May 7, 2016
- The philosophy of this book is that the best defense against a big lie is curiosity.
- soon as a diamond leaves a jeweler, it loses over 50% of its value. We exchange diamond rings as part of the engagement process because the diamond company De Beers decided in 1938 that it would like us to.
- It circulated marketing materials suggesting, apropos of nothing, that a man should spend one month’s salary on a diamond ring. It worked so well that De Beers arbitrarily decided to increase the suggestion to two months’ salary. That’s why people think that they need to spend two months’ salary on a ring — because the suppliers of the product said so.
- brands are king in fine art; names like Rothko and Pollock distinguish them from unknown artists as Coke and Pepsi do from other sugar water.
- this demonstrates how artwork maintains its diversity despite its commodification; there is a near infinite supply of art out there, but a limited supply of Van Goghs. In another sense, this gets at how the overwhelming factor underlying the price of an artwork is the artists’ brand. The art world refers to buying “a Pollock” or “a Warhol” because those artists are brands, and the contemporary art market is more like the music scene of 50 years ago, which celebrated the full albums of a select few bands, than the music scene today, which more often celebrates a few singles by a wider array of bands.
- No one considers a painting selling for lower than expected a fortuitous discount; they perceive it as a sign that the artist was overhyped and overpriced.
- art galleries exercise a level of control over prices that, as economist Allison Schrager writes in Quartz, “would be illegal in most industries.” In this way, artists’ work gets singled out and begins to enjoy the compounding benefits of the mere exposure effect. It’s not exactly a “historical accident,” as Leslie
- The first way galleries do this is by refusing to drop the price of any artwork. Galleries have their own reputation for dealing work at a certain price point; to protect the prestige of the gallery and their artists, they will drop an artist whose work fails to sell rather than reduce the price. So within the gallery at least, the price of a painting never drops, instead the artist just fades away
- Galleries do, of course, want their artists to succeed and the price of their artwork to increase. They just need to make sure it happens in lockstep with validating critical reception
- “The art market is the largest unregulated market in the world,” Filippo
- Heinrich’s intention was to create the ultimate Veblen good in app form: something desirable merely due to it’s price and exclusivity.
- In the stock market, most assets have an underlying value based on objective facts. In wine, taste and quality is a factor of perception. Investors deal, then, in perceptions of perceptions.
- The odds of taxi drivers dying because of work related fatality is even higher than for police officers.
- Likeable people have an easier time selling products, and attractive people are eminently likeable due to the halo effect. The second is that
- Personally and professionally, the halo effect of attractiveness shapes people’s lives in ways that go far beyond people holding the door for a pretty girl. And unlike the case of an actress’s stunning looks propelling her to stardom, it often operates subconsciously. Good-looking people earn more money, are judged more positively, and even receive more lenient treatment in court than their plainer looking counterparts.
- The authors find that being Asian instead of white is the equivalent of a 140 point score penalty on your SAT when applying to top private universities.
- The data Unz has compiled shows that while the number of college aged Asians has increased dramatically, Asians’ presence at top schools has shrunk or remained flat. By contrast, CalTech, which has a strictly race-neutral admissions policy, has kept pace with the growth in the Asian population (this is also true of the school we previously examined).
- The holistic approach was used to squelch diversity and the number of Jews in American universities then plummeted. After these “reforms,” the percentage of Jews at Harvard declined from 27.6% to 17.1%;
- According to nutritional guidelines published by the USDA and the Harvard School of Public Health, fruits and vegetables should make up about 50% of a healthy diet. But the financial value of the fruit and vegetable market is nowhere near 50% of the food industry. In 2012, the USDA calculated that American farms earned $47 billion in revenue from fruits, vegetables, and nuts. In contrast, just three American processed food manufacturers had (global) revenues of $116.2 billion in 2013.
- So whenever a federal agency or Congress makes a push to support healthy foods, it essentially picks a fight with a collection of the world’s largest companies.
