#New Economy Companies

[tntra]

Discover the digitalization landscape in Singapore and the strategies employed by new economy companies in this insightful blog. Gain valuable insights into how Singapore is fostering a thriving digital ecosystem and driving innovation across various industries. Explore the success stories and strategies of leading companies embracing digital transformation. Stay ahead of the curve and unlock the potential of the digital economy in Singapore.

[the-voice-of-night-vale]

u know what i've been thinking about. how the economy expects you to be, right now, at a job you've been at and consistently getting raises in for like, ten years. it's almost like the implication is "well yeah, you'll be able to live off this job in three, five, ten years if you stick with it and grow in the company" which is all fine and dandy, but i kind of need to live right now

[blueish-bird]

hyperfixations are weird as hell; every time I see a representation of a particular interest i get a surge of dopamine that makes me want to sprint a mile while writing an incomprehensible-yet-poignant essay about how much I like said interest. except I can do neither of those things because I have to leave for work in 20 minutes.

[morayofsunshine]

putting together a potential pet budget and realizing that adding a family member costs a lot of money

[head-post]

Oil prices rise with US interest rate cut expectations

Oil prices rose slightly in early trading on Monday on expectations of a US interest rate cut this week. However, growth was limited by weak economic data from China and lingering demand concerns.

International benchmark Brent crude rose 0.74 percent to $72.14 a barrel at 11.35 a.m. local time (0835 GMT), up from the previous session’s close of $71.61.

US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) rose 0.93% to $68.38 a barrel after closing at $67.75 in the previous session.

Markets are set for an interest rate cut by the US Federal Reserve following its meeting scheduled for Wednesday, which would be the first rate cut since 2020.

The bank is likely to start the easing cycle, but market uncertainty remains over how aggressive the rate cut will be.

While investors have raised their odds of an aggressive 50 basis point rate cut, a 25 basis point cut remains on the table. Lower interest rates typically reduce borrowing costs, which fuels expectations of increased economic activity and oil demand.

However, the rise in oil prices was tempered by rising demand in the market following the release of data from China. China’s economic data released over the weekend pointed to weakness in the economy of the world’s largest oil importer, adding to doubts about oil demand.

The country’s industrial production in August fell short of expectations, unemployment rose and house prices fell further.

Read more HERE

[jcmarchi]

The merging of AI and blockchain was inevitable – but what will it mean? - AI News

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/the-merging-of-ai-and-blockchain-was-inevitable-but-what-will-it-mean-ai-news/

The merging of AI and blockchain was inevitable – but what will it mean? - AI News

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At first glance, AI and blockchain seem like completely disparate realms. For instance, blockchain emphasises decentralisation but suffers from constrained memory and throughput rates.  

On the other hand, AI thrives on massive datasets and demands high-performance computing. To elaborate, Machine learning (ML) models – especially deep learning networks – require enormous amounts of data to train effectively, often relying on powerful GPUs or specialised hardware to process this information quickly. 

To this point, a report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) states that the global electricity demand for AI is projected to rise to 800 TWh by 2026, a nearly 75% increase from 460 TWh in 2022. Similar projections have also been released by multinational giants such as Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo, with the latter’s model suggesting that, by 2030, AI-centric energy consumption will account for 16% of the USA’s current electricity demand.

Morgan Stanley’s AI power consumption prediction (best-case scenario)

The best of both worlds is here.

Despite their apparent differences, the tech world is witnessing a growing convergence between AI and blockchain, with a number of innovative projects emerging. For instance, Ocean is a protocol that provides users with a decentralised data exchange centre, unlocking information sets for AI consumption while preserving their privacy and security. 

Similarly, ThoughtAI embeds AI and blockchain directly into data and information, effectively eliminating traditional application layers. It aims to create more responsive and adaptive AI solutions, potentially revolutionising how people interact with the technology and manage information.

While these projects demonstrate the potential of combining AI and blockchain, they also highlight a critical challenge, i.e. scalability. For AI on blockchain to truly flourish, platforms need to overcome the inherent limitations of traditional blockchain architectures, particularly in terms of data availability and throughput.

