Posts tagged money | Culture Making

30 July 2008

Here's a recent mobile-phone services ad from India. It's hard to imagine a national-level ad in the States pitching this particular world-changing aspect of cell phone technology (though, of course, such tech would be of great interest -- and is probably being used by -- the many first-generation immigrants who aren't yet honored by our mainstream advertisers' full attention).

advertising, asia, cell phones, children, cultural worlds, horizons of the possible, india, marriage, money, parents

Nate:

22 July 2008

How could I not link to a column that so eloquently describes the way that culture creates "the horizons of the possible"? Brooks is spot on. Now the culture-making question: what cultural goods could we shape or create that would change "the culture of debt"?

consumption, debt, horizons of the possible, money, stewardship

Andy:

from The Culture of Debt, by David Brooks, NYTimes.com, 22 July 2008

Individuals don’t build their lives from scratch. They absorb the patterns and norms of the world around them.

Decision-making — whether it’s taking out a loan or deciding whom to marry — isn’t a coldly rational, self-conscious act. Instead, decision-making is a long chain of processes, most of which happen beneath the level of awareness. We absorb a way of perceiving the world from parents and neighbors. We mimic the behavior around us. Only at the end of the process is there self-conscious oversight.

According to this view, what happened to McLeod, and the nation’s financial system, is part of a larger social story. America once had a culture of thrift. But over the past decades, that unspoken code has been silently eroded.

9 June 2008

Culture-predicting = Culture-Making?

business, finance, future, horizons of the possible, investing, kevin kelly, money, predictions, trends

Nate:

a Boing Boing post by Mark Frauenfelder, 9 June 2008

Kevin Kelly says:

Warren Buffett recently bet an ambitious hedge fund operator $1 million that they won’t beat the returns of S&P 500 after their extremely hefty fees are accounted for. Buffett claims investors will do as well with a no-load index fund over the ten years of the bet. He has long been critical of the performance claims of hedge funds, and his bet is intended to put his money where his mouth is.
Buffett’s million dollar bet was made on Long Bets, the accountability mechanism founded in 2002 by Stewart Brand and myself, and operated by Long Now Foundation. The intention of Long Bets is to encourage responsibility in prediction-making (by keeping a public roster of predictions), to encourage long-term thinking (by offering a opportunity to shape a long-term bet), and to sharpen the logic of forecasting (by recording the logic of predictions and bets.)
In order to make a Long Bet, bettors need to lay out their reasoning. It’s worth reading the two sides’ very short arguments about investing because the two extremes of investment advice are contrasted in them. Buffett, as usual, is stunningly clear in his argument, which ends:
A number of smart people are involved in running hedge funds. But to a great extent their efforts are self-neutralizing, and their IQ will not overcome the costs they impose on investors. Investors, on average and over time, will do better with a low-cost index fund than with a group of funds of funds.

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