May 2019

Episode #243: Team Member Compensation

People have value, not jobs. You price people, not jobs.

So why do people work?

  1. Intrinsic rewards—inherent in the work itself (volunteers)

  2. Opportunity to grow—education, invest in HC

  3. Recognition of accomplishments—storytelling (FedEx Bravo Award)

  4. Economic rewards—Extrinsic, pay, benefits

From Dale Dauten, The Gifted Boss: How to Find, Create, and Keep Great Employees:

Old school is hire someone by offering 20 percent more money. Well, try offering 100 percent more freedom or 100 percent more excitement…Gifted bosses and great employees want the same things from a workplace: 

            Freedom from…management, mediocrity, and morons

            A change

            A chance 


And there are other examples as well:

  • Steve Jobs said Apple was a culture that runs on ideas, not hierarchy (or seniority).

  • Thomas Jefferson: “There is nothing less equal than treating nonequals equally.”

  • Nordstrom: “Your performance is your review.”

In Get Rid of the Performance Review!, Samuel A. Culbert writes that “pay and performance don’t have much to do with each other. Lumping them together is a needlessly stupid, alienating ritual that produces phony posturing, and inhibits straight talk.” 

Here is a summary of Culbert’s theory on what determines pay:

  1. Whether the boss wants to retain the employee

  2. The amount of raise that boss thinks is necessary for doing so

  3. The department’s budget

When a valued employee decides to leave the boss will ask: “What will it take to get you to stay?” There’s no game-playing, or pretense, just the raw truth (of course, people don’t leave companies, they leave managers). 

Ed’s Compensation Model (read more at Ed’s blog post)

  1. Salary

  2. Profit-sharing (team vs. firm)

  3. On-the-spot bonuses

  4. Enhancement of intellectual capital — Knowledge Matrix

There’s an old military saying: “A man wouldn’t sell his life for $1 million, but would gladly risk it for a ribbon or Medal of Honor.” Purpose, probably more than any other factor, drives performance and discretionary effort. If people believe in what the organization stands for, they will pour their heart and soul into their work.


Episode #242: Prices, Profits, and Fairness

Why is an oil or pharmaceutical company condemned for earning windfall profits when market conditions change, while an individual homeowner who realizes a tidy profit off of a hot real estate market is applauded?

Popular movie stars, directors, and entertainment companies can earn above-normal profits without so much as a whisper of public protest. Premium ice creams and chocolates are very expensive and yield profit margins that would have made the “robber barons” of yesterday blush.

Very few of us would continue working at 50 percent of our present salaries. Are we not charging what the market will bear?

Why are individuals and corporations held to different standards? Perhaps it is not so much price that bothers people as it is profits.

Market Competition leads a self-interested person to wake up in the morning, look outside at the earth and produce from its raw materials, not what he wants, but what others want. Not in the quantities he prefers, but in the quantities his neighbors prefer. Not at the price he dreams of charging, but at a price reflecting how much his neighbors value what he has done.
––Friedrich A. von Hayek


Capitalism offers nothing but frustrations and rebuffs to those who wish—because of claimed superiority of intelligence, birth, credentials, or ideals––to get without giving, to take without risking, to profit without sacrifice, to be exalted without humbling themselves to understand others and meet their needs.
––George Gilder


Throughout history the morality of profits and a just price has been debated endlessly, as it should be. The late Father Richard John Neuhaus, in his book Doing Well and Doing Good, explains the ancient debate of a “just” price:

The idea that there is a right amount or a “just” amount always runs up against the question, Compared to what? The conventional answer is that one pays what the market demands, or what the market will bear. From Athens to Elizabethan England to the Great Terror of the French Revolution, societies have experimented with “sumptuary laws” setting limits on people’s income and expenditures. The experiments have never worked out very well, the obvious reason being that it is almost impossible to agree on standards. Few egalitarians, even among the well-to-do, propose a top income limit that is less than what they themselves receive.

 During the Dark Ages merchants could be put to death for exceeding the communal concept of a “just” price (justum pretium, the right price). In A.D. 301, Diocletian, the Roman Emperor, issued an edict fixing prices for nearly 800 items and punishing violators with death. Severe shortages transpired.

In ancient China, India, Rome, and almost everywhere throughout the Middle Ages, all interest charges were called “usury” and were prohibited entirely, making economic progress through lending and risk-taking all but impossible.

