Carnival of the Capitalists

Welcome to Carnival of the Capitalists 101. Everyone find a seat. If you're looking for Carnival of the Vanities, it's across the hall.

I'm your instructor, Director Mitch, and I'm a real-life Marketing Director at an international technology company. I've broken down today's class by topic. Please hold all questions until the end of the lecture:

Marketing - My favorite business topic since it's what I do for a living.

o A boom in knitting? It's true. Small Business Trends looks at how this fuddy hobby is suddenly cool.

o Want to market your blog? Blog Business World has the ins and outs of the DMOZ Directory.

o Interested Participant makes me glad I turned down that marketing job at Maytag last year. Maytag's lack of a cost cutting strategy over the past decade means they are now forced to make a big change all at once, meaning big layoffs.

o Pricing is one of the Four Ps, and everyone hates the high prices of CDs. The Big Picture looks at why the planned CD price cuts went off track.

o The only thing people hate more than high CD prices is high gas prices. Steve Verdon notes that everyone likes to blame oil prices, but are missing many of the other factors contributing to high prices at the pump. Calico Cat looks at the political aspect of gas prices and wonders why politics gets in the way of a sound energy policy.

o Marketing includes sales, and a great way to improve sales is to read and understand the book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Synergy Fest reviews the book and finds it very valuable.

Finance and Economics - Here we'll get out of the "real" world and get into theory and even some philosophy.

o Maybe this should be filed under Marketing: Curryblog explains how investment consultants and portfolio managers purposely misuse the term Tracking Error to make their portfolio performance seem better than it is.

o Catallarchy explores how markets allow selfishness to result in cooperation and uses everyone from Smith to Hobbes to explore how it has resulted in higher living standards for everyone.

o Wheat and Chaff fisks Orwell's book The Road to Wigan Pier and finds Orwell's criticisms of capitalism didn't take into account economic freedom, and how central planning of any kind results in losses of all freedoms.

o Consumption Taxes and how they tax dissaving is explored over at Tim Worstall

o How much do you believe in the economic principal of capitalism? Enough to go to a pro-capitalism rally? Ego suggests you attend one.

Corporate Governance - How is a corporation run? How are decisions made? Do you have a succession plan? What's the role of government in business? Those are only a few questions this area covers.

o One of my daily blog reads, Professor Bainbridge, looks at how hard it is to pass down a family owned business using the Mondavi wine family as a case study.

o Voluntary Exchange uses the example of the WMD recently found in Iraq to explain Framing Effects and their role in decision making.

o Leadership in corporations is vital and Photon Courier passes on a vignette on Eisenhower and his efforts to maintain positive relationships within his organization.

o My own entry this week asks readers for advice for when you find out customer is acting unethically.

o Jeff Doolittle examines FCC regulation and the long term plan for reallocating radio frequency spectrum

Entrepreneurship - Start-Ups are an area where I am 0 for 2, so a good topic for me do some reading on.

o The Entrepreneurial Mind looks at the need for entrepreneurs to find rest in their lives. I've yet to meet a successful entrepreneur who had any rest, so an interesting read.

o Which has created the most innovations: large companies with huge R&D budgets, or independent inventors? It's not hard to guess the correct one and Econlog wonders why large companies aren't the ones doing radical innovations.

That's it for today. Some of this material will be on the mid-term. Are the any questions? Bueller.....? Bueller.......?

Thanks for everyone's contribution. Next week's Carnival will be at We The People. Send your entries to capitalists -at- elhide -dot- com. Go to the CoC home page for more information on this weekly event and how you can become a host.