As the economy gets ever better at satisfying our immediate, self-serving needs, who is minding the future?

A half-hour east of Seattle, not far from the headquarters of Microsoft, Amazon, and other icons of the digital revolution, reSTART, a rehab center for Internet addicts, reveals some of the downsides of that revolution. Most of the clients here are trying to quit online gaming, an obsession that has turned their careers, relationships, and health to shambles. For the outsider, the addiction can be incomprehensible. But listening to the patients’ stories, the appeal comes sharply into focus. In a living room overlooking the lawn, 29-year-old Brett Walker talks about his time in World of Warcraft, a popular online role-playing game in which participants become warriors in a steampunk medieval world. For four years, even as his real life collapsed, Walker enjoyed a near-perfect online existence, with unlimited power and status akin to that of a Mafia boss crossed with a rock star. “I could do whatever I wanted, go where I wanted,” Walker tells me with a mixture of pride and self-mockery. “The world was my oyster.”

Walker appreciates the irony. His endless hours as an online superhero left him physically weak, financially destitute, and so socially isolated he could barely hold a face-to-face conversation. There may also have been deeper effects. Studies suggest that heavy online gaming alters brain structures involved in decision making and self-control, much as drug and alcohol use do. Emotional development can be delayed or derailed, leaving the player with a sense of self that is incomplete, fragile, and socially disengaged—more id than superego. Or as Hilarie Cash, reSTART cofounder and an expert in online addiction, tells me, “We end up being controlled by our impulses.”

 

……

If we could step back a century, before the rise of the consumer economy, we would be struck not only by the lack of affluence and technology but also by the distance between people and the economy, by the separation of economic and emotional life. People back then weren’t any less wrapped up in economic activities. The difference lay in where most of that activity took place. A century ago, economic activity occurred primarily in the physical world of production. People made things: they farmed, crafted, cobbled, nailed, baked, brined, brewed. They created tangible goods and services whose value could be determined, often as not, by the measurable needs and requirements of their physical, external lives.

That relationship changed with the rise of the consumer economy. Sophisticated, large-scale industrial systems assumed the task of making many of the things we needed, and also began to focus on the things we wanted. As the consumer economy matured, an ever-larger share of economic activity came from discretionary consumption, driven not by need but by desire, and thus by the intangible criteria of people’s inner worlds: their aspirations and hopes, identities and secret cravings, anxieties and ennui. As these inner worlds came to play a larger role in the economy—and, in particular, as companies’ profits and workers’ wages came to depend increasingly on the gratification of ephemeral (but conveniently endless) appetites—the entire marketplace became more attuned to the mechanics of the self. Bit by bit, product by product, the marketplace drew closer to the self.

…..

The “shareholder revolution,” as Wall Street dubbed it without irony, was a shock to the nation’s business psyche. For more than half a century, corporate America, heavily pressured by labor and an openly interventionist government, had hewed to a paternalistic capitalism, under which a large share of profits was reinvested in everything from worker training to community charities. But those times were over, for according to many conservative economists, it was partly such misplaced corporate generosity that had weakened U.S. companies in the first place. For these critics, the only way American companies could help society was, paradoxically, to jettison the older notion that business had any separate, social obligations other than making maximum profit. As Milton Friedman, an icon of conservative economics, argued in a seminal New York Times essay, “There is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.” And the best way for government to help this happen was to turn companies loose, by cutting taxes and regulations, and thereby allow the efficiencies of the marketplace to find the most direct route back to wealth.

The shareholder revolution would have upended American society in any case. But its effects were magnified by a second shock—a potent new technology, the microprocessor, which made computing vastly more powerful and much cheaper. By the 1980s, computer speed was doubling, and computer costs were halving, every two years—a trend, known as Moore’s Law, that quickly transformed every sector of the consumer economy. Business processes, from design to marketing, could now be supercharged and accelerated. (In Detroit, for instance, the time needed to bring a new car from drawing board to showroom fell from four years to 18 months.) By cutting the time between investment and profit, computers gave business a potent new tool to generate the faster returns that Wall Street was demanding—but also to deliver the gratifications consumers were now coming to expect.

http://theamericanscholar.org/instant-gratification

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Warren Buffett’s Right-Hand Man Reveals His Secrets for Success

 

Have you ever wondered what the secret to Warren Buffett’s success is?

