Relates to format of 2008 Shopping Centre assignment
As Karl Marx rightly said
WILL we run out of things to consume? John Maynard Keynes thought so. He explained his reasoning in an essay, Economic Prospects for our Grandchildren.
Written in 1929-30, with tens of millions out of work and the world economy mired in the Depression, that essay is striking for its message of hope. It is the mark of a great social scientist that he is willing to make statements that are precise enough to be proved wrong. In that essay, Keynes met that test, boldly predicting “the standard of life in progressive countries 100 years hence will be between four times and eight times as high as it is today”.
A four to eight-fold increase implies an upper-bound annual growth rate of 2.1 per cent. This is very close to the unweighted average of national annual growth rates of per capita gross domestic product for the period from 1929 to 2006, which is 2.04 per cent. Keynes may not have got it precisely right, but it is difficult not be to awed by the brilliance of his attempt, especially when the credibility of our economic soothsayers lies in tatters.
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Keynes erred, however, in assessing the consequences of rising living standards. Greater wealth, he thought, would bring a time when needs would be satiated; when our desire for greater consumption would reach itslimit.
The conclusion was that with all important needs met, production could be undertaken “with a quarter of the human effort to which we have been accustomed”. Working time could fall to 15 hours a week, leaving ample time “to pluck the hour and the day”.
How far that seems from the world of today. As the willingness of Australia’s population to engage in frenzied consumption clearly shows, satiation of human desires is no closer now than it was in 1930, not only in the economies where poverty remains pervasive but even in the world’s richest countries. As we seek to finance our consumption habit, working hours, far from shrinking, have lengthened in many countries and only declined slightly in others.
How did Keynes get it so wrong? Simply put, he greatly underestimated the ability of markets to devise new goods and patterns of consumption.
In the pre-capitalist era, luxury was the jealously guarded preserve of the few. As economic growth got under way in the 17th and 18th centuries, after millennia in which per capita incomes averaged less than $2 a day, the aspirations of the emerging urban middle class to share in better quality goods were viewed as a threat to good order.
Sumptuary laws, such as the edicts of Louis XIII prohibiting anyone but princes and the nobility from wearing gold embroidery or lace, became widespread, and philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau deplored the urban taste for frivolous objects of little utility, for which he coined the term colifichet.
The genius of capitalism lay in transforming those aspirations into opportunities. As the prohibitions on consumption collapsed, the road to riches came to involve providing ever more elaborate goods to ever wider parts of the population, rather than in pandering to the the elite. Although there may be limits to how many goods each of us can consume, there are no obvious limits to their quality and performance. The result has been a race without an ending, in which competing suppliers strive to identify and exploit new sources of willingness to pay.
Unbounded, too, has been capitalism’s ability to devise new means of distribution that increase the efficiency with which we consume, that is, that reduce the time and effort required per unit of consuming. From the development of packaging, branding and advertising in the 19th century, to the invention in 1916 of the first self-service grocery store by US entrepreneur Clarence Saunders with his Piggly Wiggly chain, the history of capitalism is that of making it steadily easier for people to meet goods and finance purchases. Internet shopping is the latest in that long line of innovations, harnessing ingrained hunter-gatherer instincts while sparing us the risk of becoming the tasty morsel of savage beasts.
At the same time, the ever greater scale of markets, now global for manufactured items and services that can be provided online, makes for ever greater product variety, as it allows suppliers of highly differentiated products to recoup their costs from users worldwide. The result has been an emancipation of minority tastes.
Karl Marx, who opened Das Kapital with the observation that “the wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as an immense accumulation of commodities”, proved far more discerning of these potentialities than was Keynes. Marx saw the development of mass consumption, and the incessant efforts of the capitalist to “give his wares new charms and to inspire (consumers) with new needs”, as lying at the heart of capitalism’s “civilising moment”, because they were inherently democratic, universal and unbounded.
Yet that dynamic creates an ever starker contrast: between boundless improvement in the supply of private goods — the goods we consume individually — and the difficulties that characterise the supply of public goods.
Milton Friedman best captured the underlying predicament when he said it is “the great advantage of the market that it permits wide diversity. It is a system of proportional representation. Each man can vote for the colour of tie he wants and get it; he does not have to see what colour the majority wants and then, if he is in the minority, submit.” In contrast, “the characteristic feature of action through political channels is that it tends to require or enforce substantial conformity”.
