In some sense, my “gift” to Prof. Ronald Coase for his 99th birthday is “special”. More on this later.
For the last 20+ years of my life, many of my thinking has been shaped and influenced by Coase, and yet I have not met him in person. Of course, how much have I actually learned or understood remains a mystery. (big smile) Allow me to share two stories.
I remember some years ago during the first year of my MBA program, somehow the topic of lighthouse came up. And I, quite off-handedly, mentioned to my classmate (he majored in economics, and I majored in computer science) that lighthouse is usually given as an example of a public good but this categorization is actually wrong.
Well, to my surprise, my classmate insisted that, “No no no. Lighthouse is a public good and you cannot charge any money for the use of it.” After a minute or so of discussion, we got back to our schoolwork. To me, from that moment on, I realized I was lucky to have some special insights. I’ve learned Coase’s ideas, including those in “The Lighthouse in Economics” via Prof. Steven Cheung’s articles in Chinese when I was attending high school in Hong Kong. I have learned the importance in asking questions. And try not to take things/”established facts” for granted.
In yet another MBA class, this time an ethics class. The professor asked a simple question, something like, “Why do we have ‘company’/'corporation’?” In hope to lead to some discussions about ethics (well, it was an ethics course after all). What my professor didn’t expect was me raising my hand and answered, “To reduce transaction cost.” :)
Now, without further delay, allow me to present my “special” and virtual gift to Prof. Coase. Wishing Prof. Coase a very happy 99th birthday (in advance) and good health for many more years to come.
My “special” “gift”
This gift is “special” because I think the best gift to give to someone like Prof. Coase, who has everything he needs in the world and likely every material thing he wants, is to “pay it forward“. Prof. Coase himself doesn’t really benefit from the gift itself, it is the people who may learn from Prof. Coase that are benefitting. So I am “paying it forward” or “gifting” forward.
As you may know, the wonderfully insightful (and often funny) 2003 Coase Lecture was delivered by Prof. Coase himself. And the full lecture has been available online via Coase Institute for free download and viewing for some time now. Unfortunately, unless the person has an extremely fast internet connection and have patient to wait for an hour or two or more, downloading the 525MB quicktime video file (this is very big)can still be quite a challenge. And for those that have slower regular internet access, viewing the lecture is practically impossible.
So as a “special” gift to Prof. Coase for his 99th birthday, I have taken the initiative and spent most of the night (well, actually last night and now well into the wee hours) to compress and upload the video onto YouTube.
This “gift” is “special” also because I’ve bent quite a few rules. Since this is a gift for Prof. Coase’s 99th birthday, I hope the “deciders” don’t mind and will let me give this “gift”. :)
Hope you enjoy the 2003 Coase Lecture (in 6 parts).
Like many Canadians, I want to get pay a more reasonable price and get better mobile services. I was hoping WINDmobile would have been launched by now and I will soon be able leave my current provider.
So it was very unfortunate that CRTC threw a curve ball in its decision. But I am determined and I have add WINDmobile to my Christmas/New Year wish list. I hope if enough Canadians speak out and demand mobile competitors like WINDmobile be allowed to compete in Canada, then we can soon have some decent prices and services in Canada. (Note to the Doctor Who fans out there: Remember what Martha Jones did here to defeat the monster? There is hope. :)
“Though many Canadians are frustrated in their own experiences with mobile service providers, they don’t understand the scope of the the issues at hand.
For example, did you know that wireless consumers in this country deal with:
Higher prices: Due to lack of competition and real alternatives, Canadians pay an average of 60% more for mobile wireless services than Americans according to the Telecommunications Policy Review Panel.
Staggering complaints: The Better Business Bureau released its list of top ten consumer complaint calls. Cell phone companies tops that list – soaring above car dealers, movers and even utilities. Clearly Canadian consumers aren’t being treated as they should be and they’re not happy about it.
Among the weakest in the world: Canada’s wireless industry is one of the weakest in the developing world. Merrill Lynch puts Canadian wireless penetration at 65 per cent, last among 22 developed countries (below Tunisia and Iraq). The International telecommunications Union (ITU) has tracked Canada’s decline from 35th in 1998 to 128th in 2008 – far behind many underdeveloped nations.
