Can someone explain the difference between this and not buying, say, locally made shoes, or clothes, rather than clothes made cheaper somewhere else?
To me it's the same. You're supporting the people for whom you have some affinity by nationality, ethnicity, history, interaction, geography, etc. However, most people (with few exceptions) don't show the same favor for goods one could argue would benefit the local industry and our society (and also be contrarian to globalization) by buying the more expensively produced local or at least American [or native nation(ality) of shopper] goods?
I'm not advocating for either, you do as you choose, but it seems a bit contradictory or maybe people identify more with the bookseller (who is just a middle person) rather then the cobbler or shoemaker, tailor or seamster/seamstress who actually physically make the things themselves.
* They don't trust working conditions abroad; Amazon is 'local'-ish labour too. I'm sure I've read online that their working conditions aren't amazing, but it's not a Bangladeshi garment sweat shop who are paying bribes to the local mafia...
* They worry about the transportation costs on the environment. There's no particular reason to think that your local bookshop would be any better at reducing environmental impact than Amazon
* Means of production and providence are important to people in food products and products made from natural materials - those don't really apply to fungible books that have come from the same producer
* Keeping money locally in the community, with the idea that there will be some kind of trickle-down effect, or collateral benefit (like bookshops having reading events for kids) -- this seems to be the only really applicable part here, and I guess each consumer needs to ask if that's worth the extra cash for them
I understand the why [nice rundown]. What I don't understand so much is why people do this in practice for some kids of goods but not others. It's not as if local shoemakers are having a new golden age [Oak Street, excepted], or knifemakers or garment makers (tailors, seamstresses).
A shoemaker moreover would have more involvement [manufacture] than a mere "merchant" which is what booksellers are.
These other goods you keep comparing it to definitely seem to fall more on the utility side as opposed to the entertainment - possibly art? intellectual?luxury? - side, which I think is a large distinction.
There's a romantic aspect to being in bookstores that just isn't found with stores of other types of merchandise.
People don't flock to knife stores for knife signings. They don't sit down with a cup of coffee inside the knife store with other knife enthusiasts and talk about the latest knife they sharpened. They don't take one knife off the shelf, sit in an overstuffed chair and flip it a few times then put it back and take down another, all with no expectation of purchase or pressure. etc. etc.
I think you might have hit it with the "intellectual" aspect. Which is curious, in some respects because booksellers are mere merchants rather than producers (artists) one might stretch it and say they are curators (but any merchant is a curator).
With regard to knives, there are some people who do sit down and discuss process and knifemaker and tradition, history of a particular blade, provenance, etc. So it does happen. Chefs tend to have favorites. Swordspeople tend to have favorites.
But I have to admit, I think your point about perceived "intellectualism" might have merit (and explains the book part, but not the bookstore part but perhaps it's social aspect of the bookstore as you imply.
Different people romanticize different products. For some people clothes are luxury goods where books are a utility, and for some the reverse. Different people put different importance on different aspects too - Bob may think the environmental impact of his purchases is of first rate importance, but doesn't care about a community forming around his retailers. Jane may not really care about either, but fondly looks back on when her Mom took her to the library as a kid...
You could argue that these are not actually fungible products, that when buying from the independent store you are also paying for a public good - the existence of independent stores.
The book is the same where ever you buy it. You could buy the book at Amazon's price and donate the difference to the indie bookstore and the indie store would likely make more from that donation than from you having it bought from their store, and you'd still get Amazon's free shipping.
Small businesses are generally not set up to accept donations, and it may be significant that the publisher records the sale as having gone through independent channels vs. Amazon.
Message board theorizing aside, the best way to support independent businesses is to do business with them.
For a business to succeed it has to provide value commensurate with the price it charges. If you can buy the books at independent bookstores at substantially lower prices elsewhere and you buy them at the indie anyways solely for the purpose of supporting them then that isn't doing business, that's charity.
If your business is actually a charity, consider going non-profit. Non-profit places to get books already exist though, they're called libraries. Independent bookstores sell the same books for more than Amazon so they can't compete as a business and they cannot compete with the state sponsored information access the local library system provides.
All that's left is to open up an overpriced coffee bar and serve the hipsters who find the irony of the bookstore's continued existence appealing enough to walk in the door. It's already amazing such stores survived Barnes & Nobles rise during the 90's and early 00's.
We could perhaps say the actual experience of shopping is not fungible. Normally, you'd find this person simply go to the indie store rather than showroom whatever multinational. Price here is secondary.
Market cap implies public company because by definition private companies are not traded publicly on a market. It's the same way start ups have "valuations" and not "market caps".
> private companies are not traded publicly on a market.
Incorrect. They aren't traded on an exchange, but they are certainly traded in a market. A market is any situation where people buy and sell to one another. Venture capitalists certainly buy shares in private companies. Similarly, a private car dealership, private family restaurant, etc can (and often are) sold from the original owner to a new owner. Thus, a market exists.
I think the term you are looking for is exchange. The distinction between a market and an exchange is an exchange creates more explicit rules on trading in order to make the goods traded commoditized.
For example, instead of buying corn at my farmers market where the differences in corn might matter for both price and quality (local, organic, some farmer just happens to grow more delicious corn), when you buy agricultural commodities from Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), each contract is equivalent. X many bushes of corn at Y price. By making rules on quality and standardizing the goods/contracts/etc, an exchange helps to bring about price discovery and ensure the goods are priced correctly.
