Yotta Point

Disaster Costs, GDP and Climate Change

Roger Pielke Jr. recently published an article in Nate Silver's new 538 website titled Disasters Cost More Than Ever But Not Because of Climate Change. You should click the link and read his entire piece but, his thesis is essentially the following:

1. The cost of disasters tied to extreme events is indeed rising rapidly - but once you normalize this to the increase in the wealth of the world as represented by global GDP (we own a lot more "stuff" now than before) - the trend basically vanishes
2. Disasters lead to high loss of life where property damage is the lowest and highest property damage in places with lowest loss of life. As examples he cites the following: "U.S. hurricanes, for example, are responsible for 58 percent of the increase in the property losses in the Munich Re global dataset" and "Consider that since 1940 in the United States 3,322 people have died in 118 hurricanes that made landfall. Last year in a poor region of the Philippines, a single storm, Typhoon Hayain, killed twice as many people."
3. Richer countries are in a better position to protect people's lives in times of disasters at the expense of higher property losses. He says: "As countries become richer, they are better able to deal with disasters — meaning more people are protected and fewer lose their lives. Increased property losses, it turns out, are a price worth paying"

His article was roundly criticized by some well known climate scientists, as summarized by Emily Atkin at Think Progress (additional discussion in this post by Laurence Lewis at Daily Kos). The crux of the criticism as I see it:

1. Improvements to deal with disasters (e.g., newer building codes and improved construction, better forecasting, better preparedness and responses) over the years reduces disaster damages/costs (lives and property) and this is not properly reflected in Pielke's assertions - this has been pointed out to him before, yet he continues to publish his misleading claim
2. Unlike Pielke's claims that somehow climate change is not causing an increasing frequency of extreme events, there are several situations where this is in fact the case

Pielke responded to these critiques in an email to Think Progress (same link as above):

GLTYR - a New App for C2C, C2B, B2C, B2B Multi-Media Communication

Part of an Entrepreneur Q&A Series [see other Q&As here: Whisk]

UPDATE on 3/9/14: Added some responses from Sudhakar to user questions in the comments section.

I was recently catching up with my good friend - the multi-talented Subra Sudhakar - a tech industry veteran, CEO of the startup School Cues and an accomplished Indian classical musician who has played with leading Indian musicians over the years. As it turned out, I discovered he had just co-founded another startup - called GLTYR. Having heard from him about it, I checked it out myself and was impressed because I think this product will be a catalyst for more advanced personalized video/audio/text communication in the coming years. Here is a Q&A I did with Sudhakar about his new product/company (with minor edits for grammar/clarity).

Yotta Point: What is GLTYR?

Sudhakar: GLTYR (pronounced “Glitter”) is a mobile app that helps create and present your message to make an emotional connection with your audience. Your message comes alive with a picture, audio and video and up to 900 characters of text. What makes this app even more exciting is that a GLTYR message can be created and sent out in as little as three to five minutes (depending on the length of your message) - entirely through the app.

Yotta Point: How did you come up with the idea for GLTYR?

Sudhakar: The genesis for GLTYR came from a combination of five technology and behavioral trends –

1. The average human attention span is two minutes or less in absorbing and retaining information.
2. Content will ultimately end up being created and consumed on a mobile device, rendering the desktop obsolete in several scenarios or applications
3. The world is going mobile so quickly that there is a greater probability that a coffee shop owner in a remote village in Mongolia will use a smart phone and not a computer to create and send out quick messages / digital fliers that would drive his brand across the globe in less than a few minutes.
4. There are several fields where the concurrent confluence of audio-video-visual-text integrated with human creativity is required to make a strong emotional connection with the audience. These fields or areas include commercials, dating profiles, resumes, food, performing arts, marketing fliers, greetings, invitations, business cards, elevator pitches, value propositions etc.
5. The cost of producing audio-video-visual commercials is prohibitively expensive for the average consumer or a small business. The cost of purchasing, filling out and sending greeting cards is also getting more expensive. Plus, these cards are unemotional, with a limited shelf life on the refrigerator door. We would like to make it ridiculously affordable for people to create messages / commercials / cards / resumes on the fly which integrates picture, audio, video and text and push it out in less than a few minutes to thousands of people.

Yotta Point: Why should anyone consider using GLTYR? Aren’t there other apps out there which have similar capabilities?

Unionization and Jobs/Wages in Today's Economy

Evan Soltas’ blog posts and chart, following his Bloomberg View article ("Is the U.S. Better Off Without Unions?"), are quite interesting and worth reading. I tend to agree with his observations on why unionization has declined in the US (and apparently other developed countries) in the second half of the 20th century and I also question the focus on unions as a key method of addressing unemployment and wage pressure challenges faced by US workers. However, I am not convinced that Soltas' ideas to address the issue are that effective. So, I'd like to offer a different perspective on this subject given my background as an executive in the Silicon Valley tech industry. This perspective focuses on the after-effects of stock-based compensation on various macro factors.

First, some context. In Silicon Valley, tech labor has tended to be non-unionized for quite some time. Additionally, over the last two decades, I've seen software design, hardware manufacturing, hardware design and other functions move outside of the US (I have also been in positions where I have moved certain jobs overseas). The reasons are simple. There are qualified workers who can do these jobs outside the US, typically at a much lower cost. Moreover, when a company's competitors move jobs or are located overseas in cheaper labor markets, for financially competitive reasons the company ends up having to do the same. Additionally, some of the larger tech companies that sell directly in non-US end markets need workers in those regions. Despite this trend, and despite many tech jobs being non-unionized, Silicon Valley has managed to maintain a decent jobs picture (example) for well-paid employees - I think primarily because US tech companies continue to be at the forefront of driving significant innovation where more experienced US workers have an advantage over workers is job markets outside the US. My experience suggests that at least in Tech, where workers tend to be paid relatively well because of their skills, unionization has not been a significant factor in driving employment or wage trends. I can’t extrapolate from this to infer that the tech experience should be applied to every other industry but it is suggestive that we need to look for deeper explanations for increases in income inequality and decline in unionization in the US and other economies.