Sebastien Tellier at the Magic Bridge in Santa Monica

Sebastian Tellier Five City US Tour December 2008!!!

Sebastien Tellier–La Ritournelle (video):
Such a great song, and was featured in the soundtrack for the movie Lost in Translation (no, that was the song Fantino–but someone had better put La Ritournelle in a movie, it’s so epic)–and according to Wikipedia, “The most prominent song on Politics was “La Ritournelle”, a string-led tune, which featured Nigerian drummer, Tony Allen, drummer and musical director of Fela Kuti’s band Africa 70 from 1968 to 1979.” Wow! Fela Kuti/Afric 70 funk/soul/jazz/Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen and Sebastien Tellier! No wonder the drums sound so epic on this song…

Yay!!! One of my favorite musician/performers Sebastien Tellier will be playing shows in the following five US cities this December!

Dec 3 2008 8:00P	Henry Fonda Theater	Los Angeles, California
Dec 4 2008 8:00P	Mezzanine	San Francisco, California
Dec 6 2008 8:00P	Larimer Lounge	Denver, Colorado
Dec 9 2008 8:30P	Schubas Tavern	Chicago, Illinois
Dec 11 2008 10:00P	LPR	New York, New York

Ex-Neo-con Fukuyama on the Restoring America; Andrew Lahde on

Update: Francis Fukuyama endorses Obama!!!

Two of the best articles/letters at the moment! More later…

Newsweek:

The Fall of America, Inc.–Francis Fukuyama

“Prior to the 1980s, conservatives were fiscally conservative— that is, they were unwilling to spend more than they took in in taxes. But Reaganomics introduced the idea that virtually any tax cut would so stimulate growth that the government would end up taking in more revenue in the end (the so-called Laffer curve). In fact, the traditional view was correct: if you cut taxes without cutting spending, you end up with a damaging deficit. Thus the Reagan tax cuts of the 1980s produced a big deficit; the Clinton tax increases of the 1990s produced a surplus; and the Bush tax cuts of the early 21st century produced an even larger deficit. The fact that the American economy grew just as fast in the Clinton years as in the Reagan ones somehow didn’t shake the conservative faith in tax cuts as the surefire key to growth.”

…

“Still, another comeback rests on our ability to make some fundamental changes. First, we must break out of the Reagan-era straitjacket concerning taxes and regulation. Tax cuts feel good but do not necessarily stimulate growth or pay for themselves; given our long-term fiscal situation Americans are going to have to be told honestly that they will have to pay their own way in the future. Deregulation, or the failure of regulators to keep up with fast-moving markets, can become unbelievably costly, as we have seen. The entire American public sector—underfunded, deprofessionalized and demoralized—needs to be rebuilt and be given a new sense of pride. There are certain jobs that only the government can fulfill.”

Financial Times:

Letter: Andrew Lahde, Lahde Capital Management
On establishing meritocracy, competing with rich kids who have all the advantages, corporations influencing legislators through donations, saving the world with alternative food and energy source hemp.

George Duke/Billy Cobham–Rush Hour

George Duke/Billy Cobham–Rush Hour

Just to show you Billy Cobham’s still got it!!! Who’s the bassist, pretty awesome (Larry Kimpel?)

Bill Cobham / George Duke Band – Almustafa The Beloved

Bill Cobham / George Duke Band – Almustafa The Beloved

Amazing jazz fusion/funk/prog from the 1970s…GREAT synth and keyboard licks, drumming by Billy Cobham, guitar by John Scofield, bass, vocals, and Chapman stick by Alphonso Johnson.  Sampled to great, great effect in that one Freestyle Fellowship song!!  The main riff sounds like some crazy Star Wars take off–but Star Wars came out on May 25, 1977!  I’m getting on the spaceship!!!   Parts are like Lonnie Liston Smith meets the Mahavishnu Orchestra…This kind of music must return again…love the chorus part at 5:13…then listen to that little prog break at 5:39…Radiohead only wishes it were half as good and experimental as any of these 70s bands…

July 6, 1976

Montreux, Switzerland

Track 4

Billy Cobham – Drums
George Duke – Keyboards, Vocals
John Scofield – Guitar
Alphonso Johnson – Bass, Chapman Stick, Vocals

Def Leppard — Rock of Ages, Pour Some Sugar On Me

Def Leppard — Rock of Ages

I was going to post some lyrics, but…

Def Leppard — Pour Some Sugar on Me (UK Version)

Incredible Soul/Funk Song: Rufus f/Chaka Khan — Stay; Brothers Johnson — Tell Me When You Need It Again

Rufus f/Chaka Khan — Stay. Crazy good. The beginning reminds me of Tell Me When You Need It Again by the Isley Brothers

Isley Brothers — Tell Me When You Need It Again

First heard the Rufus song on the last.fm Gap Band similar artists station. Both are incredible songs.
Beats the pants off of anything made now!

