Let us issue shares fed with some results of our economy to all of us, and then worship these.

Sir, Rana Foroohar asking “At what point does bad corporate behavior become willful malfeasance?” writes, “Facebook is the natural culmination of 40 years of business worshipping at the altar of shareholder value.” “Facebook puts growth over governance” December 25.

Really? If all the incredible developments around Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft and similar, results from “worshipping at the altar of shareholder value” then perhaps we should issue a share to each citizens that feeds on a substantial part of profits, like those of Facebook, or taxes, like carbon taxes, and have us all worshipping these shares, instead of trusting the acts of genius politicians or bureaucrats with agendas of their own. 

Those shares, which would pay out an equal unconditional societal dividend to all of us, is by the way what a Universal Basic Income is all about. 

Of course, as usually comes with new developments, there are new and serious problems, and data privacy is one of them. Foroohar asks “ Have we reached one of those watersheds when US and European authorities are going to step up and do something about it? Let us beware, there’s no guarantee that would not be even worse. 

Foroohar says she is reminded of “bank executives who had no understanding of the risks built into their balance sheets until markets started to blow up during the 2008 financial crisis” 

I am though more reminded of regulators who allowed banks to leverage over 60 times their equity with what rated as AAA could be very dangerous to our bank system, and less that 8.3 times with what rated below BB- bankers do not like to touch with a ten feet pole. I am reminded of regulators who assigned a risk weight of 0% to the sovereign of Greece, and thereby doomed that nation to its tragedy.

@PerKurowski

Martin Wolf, we sure don’t need a Basel Committee for Large Technological Companies Supervision

Sir, Martin Wolf ends his discussions about the monstrously large technological companies (Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook, Alibaba, Tencent and Samsung) with: “What are the implications? They are that our futures are too important to be left to the mercies of the technology industry alone. It has done magical things. Yet nobody elected it master of the universe. Policymakers must get an intellectual grip on what is happening.” “Taming the masters of the tech universe” November 15.

Does Wolf really believe some probably self appointed technocrats should be able and capable enough to stand in for the current masters of the tech universe, for all these to work more smoothly and safer without any unexpected consequences?

I am reminded of AEI’s Alex J. Pollock’s 2015 article “Martin Wolf’s childlike regulatory faith”. That article referred to Wolf’s “naïve faith in the future superior knowledge and future ability of central bankers and other bureaucrats successfully to tell other people what to do”.

Sir, just look at what those who appointed themselves as the Regulation Masters of the Universe of Banks have done:

They have allowed banks to leverage differently with different assets. As a consequence banks have different capability to obtain risk-adjusted returns on equity with different assets. This has dangerously distorted the allocation of bank credit to the real economy, in favor of what could be leveraged the most. Now instead of banks wanting savvy loan officers to maximize their ROE, they look mostly for equity minimizers to do that.

And, by considering the risk of the banks assets per se, and not the risk those assets represent to the banks, they got their whole risk-weighting totally wrong. A clear example of that is Basel II’s risk weight of only 20% for the dangerous AAA rated and of 150% for the so innocous below BB- rated. Sir, have you ever seen more inept Masters of the Universe?

Would the banks left alone to the markets be able to leverage 62.5 times to 1 only because an AAA to AA rating was present? No!

Would the banks left alone to the markets be able to lend to sovereigns without any capital at all as Basel II’s 0% risk weighting of sovereigns implies? No!

Would we have suffered to 2007-08 crisis had it not been for these regulations? No!

Do I suggest we should leave the tech monsters to do what they want? No, but I don’t think markets will allow them to reign alone and do what they want forever either… things do change, just look at GEs and Siemens.

For instance I can feel some ad-blockers around the corner that could help us users to charge Google and Facebook something for them using our own preferences to earn their advertising revenues.

And I can also smell additional taxes coming up in the future, like for instance a minuscule cost for each advertising connection in social media, which would make sure the marginal cost of exploiting our limited attention span is not zero. But these taxes will hopefully be shared out to all by means of universal basic income mechanisms instead of increasing the franchise value of the redistribution profiteers.

And to combat “people of ill” engaging in “deliberate dissemination of dangerous falsehoods”, much could be helped just by means of having an independent credible register that guarantees us who do not want to engage with unknown strangers, that behind a communication stands a correctly identified and not hacked real person.

PS. Here are some questions I have on tweets and tweeting etiquette that I tweeted.

If without any bad intentions I have re-tweeted a tweet that turns out to be fake news or fake and damning accusations, could I be sued?

If I re-tweet a tweet that I know or should know contains fake news or fake damning accusations, should I be sued?

Don’t we need a sort of ISO quality standard on tweeting that we can adhere to?

Don’t we need somebody to guarantee us that a tweeter is a real identifiable person that has not been hacked?

@PerKurowski

They pay just 0.0025 to 0.02 cents of a dollar per advert to reach me online? No way! I am worth much more!

Sir, I refer to Tim Harford’s “Online ads: log in, tune out, turn off” April 4. It contains some very enlightening data for someone not in the business of targeting ads but only being a target of ads. Harford mentions that the rate for cheap advert may be as low 25 cents of a dollar per 1000 views, while good adverts may pay the publisher 2 dollars per 1000 view.

