In the end, it cost less and created a new market for the company. The same example is used in a book called Natural Capitalism (highly recommended by the way).
The original push to develop the new process was that the chemicals used in the manufacture of the fabric were classed as hazardous waste and it cost the company a ton of money to dispose of them.
After they revised their process their manufacturing costs went down (didn't have to dispose of chemicals), they were able to fetch a premium price for the product, and it opened up the entire market of people with chemical sensitivities that they hadn't been able to sell into before. I believe it also cut down on the number of employee sick days being taken, although that may have been one of the other examples in Natural Capitalism.
Net of it all: more money to their bottom line, lot's of good publicity, and they're doing The Right Thing(tm).
I started with NetFlix when you got four DVDs for $20 instead of three. Blockbuster bothers me a lot and I'm horrible about getting the movies back quickly enough to avoid the late fee. Turnaround time to Texas was fairly slow and the selection (though much better than Blockbuster) wasn't as good as one of the independants here in Dallas.
Then I got a Tivo about 6 months ago... I think I've only watched 2-3 DVDs since then.
The only reasons I haven't cancelled the NetFlix subscription are that:
I put a lot of time into rating movies and the recommendations have gotten pretty good.
If I cancel and decide to join again later (sooner or later I'm going to catch up on all of the old movies/series Tivo is recording for me) I only get three movies out at a time and with the shipping delay to Texas that wouldn't be worth it to me.
By the way, what ever happened to those breakthroughs in solar-cell technology that were going to bring us ultra-low cost energy from the sun?
Bah... humbug... I think I'll just go and burn a few more gallons of dinosaur-extract in my pulsejet:-)
They happened.
I don't know if you've priced solar cells lately, but they cost less than a tenth what they did 10-15 years ago. They're also environmentally cleaner to make then they used to be (there's still plenty of room for improvement).
Another major advance has come from inverters being made more efficient. It's now practical to use solar cells to generate DC power, use an inverter to convert to AC and none of your appliances and electronics will ever be any wiser.
You think grid electricity is so much cheaper because someone else has paid your infrastructure charges. If you look at rural property where the electric company makes you to pay them to run power lines in, solar electricity is cheaper up front for any property more than 1/4 mile from an existing power line (at least where I've priced it). Plus after the initial install it's basically free.
In parts of California last year it even become economically feasible to put in solar cells even if you were already connected to the grid.
If demand doubled or the solar cell manufacturing industry got even a twentieth of the subsidies that oil exploration currently gets, the price of solar cells would go down by another factor of 3-5 making them the economically smart choice damn near anywhere you get 4 hours or more of sunlight a day.
Usually the people making the calls do not work directly for the company the calls are about (timeshare and local services like exterminators or lawn care seem to be the big exceptions).
You can reduce the number of calls you get a bit further if you make it clear that you want to be on both the do-not-call lists (the telemarketing company's and their client's). That way not only don't you get the call from that credit card company again, you also don't get calls from anyone else that hires that telemarketing company.
For bonus fun, try to get a sales rep to tell you the name of the company actually doing the telemarketing. Between client contracts that say they can't tell you, and the number of threats telemarketers receive, they get really nervous when you start asking.
Let's not forget that it's not a one way transfer from the United States to everyone else. According to the book "Skunkworks", US stealth technology is the direct result of a scientific paper published by a Russian in the late 1970's.
The story as told in the book is that a Russian published a paper on mathmatically modeling radar profiles for a three dimensional objects and a US engineer (who made it a specific point to read foreign scientific papers) realized that we had the compute power to use those models to calculate a minimal radar profile from any angle.
An interesting bit of trivia: stealth fighters are angular not becuase that's the best design, but because the computers the designers had at the time couldn't do the math for surfaces with continuously varying tangents. By the time the stealth bomber was designed the computers had improved enough to go with lower profile curved surfaces.
this book appears to have been ghostwritten by Ralph Nader. From what i'm reading the whole thing seems to be a sheep in wolve's clothing (i.e. - just the same old fruit cake, just rewrapped and sent back to the same people).
The ideas we're seeing here aren't really new (when taken as a whole). Love your environment and all will be well. The problem is that this has nothing to do with capitalism.
The best thing I can say is RTFM! Either grab a copy of this book (or it's predecessor Factor Four) and actually read what it has to say. Not trying to provoke a flame war here, but the post above is FUD pure and simple.
The books are about as far from a rehash of Nader or the cynical love-in described above as one can get. The whole premise of the group at RMI seems to be that for years the government has waved a stick and made empty threats to companies that harm the environment. Now RMI has come along and offered nice juicy carrots in their descriptions of short term benefits that any group of stockholders would have to love. By the way, while you're increasing your profits by 30% this year, you're also saving the planet.
As an example of how hard-headed and practical some of their advice is, here's a paraphrase from one of RMI's consumer oriented books on saving energy in your own home. "First, climb into your attic and plug any hole large enough for a cat to crawl through." A surprising number of the things they point out in Natural Capitalism seem just as obvious once you've read them.