Oligopoly: The Canadian wireless market is dominated by three very large, very profitable players – Telus, Rogers and Bell. This is not a ‘hypercompetitive market’ as they would have you believe. WIND Mobile, is the only new entrant that offers a truly national wireless alternative.”
P.S. I am a fan of WINDmobile, but I will be less than honest if I don’t mention that I actually agree with the CRTC’s analysis when it made its decision (see further comments here) that Globalive and WINDmobile are foreign controlled. I just think it is time that our telecom laws are updated to remove the foreign ownership restriction. I don’t usually like the idea of government overruling quasi-judicial bodies’ decisions, but I will make an exception here.
Lets give Canada some needed competitions in the mobile industry by exempting WINDmobile, and lets fix the telecom laws next.
“RedOctane was founded in 1999 by Kai Huang and Charles Huang and is best known for its Guitar Hero games. During August 1999, they began operation as the world’s first online video game rental service. In 2000 the company expanded into premium video game accessories, starting first with the RedOctane dance mat which the existing products at the time. They would later become better known for the Ignition dance pads and other video game accessories including arcade joysticks, drums, and guitars for existing music games.”
One of my favourite slide in the talk is the slide of the reasons investors gave when they refused to invest in the company. The last reason is especially funny.
Fascinating and insightful talk “Innovating Search” by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products and User Experience, Google. Here is the talk info,
Lecturer for A. Richard Newton Distinguished Innovator Lecture Series. Marissa Mayer leads the company’s product management efforts on search products web search, images, news, books, products, maps, Google Earth, Google Toolbar, Google Desktop, Google Health, Google Labs and more. She joined Google in 1999 as Google’s first female engineer and led the user interface and web server teams at that time. Her efforts have included designing and developing Google’s search interface, internationalizing the site to more than 100 languages, defining Google News, Gmail, and Orkut, and launching more than 100 features and products on Google.com. Several patents have been filed on her work in artificial intelligence and interface design. In her spare time, Marissa also organizes Google Movies outings a few times a year to see the latest blockbusters for 6,000+ people (employees plus family and friends).
“Two news stories today may mean that the internet is getting a little less open. Julia Angwinwrote in the Wall St. Journal today about how the number of volunteer editors on Wikipedia has dropped precipitously over the past year. Then, Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine.com discusses reports that Rupert Murdoch is in negotiations with Microsoft to provide content exclusively to Bing, and not Google.”
“At a Yale conference a week ago, Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer talked about the life cycle of the value of news in his business.
When a piece of financial news come out, it is at its most valuable for a very short time, he said. I asked him later how long that is. “Milliseconds,” he replied. Milliseconds. That’s as long as a computerized trader has to take advantage of news before the market knows it, before the news is knowledge and is thus commodified and loses its unique and timely value.”
For a long time, Buffett had invested in railroads only when they were cigar butts. Then they were deregulated, energy costs began to rise, and railroads became profitable once again. Berkshire first announced that it owned 10% of Burlington in April 2007.
Buffett has always said that if he likes a company well enough to own its stock, it means he likes it well enough to buy the whole thing. Eighteen months after the first announcement, that’s just what he did. It’s interesting that even with an 18-month head start, the rest of us have been scrambling since the announcement to catch up with the many factors that influenced his decision.
One of the best and simplest lessons that can be learned from Warren Buffett is to learn things before you need the knowledge. This, after all, is why Buffett invests so often in the businesses he’s had the most time to study.“
Learn about things because you are curious about them, passionate about them, while you are having lots of fun learning about them. Then even if you don’t use these knowledge, you will still have fun in the process.
From CNBC (transcript and video) (emphasis added),
“QUESTION: Hi. My name is Katrina Gankena, and I was born in Russia. And I’m a second-year student at Columbia Business School. My question is for Mr. Gates. What industry do you think is going to produce the next Bill Gates? Because that’s the industry I want to get a job in. [LAUGHTER] [APPLAUSE]
GATES: Industries do have different paces of innovation. So the IT industry, driven by the magic of software, the magic of the optic fiber, magic of the chip which doubles in power every couple of years, it’s been the industry that has not only been the most exciting, it’s also changed the rules for many other industries. The idea of information being available, what the online world is like, that’s incredible. I’ll tell you, there are a few other industries that will compete for being exciting in the decades ahead. The energy business, some approach will provide cheaper energy that’s environmentally friendly. And there’s a lot of science, a lot of business. That’s a global thing. There will be some great careers there. Medicine, you know. We haven’t solved Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s or about 20 diseases of these poor countries, and yet we can be sure that we’re on track to do that. And so those three industries I think you would do great in. There’s many others, but those are the ones that have the strongest appeal to me.
