Well, it’s Friday at lunch. You know what that means… time to clear out the links that couldn’t be strung together to make a theme…. although looking at the articles, there might be a theme: money.
- Making Money. Note that I mean literally making money. In Brazil, many communities have begun minting their own bills, pegging them on a one-to-one basis with the national currency. The goal is to get people to spend their money locally; merchants give a discount when the community currency is used. Here’s a way to think about this. Suppose LA County issued their own currency, where one Yorty=$1. If you used the money at a local merchant, you get a 5% discount. Would that encourage you to purchase from a local merchant vs. an online merchant?
- Seltzer Boy. Two articles related to seltzer. The first tells the story of a seltzerman in New York, who may be the last in his clan to sell seltzer. The second is about a pharmacy in Ava, MO, that has restored its soda fountain, and charges 1950s prices. This means 5c ice cream, sodas, and coffees. They are losing money on the soda fountain, but building relationships with customers, and making a profit on prescriptions.
- Mining Social Media. We all think of Facebook as the dangerous social media. It is time to give Linked In some thoughts. An interesting article looks at the risks of putting information on Linked In: mining corporate information. In particular, one VP at HP tipped off competitors earlier this year to previously undisclosed details of HP’s cloud-computing services. The information was later removed, though not before rivals got a look at the plans.
- It Should Be A Musical. A few days ago I read this story about a Chinese Artificial Sweetner company that wanted to build a plant in Moberly, MO, and thought it would make a great musical or play. Mamtek USA made a $46 million deal with Moberly to build a new artificial sweetner plant. It was supposed to be pumping out high-grade artificial sweetener by the truckload, paying nearly 200 people making $17.50 an hour, and serving as Exhibit A of how foreign — Chinese — investment could bring new life deep into the Missouri heartland. It didn’t happen. The half-built plant sits idle, and the city could be on the hook for $39 million of the company’s bad debt. Where’s the musical, you say? The musical would be the story of Janet Morales, the editor of the local paper. After an initial start of construction, things slowed down… and Morales got suspicious. Morales was editor and publisher of an upstart weekly called The Moberly Mirror. After the announcement, she asked a few questions about the varying job projections, and why Mamtek couldn’t use an existing building. Not long after, Morales started hearing rumblings that city leaders were urging advertisers to boycott her paper, because she wasn’t being supportive enough of the deal. She kept quiet; her 400-circulation Mirror was a shoestring operation, and she wanted her hometown to thrive. But she kept hearing the talk. So she started digging, and she found some holes in Mamtek’s story. While the company said it has a plant in Fujian Province, China, she could find no evidence of one. She contacted trade publications and competitors, and found no one knew of Mamtek. She found other towns — in Missouri and in North Dakota — that had talked with Cole but balked at the incentives he wanted. She asked some questions about the science and safety of Mamtek’s chemical processing. Then she wrote up her findings and mailed the Mirror’s final issue to every home in Moberly. But nothing came of it. You need to read the article to find out what happened.
- Paying for College. I regularly highlight articles related to paying for college. Here’s an interesting one. It appears universities, especially public universities, are giving preferential admission to those who can pay the full ride without any merit or need-based financial aid. This means they are admitting those students even if they have lower grades or test scores.
- The Muffin Man. Lastly, we have the $16 muffin kerfuffle you’ve probaby read about. Hilton is now saying the $16 was for more than muffins: The $16-per-person tab included fresh fruit, coffee and juice, plus tax and gratuity, in addition to muffins. Of course, as someone that has planned menus for a conference at a nice hotel, you know that $16 for that tab is cheap. Hotels make major money on their food and beverage concessions, where the conference planner is captive and cannot bring in another service. They do the same thing with A/V costs, internet in conference rooms (try $1K/day per connection). It’s nothing new, and is being trotted out to exploit the public’s lack of knowledge of how why conferences are expensive. Remember: politicians often get their power and stay in power by exploiting the great unwashed public’s lack of knowledge of (deep voice) how things work (end voice). Another example of this is how they use government pensions to their own advantage, while keeping their public salaries low.