In this regard, 0G is a platform that has made significant strides in addressing the above-mentioned bottlenecks. To elaborate, ZeroGravity (0G for short) is the world’s first data availability system with a built-in general purpose storage layer that is not only highly scalable but also decentralised. Its scalability hinges on separating the workflow of data availability into a data publishing lane and a data storage lane. 

To put it technically, 0G is a scalable Data Availability (DA) service layer built directly on top of a decentralised storage system. It addresses the scalability issue by minimising the data transfer volume required for broadcast. — allowing for unprecedented levels of data availability and transaction throughput.

One of the key advantages of 0G is its performance. While competitors like Celestia are able to achieve about 1.4 to 1.5 megabytes per second, the 0G network is capable of producing about 50 gigabytes per second, making it 50,000 times faster. Additionally, 0G’s cost is approximately 100 times cheaper than its closest competitors.

This level of performance and flexibility opens the door to a wide array of AI/blockchain use cases that were previously impractical or impossible. For starters, in the realm of finance, 0G’s scalability can potentially allow for sophisticated AI-powered trading algorithms to operate directly on-chain.

Similarly, it could also be possible to implement large-scale federated learning systems on the blockchain, leading to breakthroughs in privacy-preserving AI—where multiple parties can collaboratively train AI models without sharing sensitive data directly. Such advancements could have far-reaching implications in fields like healthcare, where data privacy is paramount but collaborative research is essential.

A trillion-dollar opportunity is waiting to be tapped.

As we look to the future, it’s clear that the intersection of AI and blockchain will continue to expand and evolve.

This convergence is not just a technological curiosity but a massive economic opportunity. For example, the AI industry is projected to be worth a staggering $1.3 trillion by 2030, while the blockchain market is set to reach a valuation of $248.8 billion by 2029, reflecting their transformative potential across virtually every sector of the global economy. 

Therefore, moving forward, it stands to reason that those companies and platforms (such as 0G) that are able to successfully navigate this convergence — solving the technical challenges while unlocking new value propositions — will be well-positioned to capture a significant share of this trillion-dollar opportunity.

[brewscoop]

Discover how the nation's #1 brewer, Anheuser-Busch, is championing American farmers with the US Farmed Certification! Learn how this initiative supports local agriculture, ensures high-quality ingredients, and boosts sustainability. Check out the full story on how these efforts are shaping the future of US agriculture.

[tntra]

What is the New Economy and its Impact on Manufacturing Technology?

New Economy manufacturing is driven by technology and information. Learn how new economy manufacturing technology impacts productivity, quality, user-centricity and more.

Read more: https://topdigital.agency/what-is-the-new-economy-and-its-impact-on-manufacturing-technology/

[alittlegiraffe]

You know what sucks? Having your position at work eliminated, through budget cuts so nothing you can control, with no notice or severance and then when interviewing at a new company being asked WHY your position was eliminated, and WHY you didn't do more to invest in your previous company.

Like idfk dude, do you want me to design a brand book for you or just go fuck off to the unemployment office.

[jetsetromance]

it literally took us 5 hours to unload the truck delivery today and then this fuck ass store manager didn’t even help (as usual) and decides to write me up for something that happened a week ago.

[happigreens]

Sustainable Furniture: Sabai

Sabai about:

[...] In 2019, [Phantila] Phataraprasit co-founded Sabai—a Thai word that roughly translates to comfortable or relaxed—with business partner and college friend Caitlin Ellen.

[...] “The core of why we wanted to start Sabai is to make sustainable furniture that was accessible to people in our demographic, knowing that we are part of an age group that cares the most about this and wants to purchase according to those values, but are limited by things like budget, lifestyle and convenience,” she says.

Sabai CEO interview:

[Phataraprasit]: [...] We started an Instagram account that served as a great tool to leverage our community to understand what they cared about. When we started the design process, we would always go back to the Instagram community and poll them on, "What do you use your couch for?" "Do you like wide arms?" "Do you like thin arms?" It seems so simple in terms of, obviously, a couch is for sitting, but the insights that we received from that were helpful in informing the design process."

