Author: s1e2t3u4p5

Lessons from the Netflix Startup Story

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

If you are inspired by stories about the good business practices behind phenomenally successful companies, then you must read “Five Lessons From the Netflix Startup Story.”
Here are some excerpts that remind me of the business philosophy in Atlas Shrugged:

Starting a new company takes a lot of persistence, positive thinking, and a never-say-die attitude. Many experienced people gave us long lists of reasons why our business idea wouldn’t succeed.
Why would people wait for movies to come in the mail when they could just go down the street to Blockbuster? How can you cost-effectively mail out movies? Won’t they get broken, stolen, or damaged? Seeing the negatives is always the easy part. Solving such problems requires a special kind of creative stubbornness.

Later in their story:

We had to build operations to create an exceptional customer experience (the “wow!”). To understand how the Post Office backend worked, I spent hundreds of hours at a few of the largest regional Postal Centers, observing and asking tons of questions.
I noticed letters being sorted by several high spinning circular drums. While these crushing metal drums enabled the separation and processing of over 40,000 standard size letters per hour, it was obvious that a thin plastic DVD would not survive the journey. With a sinking stomach, I felt the business idea slip away. But then I noticed a separate conveyor belt sorting magazines and other larger pieces of “flat mail.” How would I ensure that the package always used this flat mail machine and not the letter sorter?

Today the company’s value is twice that of Blockbuster.
Read the full article for more.

Univ Montana Objectivist Club Defends Free Speech

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

The Daily Missoulian provides a reasonably balanced account — “Secular, pro-individualist group holds solidarity event for magazine sued over publishing Muhammad cartoons” — of an event sponsored by the University of Montana Objectivist Club.
Atlasphere member Andrew Bissell is president of this club.
From the article:

The University of Montana Objectivist Club on Friday stood behind — literally — the right to publish a cartoon of the Muslim prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban.
As a show of solidarity with a Calgary news magazine that’s been sued over the matter, members of the student club pasted the cartoon and others — which are offensive to most Muslims — on a tri-folded placard in the University Center, then stood ready to defend it.
â??If no one has the guts to show these cartoons, it’s allowing the violence and the worst common denominator to dictate their terms to us,â? insisted Andrew Bissell, president of the Objectivist Club, which promotes the secular, pro-individualist philosophy of novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand.

And:

â??Even the moderate factions of Islam take this very seriously,â? said ASUM presidential candidate Andrea Helling, challenging Bissell and the club’s judgment. â??I don’t think the fear of Muslim violence should stop you from doing this, but there are other ways around it, like describing the cartoons. … It’s a respect thing.â?
Bissell said that respect has nothing to do with it. The West has been â??cowingâ? to the violent fringe of Islam and to multicultural sensitivities, he said, offering as proof Comedy Central’s stopping the irreverent â??South Parkâ? television show from showing an image of Muhammad in a spoof of the cartoon issue. It’s the policy of most U.S. newspapers (including the Missoulian), he noted, to refrain from publishing them.
Showing the cartoons is not only a defiant and bold defense of free speech, it’s the most effective way to get the point across, Bissell said.
â??We’re challenging the assumption that there’s a right not to be offended,â? he said. â??You can’t do that with gumdrop smiles and rainbows. I believe we have the right to criticize religion, and that extends to all religions.â?
At least one person was offended enough to tear off one of the cartoons and throw it away, Bissell said.

Our congratulations to Andrew and the rest of his club on their commendable efforts, and on the publicity they have succeeded in generating on behalf of free speech.
See the full article for more.