Probably the best thing about the book though is that because it's written in terms of "here are a bunch of things you can do to increase your profits that, as a side effect, save the planet" the right people are reading it. I've personally got extra copies on order now that I'm planning on passing out to our corporate officers. If a few more of you did the same thing at your companies, I bet you'd be surprised at how happy management is to read the book.
If you're going to grab a copy, check out Hamilton Books. The hardcover edition has just been remaindered and they have it available for $7.95 (about half what amazon wants for it).
How is it that we can use this to our(Lars, artists, and consumers all) advantage? Is there a way to *work* with the artists, like Lars, rather than against them?
I obviously can't speak for Lars, but here's how I think he'd answer that question based on an interview with him that I saw a week ago.
In the interview Lars was equating Napster with the labels. From his point of view there is no difference -- both are making money by ripping off the artist. Actually, from his point of view Napster is worse than the labels because at least the labels put up money to get the band started.
Even in the current Slashdot interview he called out what he sees as the four players: artist, label, retailer and consumer. If you create a commercial service that makes money by taking a fee when the artist's music is made available to the consumer, then all you've really managed to do is combine the label and the retailer under a different name. Every incentive the service has points to increasing the price of the download without giving any more money to the band until people stop downloading the music or the band refuses to sign with them. That's how we got $16 CDs and labels getting rich off of bands.
One possibility might be to allow any site that wishes to distribute your music so that there is competition (in which case you've somehow got to figure out a way to collect from all the sites that distribute your music without paying you).
Another option might be for a non-profit portal set up by a group of artists that takes only enough of a cut for infrastructure that uses a micropayment approach to charging the fans a very small amount to download the song, making it not worth their time to rip the CD and pirate the music in the first place.
Lars talks about CD prices being set by the free market, and that if the price gets too high people can push back. In my opinion, that's exactly what's happening. The push-back in this case is to go around the system.
Here's some paranoia for you that came from a lunch table conversation when I was working for a company with both Defense contracts and a consumer electronics (mostly components) business.
Distributed processing/cracking requires a processor to run on and a means to get results back and forth from the cordinating agency.
We know that special purpose electronics can be produced and that the more you build the cheaper they get. Single purpose chips can be quite small (and who says they have to take up an entire chip). Since most of the cost comes from the design phase, once the design was done the "feature" could be embedded in new chips at little or no cost.
Some (most?) electronics companyies both contract with the DoD and sell consumer chipsets.
The government often uses it's muscle to force companies to implement it's policies if the company wants to continue selling to the government (anyone remember Clipper?)
Consumer electronics makers often contract out the building of entire subsystems of their products to companies with the facilities to build their boards. Almost every major component manufacturer is represented by at least some small part in an electronic device of any complexity.
Televisions are electronic devices of some complexity.
Televisions (a large percentage of them anyway) are connected to each other via a national cable network. Recently, the data moving capabilities of the cable network are even being capitalized on by the commercial sector.
It wouldn't surprise me too much if everytime a TV show about consumer privacy airs, folks at the NSA or some other agency laugh themselves senseless at the number of private keys attacked while people are watching the show.
Slashdot Mirror
In the end, it cost less and created a new market for the company. The same example is used in a book called Natural Capitalism (highly recommended by the way).
The original push to develop the new process was that the chemicals used in the manufacture of the fabric were classed as hazardous waste and it cost the company a ton of money to dispose of them.
After they revised their process their manufacturing costs went down (didn't have to dispose of chemicals), they were able to fetch a premium price for the product, and it opened up the entire market of people with chemical sensitivities that they hadn't been able to sell into before. I believe it also cut down on the number of employee sick days being taken, although that may have been one of the other examples in Natural Capitalism.
Net of it all: more money to their bottom line, lot's of good publicity, and they're doing The Right Thing(tm).
Then I got a Tivo about 6 months ago... I think I've only watched 2-3 DVDs since then.
The only reasons I haven't cancelled the NetFlix subscription are that:
By the way, what ever happened to those breakthroughs in solar-cell technology that were going to bring us ultra-low cost energy from the sun?
:-)
Bah... humbug... I think I'll just go and burn a few more gallons of dinosaur-extract in my pulsejet
They happened.
I don't know if you've priced solar cells lately, but they cost less than a tenth what they did 10-15 years ago. They're also environmentally cleaner to make then they used to be (there's still plenty of room for improvement).
Another major advance has come from inverters being made more efficient. It's now practical to use solar cells to generate DC power, use an inverter to convert to AC and none of your appliances and electronics will ever be any wiser.
You think grid electricity is so much cheaper because someone else has paid your infrastructure charges. If you look at rural property where the electric company makes you to pay them to run power lines in, solar electricity is cheaper up front for any property more than 1/4 mile from an existing power line (at least where I've priced it). Plus after the initial install it's basically free.