[...] It was definitely difficult for two relatively young women who had never started this type of company before and in a relatively traditional space to find any factory that was willing to work with us and basically take a bet on us. [...] When we finally did find a manufacturer who wanted to work with us, that was amazing, [...], but for us, we [...] had to find the sustainable alternatives to every component of the product so that was definitely a whole process in and of itself.

Sabai Materials blog post:

[...] OEKO-TEX certified hemp fabric is used in our Evergreen slipcovers [...] We wanted to ensure we were using [natural fibers] that uses less water than the cotton and linen options we’ve seen offered.

In place of traditionally used polyester upholstery fiber, we are using a natural fiber material made from a mix of coconut fibers and natural rubber wherever possible. The wooden legs are finished in a water based finish and the frame construction uses a non-toxic, solvent free glue.

[Sabai furniture] are designed to be assembled and disassembled easily with standard hardware and tools. Second, both seating collections are made to be repaired, individual parts can be purchased to replace in case of damage and cushion covers and slipcovers can be replaced to ensure the longevity of the product.

B Corp status of Sabai:

Sabai third-party product review:

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"TECHNOCRATS DECIDE TO USE SOFT PEDAL," Toronto Star. December 23, 1932. Page 1. --- Holds No Golden Promise of Economic Paradise," Says Engineer ---- New York, Dec. 23. - Technocrats to-day began to soft-pedal. Technocracy, they contended, is not claiming to be a system of government, a sort of communism run by engineers, as one description made it. Technocracy does not advocate a Soviet of engineers.

Technocracy, declared Dal Hitchcock, one of the engineers, is not a panacea for social disturbances. It is only an investigation of the way modern, speeded-up machinery is rapidly displacing human labor, and, from this analysis when it is completed scientists may "perhaps" work out a new system of industry and government.

Hitchcock appeared before a large group of newspapermen with a long typewritten statement to this effect from Howard Scott, head of the investigating engineers, who is ill.

"Technocracy holds no golden promise of an economic paradise," Hitchcock told the assembled, press men.

"Technocracy points out," he said, that this continent has no fear of gloom or chaos, but that we must face the inconvenience of change - that this continent stands on the threshold of a new era of well-being. The high road to this new era can be one of orderly progression under technological control."

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Red Lobster was killed by private equity, not Endless Shrimp

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

A decade ago, a hedge fund had an improbable viral comedy hit: a 294-page slide deck explaining why Olive Garden was going out of business, blaming the failure on too many breadsticks and insufficiently salted pasta-water:

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/940944/000092189514002031/ex991dfan14a06297125_091114.pdf

Everyone loved this story. As David Dayen wrote for Salon, it let readers "mock that silly chain restaurant they remember from their childhoods in the suburbs" and laugh at "the silly hedge fund that took the time to write the world’s worst review":

https://www.salon.com/2014/09/17/the_real_olive_garden_scandal_why_greedy_hedge_funders_suddenly_care_so_much_about_breadsticks/

But – as Dayen wrote at the time, the hedge fund that produced that slide deck, Starboard Value, was not motivated by dissatisfaction with bread-sticks. They were "activist investors" (finspeak for "rapacious assholes") with a giant stake in Darden Restaurants, Olive Garden's parent company. They wanted Darden to liquidate all of Olive Garden's real-estate holdings and declare a one-off dividend that would net investors a billion dollars, while literally yanking the floor out from beneath Olive Garden, converting it from owner to tenant, subject to rent-shocks and other nasty surprises.

They wanted to asset-strip the company, in other words ("asset strip" is what they call it in hedge-fund land; the mafia calls it a "bust-out," famous to anyone who watched the twenty-third episode of The Sopranos):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bust_Out

Starboard didn't have enough money to force the sale, but they had recently engineered the CEO's ouster. The giant slide-deck making fun of Olive Garden's food was just a PR campaign to help it sell the bust-out by creating a narrative that they were being activists* to save this badly managed disaster of a restaurant chain.

*assholes

Starboard was bent on eviscerating Darden like a couple of entrail-maddened dogs in an elk carcass:

https://web.archive.org/web/20051220005944/http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~solan/dogsinelk/

They had forced Darden to sell off another of its holdings, Red Lobster, to a hedge-fund called Golden Gate Capital. Golden Gate flogged all of Red Lobster's real estate holdings for $2.1 billion the same day, then pissed it all away on dividends to its shareholders, including Starboard. The new landlords, a Real Estate Investment Trust, proceeded to charge so much for rent on those buildings Red Lobster just flogged that the company's net earnings immediately dropped by half.