The “Gridlock Economy” and Anti-commons Problems Through the Lens of the Prisoner’s Dilemma and Collective Action Problem Theories

Michael Heller has a really interesting new book out called “The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives.” He describes how when too many people own things and parts of things, it results in way too many agreements needing to be assembled in order to get anything done, with way too many property holders being able to hold out and block the process in order to try to negotiate the most money for themselves. As a result, a societally advantageous outcome often does not occur. Heller has called this phenomenon the Tragedy of the Anticommons.

He gives the examples of some wonderful Alzheimer’s drug which a company apparently thought they could make, but would need to get patent licenses from so many other companies, with so many holdouts and demands for high license/royalty rates, that the company gave up on researching the drug in favor of researching simpler projects. The company kept secret about it’s great Alzheimer drug idea–if it publicized what a great drug it would be, that might imply that it was very valuable to them, and thus each company with relevant patents would be more inclined to hold out for much higher and higher license rates, which would make assembling the necessary rights bundle all the more expensive. However, all of the companies and humanity as a whole could be better off if the drug could in fact be made.

Here’s where it’s somewhat like the Prisoner’s Dilemma problem which you may have heard of, in that lack of communication to get and enforce agreement leads to a sub-optimal outcome. If the company could somehow get agreement beforehand that all the companies with relevant patents would agree to reasonable terms, then the deal could get done, and an optimal outcome could be reached; new value could be created from the drug and shared among all the companies. This is like in the Prisoner’s Dilemma; if only the two prisoners could agree beforehand that they would not rat each other out no matter what, and if they could communicated to enforce that, then they could reach the best outcome–neither would rat each other out (“defect” as its called in game theory language), and they would get light sentences.

	Prisoner B Stays Silent	Prisoner B Betrays
Prisoner A Stays Silent	Each serves 6 months	Prisoner A: 10 yearsPrisoner B: goes free
Prisoner A Betrays	Prisoner A: goes freePrisoner B: 10 years	Each serves 5 years

Table from Wikipedia

In the Prisoner’s Dilemma scenario, the player who defects when the other player doesn’t defect will get the most benefit for themselves–no jail time at all. In the drug company story, so too will a company who defects when the others don’t will theoretically stand to get the best outcome in the context of bargaining power towards the deal–if every other company agreed to license their patents, they might think about how close they are to getting the deal done and start to value the deal highly, and will have spent money on transactions costs already, plus they may have revealed information about how much/how little money they are willing to accept for a license–the last holdout might stand to gain the most and be able to negotiate the best deal for themselves as the others might be anxious to get the deal done at last, and the holdout will have revealed information about the other parties’ deal preferences. Of course, according to game theory, all companies will think this way, will want to be the last/lone holdouts, so no companies will be likely to agree to license their patents to the company!

In fact, that is one reason the company might not be able to communicate with the companies beforehand about how important it is that they get agreement from all the companies–if the company tried to get such an agreement from companies, each other company would think that the project must be a really valuable and important project, and this would be likely to make each company want even more to be the lone holdout. And like I mentioned, the lone holdout could theoretically command a better stake for themselves if every other company were salivating to get the deal done–maybe they’d pay more to get this one last roadblock out of the way! And of course each company would want to be the lone holdout, so none of them would agree to license their patents.

Tragic! I’ll have to read more of the book to findout what suggestions Mr. Heller has in mind. He also describes the subprime mortgage meltdown in gridlock economy terms; all the mortgages were chopped up and securititzed, in olden days it was easier to deal with one bank to stave off foreclosure, now so many people own parts of mortgages that it’s too hard to communicate with all of the owners of any one single mortgage, the transaction costs (see Coase’s ideas on transaction costs) would be too high, so foreclosure is the easiest route, even though foreclosures are wasteful to all involved. He also talks about gridlocks in terms of copyright, think of all the hoops to jump through to get copyrights for sampled songs, or think about even the troubles trying to clear all the copyrights to the Eyes on the Prize documentary, etc. Lots of transaction costs!!! As I mentioned, I’ll have to read more to see what solutions Mr. Heller proposes. I wonder if there could be some sort of mediators hired on to broker these deals…in some areas ideas like patent sharing pools are in the works, etc.

Also see the collective action problem, as described below, which also fits, if the individualistically rational choice is to become the last/lone holdout. From a University of Washington website:

2. COLLECTIVE ACTION PROBLEM = A situation in which everyone (in a given group) has a choice between two alternatives and where, if everyone involved chooses the alternative act that is Individualistically Rational (IR), the outcome will be worse for everyone involved, in their own estimation, than it would be if they were all to choose the other alternative (i.e., than it would be if they were all to choose the alternative that is not IR).

