Coyote Blog

George's Employment Blawg has a nice roundup of what folks might expect in the way of changing labor law and employment regulation from a second Bush term.  As I posted below, I do think that the Bush administration has a pent-up backlog of domestic policy that it wants to tackle.

One of the less remarked on casualties of 9/11 and the war on terror is any progress on a number of issues that GWB looked like he might tackle (e.g. social security and tort reform).    While the war is far from over, and I have had mixed feelings about some part of it (e.g. here), the infrastructure seems to be in place to fight the war while also tackling some new domestic issues.

Jane Galt, over at Asymmetrical Information, has a nice post about new momentum in the Bush administration to tackle social security.  It is unlikely that Bush could draw any more hatred than he already has, so he might be the right person to finally grab the third rail.

UPDATE #1

Marginal Revolution tackles social security and links to other good sources.

For a variety of reasons, my wife and I, who usually get along swimmingly, get into fights when I am trying to help her with the computer.  She has never developed a high comfort level with computers, while I have been using them since I was about 15, programming assembly language on S-100 bus CP/M computers (and yes, I have used punch cards too -- I am just old enough to have had that experience).

I realized today what the problem is.  She called me on my cell, trying to elicit from me the set of commands to do something-or-other in Word.  I kept saying I don't know and she got mad at me because she knew I had done it before, and she thought I was just blowing her off.

In truth, the difference is in how we have both learned to use the computer, and maybe even a fundamental difference in how each of us learns anything.  My wife is a memorizer and note taker.  If I explain to her how to, say, embed an image in a word document, she will carefully write down each step in a notebook she has.  She will never ask me again or falter at the task of adding an image to Word, because she now has either memorized how to do it, or she can look in up in The Book.

I, on the other hand, am nearly incapable of memorizing anything, and the sum total of the notes I took in college probably would not fill a single spiral notebook.  In fact, I suspect I switched from chemical engineering to mechanical engineering in college because, at least at my University, chemical engineering had a ton of memorization (can you say, Isomer?) while mechanical engineering was all about open book problem solving.

When I sit down to a computer, I just sort of figure things out.  When I had my old S-100 bus computer, that was essential, because there was no manual.  Today, its just how I am.  The disadvantage is that every time I insert a graphic in Word, I may have to fiddle around in the menus to figure out, for the 100th time, how to do it.  The advantage is that, if I am suddenly required to insert a spreadsheet rather than a graphic, I am not thrown for a loop - I just follow my usual process of poking around through the menus.

So, I have explained to my wife that to help her, I need to be at the computer.  Once I figure out how to do something, she can then document it in The Book. 

I have had friends who work like me try to insist that my approach is better than my wife's.  I don't think it is - just different.  Take driving directions.  I have no problem trying to find someplace I don't have clear directions for, because I have a good sense of direction and can usually get there by visual reckoning.  As a result, though, I sometimes cannot give street names to get to places I have been as many as 10 or 20 times.  Since I navigate visually and by real-time reckoning, any knowledge I have gained in my successful exploration is very difficult to pass on, just like I have difficulty passing on my computer knowledge.  If the world was all like me, technological society would end after this generation, because no one could pass our knowledge on.

In fact, as I write this, I am getting an epiphany about myself and why I did not do so well as a consultant at McKinsey & Co. (the reader is welcome to stop at this point, because what follows will likely be real-time self analysis rather than of general interest).  I was very very good at analysis, and quickly getting to a sort of 70% confidence level as to conclusions, and then I would hit a wall.  I had little tolerance for continuing to build evidence and analysis and the perfect polished presentation once I thought I "got it", and I had absolutely no tolerance for sitting down and writing a white paper or other published article about our experiences.  This profile probably makes me perfect for running my own business - I wish I had figured it out about 10 years earlier.

This series explained here. We get many of our featured products here.  You can find all of our past featured products here.

Today's featured product is an ACME classic.  Not necessarily high tech or sexy, but one in which ACME has a tremendous world market share.  No self respecting cartoon character would drop any other brand anvil but ACME!

Note that this is the newest in my series of "real-world" small business issues.  Other posts in this series include Buying a Small Business and Working with the Department of Labor

One of the things I did not mention in my series on buying a small business was the notion of complexity.  Our business manages over 175 sites with 500 seasonal employees in 10 states.  I have friends who own businesses that have the same sales, and more profit, from working alone from their home.  As I often tell people, I love what I do, working in recreation and spending most of my time in National and State Parks, but it is overly complex for the money we make.

