In this country, the notion of private companies risking their capital on infrastructure projects is a no-no. While it complains about “market failure” and high prices, the Financial Mail’s Duncan McLeod reports that the government has just decided to spend $2 billion (!) on its own undersea cable project.
Business
Posted inBusiness
An hour with Lood Bester
Meet the man who is revolutionising the motor-car salvage industry and a Blue Bulls fan to boot. Traps (T): Tell me a bit about Ludewikus Bester. Lood (L): I matriculated at Lichtenburg High, having spent most of my school days at boarding schools in Pretoria. I’m 36 years old, married to a wonderful girl, Aldurette, […]
Posted inBusiness, Lifestyle
What’s for supper tonight? Ask Arnold
Somewhere a computer is quietly thinking about you. It is deciding what you want for supper tonight and sending instructions to trucks and warehouses to make sure that your local Woolworths can sell it to you. It is basing its thoughts on a whole range of factors — weather patterns (thanks, Al Gore), holidays (Eid, […]
Posted inBusiness, Tech
The Remora business model, or how widgets make money
If you have a blog or a Facebook account, I’ll bet you have plenty of widgets or applications on your pages. Ever thought of how the developers make money off these little tools? Photobucket sold to MySpace for $250-million, and myBlogLog was recently acquired for $10-million. The TripAdvisor supposedly paid $3-million for the “Where I’ve […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Tito marshals us to higher interest rates
It is rare for private-sector economists and Cosatu to agree on anything. But, they have jointly criticised the decision of the South African Reserve Bank to increase the interest rate last week. The basic argument is that the monetary policy committee has gone too far by increasing the interest rate to 10,5%. Or, as they […]
Posted inBusiness
Classic price-control crisis
Browsing the website of the state-owned electricity producer, Eskom, where “loadshedding” schedules are published, is a depressing pastime for a sunny Friday afternoon. It’s a tale of woe that underscores the truth of the classic economic argument that if you control prices, you’ll get only shortages for your efforts.
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Will a single African currency succeed?
There has been much talk recently about creating a monetary union within the African Union that would lead to all members having one single currency. The question is: Would Africa benefit? I must be honest. I don’t think so — at least not right now; not within the next decade or two. There is a […]
Posted inBusiness, Media, Tech
What’s the frequency, Zuckerberg?
On Friday I read a rumour that Facebook would be launching a possible iTunes competitor. Since then the rumour has evolved and claims a more realistic scenario that Facebook will simply be implementing musician-friendly profiles — a feature that will compete directly with MySpace’s Artist platform (responsible for a huge part of their growth). Rafat […]
Posted inBusiness
Do we really want the tourists to come in 2010?
At some point on Wednesday, two individuals descended upon the humble abode I share with my family. They had apparently been sent by some other individual from my efficient municipality to serve us with a “notice to disconnect” our power supply on the basis of non-payment. They figured that while they were there, they might […]
Posted inBusiness, Media, Tech
eBay: How big can you go?
eBay is a notoriously dominant property in the online auction/marketplaces space, where the market value of an item is uncertain. The most significant element of this dominance is attributed to network effects in its marketplace business. In eBay’s business, the money side of the platform is the marketplace sellers and the subsidy side is the […]
Posted inBusiness
Back to basics (Economics 101)
The inspiration for this post came from the fact that I’m busy outsourcing software-development work to Russia now, given that I can’t find the skills locally. I often wonder how (and when!) South Africa will become globally competitive in the internet and software sectors — the reality is that we’re not, and probably won’t be […]
Posted inBusiness, Media, Tech
Google’s cash machine: How sustainable is it really?
Barriers to entry have typically been used by traditional offline players to deter entry into an industry. This has the effect of creating a business environment where healthy profits and sometimes even monopolistic (economic) profits are possible. In the online space, there are few of these barriers to entry, but there is something else that […]