Dayen ends his piece with these prophetic words:

Olive Garden and Red Lobster may not be destinations for hipster Internet journalists, and they have seen revenue declines amid stagnant middle-class wages and increased competition. But they are still profitable businesses. Thousands of Americans work there. Why should they be bled dry by predatory investors in the name of “shareholder value”? What of the value of worker productivity instead of the financial engineers?

Flash forward a decade. Today, Dayen is editor-in-chief of The American Prospect, one of the best sources of news about private equity looting in the world. Writing for the Prospect, Luke Goldstein picks up Dayen's story, ten years on:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-05-22-raiding-red-lobster/

It's not pretty. Ten years of being bled out on rents and flipped from one hedge fund to another has killed Red Lobster. It just shuttered 50 restaurants and declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Ten years hasn't changed much; the same kind of snark that was deployed at the news of Olive Garden's imminent demise is now being hurled at Red Lobster.

Instead of dunking on free bread-sticks, Red Lobster's grave-dancers are jeering at "Endless Shrimp," a promotional deal that works exactly how it sounds like it would work. Endless Shrimp cost the chain $11m.

Which raises a question: why did Red Lobster make this money-losing offer? Are they just good-hearted slobs? Can't they do math?

Or, you know, was it another hedge-fund, bust-out scam?

Here's a hint. The supplier who provided Red Lobster with all that shrimp is Thai Union. Thai Union also owns Red Lobster. They bought the chain from Golden Gate Capital, last seen in 2014, holding a flash-sale on all of Red Lobster's buildings, pocketing billions, and cutting Red Lobster's earnings in half.

Red Lobster rose to success – 700 restaurants nationwide at its peak – by combining no-frills dining with powerful buying power, which it used to force discounts from seafood suppliers. In response, the seafood industry consolidated through a wave of mergers, turning into a cozy cartel that could resist the buyer power of Red Lobster and other major customers.

This was facilitated by conservation efforts that limited the total volume of biomass that fishers were allowed to extract, and allocated quotas to existing companies and individual fishermen. The costs of complying with this "catch management" system were high, punishingly so for small independents, bearably so for large conglomerates.

Competition from overseas fisheries drove consolidation further, as countries in the global south were blocked from implementing their own conservation efforts. US fisheries merged further, seeking economies of scale that would let them compete, largely by shafting fishermen and other suppliers. Today's Alaskan crab fishery is dominated by a four-company cartel; in the Pacific Northwest, most fish goes through a single intermediary, Pacific Seafood.

These dominant actors entered into illegal collusive arrangements with one another to rig their markets and further immiserate their suppliers, who filed antitrust suits accusing the companies of operating a monopsony (a market with a powerful buyer, akin to a monopoly, which is a market with a powerful seller):

https://www.classaction.org/news/pacific-seafood-under-fire-for-allegedly-fixing-prices-paid-to-dungeness-crabbers-in-pacific-northwest

Golden Gate bought Red Lobster in the midst of these fish wars, promising to right its ship. As Goldstein points out, that's the same promise they made when they bought Payless shoes, just before they destroyed the company and flogged it off to Alden Capital, the hedge fund that bought and destroyed dozens of America's most beloved newspapers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/16/sociopathic-monsters/#all-the-news-thats-fit-to-print

Under Golden Gate's management, Red Lobster saw its staffing levels slashed, so diners endured longer wait times to be seated and served. Then, in 2020, they sold the company to Thai Union, the company's largest supplier (a transaction Goldstein likens to a Walmart buyout of Procter and Gamble).

Thai Union continued to bleed Red Lobster, imposing more cuts and loading it up with more debts financed by yet another private equity giant, Fortress Investment Group. That brings us to today, with Thai Union having moved a gigantic amount of its own product through a failing, debt-loaded subsidiary, even as it lobbies for deregulation of American fisheries, which would let it and its lobbying partners drain American waters of the last of its depleted fish stocks.

