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Wednesday, August 14, 2002

I'll buy that: Full of shiny gadgets, Gizmodo is an experiment by Nick Denton to see if weblogs can make money.

6:16 PM | permalink

Money talks: The 1.5 million people earning £60,000-plus are 'affluentials', according to Barclays. Their spending power 'gives them enormous power over setting trends and influencing the way we all live'. [Guardian].

5:40 PM | permalink

End of an error: The editor of Business Ethics magazine celebrates its 15th anniversary by admitting that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a smokescreen for the excesses of the 'financial elite'.

As the 'Watergate of Wall Street unfolds', Marjorie Kelly - with all the zeal of the converted - tells the MBA class that power structures need to be made democratic. 'We’ve been like homeowners chopping down nuisance trees which continually spring back, because we have failed to eradicate the roots.' [Business Ethics].

Peter Carlson says: 'Duh!'

'The idea that corporations will shaft workers, shareholders and Mother Nature in pursuit of the almighty dollar should be obvious to anyone who has ever glanced at an American history textbook. And the fact that corporate executives might utter pious platitudes about ethics while stealing like gangsters would surprise no one familiar with the tale of Richard Whitney, the president of the New York Stock Exchange, who delivered a famous speech titled "Business Honesty" shortly before he was sent to Sing Sing for theft in 1938.

'But it's not nice to gloat over the naivete of disillusioned idealists. The folks at Business Ethics are not all that different from the rest of us. In the last several decades, politicians, think tanks and the media have convinced the American public that corporations are warm, fuzzy creatures, that CEOs are American heroes and that government regulation of business is meddlesome and unnecessary. Now we know -- or ought to know -- that it was a lot of baloney.' [Washington Post].

5:39 PM | permalink

Net gains: Scott Rosenberg on why the internet matters even after the pop of the tech stock bubble: 'Hundreds of millions of people around the world continue to bend it to their own ends, in chaotic, unstable and unpredictable ways. As a generator of instant wealth, the Net may now be a big bust; as a generator of instant ideas, it keeps thrumming along.' [Salon].

5:38 PM | permalink

iMicropayments: To complement The End of Free, here comes The Start of Fee.

5:38 PM | permalink