Book Review: Outrageous Fortunes

Did this one as an audio book. It's not bad, but has some flaws.

Outrageous Fortunes is a look at "Twelve Trends That Will Shape the Global Economy". They are mostly macro-economic and political trends that the author claims will shape the world in ways that most pundits aren't predicting.

Ideas covered range from predicting a stemming of China's growth curve, to theorizing about the potential collapse of the World Trade Organization and what might follow in its wake.

I'm not sure I believe all the theories presented in the book. I'm not versed enough in most of the subject matter to call the author out on any of them, but it does seem like he's as single-minded in some of his predictions as the pundits he's claiming are getting it wrong.

Regardless, I do like the contrarian thinking, and the gaming out he does in approaching some of these ideas. At the very least, it'll get you thinking about implications of some of these things.

Outrageous Fortunes: The Twelve Surprising Trends That Will Reshape the Global Economy

The Virtual World Taxman Cometh

As aluded to previously, we all knew it was coming.

Raph points us to this: Virtual Worlds News: China Levies 20% Tax on Virtual Currencies

And notes:

[the ruling] seems to apply whether or not the value is cashed out.

(and goes on to note)

However, if the value is not cashed out and taxes are still paid, that could mean (maybe should mean) that the companies are liable if they manage to accidentally delete some of it. In other words, they’re banks.

I commented on his post that non-Chinese MMOs like Wow are probably glad they licensed the right to run servers in that country to other parties. Boggles the mind to think how something like this would apply, be determined, be policed, etc, if numerous countries were to institute similar laws. Thousands of individuals all paying taxes on income incurred in other countries (where the servers reside), and businesses in some cases being run from elsewhere than where the servers reside. Blech. What a mess!

It's already moderately messy to do taxes for, say, stock purchases & sales, if you do anything moderately frequent in the way of trading. Now imagine that on a micro-scale at an accelerated pace. 

As I understand it, in the USA, Internet commerce has been relatively hands-off in the area of taxation; as an incentive to promote growth. However that can't last forever, can it? At some point, growth has happened. Plus, no one is doing VW business in the US only going forward. 

This whole idea of 'countries' is obsolete :-)

More on the mainstreaming of games

If this isn't a great example of mainstream of games, then I don't know what is.

From the description on youtube:

Blizzard has teamed up with iCoke, Coca-Cola's name-brand presence in China to create a joint World of Warcraft and Coca-Cola televised commercial, featuring Chinese pop sensation SHE...

Better Chinese Brandnames

Related to my earlier post about Chinese knockoff cars, here's a link to knockoffs of two cars, the Smartcar and the Hummer.

The knockoff of the Hummer is called, and I kid you not, the Dongfeng Crazy Soldier.

Let me be the first to suggest that Hummer's course of action should not be to sue but to license the name.

I've never wanted to own a hummer, but damn if I wouldn't be a target customer for it if it was called the Dongfeng Crazy Soldier!

Knock-offs best of both worlds?

BoingBoing has this post about "MFC" a chinese fast-food chain that is a rip-off and mash-up of both McDonalds and KFC, combining look, feel and menus of both American chains.

It reminded me of this post about the Chinese car manufacturer making a mashup/knockoff of both a Mercedes, and a Chrysler (with a BMW-inspired logo to boot).

It struck me that people discussing these things,and I include myself here, are either struck by the scale of these things ("sure, knock off a Rolex, but a Mercedes?!"), or suprised by the mashup model being applied to something other than media or online businesses.

But why should either of these surprise us?

The scale of the operation to do a Mercedes knockoff should not surprise us when coming from the same folks that built the Three Gorges dam and capped off the Yangtze.

And with regard to the mashup model, well, why should that suprise us either? It's not exactly new here either.I'm sure at some point, someone said "How about we apply Ford's assembly line to Acme's widget manufacturing!".

So I guess what we are finding surprising is the combination of these, the blatant disregard for IP, the unabashed lack of originality, and the speed of progress. Either way it's fun to watch

The most macabre thing I've heard this year...

We have a friend staying with us for a few days who is attending an orthopedic surgeon's conference. We were chatting last night about the layperson's knowledge of medical procedures and anatomy, and how it has improved due to things like the Internet, Wikipedia, etc. He agreed.

I cited the 'Bodies' exhibit as another example. Alisa and I went to see it a number of months back. He said he had ethical issues with the exhibit and I asked why.

"Well, did you notice anything that all the subjects had in common?"

I thought about it, but my wife beat me to the conclusion.

"They're all Chinese"

Oh my. So I checked wikipedia and of course there's a great deal of controversy about the questionable origin of the cadavers used in these exhibits. Here's the money shot right here:

The cadavers were donated for research by the Chinese government, because all the bodies at the time of death allegedly had no close next of kin or immediate families to claim the bodies.

And

Due to the fact that the cadavers featured in the exhibition are Chinese in origin, critics suspect that some or all of the bodies may be those of Chinese political prisoners or Falun Gong practitioners, who may have been subject to arrest and execution without due process, in order to be sold as cadavers

Makes me regret giving them my money, as well as being so ignorant about the issue in the first place.

Intolerant buffoons: Shanda bans cross-gender play

OK, this just takes the cake.

(via Kotaku), Shanda has announced that one of their MMOs, King of the World, has chose to disallow, and frozen accounts of men who chose to play female characters in-game. Emphasis below is mine:

Shanda (Nasdaq: SNDA) subsidiary Aurora Technology has frozen game accounts of male players who chose to play female in-game characters in its in-house developed MMORPG King of the World, reports 17173. Aurora stipulates that only female gamers can play female characters in the game, and it requires gamers who chose female characters to prove their biological sex with a webcam, according to the report.

Yeah, this isn't going to be a problem, right? Not to mention that meatspace cross-dressing in order to enable in-game cross-dressing is kind of funny too.
Crazy.

Farming Gold on a Pauper's Margins

An interesting article by Daniel Terdiman (via Alice), in which he interviews Brock Pierce, CEO of Affinity Media, who used to own IGE, the pioneer firm in the area of barter and trade of virtual items.

Business is down, it seems, as pressure from competition, mainly Chinese, willing to live of thinner margins. The money quote:

...as Chinese competitors get more and more sophisticated, they are also willing to accept less and less profit margin. And that means, "they're perfectly happy to accept $20,000 in profit on $2 million of revenue." That, for all you out there without a calculator, is a 1 percent profit margin...

While I'm not surprised that the margins are thin, and that the pioneer in the area is being squeezed out, I *am* surprised that the 'living of 1% margins' idea goes unquestioned (not just in Daniel's article, but in general), when it's a Chinese competitor in question.

Is it feasible? Perhaps, but it often seems to go unquestioned.

Let's take this example. If indeed companies are selling $2M worth of virtual items & currency at only 1% over what it cost them, what other possibilities might exist?

• These competitors may actually be vertically integrated. These might be gold farmers (organizationally, a gold farming factory/sweatshop) that are looking to cut out the middleman. That 1% profit might be over the 5% they had to give up to a middleman in the past.
• They may be living off the float. Not sure what the turn-around time is on cutting checks to sellers, but with enough capital coming through, they could put that money to work during the month it takes them to pay someone.
• Trade off currency exchange rates between China & US.

I don't know that any of these is the case, of course. But it stands to reason that if they are only making one point off of it, there's something else helping pay the bills, cheap overhead or not.