Dayen's 2020 must-read book Monopolized describes the way that monopolies proliferate, using the US health care industry as a case-study:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/29/fractal-bullshit/#dayenu

After deregulation allowed the pharma sector to consolidate, it acquired pricing power of hospitals, who found themselves gouged to the edge of bankruptcy on drug prices. Hospitals then merged into regional monopolies, which allowed them to resist pharma pricing power – and gouge health insurance companies, who saw the price of routine care explode. So the insurance companies gobbled each other up, too, leaving most of us with two or fewer choices for health insurance – even as insurance prices skyrocketed, and our benefits shrank.

Today, Americans pay more for worse healthcare, which is delivered by health workers who get paid less and work under worse conditions. That's because, lacking a regulator to consolidate patients' interests, and strong unions to consolidate workers' interests, patients and workers are easy pickings for those consolidated links in the health supply-chain.

That's a pretty good model for understanding what's happened to Red Lobster: monopoly power and monopsony power begat more monopolies and monoposonies in the supply chain. Everything that hasn't consolidated is defenseless: diners, restaurant workers, fishermen, and the environment. We're all fucked.

Decent, no-frills family restaurant are good. Great, even. I'm not the world's greatest fan of chain restaurants, but I'm also comfortably middle-class and not struggling to afford to give my family a nice night out at a place with good food, friendly staff and reasonable prices. These places are easy pickings for looters because the people who patronize them have little power in our society – and because those of us with more power are easily tricked into sneering at these places' failures as a kind of comeuppance that's all that's due to tacky joints that serve the working class.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates

[merchantservices444]

Empowering Business Development: The Role of Digital Payments

[reasonsforhope]

"Businesses like to talk about the concept of a closed loop or circular economy, but often they’re trying to close small loops. Releaf Paper takes dead leaves from city trees and turns them into paper for bags, office supplies, and more—which is to say they are striving to close one heck of a big loop.

How big? Six billion trees are cut down every year for paper products according to the WWF, producing everything from toilet paper to Amazon boxes to the latest best-selling novels. Meanwhile, the average city produces 8,000 metric tons of leaves every year which clog gutters and sewers, and have to be collected, composted, burned, or dumped in landfills.

In other words, huge supply and huge demand, but Releaf Paper is making cracking progress. They already produce 3 million paper carrier bags per year from 5,000 metric tons of leaves from their headquarters in Paris.

Joining forces with landscapers in sites across Europe, thousands of tonnes of leaves arrive at their facility where a low-water, zero-sulfur/chlorine production process sees the company create paper with much smaller water and carbon footprints...

“In a city, it’s a green waste that should be collected. Really, it’s a good solution because we are keeping the balance—we get fiber for making paper and return lignin as a semi-fertilizer for the cities to fertilize the gardens or the trees. So it’s like a win-win model,” [Valentyn] Frechka, co-founder and CTO of Releaf Paper, told Euronews.

Releaf is already selling products to LVMH, BNP Paribas, Logitech, Samsung, and various other big companies. In the coming years, Frechka and Sobolenka also plan to further increase their production capacity by opening more plants in other countries. If the process is cost-efficient, there’s no reason there shouldn’t be a paper mill of this kind in every city.

“We want to expand this idea all around the world. At the end, our vision is that the technology of making paper from fallen leaves should be accessible on all continents,” Sobolenka notes, according to ZME Science."

-via Good News Network, August 15, 2024

[head-post]

Hungarian companies lead in the region – Szijjártó

Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó stated in Budapest on Monday that several domestic companies had become regional leaders in various key sectors due to the national interest-based economic development strategy of the past 14 years.

The minister announced that construction company Bayer Construct Zrt. would build a factory worth 15 billion Hungarian forints (38 million euros) in Sóskút, where a bathroom assembly plant would operate. The project would be supported by the state with 6.6 billion Hungarian forints (16.7 million euros), helping to create 100 new jobs.

Szijjártó claimed that the recently announced investment would contribute to further reinforcing of the construction industry, one of the main pillars of the Hungarian economy. The construction sector employed nearly 400,000 people, with output totalling €18.7 billion last year.

Read more HERE