Rigobon: What to do when you suck @ everything

Do the thing where you suck relatively less than your peers.

Yesterday, Rigobon outlined competitive advantage under autarky and trade conditions. Rigobon likened free trade to the "value creation" stage of a Curhan-styled negotiation. The problem arises when "value claiming" ensues (fair trade is one of many ways to allocate the surplus).

At this point, a dominant country is inclined to claim most of the value created because:

1. they have more power/stronger BATNA

2. it "looks" like they're doing all the work and their trade partners suck (the productivity gains associated with outsourcing grunt work are easy to lose in the wash)

This is why countries which are best in the world at commodity industries (i.e. agriculture) tax their strengths to subsidize their weaknesses in higher margin products (i.e. healthcare). Rigobon would tell you this approach only makes sense if the subsidy is driving development in an area the world sucks at and your particular country sucks at everything.

Zipcars

Get the MIT discount while you can!

AF & I took a yellow mini cooper named Mushpot for a day trip to Funspot Arcade in Laconia.

Super easy logistics. It lived in an alley close to the green line (if we hadn't wanted one last min for the entire day, there were plenty in Beaconhill). Had its own EZ Pass. There's a gas card under the sun visor.

There's an iPhone app out there that lets you lock/unlock/honk remotely.

BYONavigation device!

Respect according to Mediation@MIT

Useful takeaway from Ruthie's SIP class on Conflict Resolution. If there were a rosary to go through before fierce conversations, this looks like a pretty good start...

• Every person has an element of goodwill and integrity
• Every person is capable of change
• People can and should make decisions about their own lives
• The parties speak for themselves, think for themselves, decide for themselves. The hard work is theirs. So is the outcome.

Riots according to Rigobon

Q: What factors drive people to riot?

Rigobon's A: There's a theory that a crisis is like a traffic jam. At first, there's camaraderie. We're in this together. But then one lane starts moving and our comrades have left us! People riot when problems are solved unevenly...

[...Next class: System Dynamics...]

Q: What happens when a company receives a spike in orders that generates a backlog?

Centola's A: In very simple input-output systems, you see a spike in output in the next time period. But few systems are this simple. Usually there are second or third order delays which lead to the output spike bleeding into earlier and later periods...

Seems like an uneven solve. With goods which are allocated in highly visible ways (i.e. relief to distressed regions) is there is a benefit to holding off on distribution until a batch has been created which does not leave anyone in the lurch?

X,Y, & Z-Prizes

"You know," he said as our cab trundled spasmodically towards a sketchy impound lot on the outskirts of Cambridge, "years from now, people won't be able to fathom parking trouble-- or having to drive the things for that matter..."

Some other artifacts I'd like to see get jettisoned fast:

• Mobile friend finding: the bickering between google and apple has to stop. yeah, yeah, standards battle, sony vs. betamax, whatever. Does anyone still use a VCR??
• Lifegamer: too many gamers grow up and go zero tolerance because FPS can really cramp your leisure time and wash out your tan and RL social skills. We need lifehacker-inspired games with some redeeming productivity/personal growth component.
• Location-based wiki: starting to see this with Google Earth iphone app and location based tagging of photos. You should be able to stroll down Charles St and set your dial to an overview of Charles' storied past, hottest deals on the block, etc.
• Try before buy: Amazon's final frontier. Really small brick and mortar shops using Zara-esque 1 item per color x size. The spectacle here is elite dressing rooms. Your items get shipped home rather than having to trudge around town with a giant pink Vicky's bag getting oggled by every straight man under 50.
• BMI sizing: and seriously, what gives with capricious sizing? we need to standardize on this. Thinking BMI may actually be a better measure than voodoo around waist to hip measurements...
• Reconciling holistic and clinical medicine: thinking midwives and home remedies will rally in the face of the disjointed, expensive healthcare mess we have today
• Currency converters: credit cards are starting to do this for us. At some point, we'll end up on a single currency, be it Euros or cell phone minutes
• Team science: we'll figure out ways to distill individual development feedback out of amorphous "teamwork"exercises. Or we'll stop caring about a straight meritocracy and ruggedly individualistic promotions.
• Home makeovers: to accommodate new family structures and the Renaissance of the family compound-- autonomous aging parents and educated kids, oh my!
• Tax: it's gotta be a pure sales tax economy to drive out of control consumption and force full ownership of a product's cost from earth to earth (yes, this is regressive because poor people spend a larger portion of their income) OR a flat tax rate... but all the shenanigans with tax shelters and gaming have got to go

Power of Positive Thinking

Just returned Authentic Happiness to Hayden Library if anyone's looking for it... Or you could just run yourself through the diagnostics on Seligman's website...

Latest tips for lightening up:

Attitudes towards the Past

• Past performance no guarantee of future results: general critique of determinism (we are not a product of our environments, we have intrinsic character and control over our behavior)
• ROI of gratitude and forgiveness > hurdle rate

Attitudes towards the Future

• Setbacks are caused by small, temporary factors that are within our control (we're within striking distance of shipping it)
• Progress is caused by broad permanent attributes of our personality (of course it worked; we're rockstars)

Attitudes towards the Present

• Cultivate your intrinsic strengths (see list of ideas)
• Chase Flow

Serenity Second Year

This semester feels a lot chiller than Core because...

• Incorporate additional "thank you" shout outs, emoticons, and exclamation points into emails instead of just thinking them
• Respond to meeting availability requests ASAP... last responder is almost invariably the rotten egg (doodle works better in theory than in practice)
• Evoke 80-20 payoff to effort with reckless abandon (at the end of the day, no one's life is contingent on their grade in [insert course name here])
• Cancel meetings that have no agenda instead of pleading emergency and backing out at the last minute
• Don't attribute ownership to ideas, that way no one takes the ego blow when something gets jettisoned
• Don't wait for quorum to arrive to start
• Do things over lunch rather than instead of lunch
• Do not join teams because you think you can see sexual/intellectual arbitrage opportunities (more on this in the coming Fifteen)