In parts of California last year it even become economically feasible to put in solar cells even if you were already connected to the grid.
If demand doubled or the solar cell manufacturing industry got even a twentieth of the subsidies that oil exploration currently gets, the price of solar cells would go down by another factor of 3-5 making them the economically smart choice damn near anywhere you get 4 hours or more of sunlight a day.
Now, where can I get one of those pulsejets??
Usually the people making the calls do not work directly for the company the calls are about (timeshare and local services like exterminators or lawn care seem to be the big exceptions).
You can reduce the number of calls you get a bit further if you make it clear that you want to be on both the do-not-call lists (the telemarketing company's and their client's). That way not only don't you get the call from that credit card company again, you also don't get calls from anyone else that hires that telemarketing company.
For bonus fun, try to get a sales rep to tell you the name of the company actually doing the telemarketing. Between client contracts that say they can't tell you, and the number of threats telemarketers receive, they get really nervous when you start asking.
Let's not forget that it's not a one way transfer from the United States to everyone else. According to the book "Skunkworks", US stealth technology is the direct result of a scientific paper published by a Russian in the late 1970's.
The story as told in the book is that a Russian published a paper on mathmatically modeling radar profiles for a three dimensional objects and a US engineer (who made it a specific point to read foreign scientific papers) realized that we had the compute power to use those models to calculate a minimal radar profile from any angle.
An interesting bit of trivia: stealth fighters are angular not becuase that's the best design, but because the computers the designers had at the time couldn't do the math for surfaces with continuously varying tangents. By the time the stealth bomber was designed the computers had improved enough to go with lower profile curved surfaces.
this book appears to have been ghostwritten by Ralph Nader. From what i'm reading the whole thing seems to be a sheep in wolve's clothing (i.e. - just the same old fruit cake, just rewrapped and sent back to the same people).
The ideas we're seeing here aren't really new (when taken as a whole). Love your environment and all will be well. The problem is that this has nothing to do with capitalism.
The best thing I can say is RTFM! Either grab a copy of this book (or it's predecessor Factor Four) and actually read what it has to say. Not trying to provoke a flame war here, but the post above is FUD pure and simple.
The books are about as far from a rehash of Nader or the cynical love-in described above as one can get. The whole premise of the group at RMI seems to be that for years the government has waved a stick and made empty threats to companies that harm the environment. Now RMI has come along and offered nice juicy carrots in their descriptions of short term benefits that any group of stockholders would have to love. By the way, while you're increasing your profits by 30% this year, you're also saving the planet.
As an example of how hard-headed and practical some of their advice is, here's a paraphrase from one of RMI's consumer oriented books on saving energy in your own home. "First, climb into your attic and plug any hole large enough for a cat to crawl through." A surprising number of the things they point out in Natural Capitalism seem just as obvious once you've read them.
Probably the best thing about the book though is that because it's written in terms of "here are a bunch of things you can do to increase your profits that, as a side effect, save the planet" the right people are reading it. I've personally got extra copies on order now that I'm planning on passing out to our corporate officers. If a few more of you did the same thing at your companies, I bet you'd be surprised at how happy management is to read the book.
If you're going to grab a copy, check out Hamilton Books. The hardcover edition has just been remaindered and they have it available for $7.95 (about half what amazon wants for it).
How is it that we can use this to our(Lars, artists, and consumers all) advantage? Is there a way to *work* with the artists, like Lars, rather than against them?
I obviously can't speak for Lars, but here's how I think he'd answer that question based on an interview with him that I saw a week ago.
In the interview Lars was equating Napster with the labels. From his point of view there is no difference -- both are making money by ripping off the artist. Actually, from his point of view Napster is worse than the labels because at least the labels put up money to get the band started.
Even in the current Slashdot interview he called out what he sees as the four players: artist, label, retailer and consumer. If you create a commercial service that makes money by taking a fee when the artist's music is made available to the consumer, then all you've really managed to do is combine the label and the retailer under a different name. Every incentive the service has points to increasing the price of the download without giving any more money to the band until people stop downloading the music or the band refuses to sign with them. That's how we got $16 CDs and labels getting rich off of bands.
One possibility might be to allow any site that wishes to distribute your music so that there is competition (in which case you've somehow got to figure out a way to collect from all the sites that distribute your music without paying you).
Another option might be for a non-profit portal set up by a group of artists that takes only enough of a cut for infrastructure that uses a micropayment approach to charging the fans a very small amount to download the song, making it not worth their time to rip the CD and pirate the music in the first place.
Lars talks about CD prices being set by the free market, and that if the price gets too high people can push back. In my opinion, that's exactly what's happening. The push-back in this case is to go around the system.
It wouldn't surprise me too much if everytime a TV show about consumer privacy airs, folks at the NSA or some other agency laugh themselves senseless at the number of private keys attacked while people are watching the show.