It turns out Charlie Munger — Buffett’s right-hand man at Berkshire Hathaway  — is happy to share.

 

he remarkable success
Much has been said from outsiders — like myself — about Buffett and the various things he has done through the years that have delivered results that are unparalleled.

But that discussion makes sense when you think about his success.

Consider for a moment that $100 parked in the S&P 500 at beginning of 1965 would be worth an astounding $9,841 by the end of 2013. This is a distinctly clear display of the true beauty of both the American economy and the rewards of buy-and-hold investing.

But what would that same $100 be worth if it was put into the hands of Warren Buffett at Berkshire in 1965?

Words don’t do it justice: $693,518.

All of this is to say, he’s clearly done one or two things right along the way.

The inside opinion
So with that in mind, the natural question becomes, how has he done it? And Munger has a unique perspective to answer that very question.

Munger first met Buffett at a restaurant in Omaha 55 years ago. After the two collaborated on a number of investments over the next 20 years — including Buffett’s beloved See’s Candy — Munger officially joined Berkshire full time as the vice chairman in 1978, and he’s held the position ever since.

In 2007 Munger also stood atop Wesco . The company was in many ways was like a mini-Berkshire Hathaway — which actually owned 80% of Wesco — because it was driven by insurance operations, but it also had a metal-cutting business and furniture retailer under its wings. And ultimately it was purchased fully by Berkshire in 2011.

But when Munger sat down to begin the question and answer session at Wesco’s 2007 annual meeting he began by saying:

I want to do something I haven’t done before. I feel obligated because so many of you came from such great distances, so I’ll talk about a question I’ve chosen, one that ought to interest you: Why were Warren Buffett and his creation, Berkshire Hathaway, so unusually successful? If that success in investment isn’t the best in the history of the investment world, it’s certainly in the top five. It’s a lollapalooza.

So what exactly did Munger identify as some of the unique keys to Buffett being “so unusually successful”?

He began by noting:

The first factor is the mental aptitude. Warren is seriously smart.

That likely doesn’t come as much of a surprise any of us, but it’s as good a place as any to begin. Yet it’s also important to see it doesn’t just stop there because Munger continued by noting Buffett “out-achieved his mental aptitude.”

How so? Well there’s also the reality the 84-year-old Buffett has been involved in investing since childhood:

Then there’s the good effect caused by his doing this since he was 10 years old. It’s very hard to succeed until you take the first step in what you’re strongly interested in. There’s no substitute for strong interest and he got a very early start.

But it isn’t just that Buffet is intelligent and got a head start. As he’s not content to just rest on his laurels. Instead he’s continuously dedicated to learning and gaining greater knowledge:

Warren is one of the best learning machines on this earth. The turtles who outrun the hares are learning machines. If you stop learning in this world, the world rushes right by you. Warren was lucky that he could still learn effectively and build his skills, even after he reached retirement age. Warren’s investing skills have markedly increased since he turned 65.

Munger notes this reality is “really crucial,” because he suggests, “having watched the whole process with Warren, I can report that if he had stopped with what he knew at earlier points, the record would be a pale shadow of what it is.”

And Buffett hasn’t just continued his learning, but he’s also seen all of the steps laid out on the path set before him as a chance to gain better understanding. Munger compares Buffett to the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius who “had the notion that every tough stretch was an opportunity – to learn, to display manhood, you name it. To him, it was as natural as breathing to have tough stretches.”

As a result, Munger suggested, “Warren doesn’t spend any time on self-pity, envy, etc.”

Put simply, Buffett has continually dedicated himself to refining and expanding his understanding of investing.

Read more: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/09/07/warren-buffetts-right-hand-man-reveals-his-secrets.aspx#ixzz3CjFhstbk

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How To Find A Killer Growth Hack Like Spotify, Uber, and Mint

 

Spotify integrated with Facebook, Uber works closely with local partners, Moz built a massive community, Dollar Shave Club launched a viral video. The history of growth marketing is riddled with brilliant growth hacks.

Yet so many of these growth hacks have a short shelf life. Facebook has changed it’s algorithm, local partnerships rarely scale easily, new communities don’t start easily today, and viral videos have always been unpredictable.

Read more here : http://www.natedesmond.com/how-you-can-find-the-next-big-growth-hack/

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