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Privasoft

Begging the question

Beg the Question

"Begging the question" is a form of logical fallacy in which a statement or claim is assumed to be true without evidence other than the statement or claim itself. When one begs the question, the initial assumption of a statement is treated as already proven without any logic to show why the statement is true in the first place.

I always get this wrong.

New to me local marketing blogs

LM&O Advertising

RedPeg

Merry Christmas

New to me local tech blogs

Appian Insight, all about BPM

Webs.com blog, with a good post about SOPA.

Identika, video production, social media, and web development

The AKG Blog, all about SharePoint

Essential Share Point from Susan Hanley

From the Library of Congress: Inside Adams, science, technology, and business.

Jim Bland, about all things tech, business, and economic.

Micro trends, the small forces behind tomorrow's big changes

I have just finished Mark Penn's book about how small groups can have a big impact on our culture, both from a political and commerical point of view. Penn is best known for his work for first Bill and then Hillary Clinton. I was delighted to discover that Penn shares my admiration of V.O.Key Jr.

I love how this book eviserates sterotypes, such as the anti-social engineer. Penn documents how technology culture is super social. (As an aside I would suggest that this socialbility predates the internet, the technically inclined have always had their clubs and hobbyist groups, it is just that no one paid attention until the Internet became popular.)

Penn also demolishes the stereotype that most annoys me, that women are not an important factor in technology. Penn points out that women outspend men on technology 3 to 2. That is quite a gap, and I am grateful to Penn for pointing out that technology marketing has yet to adapt to this. Even in such basic matters and product design and testing, women are invisible. For example it seems that the first video conferencing systems were not calibrated to pick up the voices of women, we were literally invisible.

Penn's book deals with mass market products; but I would point out that women are also ignored by companies in the enterprise technology sector. Even though women have played key roles in the procurement of technology in the federal government for decades, and even though there have been women editors directing reporting on enterprise computing for decades, marketers for these companies persist in acting as if we do not exist. Why?

I find Penn's writing about politics less persuasive. I certainly concur with his suggestion that our elites are hoplessly out of touch with popular opinion. Indeed, I would love to know what Penn makes of the Occupy movement. Where I part company with him is in his discussion of swing voters. Penn continually conflates independent voters (actually non-affiated is a better and more accuarate term) with Independent voters. Penn capitalizes Independent and this creates confusion. Independents are actually a political party in several states, including Connecticut. It is true that the Independent party of Connecticut did not nominate anyone for US Senate in 2006, the year that Penn was adivisng Lieberman, but it is a significant force in Connecticut with many elected leaders at the town level.

Penn's book was written in 2008, which may account for why he has failed to pick up on the growth of emergent parties as a crucial micro trend. In 2010 Elliot Cutler, an independent candidate for Governor of Maine, came in second with 30.9% of the vote. In every state emergent party candidates have been gaining support. While they have yet to win at the state wide level, political observers ignore the emergent party vote at their peril.

Women will love this book. Penn understands that women exist, that we have opinions, that we have both purchasing and political power and that the powers that be ignore us at their peril.

Financial Services PR FAIL

So who is advising the financial services industry on their public relations, Lord North? Marie Antoinette? Wile E Coyote? The collective reaction to the Occupy movement has been a study in thud and blunder.

First we have the spectacle of the swells sneering from the balcony at the protesters on the sidewalk. Then members of the CBOT thought this gesture would be cute.

Here in Washington, DC we have been treated to the antics of a agent provocateur so stupid that he did not know better than to write a magazine article bragging about his crime.

A CEO asks his reporter friend to check out Occupy Wall Street to see if they are dangerous. Obviously they are not dangerous. Demonstrators have been pepper sprayed, beaten with batons, assaulted by a plain clothes officer, and run over by a police motorcycle. In spite of all this their non-violent discipline has held. If they were going to be violent, that would have happened by now.

And why has Mayor Bloomberg decided to play the part of a twenty first century Bull Connor?

There have been the comparisons to the hippies of the late 1960's. Take it from someone old enough to remember, there is no resemblance. The coalition of people supporting these protests is wide and deep, witness all the pizzas that have been ordered for the demonstrators and the donations, both in kind and monetary that have been made. That never happened in the 60's. Witness of the small acts of support, such as cab drivers who turn off their meter when taking riders to the demonstration or the sanitation workers in San Francisco who returned personal items to demonstrators after the police had tossed them. Such things never happened in the 60's.

The incident at Citi Bank was the first incident I have head of where a customer was arrested for trying to close her account; but it seems there have been previous incidents of this. Why police departments go along with it I will never know.

Anyone who thinks that the Occupy movement bears any resemblance to the Tea Party is encouraged to read this post by Peter Daou.

Certainly the financial services industry has been ill served by their trade press, take this unfortunate editorial in Investment News. While it concedes the demonstrators have a point it characterizes them as misguided and attention seeking.

With over 1,549 demonstrations in this country, and hundreds more around the world, the Occupy movement is already a very serious movement. Its impact will go way beyond electoral politics.

So here is my advice for anyone in the financial industry who would be interested:

Reexamine your business model.

Do nothing inflammatory in the present environment. For example, on November 5th protesters will be closing their bank accounts. DO NOT call the police and have them arrested. DO NOT think that you can control this story. Almost every protester there will be carrying a video phone, do not give them anything to film. Have extra staff there to handle the additional traffic and close the accounts as fast an efficiently as possible. Anything else will generate a storm of bad publicity that will haunt your company for decades to come.

Listen to the protesters in their own voices. This Twitter list follows protesters from all over the world.

Read the following reality based economics blogs:
Mosler Economics
Naked Capitalism
New Economic Perspectives

Above all recognize that you are in a new environment and that the old rules do not apply.

Edit -
Slightly off topic, but I thought that Jonathan Bernstein had an interesting take on Margin Call.