Today, so-called “price gougers” are subject to societal condemnation, regulatory harassment, and editorial vitriol. Oil companies are frequently a prime target of public outrage, especially when prices at the pump vary from one city to another.

Pharmaceutical companies are held in special contempt when they charge $5 to $100 (or more) per pill, even if the dosage reduces more costly medical intervention by other means, such as surgery. In May 2000, the late Senator Paul Wellstone claimed, “We have an industry that makes exorbitant profits off sickness, misery, and illness of people, and that is obscene.” So what?

Orthopedists profit from people breaking their leg skiing, just as professors’ profit from students’ ignorance. Farmers profit from our hunger, but in reality they keep us from hunger. Drug companies profit by making us healthy.

The problem with a “just” price is who gets to decide what is just? The free market already provides an answer to this question—whatever someone is willing to pay. There is no objective standard for “fair,” which is why we have free speech rights, not fair speech rights.

Although it sounds heretical, it is not. An old legal maxim teaches: Emptor emit quam minimo potest, venditor vendit quam maximo potest (“The buyer buys for as little as possible; the seller sells for as much as possible”). Ultimately, the customer is sovereign, spending his or her money only when it provides value.

To believe the free market is imperfect with regard to the fairness of prices is to grossly underestimate your own sovereignty as a customer while putting your faith in some anonymous third party—usually a governmental regulatory agency or the courts—to determine what is “fair.”

Yet prices contain a wealth of information that no central agency can possibly possess, which is why wage and price controls have failed everywhere they have been tried (See “A Fair Price Utopia Gone Wrong” Case Study).

If it is immoral for a company to charge premium prices to customers, does it follow it is also immoral for customers to pay low prices? If prices are deemed “unreasonable” why do people pay them? Only unreasonable people pay unreasonable prices.

Case Study: A Fair Price Utopia Gone Wrong

Once upon a time there was a fair price utopia. In it, prices were set according to a theory of fair pricing. The price was based on the average product cost of all firms plus a standard percentage markup. Even if the costs of production for an identical good varied, the price was kept uniform for the customer. Although prices responded dynamically to changing average costs of production, this dynamism was tempered to maintain price stability. There were no unpleasant surprises. Buyers were supposed to enjoy complete transparency and control: by law, they could review the producer’s accounting and participate in determining the price. And the prices of basic staples like bread were subsidized to help the needy.

Beginning to sound familiar? That is because this utopia was the pricing system of the former United Soviet Socialist Republic. It was a pricing system designed to be fair. So what went wrong?

In might have been fair in theory, but not in actuality. Prices did not reflect the value as perceived by the consumer. The determination of value was done by overblown governmental departments based on complex calculations of cost and profit plus distribution costs, as well as consumption value and utility. Consumers had no idea how prices were actually determined. Supply did not respond to demand. Consumer goods were always in short supply no matter how strong the demand.

The system was imposed from above so that consumers had no voice. They consequently felt no compunction about flouting it. The black market flourished. Although in theory all consumers paid the same price, in actuality they did not.

The pricing system was inequitable, unequal, uncontrollable and opaque. The prices were wrong—and that’s not fair.

Excerpted from The Price is Wrong: Understanding What Makes a Price Seem Fair and the True Cost of Unfair Pricing, by Sarah Maxwell, PhD, 2008, page 164.


To believe prices are determined by greed is to believe sellers can establish prices at whatever level they desire, in effect never having to suffer losses or bankruptcy. Homes along the ocean front command high prices, but this does not prove fresh air causes greed. Prices convey information, while allocating resources and distributing income. If sellers are greedy than the counter argument can be made that buyers are also greedy and selfish, since they value seller’s products more than they do their money. Yet only the seller gets blamed. Probably because greed and selfishness do not, at all, explain this behavior.

Perhaps it is not so much price that bothers people as it is profits. Profits have a bad reputation because most people simply do not acknowledge where they come from. Profits come from risk. The entrepreneur gives long before she receives. She pays wages, vendors, landlords, and the other costs of running a business in advance of having anything left over (profits). Very few individuals work for 100 percent stock options, yet business owners, in effect, do exactly this, since profits are only left over after everyone else has been paid.