The one advantage of this is that, despite being a small business, I get to observe business practices in many parts of the country.  And one business-related practice that varies tremendously from state to state is sales taxes.  (By the way, before I bought this business, I was a strong Federalist.  Putting most regulatory power in the states slows government encroachment.  It also limits anti-business regulation, because states know that such unilateral regulation will just chase employment across state lines, as California has found out.  However, having to deal with 10 different tax and regulatory regimes every day is causing me to revisit Federalism a bit).

Anyway, based on this experience, I will dedicate the rest of this post to my observations of the good and bad of state sales tax systems.

Continue reading ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of State Sales Tax Systems’ »

Some of the "official" biographies of Arafat in the media are starting to make me sick.  Arafat was not a slightly flawed statesman and freedom-fighter.  Arafat was a leading terrorist who has squandered the Palestinians chances to get a real homeland for themselves.  When given the chance at statehood, he was unwilling and unable to create any sort of rule of law, and quickly demonstrated that he was really seeking violence and chaos, not stability and happiness, for his people.  You can find "alternate" obituaries here and here.

Coyote's Law states:

When the same set of facts can be explained equally well by

1. A massive conspiracy coodinated without a single leak between hundreds or even thousands of people    -OR -
2. Sustained stupidity, confusion and/or incompetance

Assume stupidity.

Protein Wisdom links to this report Caltec/MIT report debunking a lot of the recent voter fraud accusations.  Here is the money quote that is a dead-on reformulation of Coyote's Law:

Well, I don't want to write off legitimate questions about the integrity of the voting system. But turn the question around: Which is more likely -- that an exit polling system that has been consistently wrong and troubled turned out to be wrong and troubled again, or that a vast conspiracy carried out by scores and scores of county and state election officials was successfully carried off to distort millions of American votes?

Marginal Revolution cites a James Surowiecki article on branding, arguing that increased information flow, particularly over the Internet, is reducing the power of brands.  This seems right to me.  Brands exist and command premiums for many reasons.  One role of brands is that they serve to reduce risk - without any other information about a product, many people would likely assume an electronics product from Sony to be more trustworthy than a no-name brand with the same features, and might be willing to pay a premium for the Sony product. However, with all the review information on the Internet, people may be more comfortable buying the off-brand, if it has good reviews, and saving the Sony premium.

Of course, brands serve some communication roles that are likely not threatened by the Internet.  For example, high end brands like Prada or Gucci have power because they allow the owner to communicate things about themselves to others.

I would argue that, even with Internet reviews, brands will continue to be powerful in the service sector.  In fact, with the growing complexity of some service offerings and the increasingly high standards of consumers, they may be more important.  Why?  Consistent product quality is much easier than consistent service quality.  A no-name product maker can get high quality product all over the world from one single factory -- all they have to do is to get that one location right.  This is much easier to do than with McDonalds, where there are thousands of locations, or even in our business, where we have hundreds of locations.  Service quality happens in real time, often in many dispersed locations miles away from supervision and the management staff. 

Also, in many cases, service failures are more critical and are harder to correct than product failures.  If my printer does not work, I get mad and box it up and return it for a new one.  But what happens if FedEx fails me on a critical shipment?  Or worse, what if United Airlines fails on me mid-flight? 

An interesting way to prove this is to go to a site like epinions.  Service reviews are generally much more variable than product reviews.  Compare Fedex, who's review is a mix of the lowest and highest scores, with this Apple Ipod, where reviews are much more consistent.  Even when products get a mix of low and high scores, often the low scores are driven by service and support and not the product itself.  In positioning their brand today, does Dell emphasize the product or their service around the product?

A while back, I wrote here with a wrap-up of what I believed about Global Warming and the Kyoto Treaty.  My point of view is that the earth is probably warming, but not nearly as fast as doomsayers predict; that the certainty the major media puts forth on global warming bears no resemblance to the messy, chaotic nature of climate and climate research; and that Kyoto is a bad treaty aimed at screwing the US, and that the costs don't outweigh the (marginal) benefits of its adoption.

Reason has a nice roundup of some new evidence pertaining to climate, that helps confirm at least the first 2 of my 3 hypotheses above.  About half the evidence points to warming and about half refutes rapid warming.  It would be interesting to do a media search to see which of these made the papers, but I think you can probably guess.

