentary on a daily basis.
Now: Stuck in eternal reruns.
Sad, really.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
that the liberal economists were wrong?
Yes, everyone has this advice, so...
What business do you advise all the unemployed to start? Whom will they sell to? Keeping in mind that one most fail in their first 5 years, and the big boys are mostly out because they're getting what they need from overseas. Small selling to small? sounds incestious? Ultimately however long the chain there has to be a source to draw from. Fix the unemployed's computers? Rewire the underemployed's wiring? Do over the plumbing of the permanently flushed? The rich will have a big pool to swim in, but they will not tip like the rich normally do. The middle will ask "Do I need you?", while the poor ignore you. Welcome to the few supporting the many.
Dear corporate interests:
We thank you for your contributions to technology. Now GET THE FSCK AWAY FROM IT! You're bastardizing it! And stop buying control of it from the government!
As for "necessary and sufficient government", no government is necessary. Absent a State, the free market takes care of justice (see Ancient Ireland, Ancient Iceland, and the Wild West). All The State is is a robber who steals from you and then has the audacity to follow you around proclaiming to be your protector, while continually robbing you (which he calls a tax, for his "services").
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
"People who will succeed in software from here on out will have to be focused on finding innovative things to do (hint: more free software ain't it) and hoping nobody has patented it first."
Gee it's amazing what passes for insightful. Here's a couple clues. One the people making the money off "innovative"(1) things, and patenting it, are not generally programmers. Usually that's reserved for the "non-geek", sweet talking PHB's.
Second most programmers operate in a framework of "we'll work on the aw-shucks 1000" that managment wants, instead of the "gee-wiz 3000" you were daydreaming about on the way to work. I think you're chastizing the wrong group for the mess we're in.
(1) Yeah it's in quotation marks because everyone from the geeks to the points talks a good game about it, but very few can actually identify it, or produce it. Kind of like winning the lottery if you use this new system.
The rules of economics might have been broken in one area. The internet has changed some of the logistics involved in business. People can work at a distance more effectively. You can set up storefronts on the web. This is not to say some brick and mortar axioms don't still apply. You still need a supply chain. You still need some warehouses. However, the internet has removed the distance barrier. The internet, within reason, can be a powerful tool for business. Frankly, I think people will eventually, in a gradual and perhaps tepid fashion, rediscover some of the power of the internet.
Perhaps on the "people who had to start over" list, they should have added "the American programmer". We've taken a beating. The culture in computing has changed. It used to be the ultimate cross-disciplinary field. If you were a biologist who CAN write code and you had 10 years of experience, you'd have no problem finding a job. Now a BS in MIS is in some ways better than a MS in Physics and a few years experience. (I'm speaking from an HR perspective.) The science of computing (note I don't say computer science [I haven't recognized that field for years]) is still open. AI, complexity theory, and bioinformatics are very interdisciplinary. There are fresh fields on the academic side. However, the industrial side is dead. It can be reborn, but for now it seems dead.
Hopefully some of you will bring computing back to life.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
1928; Greed and Stock Market Gambling is at its peek of lunacy.
1929; The Big Crash. The Great Depression Begins! Millions of jobs, property lost.
1930; Nazi Party wins stunning elected victory. Hitler now a big 'somebody' on world stage.
1932; Creation of holding companies and 'pyramiding' of enterprises on unsound foundations exposed the entire system of investment to massive abuses. The Insull Empire collapsed, the largest failure (at that time), in American business costing investors a billion dollars.
1933; Hitler achieved the German chancellorship. The Reichstag burns down, is blamed on Communist Terrorists, and signals the beginning of German/Nazi military posturing. Germany withdraws from the Disarmament Convention and the League of Nations
1935; Hitler denounces the Versailles Treaty.
1936; Hitler re-militarizes the Rhinelands.
1938; Germany marches into and annexes Austria and Czechoslovakia.
1939; German invasion of Poland. WWII begins in earnest.
We were providing a service others needed at the time. Looking back with hindsight, I don't know how long it could have been sustainable, but it didn't really matter because a larger ISP in the city offered over USD 1M in stock and cash for the company. I took about $40,000 in cold hard cash and nothing in stock used it to pay off student loans and finish my last two years of college (I did this as a "summer internship"). Okay, I bought a new computer along with new Hockey pads, but There was no way our company was worth that amount of money. $250,000, yeah, that would have been a fair estimate. I think our first year revenue projection was about $200,000, but that's irrelevant. The other two took hundreds of thousands in stock that is worthless today because I think the company that bought us out went under in 2001.
However there is still money to be made on the interent. I now own/run a small company that owns a couple sites that still generate enough for me to pay the bills while in Grad School, so I consider it my part time job. My $850 a month stipen covers my rent, utlities, and food. But still, there was a need in the local community for this type of website so I started one. Spent some money on Google Ad Words and $50 on monthly adverts in a newsletter, and things are going well.
I also work as a consultant for others creating websites. Only get 1 or 2 jobs a year, but the average $1000 pays for a semester of classes almost...
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Well, that's one way of looking at it. The other way is to look at taxation as a proportion of income (or to make the point even stronger, disposable income).
If you're able to pay your taxes (direct and indirect) with 10 minutes' work, would you consider it an equivalent and fair burden compared to someone who has to work for months to pay their burden?
A fair and transparent form of personal taxation would be to have a standardised %age of disposable income, although no doubt with good tax advice, it would be easy to show that one doesn't have any disposable income worth taxing.
Besides, Oliver Wendell Holmes was right - taxes are the price you pay for a civilised society. They are not an evil in themselves.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
You have a point, but it only goes so far. One perfectly valid motivation for saying "tax the rich fairly" is that The Rest Of Us {tm} have noticed that tax loopholes are so outrageous that the wealthier one gets, the less proportionate tax one pays.
... which applies to everybody without exception. At this point, a particular needs to be shouted: WITHOUT EXCEPTION. If a man makes $100 during the year, he owes ten bucks (and not one cent less) regardless of his hardship. And the man raking in $200 million (a la Grasso) had better cough up twenty mill -- and not a dollar less.
I'm so personally disgusted by the elitism implied by tax laws, that I'm entirely willing to shoulder a 10% flat tax
The Democrats want tax loopholes to justify welfare for the poor, and the Republicans want them so the wealthy can dodge taxation. This will never be fixed; we will never have a real flat tax. And if a consumption tax is installed instead of an income tax, then we will see the wealthy banding together under the cover of exempted "wholesale clubs" or "foreign importers" to take advantage of some loophole that allows them (leaving the lower- and middle-classes to shoulder the tax burden at local stores -- a non-exempt activity).
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]