If it were true that profits caused high prices, then we should witness lower prices in those countries with no profits, such as socialist or communist countries. Yet all of the empirical evidence is to the contrary. Even though profits comprise only 10 percent of national income, they are crucial in allocating the other 90 percent. Of course, since most enterprises do not make an economic profit, perhaps we should say the pursuit of profit is the necessary ingredient. In any event, whenever someone laments a particular industry (or company) is making obscene profits, there is an effective retort: If you believe that, you would be crazy not sell everything you own and buy its stock.

Peter Drucker pointed out, “If archangels instead of businessmen sat in director’s chairs, they would still have to be concerned with profitability, despite their total lack of personal interests in making profits.”

Profits are an indicator that a useful social purpose is being filled and needs are being met. In a free market, no profit could exist without people voluntarily entering into a transaction where each receives more than they give up, what Harvard philosophy professor Robert Nozick cleverly coined “capitalist acts between consenting adults.” This is why George Gilder compares profits to altruism, since in enterprise gift giving precedes voluntary exchange—alter in Latin means “other.” For you to exchange you have to create something to exchange.

The essence of giving is not the absence of an expectation of earning a return, but the absence of a predetermined return. Profits are not guaranteed, and are determined by consumers, not greed. Gilder explains this eloquently:

A profit is the difference between what inputs cost the company and what they are worth to somebody else. It’s the index of the altruism of the process.

The moral code of capitalism is the essential altruism of enterprise. The most successful gifts are the most profitable––that is, gifts that are worth much more to the recipient than to the donor. The most successful givers, therefore, are the most altruistic––the most responsive to the desires of others.

The circle of giving (the profits of the economy) will grow as long as the gifts are consistently valued more by the receivers than by the givers. A gift is defined not by the absence of any return, but by the absence of a predetermined return. Unlike socialist investments, investments under capitalism are analogous to gifts, in that the returns are not preordained and depend for success entirely on understanding the needs of others. Profit thus emerges as an index of the altruism of a product.

 
Economists classify different types of profits as follows: 

Normal profits—The return to the owner, net economic return is zero, where costs include the cost of capital, the market rental rate of capital.

Supernormal profits—Profits in excess of normal profits. Occur when revenues exceed costs, again including the cost of capital. They are often identified with monopoly profits.

Rents—When an agent owns a good that has a special characteristic which, through no effort of the agent, is valuable. Professional athletes or musicians are often given as examples.

Profits from Immoral Activities—Extortion, theft, blackmail, etc.

Windfall profits—When the event causing the profits is a complete surprise to the profit maker. An example is the OPEC oil embargo of 1974.


This view of capitalism being a moral system is certainly not one that is propagated in the mainstream popular culture, where a populist refrain is “People before profits,” and the “bad guy” is portrayed as a businessman twice as much as any other occupation. As if profits and social responsibility are mutually exclusive. They are not.

This view is pernicious and completely out of touch with human behavior. In fact, given the realities of free-market exchanges—where both parties are better off after the exchange—profits are actually an indicator of social value created. Those who believe that earning a profit is morally neutral rather than a morally superior way for a corporation to discharge its responsibility should be asked if they believe deliberately running losses is ethical—particularly if it is with someone else’s money?

Episode #241: Lessons Learned From Our Subscription Economy Workshop

In Memory of Ken Baker

In memoriam Ken Baker

Ron’s brother Ken passed away recently. Ed and Ron spent the first few minutes of the show discussing his impact as Ken’s brother.


Lessons from the Subscription Economy Workshop

UPDATE: “From Fighting Fires to Fire Insurance” - These slides from the subscription economy workshop are now available here.

Ed and Ron recently taught their first workshop in Chicago on the Subscription Economy Business Model. The advantages of this model are many, including:

  • Predictable revenue

  • Not selling services, but creating annuities with a lifetime value that far exceeds whatever you paid to acquire them

  • Collective knowledge of your customers, which is a competitive advantage that cannot be duplicated

  • One-to-one marketing

  • Not pricing a product or service, but rather customer transformation and peace of mind

  • You can predict demand and plan capacity more effectively

  • …and it breaks down silos and creates a true “one-firm” model.

So what did Ron and Ed learn from the attendees? What were the most salient points they took away from this workshop? There are lots of great points in the recorded show audio that you can use and frame for your own business.

On a related note…

Ron will be teaching a Subscription CPE course the CAL CPA Education Foundation on August 8. More information is available here.

A big thank you!!!