One of the government habits that consistently irritate me is the public funding of stadiums.  Never has so much public money been transferred for so little economic benefit to so many billionaires who don't need it.  For example, Seattle ponied up hundreds of millions of dollars for a stadium for Paul Allen, one of the five richest people in the world (and who probably has spent more than the cost of the stadium searching for aliens). 

Credit the owners of sports teams, I guess, for they have learned to use gun-to-the-head threats of moving the team out of town to get local taxpayers to vote them new stadiums.  I mean, for god sakes, we are building a stadium here in Arizona for the hapless Cardinals (and here is our new Glendale Arena, constructed by taxpayers just in time for the NHL strike - but we get roller derby!) Some thoughts:

• Public funding is totally unnecessary.  Many private owners have built their own stadiums, either through private capital or Personal Seat Licenses.  In fact, with naming rights and luxury boxes, there are more revenue streams than ever to pay for these stadiums.
• Its all about blackmail. If the mayors of the 50 largest cities in the country got together tomorrow and made a no-public-stadium funding pledge, then owners would be forced to build their own stadiums.  Congrats to Los Angeles for resisting the the NFL's outstretched hand.  What the owners have created is a classic prisoners dilemma for the cities (see update#1 below)
• Sports teams bring little net economic benefit.  No disinterested economist has found any justification for the premise that they improve the local economy - instead, they just shift benefit around.
• Teams take better care of stadiums they actually own.  Private stadiums are steadily improved, year-in and year-out.  Public stadiums (I am thinking of Veterans Stadium and the Astrodome in particular) are used up and thrown away.
• Teams always underestimate the tax burden of the stadium and the implied subsidy.  Often you see them arguing that the stadium will be funded only out of the revenues from the stadium itself -- well if that's the case, then why does the public need to be involved at all?

Here is a Cato paper debunking the economics of the proposed new DC baseball stadium.  Matt Welch has a great article on this topic in Reason here.  Hit and Run has an update today on the Angels' jacking both Anaheim and Tempe at the same time.  Makes Me Ralph (lol) has a series of posts here, just keep scrolling.  For even more, see the website Field of Schemes and the related book Field of Schemes : How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money into Private Profit.

UPDATE#1

Marginal Revolution makes the counter-case for public funding, citing a study by two economists who try to put a value on the intangibles of having a team in town.

I have to disagree for three reasons:

• I am against taxing for such value.  If everyone finds value, find a free-market approach to get the same thing.  Have a telethon or something.  And by the way, this value is fleeting and much more limited than owners let on.  One good example - has anyone south of Chicago noticed that the NHL season has not started?
• This is a very slippery slope argument.  How many times have you heard politicians say something like "Everyone I know would pay a dollar a week to get this, its not that much".  Yeah, it sounds great, but a dollar a week per person in the US gets us a new $15 billion a year program or tax. 
• Most importantly, though, is that private enterprises don't NEED the public funding to make stadiums work.  If the product works, like the NFL, they don't need public funding.  And if the product isn't working, like the NHL, then no amount of public funding, like our new arena here, will save it.  Team owners get public funding only because they can, not because they have to.  And they can because of the threat of moving the team out of town.  This is a classic prisoner's dilemma.  If all major cities collude and refuse to fund public stadiums (like the two prisoners agreeing not to cooperate with police) then everyone except the owners is better off, because the NFL will still exist but without public subsidies. 

UPDATE #2

A nice post with lots of good links from Houston's Clear Thinkers.  A nice blog based in my old hometown and birthplace.

Just finished up preparing our sales tax returns for October.  We file in 9 states (Oregon does not have a sales tax) and about 5 municipalities or counties.  Being located outside of cities cuts down on the number of separate returns we have to file, but being in the lodging business adds returns (there are a lot of local lodging taxes out there).  NONE of these taxes work the same, and every return is unique.

I am working on a longer post with some observations about sales taxes, the states that have it right and the states that are over-complicated messes.  However, in the mean time, one observation.  Most states offer an online filing option.  If every state had a nice online tool, or better yet, a tool I could upload data to right out of Excel, I would love it.  This is a true win-win, with the business owner saving time and the state saving LOTS of time by not having to re-key handwritten returns.

However, several states currently have awful, totally non-intuitive online filing systems, or systems that are down all the time, or systems that make correcting errors a real pain in the butt, or all three.  The problem is, in most states, there is no way to try before you switch.  Many states play a kind of brinkmanship, requiring that if you file even once online, you can never go back to paper.  I did this with one state and the online tool really sucked, and now I am stuck  using it, despite the fact that their paper return is easier to use.