BUFFETT: Find what turns you on. Find what you have a passion for. If somebody said to me when I was getting out of Columbia, you know, that Bill’s business was going to be the one that would be exciting, you know, I don’t think I’d have done so well. [LAUGHTER] But I knew what turned me on. I had a professor, Ben Graham, I offered to go to work for him for nothing. He said, “You’re overpriced.” Nonetheless, I went into the business. [APPLAUSE] I will guarantee, you will do well at whatever turns you on. There’s no question about that. Don’t let anybody else tell you what to do. You figure out what you are doing. [APPLAUSE]“
CRTC Chair Konrad von Finckenstein at 2008 Banff World TV Festival
From Inside The CBC (emphasis added),
At the packed hearings CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein often seemed exasperated with the approach from both sides. He pressed officials repeatedly on why the carriers and broadcasters couldn’t solve this issue themselves. “Why is it so difficult for you to sit down and negotiate?” he asked a Rogers official.
Von Finckenstein said he was very frustrated by the messy, public battle between the conventional broadcasters and the cable and satellite carriers, the likes of he had never seen before. “I have trouble realizing why we are in this mess.” He said broadcasters and carriers are in a “symbiotic relationship. There should be a symbiotic solution.”
Here is a link to an online video of the complete CNBC Town Hall Event “Warren Buffett and Bill Gates: Keeping America Great”, hosted by Becky Quick (aired on Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 9p ET).
“Hill: You have said that everyone in Warren’s world is his protector, and if you just look at the annual shareholder’s meeting, it is really, it is almost like a coronation on an annual basis. Are there people around Warren Buffett who will openly disagree with him?
Schroeder: Very few. One of the roles that Charlie Munger plays that is really important is he is one of the very few who will tell Warren “no” or “you’re wrong.” Interestingly, Warren has enlisted all of these women to be recruited as his protectors, but there are one or two — Carol Loomis is one, his friend who works for Fortune, and Sharon Osberg, his bridge partner — … who will really stand up to him. It is tough to be in the position he is in where you are incredibly rich, incredibly famous, and known for your wisdom because people are in awe of you. He said to me one time, “When I was 21 years old, I could have been saying the most brilliant things on earth and nobody would have listened to me. Now, I could say that the moon was made of pink tissue paper and everyone would go, ‘Wow, look! It really is.’ And they would believe me, because I am Warren Buffett.” He said it is the strangest thing.“
“Hill: What part of his story has had the most impact on you personally?
Schroeder: On me personally what has been the most important was to understand the value of time — and this is something that has come from observing him, learning his story and that time compounds. What you do when you are young (and as you use time over your life) can have an exponential effect so that if you are thoughtful about it, you can really have powerful results later, if you want to.
Also, that is a reason to be hopeful, because compounding is something that happens pretty quickly. If you are 50 or 60, it is not too late. He said to me one time, if there is something you really want to do, don’t put it off until you are 70 years old. … Do it now. Don’t worry about how much it costs or things like that, because you are going to enjoy it now. You don’t even know what your health will be like then.
On the other hand, if you are investing in your education and you are learning, you should do that as early as you possibly can, because then it will have time to compound over the longest period. And that the things you do learn and invest in should be knowledge that is cumulative, so that the knowledge builds on itself. So instead of learning something that might become obsolete tomorrow, like some particular type of software [that no one even uses two years later], choose things that will make you smarter in 10 or 20 years. That lesson is something I use all the time now.”
*******
For my friends Wallace & Zhaofeng: Even I mention Warren Buffett in our conversation often and respect him, I still know that he can be wrong (and sometimes quite wrong). :)
Nov 15, 2009 Update: Here is an insightful comment from Patent Baristas on the Bilski case where Stephen listed some of the questions a few of the Supreme Court Justices asked at the oral argument.
22 minutes of Warren Buffett talking to Fortune’s Carol Loomis about the effects of the fall of Lehman Brothers. (and the Edmonton connection, watch for yourself)
Posted by kempton 
Posted by kempton 
Posted by kempton 
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