Regarding Mr. X and American Airlines
After catching wind of the controversy from Daring Fireball, I’ve looked at two of the major opinions in this entire American Airlines and Mr. X debacle.
For those who don’t know what happened, a young designer, Dustin Curtis, wrote a sardonic post about the unintuitive nature of American Airlines’ website and created a mock-up for a better version of their site.
Surprisingly, a member of the American Airlines design team (codenamed Mr. X) actually responded, defending AA rather passionately and described the difficulties of trying to implement change when dealing with issues of huge scale and a sprawling bureaucracy.
An hour after Dustin posted the response, Mr. X was fired.
Read more…
Posted on November 6th, 2009
Filed under: Featured, Marketing by James Wang
A March to Irrelevance
Steve Ballmer speaking at CES 2009.
Source:
JD Lasica
“We don’t believe in coming to market like Apple – high margin, high quality, high price. We believe in high volume and low price,” – Steve Ballmer
Most companies spend millions attempting to promote the first and abolish the second.
Even the poster child of bargain-marketing, Walmart, has been struggling for the past few years to move upmarket with in-house “designer” brands and higher end goods. Cutting costs mean cutting margins. It means living lean—and having no brand loyalty.
If you compete on cost, the moment a cheaper competitor comes along, there goes your market.
But on the low end, Microsoft is not going to outcompete Linux on the low end—and if they do, the Microsoft of now is not going to much like the Microsoft it’ll have to become to do so.
That leaves the mid-market. Which is nothing. Read more…
Posted on September 18th, 2009
Filed under: Featured, Marketing, Science & Tech by James Wang
Media Oversaturation
Tickle Me Obama: Lessons from Sesame Street on TIME.com is certainly an eye-catching title—truly an example of good headline writing, even if the content is less than insightful.
Considering how many things are going on in the world, I wouldn’t think that there’s a dearth of news stories, but maybe at least in the case of Obama, we’re running out of things to say.
Technorati Tags: Obama, media
Posted on June 7th, 2009
Filed under: Politics by James Wang
Taking on Titan after Titan in His Address to the Nation
Bank bailout? Auto bailout? Health care reform? Education reform? Ending the Iraq war? Total security review? International diplomatic push?
Is there any major, explosively controversial issue that Obama has not promised to tackle in his “State of the Nation” address? One particularly interesting aspect of Obama’s address is that he does not shirk from criticism at all. He takes the arguments of his strongest critics, calls them out, and rebuts then. This is not what recent American Presidents, especially the last one, have done.
In many ways, it was another fireside chat. It was another “Good Morning, America.” I think the media and blogosphere has described it as both at this point. He was blunt and treated Americans as fellow stakeholders, instead of obstacles to be dealt with.
But many of the points he made were also in his speech at the Fiscal Responsibility Summit that came before this particular speech. My feelings on his chosen set of Titans—and he’s chosen almost every single one—is that Obama is over his head. Read more…
Posted on February 25th, 2009
Filed under: Politics, Society by James Wang
Hoping for Plan Behind the “Stress Test”
I’m really hoping that the Obama Administration’s recently announced “stress test”—where they will simulate Great Depression conditions by computer and see what would happen to each major bank in that scenario—is just an excuse to nationalize the banks.
I’m really hoping that the Obama Administration doesn’t ACTUALLY naively think that despite a wide consensus about the lack of soundness in these banks (and more significantly, the market’s complete lack of faith in them), that these banks will come out of the stress test even close to looking like they’re ready for such conditions. Or even solvent at all.
I’m hoping that since they are expecting it, they should have a plan (which has been curiously absent so far). Read more…
Posted on February 23rd, 2009
Filed under: Economics, Politics by James Wang
Finally, A Rational Voice on Aid Policy
Source: NASA
The New York Times recently did a very interesting interview with a certain Dambisa Moyo on aid policy to Africa. She’s apparently an ex-Goldman Sachs banker who is trying to stop aid from being sent to Africa. The New York Times is calling her the “anti-Bono.”
She makes, in my opinion, a valid point that’s long overdue in getting coverage.