Inevitably, that collective action creates disappointment, as fine aspirations give way to shabby compromises, while its outcomes, far from hoped-for ideal states, dissolve into less than satisfactory halfway houses. Little wonder then that we tend, in that wonderful phrase of John Kenneth Galbraith, to private affluence amid public squalor. And the fact that good governance remains the most stubbornly untradeable of goods — try benefiting from Swiss public administration while living in the Sudan — means those improvements that there are, are spread glacially, if at all.
Albert Hirschman, economist and historian of ideas, may have been right to say “no disappointment with a specific meat dish, no matter how severe it may be, can fully explain the decision to become a vegetarian”; but it is surely understandable why experience with collective provision turns us into (at times painfully naive) supporters of privatisation, all the more so as the search for better ways of providing public goods remains a will-o’-the-wisp.
Will we run out of things to consume? Not as long as we live in market economies. But will public goods keep up private needs and hopes? Not in my lifetime.
It is that tension, between private dynamism and public inertia, that will continue to frame our lives in ways not even Keynes could have imagined.
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Chief’s talk of ‘free content’ on ABC is inaccurate
Richard Freudenstein | October 19, 2009
Article from: The Australian
SINCE indicating its intention to start charging for some of its online content, News Corporation, publisher of The Australian, has been the subject of much misguided commentary and criticism, but none quite so peculiar as that of ABC managing director Mark Scott in his A.N.Smith Memorial Lecture last week.
It is worth starting by saying that I agree with much of what Mark said about the state of the industry. The media world has undoubtedly changed forever, and his five prescriptions for future success make much sense.
However, he seems to ignore that Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch, along with numerous News executives, have been saying similar things for some time. Here in Australia, News chief executive John Hartigan talked at length on the subject two years ago in his Andrew Olle Media Lecture, where he embraced this change, saying it would better our industry.
Regrettably, during the course of his speech, Mark made several bold — but entirely inaccurate — claims, which demand correction.
First, as the head of a company that takes in excess of $800million every year from Australian taxpayers, his claim that the ABC’s online news content “will certainly be free” is as laughable as it is disingenuous.
Similarly, he has some gall to criticise the “old proprietorial model”, which he says “operated as a form of protection from harsh realities the businesses might otherwise have faced”, since this precisely describes the ABC’s government-owned model.
He then railed against Rupert Murdoch’s “demands” that people start paying for content, presumably hoping his audience would overlook the fact that it is the ABC that gives people no choice whether to pay or not.
To top it off, he inferred that News’s success has been built on a lack of competition and choice. This is a bizarre comment, given some of News’s greatest successes — Sky in Britain and the Fox Network in the US, to name but two — have come in the face of the toughest competition around: in these examples, the BBC, ITV, ABC, NBC and CBS.
Coming from someone who is exempt from competition, this is a particularly egregious argument. Mark speaks from a rare and privileged position. Guaranteed his annual $800m-plus taxpayer income, he can operate with little concern to what his audience actually wants.
He takes the money and decides what to give back, which more often than not is targeted to a very narrow section of society.
Meanwhile, commercial operators such as News live or die by the value of their content. Unlike the ABC’s content, which Australians have to pay for whether they want it or not, people can choose whether or not to purchase our content.
Shielded as he is from this commercial reality, Mark does not understand that advertising alone can’t support the growth of online journalism. Every single commercial news publisher in the world is facing this reality, and as such something has to change.
Charging for a product, even when there is a free alternative, is not a radical or outrageous proposition. If your content has real value, and you deliver it in the time, place and manner people want, then it is not unreasonable to ask them to pay for it. From the research undertaken by News and other organisations across the world, there is every indication that the general public understands and agrees with this.
Quality journalism comes at a price. Although they play a key role in the digital age, even the best-intentioned citizen journalists and bloggers cannot provide the same service. Journalism is not a commodity, as Mark thinks it is.
He says it’s just about news, but journalism is so much more. It is analysis, judgment and comment. Its value must be recognised. I wonder how the ABC’s numerous fine journalists feel when they hear their boss saying their work only warrants being given away free?
For those of us who actually have to earn our keep, we have to make a compelling enough case to the public that what we have to offer is worth paying for.
This is not new to News — it applies equally online as it does to our newspapers, magazines, movies, books and subscription TV packages. News has built its business by being customer-focused, continuing to innovate and evolve, engaging with its audience and providing information and entertainment that our customers are willing to pay for.
