November 4, 2009

now everyone’s a madman

Posted by Andrew under rhetoric, society | Tags: , , |
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Worth keeping tabs on this one – New York, via its next gubernatorial candidate, Andrew Cuomo, filed an antitrust action against Intel.  From NY Times:

The lawsuit charges that Intel violated state and federal laws by abusing its dominant position in the chip market to keep its main rival, Advanced Micro Devices, at bay. Intel has faced similar lawsuits in Asia and Europe, and in May the European Commission fined the company a record $1.45 billion for antitrust violations.

These cases have largely revolved around deals Intel had struck with computer makers and retailers that, regulators said, pressured them into picking the company’s microprocessors — which serve as the central chip inside personal computers and servers — instead of competing products from A.M.D.

Speaking of Intel, am I alone in finding their latest ad campaign pompous?  The USB’s co-inventor walks into a room to wild adoration: “Your rock stars aren’t like our rock stars.”  A guy makes – a + and giggles: “Your jokes aren’t like our jokes.”  And then, a bunch of efficient hummers alertly offer the Intel jingle.

Compare the theme to several other recent ad campaigns.  Bank of America shows a bunch of folks (an attempt at a sort-of visual quilt of American workers) walking forward to suggest that we, collectively, are moving past the financial pits.  Mac-guy is supposed to represent everyman – or, hip everyman – excluding only the red staple holders of America.  PC (Microsoft) celebrates over-achievers and they are a bit neo-geeky, but the commercials includes the audience as a potential member of the “I’m a PC (and saving the world with smart-_____ )” club.

So Intel took a new turn with such explicit elitism.  It makes some sense – we want elite technicians making our microchips.  But, the ads leave a sour note.  They are almost funny, and could have kept the same theme.  I think their failure is the Our ___ are not like your ___.   That’s just off-putting and mean.

 

March 1, 2008

Let the Market Determine?

Posted by Andrew under market | Tags: |
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Seems a long time since we’ve debated the notion of the market on here…and even when we did, the ‘market’ debate was probably indirectly related to some other issue. If memory serves, the issue tends to be whether government imperatives or the market should dictate certain trends (like environmental regulation, say). The market, and for whatever reason it tended to be the GOPers in the room arguing this, is the great thing on which we ought to rely…to set policy, show what people will and won’t accept, and so on. Should we require reduced air emissions? ban smoking in public restaurants? mandate health care? Opponents of government intervention generally cite the market as a better policy setter than agency staff.

Oddly enough, this morning the whole whether-or-not-the-market-adequately-reflects-reality debate came back to me, after all these years, while reading a slate article on the blu-ray vs hd-dvd war. I am re-convinced that theories relying on the market are rubbish!

This passage sums up why:

Even worse, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and BusinessWeek reported that Sony, perhaps having learned its lesson from the Betamax debacle, paid Warner Bros. between $400 million and $500 million to go with Blu-ray. Sony hadn’t won because it offered the HD-buying public any other tangible advantage. It took down Toshiba because it knew whom to pay off.

Reckon I’ll have to dig up the actual discussions we’ve had that go back to market theory. Or maybe I’ll just read up on my Posner. In any event – the point here is that the market is hardly, in reality, a place of rational decision-making. Indeed, that’s pretty much agreed upon all around…moreover, though, examples like the above point to the bigger problem of market-reliance: the market is rigged. It’s a false display.

 

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