So, as a result of this nutty requirement, despite being totally committed to doing things online, I sit here filing paper returns, too risk-adverse to play Russian Roulette with various states' online filing systems.

This week's Carnival of the Vanities is up at Lets Try Freedom.  Look who's right up top!

OK, the 1993 movie Demolition Man was not that great of a movie, though Wesley Snipes was pretty cool and Stallone was a lot less stiff than usual.  And the shell gag was pretty funny.  The highlight, however, was the debut (I think) of Sandra Bullock in a major picture.

For a number of years, Stallone and Governor Arnold, the two major action movie stars of the time, traded barbs with each other in their flicks.  For example, in the 1993's Last Action Hero, Arnold makes a joke about Stallone in a video rental store.  In 1994's True Lies (an awesome movie) Jamie Lee Curtis, Arnold's movie wife, says "I married Rambo". 

In Demolition Man, it was Stallone's turn.  Driving through future-era LA, Stallone is trying to adjust to waking up in the future after being frozen for a fifty years or so.  He has this conversation after seeing a large building out his window:

Stallone: "Hold it! The Schwarzenegger Library?"
Bullock: "Yes, the Schwarzenegger Presidential Library. Wasn't he an actor?"
Stallone: "Stop! He was President?"
Bullock: "Yes. Even though he was not born in this country, his popularity at the time caused the 61st Amendment"¦"

After which Stallone looks like he is going to puke.  At the time, in 1993, this was a ridiculous joke, the stupidest thing you could imagine.  Now, ?

PS, how did I ever leave True Lies off this list?  Gotta add it.

Previously, I explained why I like Football Outsiders here. Their week 9 statistical rankings of teams is here.

Miami still can't nail down that bottom spot. San Francisco and the Raiders both have fallen below the Fish (so much for Bay Area football). Miami has the worst offense in the league by a HUGE margin, but its defense keeps it off the bottom, as it probably should:  A good defense will win you a few games, no matter how bad the offense is.  My Arizona Cardinals continue to fall, down to their rightful place in the bottom quartile, despite having a pretty good defense. At the top, Pittsburgh, New England and Philly are threatening to run away and hide, which just goes to show that every once in a while, BCS notwithstanding, computers and common sense can converge.

OK, I could not ultimately resist the need for a red/blue map on my site.  This map is county by county, and shows bright red or blue in counties Bush and Kerry won over 70% of the vote.  Counties with votes in between are shades of blue-purple to red-purple.  Courtesy of Michael Gastner, Cosma Shalizi, and Mark Newman, University of Michigan

Click for Larger Image

Our business is seasonal, meaning that most of the facilities we run are open from about mid-April to mid-September.  Our employees are hired in the spring and then laid off in the early fall.

The unemployment bill is a killer.  Everyone we lay off in the fall, whether they intend to work in the winter or not, files for unemployment.  Like any insurance, your premiums are based on your actual claims, and as a result our unemployment insurance rates are sky-high. 

A few or our employees are actively looking for winter work, and I am OK with their claiming unemployment.  However, the vast vast majority of our employees work for the summer and vacation all winter, since working for us really just supplements their retirement pay.  I know for a fact that some of those who have claimed unemployment in the past weeks are in Mexico on vacation or on the Colorado River or wherever.

Unemployment agencies are NOT doing their job.  By law, in most states, they are not supposed to pay unemployment to people unless they are actively looking for work.  Heck, most of our employees, during the winter, are not even in the state that is paying them unemployment - they are down south or even out of the country vacationing.  However, I have not found a state agency yet that has any interest in dealing with this fraud.

One of my favorite blogs, Marginal Revolution, pointed to a digital beauty contest here.  The imagery is pretty amazing - this, for example, can hardly be discerned from a photo of a real person.

This imagery reminded me of the old Turing test.  I don't hear much about Turing tests nowadays, which is odd, because we are so close to having systems that will pass it.  (Jerry Pournelle, in the old Chaos Manner columns in Byte, use to write a lot about Turing tests).    In a Turing test, a person is connected in some blind manner to another entity, and they have to determine if it is a machine or a live human.  Having a computer pass a Turing test means that a human, in interacting with it blindly, could not discern that it was not another human.  In the same way, one could propose a Turing test for digital imagery like the one above, ie is it Live or is it Memorex?

By the way, no one asked me, but in my mind the reigning beauty queen of digital imagery is still Aki from the otherwise forgettable computer-animated movie Final Fantasy. 

I try not to impose too much of my personal life on this blog, but I couldn't resist showing off our weekend project.