In essence, all of these issues seem to tie ultimately into cooperation problems and profit expectations. Every one would be better off if everyone cooperated, where if one party defects, no deal is done at all. Imagine nuclear disarmament. We might all be better if we all agreed to disarm. But countries could benefit from being the lone holdout, the only country with nuclear weapons, so all parties are loathe to disarm.

To try to go into more detail about the comparison, in the Prisoner’s Dilemma problem, there are basically four levels of benefit : high, medium, low, and none, well, it’s given in terms of their sentences, but I’ve kind of rephrased it here. If one party defects and the other chooses not to defect, the defector gets the high benefit, i.e. gets no jailtime, and the nondefector gets no benefit, say the full sentence, 10 years in jail. If both cooperate and don’t rat each other out, they get a medium benefit, say a lightened sentence to 6 months each in jail. And if both parties defect, they get a low benefit, i.e. a reduced sentence of 5 years each in jail. The setup is most likely to lead to the low benefit to each party; each strives for the high benefit by ratting each other out, but this leads to the low benefit for each. If only they could have communicated sufficiently to both cooperate, they would both get a medium benefit, instead of both getting the low benefit.

How I’m saying this can be similar to the gridlock problem is this: a company can get the high benefit if they are the last holdout; if the other companies choose to cooperate, they may have spent transaction costs analyzing and negotiating terms of cooperation already, and they may have revealed a willingness to accept a certain range or certain terms, funds expensed and information revealed which can put them at a disadvantage when negotiating with the holdout; thus the holdout/defector can get the high benefit (if the deal ultimately goes through) and the cooperators are at theoretically more of a bargaining disadvantage than if they had all defected and not cooperated, because they have spent money negotiating and have revealed some of their preferences, and so they get no benefit in terms of their negotiating position–although if they are all cumulatively closer to a deal being done, then perhaps that is in fact in the long run better off than if they had all defected, which is more subtle than in the Prisonners Dilemma.

If they all cooperate, no one gets the high benefit theoretically in the current deal of extracting the highest benefits by leveraging being a holdout, but they all get a nice medium benefit of realizing potential profits from the deal. The biggest difference might be in the “low” benefit area: whereas the prisoners get a low benefit from both defecting, i.e. they still get some of their sentence reduced by both ratting each other out, the companies do not really get any benefit from all defecting, except if it is considered a benefit that they have each not revealed valuable preference information by attempting to cooperate and didn’t expend  transaction costs so far in cooperating, it’s not really a “benefit” at all but more like they didn’t put themselves at more of a disadvantage, kind of like a lesser punishment in the way the Prisoners Dilemma is framed–however, if all companies defecting means that the deal is farther away from fruition than if all but one had cooperated, then all companies defecting may leave them in a worse position than if they had attempted to cooperate but one lone holdout persisted, which is different from the analogous cases in the Prisoner’s Dilemma.

What do you think?

People really don’t think of Pittsburgh as a college town…

But look at this demographic, pretty much explains it. 

University of Pittsburgh – 26,860

Carnegie Mellon University – 10,120

Duquesne University – 10,110

Carlow University – 2,154

Chatham University – 1,590

Estimated total population of Pittsburgh 2008 – 315,000

Holger Czukay / Jah Wobble / Jaki Liebezeit/The Edge–Full Circle and Snake Charmer Albums, Awesome New Wave Dub

Okay so are you ready for some awesome dub/new wave/postpunk/krautrock? Brought to you by Holger Czukay/Holgar Czukay, one of the founders of Can, Jah Wobble, dub bassist extrodinaire with his own solo career and PIL, and Jaki Liebezeit, also a founding member of Can. Kind of reminds me of the equally excellent Flying Lizards of course…with touches of Kajagoogoo and the Fixx at times, which is either very good or very bad depending on your tastes of course, R&B such as Frankie Beverly’s Maze, and lots of nice disco stuff. Very 70s/80s/dubby, from the album/EP Full Circle.

Watch out all you new wave/postpunk/disco electro revivalists!!! This old stuff still sounds better!!! There are tracks on Snake Charmer that sound a lot like some of the stuff on the proggy album Effects of Exposure or whatever by this band Regressive Aid…wonder which was first?

Here’s another one, Hold On To Your Dreams, feature the EDGE of U2 on guitar…awesome!!! Off of the album/EP Snake Charmer.

mp3s: Snake Charmer album/EP (via Wiel’s Time Capsule blog)

mp3s: Full Circle album/EP (via the Fantasmi Macchina blog)