Contrary to what some might think, News fully recognises the scale of the challenge. We know our business has to evolve, but we have been constantly evolving throughout our history.
Does anyone want the sole provider of news to be a state-owned organisation? I am not attacking the ABC’s content or its right to exist, simply advocating a plurality of independent voices, which I believe Australians deserve. But if those voices are to survive, let alone thrive, they must be justly recompensed for the expense of creating their content.
Richard Freudenstein is the chief executive officer, News Digital Media, part of News Corporation
Production Manager
Reports to: Canberra Christian Radio Limited Board of Directors in the short term then Station Manager, General Manager or CEO in the longer term
Job purpose: Manage all areas of the production of on-air content for 1WAY FM community radio station. Manage team leaders working on different aspects of production and assist them in coordinating their work in line with the vision and mission for 1WAY FM
Job structure: Full time
Remuneration: Base Salary of $40,000 + 9% superannuation
Key Results Areas and Major Tasks
2.1 Areas of expertise include: Programming Content, Announcers, Music Direction, Announcer Training and Program Scheduling
3.1 Assist them to develop systems and processes for volunteers who work in their teams
3.2 Work closely in formulating programming content going to air
3.3 Bring leaders together regularly to discuss innovations and ensure consistent program formats
5.1 Ensure that the processes and guidelines presented in the training courses are adhered to by all announcers
5.2 Monitor the work of announcers for consistency in performance and content
6.1 Build up the number of announcers to cover the different segments for daytime listening, having announcers live to air whenever possible
Competencies
Selection Criteria
Qualifications
Nil
Essential Criteria
Desirable Criteria
Marketing insights from A to Z : 80 concepts every manager needs to know Kotler, Philip. Due:
21/10/2009,23:59
Harmer speaks out about SandilandsKATHERINE FIELD September 22, 2009 - 3:08PM Former top rating 2Day FM breakfast host Wendy Harmer says she sympathises with embattled radio star Kyle Sandilands - saying he’s not a bad person and is sure he’ll bounce back. Harmer, who led the station’s breakfast show The Morning Crew for 11 years, says she feels for Sandilands, who has been suspended from his job without pay until October 7, after two on-air stunts gone wrong. “He’s not a bad person at all. He’s a very personable human being and I know he’s a thoughtful person,” Harmer said. “But sometimes, if you’re on the top things can get out of whack. “And you can see it in any personality that’s doing really well.” She said radio was an “ego game” and presenters had to find balance. “The jeopardy for any successful performer is not to let self-confidence become arrogance or humility turn into grave self-doubt,” she said. Sandilands has been widely criticised for two incidents on his Sydney radio show. The first was a segment in which a 14-year-old girl was attached to a lie detector and quizzed about her sexual history, while in the second stumble, earlier this month, Sandilands said comedian Magda Szubanski, who has been trying to lose weight, would get thin if she was put in a concentration camp. Harmer, 53, said the lie detector incident had been a “serious breakdown” in the 2Day editorial process, while the Szubanski comment was “unfortunate”. She said Austereo’s requirement that Sandilands undergo counselling could only be a good thing for him. “Creating a bit of time to have a bit of self reflection is not a bad thing, and I’m sure he’ll bounce back,” she said. “I hope that he finds some confidence and is able to go on. I never want to see Kyle crushed and humiliated and driven out.” Many radio personalities have been quick to criticise and poke fun at Sandilands, but Harmer, a stand-in for Adam Spencer on ABC 702, said there wasn’t a breakfast radio presenter who hadn’t made “hideous blunders” and would reflect on some “idiocy” on the drive home from a shift. “It’s a high wire act,” Harmer said. “The medium is live, live, live, and sometimes the mouth is in gear and the brain is being towed along behind the vehicle. “All of us, if we’re honest, would like to take back something we’ve said.” Dominic Knight from the satirical group The Chaser - who have been reprimanded in the past for their stunts - has also questioned whether condemnation of Sandilands has gone too far. Harmer says she knows too well how criticism feels, after she was caned in the media for her 2002 Logie Awards hosting. After Harmer resigned from 2Day FM in 2003, she had a brief stint on radio station Vega at the end of 2005. The mother of two is a contestant on the upcoming celebrity MasterChef series, while her popular Pearlie children’s books have been made into a TV animation to launch early next month on Network Ten. AAP
