Tag: markets

Freecycle

“It just has completely floored me, the generosity of people. Especially in West Virginia because West Virginia is considered one of the poorest states in the nation. But people are very generous. It’s amazing.” Freecycle is a global recycling phenomenon. Since it started in Arizona in May 2003, it has grown to more than 4m members in 4100 cities, from Istanbul to Inwood. It boasts of keeping 300m tons of trash out of landfills every day and has inspired imitators.

freecycle would be a lot better if they didn’t use paleotech like mailing list.

Broken Business Models

I won’t go into it again in detail (see here and here) but it strikes me that instead of vainly trying to preserve an outdated business model by desperately looking to slap taxes and rents on anything that moves, artists and their agents should be looking to embrace the long proven and manifest advantages of robust, liquid and transparent markets to reduce their risks and refine their pricing.

too funny. sean makes up a nice example to expose the usual lunacy of the dying music industry.

Lead Theft

In addition to the abbey, 2 other local churches have experienced their roofs being stripped, including 1 she had just visited: “On Sunday, we were sitting in service and the vicar said, ‘Look up,’ and we could see the sky.” The rooftop thefts, which have reached epidemic proportions, with more than 1000 churches hit this year, are a function of the cost of lead. It has jumped from $450 a ton 5 years ago to $3200 this year.

why not intercept some shipping containers with chinese toys instead?

Skeleton Black Market

Investigative journalist Scott Carney has been working for the last half a year or so on a story about grave robbers in Calcutta who steal skeletons and sell them to medical supply companies in the US and Europe. “To research the story I combed the state of West Bengal and saw huge piles of police-confiscated bones. I even spoke to some of the people who deflesh human bodies for a living.”

makes sense, since we already outsource many of our medical studies to india as well. medicine will be increasingly catering to indian people i suppose 🙂

Forex Trading Game

eToro lets users practice play, or deposit funds for real money trading. The currencies available to trade are the US Dollar, British Pound, Australian Dollar, the Euro and the Japanese Yen. This is where it gets fun… There are 4 games to choose from: Forex Marathon – You pick the currency you think will go up and have it compete in a foot race against the currencies you think will go down.


very banking 2015

Alibaba

“We are lucky the business was not started in Beijing or Shanghai,” there, it might have evolved to serve the sophisticated multinationals nearby. Instead, it has aimed at the kind of small businesses that cluster around Hangzhou.

2014-05-22: Alibaba has had massive growth

Alibaba’s transactions totaled $248B (more than eBay and Amazon combined)
Alibaba delivers 5B packages a year. UPS delivers 4.3B
Alibaba’s money market fund went from 0 to 4th largest globally, in 10 months