But it isn't inherent that exchanges cause the true price to be found or that OTC[0] markets are inferior or less accurate. It depends on numerous factors for whether a share price is being valued correctly.
Funny that you mention corn specifically, because all contracts are not delivered the same even on-exchange! The deliverable grade of corn is "#2 Yellow at contract Price, #1 Yellow at a 1.5 cent/bushel premium #3 Yellow at a 1.5 cent/bushel discount" per http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/agricultural/grain-and-oilse... .
Along these lines, I heard there were complaints in the UK's LIFFE market because excess rainfall was damaging French wheat crops, but even the poor crops were within the exchange's loose contract specifications.
But I suppose this is a bit of a tangent. The takeaway is that everything is traded on a market somewhere, but there are different sizes and standards for markets. Private companies can have some number of institutional investors while still keeping reporting requirements low (IIRC Facebook ran into this limit before their IPO). Ergo, every company has a market cap, but companies with fewer investors/owners are harder to measure.
I don't think GoPro went down because of the threat of the patent. Rather, investors are afraid Apple will start to compete against GoPro. People are seeing the patent as a possible product roadmap not a legal threat.
I have no idea if GoPro stock is overvalued, undervalued, or just right. But I will say that they've had a really nice run with a product that IMO is not all that great (terrible UI among other things) by plugging themselves into the adventure sports lifestyle. And, probably more importantly, those who like to think of themselves as being part of the adventure sports lifestyle--whether they do or not.
I've always been surprised GoPro are as popular as they are.
Before GoPro was even a known brand you could easily buy extremely similar items (small plastic cameras with one-two button(s)) off of eBay straight from China which cost under $50. They often came with generic stick on clips for motorcycle helmets and similar.
This entire market existed for years before GoPro suddenly appeared. All GoPro did was package up the generic product from China, increased the price by 100%, and then used all the extra revenue to buy a ton of adverts.
People often like to claim that GoPro won because it was optically better, but that just isn't accurate. Up until maybe the HERO3+/HERO4 (2013/2014) the line was actually quite behind some generics. The only reason GoPro even got their act together was that some other named vendors started getting into the "action camera" market.
Even today GoPro seems insanely expensive, for the price of a single GoPro HERO4 SILVER[0] with a basic plastic case you can buy the same spec camera on eBay for $65 [1] with enough money left over for a [bad] DSLR by Canon/Nikon/Sony/etc [2].
>> People always seem to know why stocks move - after they have moved.
Hindsight is perfect, you just get all the survey results from the buyers and sellers and see what the common reasons for buying/selling were. Then you post an article before the closing bell that same day. Easy.
People think they know why they do what they do. But when you try and encode it, it fails.
I've worked with traders, trying to implement the system they think they use. They had a system of indicators and said they traded according to them but when applied mechanically to trading data it didn't make a profit.
maybe it's difficult to uncover the opposite story, but when was the last time we heard a story like: "Large corporation stock price drops because small tech company was awarded patent".
Honestly, it sounds like traditional enterprise software and should be valued similarly. Software like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or Electronic Health Record (EHR) always require very expensive integration/training/support. The contracts take forever to negotiate but are very lucrative with a huge lock in and expensive support contracts.
1) Some programmers really are worth orders of magnitude more than others. Really great programmers will help drive product decisions that can change direction of the company and the ultimate success/failure. The more responsibility a programmer has over product/quality/cost/delivery schedule, the more they can be worth a huge amount. 10X is probably a more common variance, but I'm sure there are single developers building the right thing that are worth more than 1,000 crap developers getting bogged down in product management BS.
The thing is that communication/management gets harder the more people there are, so crap developers have very little value (and maybe even negative marginal value in certain cases). IE a developer that's 10X better than another developer can actually be worth 1000X because you can't just hire a 10 mediocre developers and have them be worth the same as a single great developer.
2) Really great developers are really paid a lot more than less good ones (but not their full value). Smart developers with no experience are paid more than what he suggests. A smart college grad can get paid 6 figures without any experience in the right job (not ~50K). People who prove their worth can ultimately get paid a lot more. However, they're pay will usually be increased above their peers outside of salary using RSUs/options that will be very valuable but vest over time. It is true that great developers often have to either co-found their own companies or take high level management roles to get 100X pay of an average developer. That said most companies don't pay programmers their true value, and it often takes a long time for a developer to fully demonstrate their value and develop a name for themselves.
edit: TBC, I'm not arguing anything about immigration or the OP as a whole. I just take issue with the idea that there is little variance in value between programmers.
1) This can't be discovered through an interview, nevermind an immigration process. It would just be increasing the entire pool of people who might qualify as "top talent" or "average" programmers. The author raised the point that 3rd world countries probably don't have as high a proportion in their general populace of skilled labour as the US.
Are they trying to deter non-serious students in order to inflate their pass rate?
If they want people to take their certificates seriously, I guess it would be important for people to trust that the person listed actually earned it. The documentation may also improve later conversion to paid products as well avoid the same person passing the course multiple times with multiple AWS accounts to get more AWS credit.
She's not really the highest paid. Most of it was a 10 year grant that finally vested. If you amortize the money over the 10 years, she's not paid more than other presidents. If anything having the pay as a retention package was probably smart and a better deal for the university.
