He claimed in 2002, after the book was published, to have found additional evidence that IBM established a Polish subsidiary after Germany invaded Poland to sell machines to the Nazi government.
Highly recommend listening to this HBR podcast about the same topic. [1]
TJ Watson (of IBM) is quoted as saying: “I’m an internationalist. I cooperate with all forms of government, regardless of whether I can subscribe to all of their principles or not.”
I hear a lot of similar echos within tech companies right now. People using “we’re a business” to shut down discussion about the role of supplying AI technology to Israel, who has been using AI to choose bombing targets [2].
I find the use of "this is a business" logic to dissuade political discussion about a company's own business practices to be extremely troubling. Yes, there can be a discussion about the proper way to have these conversations, but dismissing discussion of ethics with an attitude of "this is a business" has lead to some horrific outcomes throughout history.
TJ Watson (of IBM) had a similar "this is a business" outlook: “I’m an internationalist. I cooperate with all forms of government, regardless of whether I can subscribe to all of their principles or not.” IBM's machines were extremely important part of Nazi Germany's Holocaust efforts, and there is evidence that IBM was actively working with Nazi Germany after the invasion of Poland [1].
3 companies owning 11% of the single family homes available for rent in a metro area doesn't seem like a massive concentration of ownership. Some people prefer to rent rather than buy. Some people don't have savings for a down payment. Someone needs to own the houses that these people rent.
There are probably economies of scale to managing rental properties (e.g. larger companies can hire full time maintenance staff). Some people prefer to rent from small-time landlords, but those can have there problems too.
Is it the maze of LLCs? That does seem problematic.
Many people are reading this stat to say that NYC is dying because of post-covid crime or some other stat. I really think this is a misreading of the situation.
I think it is far likely composition effects from:
- High-income people who work remote or hybrid started demanding more space for work and living. Given NYC housing is basically fixed (there is almost no building), this trend has decreased the average number of people per housing unit.
- As the article notes, "the city’s populace is overall older and wealthier": wealthier people use more housing per person and tend to have fewer children.
I don’t have a strong opinion on the events of the past several days. But a lot of the behavior I’ve seen on twitter from Open AI employees, some led by Sam, feels very cult like: posting in all lower case, the heart emojis, rumors of employees calling each other in the middle of the night to pressure people to sign letters supporting Sam.
There isn’t necessarily anything wrong of this behavior. It is good to like your coworkers, but something about the manipulative nature of it triggers an “ick” feeling that I can’t really put into words.
I’ve also spent very little time in the Bay Area, but from afar, there does seem to be something in the DNA that makes people there more susceptible to cult like behavior.
Relatedly, University of Chicago has a popular survey where they ask Economists their views on policy proposals (along with their confidence in their answers), and their most recent survey was on LVT:
The question:
> Shifting the burden of municipal property taxes towards land and away from improvements such as buildings - as proposed in the Detroit land value tax plan - will enhance the incentives for owners to develop their land and thereby give a substantial boost to local economic growth over a ten-year horizon.
And responses:
7% Strongly Agree, 46% Agreed, 17% Uncertain, 2% Disagree,2% No opinion, 24% Did Not Answer
> looked at census data on the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas and found there are 5.47 million vacant housing units, with an average vacancy rate of 7.22 percent.
This feels sensational. Imagine a common scenario: a unit is rented for 2 years (24 months), and then is vacant for 1 month while the owner repaints, performs maintenance, and relists the property for rental. That is 1/(24+1) = 4% vacancy. Given you can easily get to 4% vacancy with simple turnover, you can see why very low vacancy rates are bad for renters: they indicate it is extremely competitive to find housing. You can see this anecdotally in extremely tight housing markets like NYC where renters looking for apartments often report they need to move extremely quickly to secure rentals and some people even ofter to pay more than the listing price for desirable apartments.
I also believe they will increase congestion in cities since when occupants switch from drivers to riders, they are less affected by the costs of road congestion (congested roads may mean riders get to their destinations slower, but because they are no longer driving, people may make extra trips where previously they would say "I don't want to make that trip now because driving during rush hour is too stressful").
But the public will face negative externalities of greater congestion (noise, pollution, slower travel times for busses & walking).
Without congestion pricing and right of ways for bikes, walking, and transit, automated taxis seem like a way to double down on a space inefficient mode of travel.
I've seen both versions of these. A good TPM is extremely valuable though, especially for work that is highly reliant on coordinating other teams. The bad version was a net negative to team productivity.
https://museum.stanford.edu/exhibitions/day-jobs