Tag: markets

Infotopia

new research on GFN, information markets and bias amplification. a lot of it seems applicable to ed’s argumentarium, if it ever leaves the utopia it is at now.

if we can choose our own media, it’s possible we will use this power to insulate ourselves in an information cocoon, where we systematically avoid dissenting voices and have increasingly less common experience with our fellow citizens. Sunstein worries that a society of these isolated individuals will have difficulty participating in a democracy because citizens need a) some exposure to materials they would not have sought out and b) some common experience as a precursor for joint decision making.

Walmart consumer surplus

By exercising its bargaining power, it squeezed profit margins among the major brands, offering them higher volumes in return. It also engaged the most efficient small-scale local producers as suppliers of store brands, thereby creating for itself a residual source of SDS products that could be used in bargaining with the major (multinational) branded suppliers. Those local firms that were not efficient enough to meet Walmex’s terms lost market share, and many failed. At the same time, the limited set of producers that survived grew, and with prodding from Walmex they became more efficient and innovative, adopting innovations first introduced into the market by their multinational competitors. A similar transformation took place among retailers themselves in reaction to the new business practices that Walmex brought to the country. This means an improvement in welfare for Mexican and American consumers, who now have more, and cheaper, soaps to choose from.

Walmart as a schumpeterian force. I love it.

Anshe Chung, SL tycoon

Anshe Chung Studios is a company that emerged from inside a virtual world. Driven by curiosity, our founder Anshe Chung decided to test in early 2004 if working in the economy of Second Life could sustain the real life of a person – a young boy in a developing country. She supported him by selling Linden dollars earned by providing services for other residents. In 2006 Anshe Chung became the first avatar with a net worth exceeding 1M US$. She has lead a new wave of virtual reality entrepreneurs who have demonstrated to the world the very real profit-making opportunities that exist within virtual world economies. Today Anshe Chung Studios maintains offices in the real world where it employs more than 80 people full time, and is extended by a huge network of virtual reality freelancers worldwide. It hosts 1000s of residents on more than 40 square kilometers of gated communities in virtual worlds, and in terms of sheer magnitude Anshe Chung Studios has developed more virtual property than any other Metaverse development company.

signpost: anshe is now a millionaire from her SL speculation.

Organ Markets

The prospect of dying for want of a kidney has concentrated Sally Satel’s mind wonderfully on how to make sure that more kidneys become available. She comes down in favor of incentive payments to donors, and suggests 4 basic models:

  1. A forward market for cadaver organs (I like this one) in which you sign up to have your organs harvested at death, and receive a small payment on signing or a large one to your estate when you die
  2. A centralized single compensator. Medicare or whoever pays a bounty for the kidney; and pays $15-20k a year for the immunosuppressant drugs which the recipient will need; but saves $66k per patient per year on dialysis.
  3. Multiple compensators. As above, but private insurers and charitable foundations chip into the compensation fund.
  4. Private contracts. The sort of market we have now, between individuals, only regulated and legal. One nice nuance, suggested by Ms Postrel’s husband, is that donors/vendors should get a year’s tax holiday, evening out the incentive between rich and poor.

2007-03-14: iran, of all places, might be the first place with an organ market.
2011-05-31:

Scott Carney’s The Red Market is a book-length investigative journalism piece on the complicated and sometimes stomach-churning underground economy in human flesh, ranging from practice of kidnapping children to sell to orphanages who get healthy kids to pass off to wealthy foreigners to the bizarre criminal rings who imprison kidnapped indigents in “blood farms” or lure impoverished women into selling their kidneys.

the trade in human flesh is brisk.
2016-12-30: Car crash victims are a major source of organ donations. What will replace them? Better stock up on those artificial organs.