"Bad economics"

Dave Winer, talking about ads in RSS feeds, writes a great line:

"Basically it's bad economics to spoil a good thing for a couple of incremental bucks today, for zero total bucks later."

Bingo.

I just wrote to him:

"This is one of the best things I've heard you say.

It's also a classic example of what's wrong with American business. Because most managers/marketers/what-have-you simply don't get this. All they see are the incremental bucks."

This all calls to mind (and I directly quoted to him) my post quoting Penn Gillette, and how Penn would make studio heads more concerned about money, not less.

Or, as akirlu once said of me, "You think too much like an entrepreneur to actually be one."

UPDATE: Dave has been kind enough to link to this post. Thank you, Dave. To those reading me for the first time, welcome. I've enabled comments from non-members of LiveJournal, if you want to pitch in. At the risk of being repetitive, I also really do suggest you read my earlier post on Penn Gillette's comments as well, as it expands these ideas some.

Today's date

...is 05-05-05. Regardless of mm-dd or dd-mm. And it's the fifth day of the week, too.

{from Om Malik, by way of Dave Winer.}