- Before 1990, food labels that listed ingredients and nutritional content were optional and opposed by food manufacturers. The act, based on recommendations from the Food and Drug Administration, sought to make it mandatory for the first time.
- America’s large commercial farms are monocultures, meaning they specialize in a single crop, which is usually a grain. Together, corn and soy account for almost 50% of all American crop revenues.
- America’s corn crop is used to produce half of the sweeteners Americans consume every year in beer and soda. The majority of the crop goes toward feeding cattle (46%) and ethanol production (25%). Corn also provides the starchy base for processed foods and the oil for McDonald’s deep fryers. The portion of crops from large commercial farms that does directly feed people essentially makes our least healthy foods.
- the average American now enjoys half a pound of meat per day
- the real problem is that within industry, manufacturers of unhealthy food are so much more powerful than the makers of health food that the food lobby has become synonymous with the foods driving our obesity epidemic.
- Every year it publishes 250,000 articles in 2,000 journals. Its 2012 revenues reached $2.7 billion, and Elsevier’s profits of over $1 billion account for 45% of the Reed Elsevier Group — its parent company which is the 495th largest company in the world in terms of market capitalization. Companies like Elsevier developed
- Today just three publishers, Elsevier, Springer and Wiley, account for roughly 42% of all articles published in the over $19 billion academic publishing market for science, technology, engineering, and medical research. University libraries account for 80% of their customers.
- From 1984 to 2002, for example, the price of science journals increased nearly 600%. One estimate puts Elsevier’s prices at 642% higher than industry-wide averages.
- There is no set cost for a bundle; instead providers like Elsevier structure plans in response to each institution’s past history of subscriptions.
- Another method is to examine Elsevier’s profit margins, which at 36% are well above the average of 4%-5% for the periodical publishing business.
- Governments could push science toward an open access future by mandating that publicly financed research be made publicly available. Every year, the United States government provides
- tuitions and fees had only increased at the rate of inflation since 1987, today’s smartphone toting Millennials would pay $25,268 to attend Yale instead of $42,300
- Over a 30-year career, the graduates of a majority of schools will make at least $6,700 more per year than the average high-school graduate.
- The nonprofit FinAid considers anything below 10% acceptable; it considers 15% of one’s salary the maximum amount a graduate should spend paying off loans
we find that, on average, their debt is sustainable. It’s rare for graduates to spend less than 4% of their salary paying off loans. But graduates of the vast majority of schools spend a sustainable 4%-8% of their salary paying back their loans. And graduates of every American college and university on average spend less than FinAid’s upper limit of 15% on loan payments. All this analysis
- The schools with the highest reported default rates fit this description: they are local schools, tuition is only a few thousand dollars, and nearly half of the students receive Pell grants (federal grants for low-income students) supplemented by loans. The rise
- Half of all student loans at the for-profit Corinthian Colleges fail, although the colleges still get their federally backed loan payments. The Corinthian Colleges enroll over 100,000 students.
- 2005, the credit monitoring company Experian paid $925,000 to settle charges that the company deceived consumers. Experian had advertised a “free credit report” on its website, Consumerinfo.com, but it actually charged consumers $79.95 for the service — a fact that was buried in the fine print. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the federal agency in charge of regulating truth in advertising, announced the settlement in a press release and declared victory on behalf of consumers. But Experian kept at it. The company disregarded the FTC’s warning and continued to charge customers $79.95 for a credit report it implied was “free” on Consumerinfo.com.
- In 2001, private car donation services in California raised $45.8 million in gross proceeds from car auctions. (Gross in the sense of the “profit” left after the company paid operational expenses.) Of that, charities received $16 million — about 35 percent.
- One study found 20% of fish in America to be mislabeled. The rate was 50% in California.
- City officials estimate that there are over 40,000 illegal in-law units attached to San Francisco properties, and they account for about ten percent of the city’s housing stock.
- the past year alone, Ellis Act evictions have risen 170%; since 1997, there have been 3,811, and that number is constantly rising.