Apple and the options option

Think triage. Take a collection of companies that Apple might be interested in buying and they will fall into one of three groups: 1) yes, buy it now, 2) not currently a good fit, or 3) a good business partner, but Apple would only need to buy it to keep it from falling into the hands of a competitor.

An option, for that third category, would be for Apple to acquire an option to buy each company they consider vital to their own business, so that, if a competitor were to make a (verifiably legitimate) offer to buy one of these, Apple would have the option of interdicting that purchase by matching the competitor's offer themselves, or if they elected not to do so they should at least be provided with evidence that the terms which had been presented to them were the actual terms of the competitor's purchase, and not a trumped-up figure. Moreover, if Apple decided not to accept the terms of the buyout, and the competitor backed out of the deal, the company under consideration of acquisition should refund the cost of Apple's option, unless Apple were to respond with a counter offer which they accepted.

Koreas's ‘East Germany’ and the role of China

Korea, South Korea, is at the top of its game. That's not to say that a fall is imminent, nor even on the horizon, only that their current degree of engineering prowess and economic prosperity is unprecedented and, to use an over-worn expression, world class.

The other Korea, North Korea, by contrast, is decades behind the world community in almost every respect, a situation compounded by the malnourishment of its people.

This set of circumstances is very like that which existed in Germany (then West & East Germany, respectively), just prior to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. For West Germany, reunification was initially a disruptive burden, owing to the poor economic condition of the east, but it also meant a suddenly expanded labor force sharing a common language.

In Korea reunification seems a remote possibility, at present, but a shift in the political wind in the north could change that rather quickly. And don't expect much in the way of resistance from China, since North Korea's persistent cult of the leader makes communism look worse than it otherwise would, and reunification would provide them with a more prosperous trading partner in place of the burden North Korea currently represents to them.

But the really interesting dynamic would be how the economy of Korea as a whole would benefit from reunification, through the combination of North Korean labor, which could be made far more potent by means of a little food aid, and South Korean industrial ability, which, automated as it is, can still make good use of less expensive labor.

Even more than with Germany, language would bind and lubricate Korean reunification, since the Korean language is not widely spoken outside of the peninsula and also not strongly subdivided into dialects. Even without exclusionary laws, the common language would help insure that South Korean business had special access to the North Korean labor pool.

One major question remains; can some degree of economic reunification proceed without a regime change in the north? If China were to signal that North Korea should look to its southern sister for assistance, that seeming impossibility would suddenly become a matter of how much how soon, and for China that would be a matter of shrugging off a burden.

belief in evolution not necessarily an evolutionary advantage

While acknowledging your right to disagree, for the present purpose I'm going to assume that the ‘theory of evolution’ (really more of an established principle) is essentially correct, along with all of the usual corollaries.

However, it does not follow that holding this view, however orthodox and realistically unassailable it may be, confers any evolutionary advantage whatsoever upon those who hold it. In fact the advantage, as measured by fecundity, may belong to those who hold another view, for example that humans have existed in our present form since the beginning of time, a view that approximately one third of Americans espouse. (Pew Research via Reuters)

While there are practical limits on how far one's internal model of the world may diverge from reality without negative repercussions upon one's chances for contributing to the gene pool of the future, social cohesion probably matters more than accuracy in something as esoteric as the origin of the human species. If access to resources depends in any tangible way upon echoing the views of those around you, however erroneous, voicing disagreement is likely to prove counterproductive, in terms of natural selection, even when your view is correct and theirs is not – perhaps especially then.

Nor should there be anything surprising about this. Science is a relatively young phenomenon. For most of the time since the emergence of humanity, we have dealt with our own unknown origins by telling stories, frequently quite fanciful stories involving magical beings, also frequently transforming those stories into dogma as some groups became dominant and others subservient. The need for some explanation, even if a vacuous one, might be considered a defining characteristic of the human species, as distinguished from chimps, for example, who lack complex language and presumably therefore also lack the need for explanations regarding questions they lack the capacity to pose, much less to contemplate at length.

And so we still do, traffic in stories that is. For most of us, most of what we know is composed, not of data and analysis, but of stories, sometimes based on data and analysis, more often not, or at least not directly so. Even so, the majority of us have had enough exposure to science to recognize reliable methods and reasonable conclusions, and make use of that general familiarity in filtering the stories to which we are exposed.

The lingering question is whether we should be concerned over higher rates of childbirth among people whose story filters are less well developed. Is there a risk of resultant devolution? Perhaps, if it were to persist for another few thousand years, but cultural evolution is happening far more quickly and there are far more pressing issues to worry about. We do, however, need to continue to put effort into bridging the gap between scientific methods and popular beliefs, working to improve everyone's story filters.

Public Domain Day 2014

Today is Public Domain Day 2014. (Follow the link to learn more about Public Domain Day and the current state of copyright law.)

To be brief, government has no natural interest in protecting intellectual property of any sort unless doing so results in an improvement in the volume, quality, and/or relevance (largely a function of timeliness) of material passing into the public domain.

government exists to support the best instincts and constrain the worst instincts of the citizenry

Collective action is a great thing when the action involved is well considered, and in such cases the involvement of government in some capacity is frequently appropriate.

Mob-like action, on the other hand, demands an altogether different sort of involvement from government, even when it occurs on the floor of a stock exchange or in the executive offices of America's largest coroporations.

One of central myths of our society is that "greed is good" (so long as you play by the rules in pursuing it), that, on balance, it results in more benefit than damage generally. While this may seem an iffy proposition, it's one that most of us have more or less agreed to provisionally pretend is true, so government comes down on the side of supporting a little greed here and there, with the details depending significantly upon which party is in power at the moment, and only constraining cases where it's clearly gone over the top, again with the details being party-dependent. So long as government doesn't become either too much a matter of providing favors to friends and allies, or too negligent, this is actually a passably workable situation.

The predicament we find ourselves in at the moment, is that we have been sold the notion that greed without limit or concomitant responsibility is good, combined with the notion that the aspiration to flatten the distribution of income and wealth is some sort of social disease.

What worries me in the discussion about the secret operation of agencies such as the NSA, is the possibility that they might view their role as serving this twisted version of American values.

We are too big and interconnected a society, with far too much momentum, to rely upon revolution as a remedy for a government gone Tory. We must make our institutions work properly.

right to privacy inversely proportional to the impact on others (or the planet) of one's actions

The more one's choices affect others, the more they are the business of others.

The more one's choices affect the planet, including issues such as diffuse pollution, degradation of biodiversity, paving over arable land, and so forth, the more they are everyone's business.

So in matters involving either widespread or deep impact on others or the planet, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.

Icahn't understand why they cling to the nest egg

Proving that not every billionaire is terribly bright, Carl Icahn once again displays his failure to comprehend why it might be better for Apple (and its investors) for the company to hold onto the majority of its investments. Apparently he assumes that if they were to pour those assets into buying back stock that it would increase the price per share, and therefore the value of his own holdings. Superficially, that makes sense, but if you credit Apple management with being clever about how they've invested all those billions, and you should, then maybe not.

choice is not an unmitigated good

Choice is of relatively little value when it resembles a minefield, when all of the available choices are poor or worse.

Steve Jobs' posthumous coup de maître

Who knew that Laurene Powell Jobs was brilliant? Well, probably anyone close to the family, but in particular Steve himself, and, in putting her on public display as he was dying, and leaving everything to her, he acted like a volleyball player setting the ball for another to spike. We've only begun to hear from LPJ; get used to it!

where's the better alternative to ObamaCare?

If the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party hates ObamaCare so much, they should be offering a better alternative, like single payer.