Tag: innovation

Categories
Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies property rights responsibility

Juicer Choosers

juicer, juice, silicon valley, innovation, risk, luxury, free markets, government waste, freedom

We all have our complaints about this company or that, this product or that.* And it is popular to rag on “consumerism” and the emptiness of “capitalism.” But put it into perspective: me “wasting money” on, say, an expensive juicer is nowhere near as offensive — that is, worth a rant, an excoriation, a philippic — than the government wasting money on … anything else. 

Or, for that matter, on juicers.

At this point, you may be wondering, “what’s with this juicer business?” 

Well, it is all about the hullabaloo regarding, er, a juicer business!

Juicero, to be precise.

The well-​funded-​at-​startup Silicon Valley biz makes the expensive Juicero Press. And news. Newsweek and Washington Post were just two major media outlets to lay into the company. They characterized Juicero and its product as a symbol of all that’s wrong with Silicon Valley.

Wow. What weight for one niche-​market company to bear.

While journalists in print and online fret over how Silicon Valley offers up empty gewgaws and gadgets for the “temporarily rich” — a few decades ago members of this class were excoriated as Yuppies — over at Star Slate Codex Scott Alexander reminds us that Silicon Valley does all sorts of things. 

One juicer cannot stand for everything else.

Besides, when “Capitol Hill screws up, tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis get killed,” Alexander writes. When “Silicon Valley screws up, people who want a pointless Wi-​Fi enabled juicer get a pointless Wi-​Fi enabled juicer.”**

Forcing many people to pay for dubious-​at-​best products, or enticing a few people to pay for harmless luxuries? You see why I prefer the latter. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* You should listen to me curse my computers! Or, on second thought, no. You shouldn’t.

** “Which by all accounts,” Alexander concludes, “makes pretty good juice.” Even if squeezing the company’s frozen packets yourself works just as well.

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Categories
privacy

Dropout versus NSA

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs didn’t finish college, and they did okay. John Brooks dropped out of middle school at age 13, and he is doing okay.

Now 22, he began developing an encrypted chat program called Ricochet some four years ago — long before Edward Snowden so profusely exposed the National Security Agency’s spy-​on-​everyone programs.

Wired reports that Brooks eventually crafted “a full-​fledged desktop client that was easy to use, offered anonymity and encryption, and even resolved the issue of metadata — the ‘to’ and ‘from’ headers and IP addresses spy agencies use to identify and track communications.…” He did a better job crafting the package than others offering similar armored tech.

One problem. For a long time, few people knew about his robust chat program. But dramatic revelations of unfettered surveillance by both government and businesses of everybody can sure concentrate the mind. Many more people have become worried about metadata that can be easily scavenged without a warrant. And Brooks realized that his achievement would be widely welcome if only he could get the word out and prove that Ricochet does what it is supposed to do. If not now, when?

That’s around the time a group called Invisible​.im announced plans to develop an encrypted chat program to do what Brooks had already done. He told them about his own software; they dropped their plans and are helping him finalize and distribute Ricochet.

May the best private, secure, anonymous chat program win.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets

Perfect Vision

One prerequisite of solving problems is having problems to solve. That is, first you must realize that there is a problem — an inconvenience or difficulty that you no longer accept as inevitable. Then you can ask questions and try to find answers.

Suppose the problem is that (a) you have imperfect eyesight, and (b) you’re lazy, busy, a shut-​in, a cheapskate, or all four. You want to update your prescription without spending the time and money to visit an optometrist. Questions: Any way you can just do this at home for, say, $35? How about over the Internet?

If we ask Mr. Google about “online eye exams,” we find several sites offering tests that aim only to tell you whether it’s time for a visit to the eye doctor. Not good enough! But we also learn from TechCrunch​.com about Opternative, a company co-​founded by optometrist Steven Lee. Opternative plans to offer professional-​grade online eye exams.

“Doing eye testing day in and day out, I thought ‘there has to be a better way to do this,’” Lee says.

Lee still faces regulatory and other hurdles. But I appreciate the ambition — also that we still have enough capitalism in our quasi-​capitalist system to make a venture like this potentially profitable. And if Opternative succeeds, we’ll be able to take its prescription to another website and order an inexpensive pair of glasses or contact lenses over the Internet.

I like that vision.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies

Forced to Innovate

Not everything new is wonderful.

When a company improves its operations, it seeks to do so in a way that decreases costs or produces features customers want enough to pay for. It works to ensure that the benefits of adopting new procedures outweigh the costs.

At least, this is what profitable companies do when free to act in accordance with their reason for being.

Government regulations clash with this, however. One of the “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it” provisions of Obamacare, for example, forces medical practitioners to convert to electronic record-​keeping — even if they think the burden unjustified.

A businessman may be wrong about whether to try a new way — and, if he does adopt an innovation, about how fast or thoroughly to adopt it. If he’s wrong, he’s free to change his mind as evidence comes in. But, in medicine, government edict replaces entrepreneurial judgment.

Mandates and prohibitions are already rife in the medical industry; Obamacare makes a bad situation worse. “In today’s health care system,” writes blogger Rituparna Basu, “a doctor’s judgment as to whether it makes sense to adopt a new technology for his practice is deemed irrelevant. The government is the one calling the shots, and jeopardizing doctors’ practices in the process.”

A sound diagnosis.

The prognosis might not be so negative, however. While governments tend to prescribe uniform, one-​size-​fits-​all “cures,” ongoing advances in genetics point the other direction, to individualizing medical practice, finding specific causes of illnesses, and developing genetics-​informed, patient-​specific cures.

But it’s just possible that individually focused medicine would be enhanced by a healthy dose of individual freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets

Inventing Objections

The Times published a wispy report on how Samsung has announced not that they are about to release a “smart watch” — a watch with computer functions — but only that they are working on one. Presumably, Samsung hopes to preclude the notion that the company is simply copying Apple, which is rumored to be developing a smart watch.

One reader — call him Mr. X — claims to be “saddened” by this evidence of market rivalry. He feels it’s “sad to witness” both Samsung’s alleged copying of Apple (or of other companies already making smart watches) and Apple’s forthcoming attempt to “force” smart watches on us.

Perhaps unbeknownst to himself, X’s lament implies that the whole market process is a continuous tragedy, only occasionally interrupted when sweeping novelty comes along.

Not so.

How often is a major new product category invented, after all? Farmers sell wheat — must they offer a new strain of wheat for their efforts to be valuable? What about napkin manufacturers? Car makers? Computer makers? Should we shed tears when anybody competes with anybody else in the same decades-​old or centuries-​old product category?

Inventions are great. But not everything on the shelf must be a brand-​new kind of product to be well made and worth getting. Incremental improvements matter too. If companies took X’s complaint seriously, their ability to provide goods and services would be thwarted.

What we want from the “competition” is usually not “the new” but the slightly better, or the substantially less expensive.

Capitalism owes its essence to copycats as well as innovators.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.