Intellectuals Confront the New Totalitarianism

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Signed by a dozen writers, journalists, and professors — including Salman Rushdie:

MANIFESTO: Together facing the new totalitarianism
After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.
We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.
The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Keep reading…

United 93: The Original 'Pack Not a Herd'

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Blogger Glenn Reynolds has made a theme out of cataloging the instances since 9-11 when ordinary Americans have taken their safety into their own hands — acting, in effect, as “a pack not a herd.”
I am not certain that the downing of United flight 93 was the original event that inspired this phrase, but it probably was. It certainly deserved to be.
In any case, Time magazine is offering up an early peek at the upcoming United 93 movie, and it further reinforces my impression that the movie will be both good and important.
A few excerpts:

Perhaps those who saw the trailer didn’t realize that this was the one flight, of the four hijacked that day, with an inspiring ending. This was the one on which the good guys, following passenger Todd Beamer’s John Wayne-like invocation, “Let’s roll,” foiled the bad guys. The saga of this flight makes for, in 9/11 terms, a feel-good movie. Just as important, United 93, at which Time was given an exclusive first look, is a good movieâ??taut and implacableâ??that honors the deeds of the passengers while being fair, if anyone cares, to the hijackers’ jihad bravado. […] If this is a horror movie, it is an edifying one, a history lesson with the pulse of a world-on-the-line suspense film. […]
“Subsequent to 9/11,” says Greengrass, an Englishman who directed the superb docudrama Bloody Sunday, set in Northern Ireland in 1972, and the gritty espionage film The Bourne Supremacy, “we all had to make decisions about the world we live in, about the courses of action that we take. This film is saying that, before we got to that, there was this event: this extraordinary work of fate, mired in confusion, with the passengers gaining knowledge of 9/11 as they went. What that did was create a debate on the plane: What are we going to do? Are we going to do nothing and hope for the best, or are we going to do something? What can we do? What will be the consequences of both courses of action? That is our post-9/11 debate.” Which the doomed, defiant passengers had just a few minutes to comprehend and resolveâ??on the fly.
United 93 is a meticulous reconstruction of that morning. Greengrass worked closely with the victims’ families, who had already heard the black-box recordings, and the actors, who were improvising. Few events, either on the plane or in the air-traffic control centers, are underlined for effect. As Bingham’s mother Alice Hoagland notes, “What happened on board Flight 93 has so much drama and pace, it needs no embellishment.” […]
[W]herever possible, Greengrass cast people close to their roles. J.J. Johnson, who plays the captain of Flight 93, is a real United pilot. Trish Gates, who plays head flight attendant Sandy Bradshaw, was a real United flight attendant. Ben Sliney, who as national operations manager for the faa kept track of the mounting atrocities, appears as himself. Lewis Alsamari, who plays one of the hijackers, spent a year in the Iraqi army. The actors playing the terrorists were kept segregated from those playing the passengers; they stayed in different hotels and did not meet until the hijack sequence was shot. Those actors had to deal with the violence on a more personal level.

See the full article in Time for more.

Academics Find a New Target: "Workaholism"

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

A new article from Ed Hudgins begins:

Governments often get their wealth-destroying, morally depraved ideas from our often misnamed institutes of “higher learning.” The latest that’s popping up in bulletins, newsletters, and probably soon in legislation is from a 2005 study on “The Economics of Workaholism,” co-authored by Joel Slemrod of the University of Michigan and Daniel Hammermesh of the University of Texas in Austin.
The study starts by stating that “Economists have recently re-considered whether a range of individual behaviors are self-destructive, and possibly addictive, and have proposed that it may be Pareto-superior to tax them in order to induce people to abandon or cut back on them.”
“Pareto superior” is an economic term that refers to some alternative distribution of wealth or resources that makes some individuals better off and no one else worse off. In this context the term means that would-be philosopher-kings pretend to know what’s good for us and what is not and are probably poised to grab our freedom or our wallets and have their way with us.
Sure enough the authors go on to say, “The focus of this ‘new paternalism,’ associated with the burgeoning field of behavioral economics, has been on a set of activities (smoking, drinking, overeating, and gambling, in particular) â?¦ and on public policy responses in the form of ‘sin taxes’ that are highly regressive.” The authors go on to state, “Here we begin to explore the economic implications of a self-destructive behavior that is likely to be more prevalent among affluent people — workaholism.”

See the full article for more.