TSOE Superfan, Hector Garcia, recorded a great video with Ed and Ron. It’s quick and full of information. Check it out here.

Business For Good?

Learn about B1G1 in about 3 minutes. Check this video out. Then take a deeper dive into the program with these slides.  

Finally…

Some of you may have heard Ed reference his tooth extraction. Well, he’s not going to be able to live this picture down.

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Episode #240: Interview with Economist Tyler Cowen

For this episode, we talked about a WIDE ARRAY of topics! This was a fast moving show and is well worth a listen or even two. Enjoy!

Tyler Cowen.jpg

Tyler Cowen is Holbert L. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason University and serves as chairman and faculty director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. With colleague Alex Tabarrok, Cowen is coauthor of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution and cofounder of the online educational platform Marginal Revolution University. Cowen’s latest books are Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Antihero, and Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals. His research has been published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, Ethics, and Philosophy and Public Affairs. Cowen is host of Conversations with Tyler, a popular podcast series (and one of our favorites) featuring today's most underrated thinkers in wide-ranging explorations of their work, the world, and everything in between. Foreign Policy named Cowen as one of 2011’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers,” and an Economist survey counted him as one of the most influential economists of the last decade. Cowen graduated from George Mason University with a BS in economics and received his PhD in economics from Harvard University. 


Ed’s Questions

  • Tell us what you do as the director of the Mercatus Center.

  • What about the Center for the Study of Policy Choice which you are on the faculty, that has to do with public choice theory, right? (Our show on Public Choice Theory.)

  • In a recent column, in the next twenty you ask what is the most unexpected next transformative technology, you say the automobile, but not driverless cars. Can you unpack that for me?

  • By 2023, according to one analyst believes that one in five cars will be a subscription car, do you think that will be a factor?

  • A lot of small towns get 80% of their budget from speeding tickets. What will be the impact on some of those places?

  • Another column you wrote in April, where you laid out your best argument for a gold standard. Is it possible that technology like Bitcoin or cryptocurrency might help overcome that government interference problem?

  • You haven’t written about Bitcoin in nearly a year; it has lost some of its luster don’t you think?

  • Maybe the best use of blockchain is smart contracts that automatically execute, like brokerage statements based on a percentage of assets, which can be automatically verified by blockchain.

  • I saw a chart today and I thought of you, it said the first time ever there are now more people in the world over 65 years old than people younger than 5 years old. How much of a concern do you think that is from an economic perspective, or is it one at all?

  • We are most productive in our 30s, as Charles Murray pointed out in his book, Human Accomplishment.

  • “I’m going to turn the tables on Tyler and do something with his permission he does on his show, Conversations with Tyler, he asks his guests a list of random things and to state whether they are underrated or overrated, are you ready Tyler? Here we go:”

  1. Behavioral economics

  2. The threat of catastrophic climate change

  3. Canadian literature and poetry

  4. The Electoral College

  5. The prospect of eliminating umpires from calling balls and strikes from major league baseball

  6. The presidency of Donald Trump

  1. Illegal Mexican immigration is a growing threat

  2. Green energy will save us

  3. Bank runs are a thing of the past

  4. The Eurozone is pretty much for everyone in Europe

  5. Bailouts should be incremental

  6. Fiscal stimulus should be temporary, targeted, and timely

  • That’s a really good list, so far unheeded by most, what might you add to it today?

  • In another article you’ve written recently, you noted contrary to what Alexander Ocassio-Cortez and other concerned millennials believe, fear of climate change is justified, it is not, however, a reason not to have children, because those kids of yours are more likely to be part of the solution than the problem. Elaborate more on that.

  • Something you haven’t written about in a while, and I just wanted to see if you’ve updated your thinking on, what do you think about collegiate athletics? Will they continue to grow or will the whole economics be rethought?

  • How do you think football concussions will impact the sport?

  • What are you working on now?

 

Check out Tyler’s newest book!

We referenced this book several times during the interview.


Ron’s Questions

  • I’ve been reading your books for quite a while, and one I found interesting is Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity In a Disordered World, published in 2009. One of things you say in there is “forget that you saw the movie Rain Man, then you list all the people throughout history who we believe are on the autism spectrum:

    • Nobel laureate Vernon Smith

    • Charles Darwin

    • Thomas Edison

    • Albert Einstein

    • Isaac Newton

    • Vincent van Gogh

    • Thomas Jefferson

    • Alan Turing

    • Steven Spielberg

    • Bill Gates

    • Adam Smith

  •  Obviously autism has been around for a long time. What makes their contributions different now? Does technology like the world wide web help?

