Missing Link Friday – 30 September 2011

Spoken like a true utilitarian: "If we really want the greatest happiness of the greatest number, we should be electing psychopathic, Machiavellian misanthropes", writes Roger McShane (via Will Wilkinson).

I love you so much … that I’m going to ruin your life: Tigtog on the perils of manipulative relationships.

The five stages of Gillard grief: "The stages of grief when a political leader is doomed differ a little in sequence from the classic Kubler-Ross order", says John Quiggin.

Michael Stutchbury returns to the Fin: "The Australian Financial Review has launched another successful raid on The Australian, announcing Michael Stutchbury as editor-in-chief of the newspaper", reports Mumbrella.

Why is the new Kindle Fire so cheap?: "The battle of the tablets is not a battle of devices, but a battle of ecosystems", argues Erik Brynjolfsson at Digitopoly. Amazon can afford to sell Kindle’s at a low price because "the profit stream from Amazon’s media products is boosted every time another customer buys a Kindle".

Why not use cheap content to sell expensive tablets? Responding to a post by Matt Yglesias, Joshua Gans offers a rationale for Amazon’s business model.

It’s obvious (once you know the answer): Common sense makes the world seem more orderly than it really is, writes Duncan Watts at Freakonomics.

Maybe we could automate Missing Link: Chris Wilson builds a robotic replacement for blogger Jason Kottke. According to Farhad Manjoo, it’s not doing too badly.

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whyisitso
whyisitso
13 years ago

I’ve already bought my basic Kindle. Took four days to deliver to Sydney from San Francisco,and have downloaded a number of books (takes less than a minute with one-click purchasing). It’s a great device, so easy to read from. The main drewback is that there are many books I’d like to read that don’t have Kindle editions. All purchases are much cheaper than hard-copy editions and you also save on delivery charges.

However given the bad publicity about the effects of supermarket competition in Australia I expect there’ll be the inevitable Dick Smith-like screaming about unfair competition.

KB Keynes
KB Keynes
13 years ago

It will be interesting to see if Stutch is the admirable journalist of previous AFR origins or stays the same as the Australian mauler.

Bill Posters
Bill Posters
13 years ago

It will be interesting to see if Stutch is the admirable journalist of previous AFR origins or stays the same as the Australian mauler.

It won’t hurt things if the editorial line swings a little further right. On the other hand, if he’s swallowed the nonsense about the Fin being “anti-business” and tries to make it “pro-business” then circulation will continue to fall. While the “anti-business” line is sometimes disguised as an objection to the paper’s politics, it’s really an objection to hard news and a paper that doesn’t break yarns won’t sell to anyone.

Dan
Dan
13 years ago

KB@2 -I’ve been wondering the exact same thing. The impression I get of Stutchbury is that he does his boss’s bidding, which of late has largely consisted of aggressive defense of the indefensible.