From Economist.com News Analysis.

Last October the Luxury Marketing Council, an international organisation of 675 luxury-goods firms, opened its India chapter. Its boss, Devyani Raman, described India’s luxury-goods market as “a cupboard full of beautiful clothes with a new outfit arriving every day—it could start to look messy without the right care”. This, she said, included everything from teaching shop assistants appropriate manners to instilling in the Indian public a proper understanding of the concept of luxury. “How do you educate them”, she asked, “about the difference between a designer bag that costs $400 and a much cheaper leather bag that functions perfectly well?”

Posted by Bruce Sterling to Beyond the Beyond.

*I’m jetlagged in Silicon Valley, but after reading this, I’m counting my many blessings. Thirty years ago this month, Ram Charan (pronounced “Rahm Scha-RON”) quit a tenured professorship at Boston University to devote himself full-time to consulting. Today he’s alone…

Posted to Economist.com News Analysis.

An art dealer sells his most beloved Cezanne

Posted to MAKE: Blog.

Jay writes -

Wendy Tremayne, best known for founding Swap-O-Rama-Rama, and Mikey Sklar, who is geek famous for self implanting an RFID chip into his hand, are also green pioneers. Leaving New York City to settle in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, these two decided to invest their retirement funds into creating Green Acre. Their goals for Green Acre span from being a green lodging spot for geeks to becoming a community center and arts venue for the increasing number of T-or-C locals.

Posted by schneier to Schneier on Security.

In 1970, American economist George Akerlof wrote a paper called "The Market for 'Lemons'", which established asymmetrical information theory. He eventually won a Nobel Prize for his work, which looks at markets where the seller knows a lot more about the product than the buyer.

Akerlof illustrated his ideas with a used car market. A used car market includes both good cars and lousy ones (lemons). The seller knows which is which, but the buyer can't tell the difference -- at least until he's made his purchase. I'll spare you the math, but what ends up happening is that the buyer bases his purchase price on the value of a used car of average quality.

This means that the best cars don't get sold; their prices are too high. Which means that the owners of these best cars don't put their cars on the market. And then this starts spiraling. The removal of the good cars from the market reduces the average price buyers are willing to pay, and then the very good cars no longer sell, and disappear from the market. And then the good cars, and so on until only the lemons are left.

In a market where the seller has more information about the product than the buyer, bad products can drive the good ones out of the market.

Read more at Schneier on Security.

I am reading Accelerando by Charles Stross. It is a deeply flawed look at the post singularity world, but I am prepared to forgive it it's flaws due to the fact that to look beyond the beyond is impossible (the definition of singularity strongly relates to the inability to understand). Anyhow one of the most interesting parts of the book is the poking at what a truly efficient economy would be, and what happens when tech makes that posable.

Now the SEC is going to push the first step into giving AI's the data to run the stock market :gonk::

Posted by Tim Bray to ongoing.

I spent a couple of fascinating hours Tuesday at a round table hosted by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The subject was Interactive Data, a term which is hardly self-explanatory but really means "Business Transparency". This in the same week that Jonathan sent a letter on the same subject to SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, who was also around the table. Mr. Cox and the SEC are definitely on the right track; I expect bumps in the road, but there's a chance that Accounting As We Know It could be blown up. Which would be a good thing; and not just because Open Source is creeping in.

Read more at ongoing.

(I am kidding about the :gonk: bit, this is pretty cool, and will help us humans "keep the thieves out" as Tim says. Just don't let the computers take over man, man.)