This is my 10-year-old son's recent science project.  They are required to do a report on a subject (in this case, he chose the biology and physics of hitting a home run) and supplement the report with a model that has to be entirely edible - i.e. all made out of food (Seriously - what sadistic maniac thinks up this stuff?).  He and I worked most of Sunday on this, while mom laughed her butt off watching.  He presents tomorrow, and then the class eats it (who wants to bet that they will fight over eating the eye?)

(Click for larger image)

Anyway, this thing includes cookie bones (we used foil for molds for the bones and bat) licorice muscles, gummi worm brains and nerves, cake baseball, chocolate bat, and fondant hand and eye (with almond nails).  Thank God for fondant - usually a smooth finish layer for cakes, it basically acts like edible clay.

Move over Martha, coyote is here!

For several years, I worked for a major supplier to the commercial airline industry.  Eventually, I had to leave, because the entire industry just drove me nuts - some of the worst structural problems in any industry I have seen combined with an incredible unwillingness to do anything about them.  Marginal Revolution reminds me about the airline industry with this post.

Through the 1990s, the average weight of Americans increased by 10 pounds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The extra weight caused airlines to spend $275 million to burn 350 million more gallons of fuel in 2000 just to carry the additional weight of Americans, the federal agency estimated in a recent issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine (fee req'd).

As entertaining as this is, the industry is still totally unwilling to address the real problems in the industry.

Continue reading ‘Airline Industry and Inventory Pooling’ »

America experienced no major terrorist attack on its soil in the run-up to the election.  This can't be for lack of trying.  If the terrorists bombed Spain, at best a peripheral country in the war on terror, to influence its election, you know that they would have loved to have bombed the Great Satan.  But they didn't.  All we got was a VHS valentine from Osama.

Thank you to the US Military, to the administration, to the department of homeland security, to the FAA, to the Phoenix Police, to the FBI, to the CIA, and to everyone else who made this non-event possible.  And, thank you to all the citizens of the US, who, whatever issues they might have with those in power, would never harbor a terrorist.  This sounds like an obvious statement, but its not.  It is in fact our best defense against terrorism.  Europe is much more vulnerable, because it has communities and groups and various cities who ARE willing to aid and abet terrorists.

First, I will say there are no books out there about what business is really like, probably because reality can be pretty grim -- I don't think that people would be hanging on the edge of their seat reading about a manager arguing with the Department of Labor about a fine for his minimum wage poster not being in the right location.  Maybe if Dave Berry wrote it.

Anyway, most fiction that involves a business is either about some rapacious capitalist who is stealing or killing or destroying the environment or whatever or it is a sort of Machiavellian opera ala Dallas or Dynasty. Few actually portray a business leader as a hero.

For business people that are heroic and multi-dimensional, and exempting Atlas Shrugged as in a class by itself, I recommend James Clavell's Noble House.  This zillion page book covers but 8 days of time in early 1960's Hong Kong, but is epic none-the-less.  I just finished reading it a second time and I enjoyed it even more than the first time.

Readers may or may not know that our company runs campgrounds, mostly on public lands.  I must say, though, despite running hundreds of campgrounds, I have never seen this.  It just looks....wrong.

More here on Gizmodo, one of my favorite sites. If you are not reading Gizmodo, particularly if you have a Y chromosome, you should be.

This series explained, and other past featured products, here. We get many of our featured products here.

This week's product was purchased by the Bush administration, soon to be used in Fallujah:

Two election-related Princess Bride posts in one day.

From Vodkapundit - "Incomceiveable"

From Asymmetrical Infromation - "Iocane powder"

I think the Princess Bride is one of the 10 most quotable movies of all time, at least for guys (Caddyshack being #1).  So here is my Princess Bride reference for the election:

Rove (election night, 7PM EST): I admit it, Kerry is leading us in the exit polls
McAuliff: Then why are you smiling?
Rove:  Because I know something you don't know.
McAuliff: And what is that?
Rove: I... am not left-handed.

UPDATE

Jane Galt & Co. have their servers down at Asymmetrical Information.  Here's hoping they are back soon.

This is a pretty good list of the 50 best "guy" films of all time.

Films I would add:

• Where Eagles Dare
• Kelley's Heroes
• Deliverance
• Patton

UPDATE

And True Lies, how could I leave that off?  Also, I might tend to add Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  Not a classic guy movie in the action sense, but there are sure dang few women who seem to get into it like guys do.  Nee.