  • There’s a lot written about how our brains can’t effectively multitask. You have a counterintuitive response to this. You think multitasking serves a useful purpose. Can you explain that?

  • You point out also that Adam Smith’s pin factory is a parable of autism. When you perform a repetitive task it can be rather than boring and alienating according to both Karl Marx and Adam Smith but you think it’s more a benefit than a cost, why is that?

  • You wrote that most education requires the physical presence of other human beings—education as theater. Do you think traditional brick and mortar colleges will be around 100 years from now, not displaced by MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses)?

  • What do you think about Bryan Caplan’s argument in The Case Against Education about the signaling vs. human capital effects of higher education?

  • There is something about being with other people versus online when it comes to education.

  • Another thing you mention, which is just fascinating, there are plenty of studies that measure education’s ROI, but what are they comparing education to? No one has compared modern education to a placebo. If you could, what might that study look like?

  • Your book from last year, which I just loved is Stubborn Attachments: A vision for a society of free, prosperous, and responsible individuals, you write, “We need to develop a tougher, more dedicated, and indeed a more stubborn attachment to prosperity and freedom.” Why is that?

  • You also wrote that you hold pluralism as a core moral intuition. What’s good about human life can’t be boiled down to any single value—pluralist theories are more plausible. Do you think capitalism is too materialistic, or defenders of free markets take a too materialistic view, or is it also spiritual, allowing for a more pluralistic good life?

  • We’ve pulled roughly 1 billion people out of bone-crushing poverty in the past decade-and-half or so, do you think we take wealth for granted because it’s all around us, there’s so much angst among young people but yet they live in one of the most prosperous times ever in this history of civilization?

  • You propose a Wealth Plus measure: GDP + leisure time, household production, and environmental amenities. We know GDP is a flawed measure because when a sheep is born per capita GDP rises, but when a human is born, it goes down. Can you explain your Wealth Plus concept?

  • The other thing you are saying is that committing to growth is creating a better future. I’m glad our forbearers did that. Do you think there’s too much focus on alleviating poverty versus creating wealth, especially among developmental economists, or international organizations such as the World Bank?

  • Do you think the best way to fight poverty is to create wealth?

  • Just before we take a break, do you think China will grow old before it gets rich, is there some truth to that cliché?

  • In Stubborn Attachments you discuss happiness and wealth, and survey data on happiness, you pointed out: “Happiness gains don’t dissipate through envy. Better to envy your neighbor’s Mercedes than his horse and buggy. Better still, his supersonic transport.” Is envy a problem? Is that why we see the graduated income tax rates, and “soak the rich” is it just envy?

  • Is there a link between happiness income, only up to a point?

  • You also pointed out that the measurement data can’t capture the gains of longer life expectancy since you can’t poll the dead.

  • Tell us about your latest book, Big Business: A love Letter to an American Anti-Hero, because there’s a lot of negative press about big business, and you’re actually writing a love letter to them?

  • Do you worry that big business is becoming too concentrated (The Economist loves to write about this over and over)?

  • I don’t know if you saw this, but Kevin D. Williamson of National Review wrote a review of your Big Business book (“Big Business: Tyler Cowen’s Compelling Case for Large Corporations”), he points out that “professor Cowen has a great talent for revealing truths that are right under our noses but oddly overlooked, such as: Large-scale corporate enterprises provide a great many jobs; relative to smaller firms, they typically pay their workers more and treat them better, invest more in research and development, are more productive and more innovative, and conduct their business at least as ethically.” On the more innovative, I think most people have the idea that small business are more innovative. Are big businesses really more innovative than small businesses?

  • Do any privacy issues concern you out of Silicon Valley, or are we just giving our data and privacy away?

  • Do you think what the EU has done with the GDPR regulations is that the right approach?

  • As an economist, what would you like to see changed in USA macro, or federal, economic policy?

  • What would you like to replace the current tax system with?

  • What would you like to see on immigration?

  • Do you buy any of the research that illegal immigrants lower the wages of low-skilled workers?

  • What would you like to see in health care?

  • What would you do with Federal Drug Administration?