Yahoo’s Great Thiner Series

Ron Graham Presents “Computers and Mathematics: Problems & Prospects”

http://www.labs.yahoo.com/Big_Thinkers

The average vacancy rate currently at many large hotels is  45% so you’ve never had a better time to score a great room at a deep discount. 5 minutes of talk time may save you 30 or 40% off the room rate plus some upgrades. But there’s an art to scoring a great room at the best rate. Here’s a quick tutorial.

Large hotels are your best option. It’s harder to fill 600 rooms night after night than 50. There are going to be slow times when they’re willing to give some deep discounts. Business travel in particular is way down now. Pick out 5 or 6 large hotels at your destination.

Before you start calling have a firm idea of how much you want to spend per night. Are you willing to spend $99 or $199 a night?  Use the internet to get an idea of the types of rooms and any specials the hotels offer. Now you’re ready to  start calling. The idea is to get the best room with the most urades for your target budget.

Some hotels have hurdle rates that the front-line staff can’t go under. If the person who answers the phone won’t deal on price ask for the rooms division or front office manager. Don’t be surprised if you just get voice-mail. Leave your number, but don’t be surprised if they don’t phone back.

Remember to mention groups you belong to like the Cannadian Automobile Association, American Association of Retired Persons.

Ask for a package rate and then unpack it. How much without the free breakfast, a smaller room or no free Wifi?

If the price won’t budge ssk for upgrades like a complementary show (in Las Vegas), visit to the spa, bigger room, free WiFi or breakfast.

Only 5 – 10 minutes talking with each hotel should land you their best deal.

Some more thoughts on free market economics and trade barriers between countries. Are export-based economies the best for every country on earth?

How is it that countries in the tropics are so poor compared to the Northern countries?

If you think a man is rich if his needs are easily met than the man in the tropics has an advantage over the Northerners. Since there are is no cold weather his shelter can be a hut made of bananna leaves. A pair of short pants can suffice as his clothing. In the tropics food grows quickly and easily.

Corn farmers in Mecico have been driven out of business by cheap American corn. Mexican  coffee farmers can’t make a profit due to imported Vietnamese coffee. But American free market ecomists say this is all for the best. However when it comes to softwood lumber imported into America which hurts the market for Amerow can producers they call foul saying Canada is dumping their wood on the American market.

The Mexican consumer does not benefit from the Mexican farmers suffering – consumer prices that Mecicans pay for corn and coffee does not reflect the lower wholesale costs. The only one who benefits is the middleman who makes more profit.

Guratemala is one of the world’s largest producers of banannas. The workers labour in the fields to grow banannas for the Guatemaln fruit company. They get paid in a currency controlled by the fruit company and are then free to buy their essentials like imported food and water from the company store. The society is completely controlled by status in the company.

It would be better for

This is a first cut at some of my developing thoughts on free markets versus controlled markets.

Is a free market better than a controlled (fair market)?

Over the long term free markets concentrate wealth due to benefits of scale and favor the urban over the rural due to the network effect. I’ll use Japan as an example because it is the world’s 3rd largest economy as well as has moved from a controlled pricing economy to a free market economy.

Japan had a form of price control up until recently. The cost of a bottle of whiskey was the same whether you bought it in a small store or a large store. In the last decade the economy has been liberalized meaning that big stores (who have economies of scale) can charge less than small stores. Does a free market always lead to better economics guided by Adam Smith’s invisible hand.

Unlike Adam Smith, I think that free markets lead to devastation of small communities to the benefit of larger communities and concentration of wealth in fewer hands,

I’ll take the case of Setagaya a small communiity on Amami Oshima an island in Southern Japan where my wife grew up. 50 years ago Setagaya was mostly a self-sustainging local community My wife’s grandmother grew most her own food, made her own miso paste. kids played on the dirt road streets. The town had a few elctronics shops, stationary stores, clothing stores. The prices of consumer goods were fixed whether you bought at a small shop or a large shop. So people bought locally. Shops competed on quality service rather than price. The fixed price was enough to gaurantee the Mom and Pop shops could at least survive. Money was spent at the local businesses who then spent the money in the village. There was a relationship between the shop owner and their customers. The town even had it’s own sake factory famous for the special snake sake made with local poisonous snakes.

Due to benefits of scale a free market leads to natural monopolies. When Japan allowed the free market to determine prices plus better transportation. People started taking a weekly shopping trip to the big town on the island to shop at the big box stores. The big box stores offered a wider selection of goods and cheaper prices. People started buying their groceries, clothing, books and alcohol in the big town. Money flows from the smaller towns to the bigger town. As the amount of money spent in the villages shrunk the small village shops got smaller to cut costs and remain profitable. This led to even less selection in the small towns which mad the big town stores still more attractive. This was a positive feedback loop. Now Erika’s village has only a small shrinking bookshop, one shrinking clothing store.

The big box stores are owned by companies so the profits flow back to the shareholders outside Amami. Now the Mom and Pop shops have been closed.

Are there parallels between free market ecomics and coloniallization?

Einstein’s Theory of relativity – that light always travels at the same speed has always intrigued and perplexed me. With the Hubble telescope in space we can see light that has traveled for billions of light years.

A light photon has mass (as shown by the bending of light during a lunar eclipse.) For an object with even tiny mass to keep moving at constant speed over the billions of years without losing any speed is hard  to imagine.

Is it because th oght is traveling in space that it doesn’t lose any energy?

If light can travel for such immense distances without losses then it seems like it would be much more efficient to transfer power using light than using electrical power transmission that has such high losses.