Defending Free Speech at Louisiana State

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

A second-year law student at Louisiana State University has published a searing analysis of the way freedom of speech is being handled in modern academia. He begins:

Higher-education institutions are no longer havens for free intellectual discussion and open debate. Since public universities have lost nearly every court battle over clearly identified speech codes, administrators have developed stealthier ways to regulate unwanted speech. These covert speech codes are hidden in university handbooks under seemingly harmless provisions such as e-mail guidelines, diversity statements and harassment policies. Even though these policies arenâ??t identified as â??speech codes,â? university administrators are still able to use them to repress unpopular opinions, censor parodies, hinder political speech and restrict academic freedom.

Included in his analysis is the treatment the NYU Objectivist club received from administrators during their recent attempts to foster discussion of the Mohammad cartoons.
See the full article for more.

Interview with Whole Foods' John Mackey

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

We’ve mentioned before that Whole Foods CEO John Mackey is a fan of Ayn Rand’s novels. Today I stumbled across an interview with Mackey (actually, because the interviewer had linked to our blog) from last year.
In the interview, Mackey discusses his enjoyment of Ayn Rand’s writings, his experiences with libertarians, and why he no longer considers himself a libertarian, per se.
Here’s one relevant excerpt, regarding his (qualified) appreciation for Rand, and his own philosophy of business:

SUNNI: It sounds to me like you aren’t a libertarian of a Randian persuasion — wholly profit-driven and focused on the self; is that accurate?
JOHN: That is correct. I was very inspired by Ayn Rand’s novels like millions of other people have been. However, I don’t agree with some of her philosophies. For example: I don’t think selfishness is a virtue and I don’t believe that business primarily exists to make a profit. Profit is of course essential to any business to fulfill its mission and to be successful and to flourish and I will defend the goodness and appropriateness of profits for business with great passion. However, profit is not the primary purpose of business. Renee and I didn’t begin Whole Foods Market to maximize profits for our shareholders. We began it for three main reasons: we thought it would be fun to create a business; we needed to earn a living; and we wanted to contribute to the well-being of other people.
As the business grew we created our mission statement back in 1985 and have tried to fulfill it ever since. That mission very clearly articulates that we have collective — there’s that word again — responsibilities to all the various constituencies who are voluntarily cooperating with the company. In order of priority these constituencies or stakeholders are: customers; team members; investors; vendors; community; and environment.
We measure our success on how well we meet the needs and desires of all of these various stakeholders. All must flourish or we aren’t succeeding as a business.

You don’t have to agree with everything he says to see that he’s a colorful example of a businessman who’s willing to at least think for himself. He has a pretty good track record of opposing unions, for example:

JOHN: I’ve written a 17-page pamphlet (a chapter in my upcoming book) called Beyond Unions. In it I outline my philosophy towards unions. I can’t do complete justice to all my ideas briefly. Let me just make a few points.
The right to collective bargaining (unionization) is an important legal right. It is important that employees, when they wish to, should have the legal right to form unions. In countries where unions are outlawed we see massive totalitarian exploitation of workers. Solidarity in Poland was a very important force to liberating that country from communism.
No employee should be forced to join a union against their will. Unfortunately in many states in our country, such as California, once a union is voted in by a majority of the employees, employees no longer have free choice in this matter. This closed shop means they must join the union and pay dues to the union whether they wish to or not. If they don’t join then they are fired. I believe open shops should be legal in all states and no employee should be forced against their will, as a condition of employment, to join a union.

See the full interview for more.

United 93, from Director of Bourne Supremacy

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Based upon the preview, United 93 looks like it will be an extremely good movie.
The movie was made by Paul Greengrass, the director of The Bourne Supremacy — which was also quite good.
From an interview with Greengrass:

Like everybody, the events surrounding Flight 93 and the events of 9/11 had a massive effect on me. And it became pretty clear to me, after that, that I would always want to make a film about terrorism that would encompass and explore the events of 9/11.
But then it’s about whether it’s the right time and it’s about whether the families of those people aboard the airplane want you to tell that story.
What we found, when we went to see each one of those fmailies, was that they all want this film to be made.

Arrives in theaters April 28, 2006.
UPDATE: Some people are already starting to complain that it’s “too soon” for a movie like this. Hello?

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