In response to what she feels had held back Africa:
“I believe it’s largely aid. You get the corruption — historically, leaders have stolen the money without penalty — and you get the dependency, which kills entrepreneurship. You also disenfranchise African citizens, because the government is beholden to foreign donors and not accountable to its people.”
Long overdue. Besides the points which she made, there’s also the issue of American and European farm policy (which is inseparably linked to aid policy) impoverishing Africa by wholesale annihilation of its agricultural sector. I wrote about this issue of farm policy in the Dartmouth Free Press (which is where the link goes) and other blogs, though haven’t gotten around to doing so here yet. Don’t worry, though, I intend to give you all an earful on it soon.
Regardless, it’s always rather ironic that so many of the things we do out of “kindness” turn out to be so terribly harmful in reality. The Law of Unintended Consequences, or perhaps of Good Intentions. Economics is sometimes counterintuitive. But sometimes, tough love is really the right thing to do.
I really wish American politicians begin to understand that someday.
Posted on February 22nd, 2009
Filed under: Economics, Politics by James Wang
Rich-World Snobbishness vs. Real-World Poverty
People who know me can tell you that I don’t like Greenpeace.
It isn’t to say that I don’t find their grab-bag of causes important. It’s simply their methods, with the sensationalism, deliberate distortion of scientific facts, and knee-jerk reactionary conservatism (because it certainly isn’t progressive) that annoy me to no end.
However, there is one cause, above all others, that has caused me to personally hate the organization. GMOs, or genetically modified organisms (food in this case). Read more…
Posted on February 2nd, 2009
Filed under: Politics, Science & Tech by James Wang
An Abundance of Lawless Lawmen
“If the Taliban were still here, that rapist would have already been executed by now. It would have been a lesson for all,” she says. “If there is no law, and the government does not listen to people’s complaints, then it is better to go back to the Taliban era. At least then we had justice.”
- An Afghan woman, reported by TIME
One should hope that we have not yet forgotten our campaign for the hearts and minds of the Middle East. And although I hate to simply add to the pile-on of criticism for what is occurring in the military campaign there, overall, what we have seen is a resounding failure.
Afghanistan’s version of the the “Sahwa” or Awakening movements in Iraq, where the indigenous people fight alongside the U.S. against insurgents and terrorists, is the alliance between NATO forces and Afghanistan’s warlords. Unfortunately, instead of respected tribal heads (or, at least, leaders who can pass as that), we have lawless tyrants who were part of the very reason the Taliban gained support from regular Afghans—at least, before the religious movement imposed its own brand of tyranny once in power. Read more…
Posted on December 10th, 2008
Filed under: Politics by James Wang
And why the current planned regulation is almost guaranteed to be dismantled
Although some might argue that the point is moot at this point, it appears that the broader financial analyst/reporter community has suddenly decided to adopt collective amnesia and paint financial regulation as the boogeyman that brought the financial industry to its knees. Of course, this is the same community that happily declared the beginning of a “new era” in investment and stocks during the tech boom (which busted), along with enthusiastically invented reasons why the real estate market could never go down even though it has gone both up and down throughout all of human financial history.
Overall, I suppose it shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise, given that track record and the relative ease that one can blame recent changes in the regulatory framework. Especially given that it comes with a very easily swallowed “us versus them” story of greed, corruption, and all those bad things. However, they’ve been wrong before, and I’m going to relatively confidently say they’re wrong again about the reason for the financial crisis—and why, ultimately, all of this hubbub about regulation, for better or worse, is mostly hot air. Read more…
Posted on October 4th, 2008
Filed under: Economics by James Wang
I apologize for the rather sparse posting at the moment. I’ve been in China for past few weeks (and will be for roughly the next two months) on an exchange program.
For at least the first part of the program, my internet access has been on-and-off, and for at least a period of time, dePolitik was blocked by the Chinese government firewall.
Given the limitations, I’ve decided to try to at least post short segments, if not the long articles I normally do, just to comment on the rapidly developing/devolving situation in the U.S. financial market.
Posted on October 4th, 2008
Filed under: Off-Beat by James Wang