So that means that someone reaching me with a cheap advert pays for that 1/40th of a cent of a dollar while someone reaching me with a good advert pays 1/5th of a cent of a dollar. What a shocker, I thought getting my attention span was worth more than that. De facto I am a Mechanical Turk working at the receiving end. Not only do I perceive any income for that, zero salary, but, to add insult to injury, they are valuing the access to my attention span at ridiculous low rates.

It is clear that I urgently need someone to develop an App that will only allow ads that produces me an income of X dollars per hour of my attention span to reach me. The provider of that service, in charge of collecting my earnings, would have to work on a commission basis, so that I can be sure we are both targeting the same end results.

Since now and again I would wish to see a little of what is available in the cheap advert markets, occasionally I authorize allotting some of my valuable attention span, on a pro-bono basis.

PS. That X dollars per hour of my attention span will fluctuate according to market conditions.

@PerKurowski

I want a net 40 percent of the revenues generated by ads on the web in which I am the target. Who can help me?

Sir, I refer to Robert Cookson’s “Web publishers in arms race with adblockers” March 30.

Clearly picking up information about what we are up to on the Internet, and screening us for what we might like, in order to reach us for with some advertising, is big big business. And stopping that from happening seems also to be big big businesses… and now we read that sometimes those two big big interests even collude to get the most out of us.

But what about us, the targets? Is there no way we can participate in those revenues? Anyone who figures that out could have a very interesting business model in his hands.

For instance: “I want to prohibit any ad blocker to block any ad in which I am the target and in which I do not get a share of the ad-revenues… let’s say 50 percent”. Who can help me with that? I am willing to pay 20 percent out of my revenues for that service… in order to retain a quite modest 40% of my value as a target.

PS. Sir, between us, to block any ads targeted at me, without my explicit authorization, sounds like something quite criminal to me.

@PerKurowski

On Companies International, November 17

Whistling in the dark forest?

Sir Robert Anderson and Christopher Mason in reporting that “Newspapers face fresh pricing pressures” they quote a spokesman for Norske Skog (Norway’s forest), the worlds second largest newsprint producer saying “We see a momentum now for increased prices”. Surprising. Is that how one whistles in a dark forest?

82 percent of pirates?

Sir Kathrin Hille and Mure Dickie reporting on how “Chinese consumers flex their muscles in Microsoft piracy flight” they mention that according to Business Software Alliance China’s piracy rates are 82 per cent, and not the world’s worst. Can we really talk of piracy when 82 per cent of a country does it? Neverland? What do we call the other 18 per cent, law abiding Chinese? When might it be better for Microsoft to go underground and start to cater to the pirates? Has Microsoft analyzed what would happen to their worldwide income if they priced their Microsoft Office at $ 9.99 per year?

Whistling in the dark desert?

Sir Simeon Kerr and Robin Wigglesworth report on “UBS fund in $500 Mideast joint foray” November 17. Steve Jacobs of UBS tell them “clients had already expressed an interest in the Middle East, which is expected to outperform most other regions as the global slowdown deepens”. Surprising. Is that how one whistles in a dark desert?

Who gets the money?

Sir Jonathan Soble, (in Tokyo?) reports on an “astronomical fine” of $1.75bn levied on some glassmakers, because they “conspired to fix prices of windscreens and other automotive glass between 1998 and 2003.” Who gets the money?

And who pays me?

Sir I deeply appreciated John Gapper’s “Microsoft problem is close to home” September 20 and where he so valiantly gives voice to the for us layman unthinkable possibility that what has been slowing our computers down is not necessarily bad hardware or virus but Señor Windows himself.

Although I confess still being a bit dizzy, if this was to be right, does Gapper think that I could address the European Commission and ask them to share with me some of the money they collected from Microsoft as a partial reimbursement for all my down time?

Alternatively, since Neelie Kroes, the competition commissioner is caught confessing that he “would like Window’s market share to fall from more than 90 percent to nearer 50 percent” and we can safely assume that he assumes this lack of competition lies at the heart of the problem… would it be better for me to sue the Commission instead for not doing their trust-busting job right?

Do we need a product responsibility and liability legislation that is proportional to the market share? At least in those cases were the society itself by awarding intellectual property rights and investing money in their defences creates some of the possible reasons for a high market share?

Should there be resurrection fees?

Sir, Thomas Rubin is very right in that “Copyright must be respected as culture goes online” March 6, but he sure does sound excruciatingly rightful, when instead humility is much called for in this difficult issue. Perhaps he needs to be reminded that all the new protected culture is genetically a descendant of previous culture, in the same vein that Microsoft would not be able to pay for Rubin’s services had not the computers existed. Society should respect copyrights and similar but the copyrighters should also respect the society, not only because it invests copious resources defending their intellectual properties, but because it has every right to expect it.

There are currently hundred of thousand books, movies, photos and other copyrightable matter out there, that were it not for the power of the web they would be condemned to eternal darkness. Shall now the saviors that bring them to life and light again have to pay for the resurrections? I am not sure, but then again I am no expert as Mr Rubin.