You've never heard of this because it's not true. A note wants to resolve up or down based on it's relative distance from tonic. This had nothing to do with what it's named, the most important part of naming notes is not repeating letters in an 8-note scale.
> taking one example, F# "wants" to step up to G, whereas Gb "wants" to step down to F.
Uhhh....no? A flat or sharp can be the tonic, which does not lead to any other note. A note is named flat or sharp to maintain proper interval distance without repeating letters within the scale. A flat is typically not a leading tone because of interval distance, but can still want to resolve up or down. Any note can be consonant or dissonant, leading or resolved depending on the context.
> A flat or sharp can be the tonic, which does not lead to any other note.
You're right, and this is most often seen with flats; when Bb is the tonic, it doesn't "want" to resolve to A. --Of course, a modulation to F - the next-sharpest key in the cycle of fifths - is enough to change that. A "stable" sharp note is seen starting from the key of D, where F# is a stable third. But in the context of enharmonic notes, what I said generally holds. F# and Gb, to take the most common example, are so far in the 'extended' cycle of fifths that whenever both appear in the same piece, one can generally assume that the rule holds.
> A note is named flat or sharp to maintain proper interval distance without repeating letters within the scale.
Notes are not just named flats or sharps; at least in principle, there can be double, triple etc. sharps, and double, triple etc. flats. This is done in order to properly notate modulations in the cycle of fifths; one does not arbitrarily "switch" from sharps to flats, but just keeps adding to them.
Music theory is really a domain specific language. Like all languages (not programming), the only way to really learn is to converse with others. I don't think you can learn theory alone, it only makes sense when you talk about music using music theory with other musicians.
1) Talk to a lawyer. Details are going to vary wide depending on where you are and the documentation that exists.
2) Your work has value, quite possibly more value than the capital put in by Jim.
3) If you own 40%, Jim has to buy your 40%. You position as a shareholder is not related to your position as an employee. Ownership doesn't disappear. I don't quite understand how/why you would reduce to 5% from 40% (without dilution events).
4) Don't sign anything until you talk to a lawyer.
Thank you. We're not from the "better" European countries, so I'm not sure whether my work would have that much value. Maybe it would, but Jim would NEVER pay that kind of money. In that case I would most likely end up with some equity and nice bill from a lawyer, which isn't something I can afford right now.
Whether or not the price falls within your expected range. Prices can rise faster than someone's perception of the price range, so the conclusion is that the asset is "overvalued". In other words, "overvalued" is a subjective conclusion that is weighted by human biases. What may be "overvalued" for one person might be "undervalued" for another. Another key component is the perception/faith of asset growth. Can the price of the asset continue to rise? If yes, then it is "undervalued".
Rewards for positive actions have a few side-effects that I have observed though:
1) Individuals start expecting positive reinforcement for everything they do. Doing it for the external reward instead of finding the intrinsic reward for doing the right thing on their own. This is probably extensively researched already, although i don't have sources handy right now.
2) Along time, positive reinforcements behave in accordance with the "law of diminishing returns". i.e. If you always reward positive actions with some standard reward, it will lose effect over time. With the danger of the positive action not feeling worthwhile anymore.
I thus became a great believer in the importance of negative consequences for bad behavior. I mostly apply (within reason) Shame and Restriction of freedoms to punish my kids for bad behavior (reserving the occasional physical slap for very serious offenses). Shame is a motivator that interests me a lot as a parent. I think it is an essential motivator in society in general, but the most delicate one. Too much Shame can also make you socially inept.
In the end I think its always about the right balance...
Your children are young, and the tools that are working for you now will not be as effective as they get older. In particular, if you are leaning on shame and restriction of freedom to punish, you are sowing the seeds of teenage rebellion. You can only restrict so much freedom from a teenager, and shame only matters in as much as your opinion of them matters to them; abuse either of these, and you will find yourself with a teenager who dedicates themselves to distancing themselves as much as they can from you.
In my experience, you should rather focus on building character by developing the intrinsic rewards for good behavior: we do the right thing because it is the right thing, even if it is a more difficult path. No amount of shame and punishment can get a child to do that; it has to come from something deeper and more positive.
> 1) Individuals start expecting positive reinforcement for everything they do. Doing it for the external reward instead of finding the intrinsic reward for doing the right thing on their own. This is probably extensively researched already, although i don't have sources handy right now.
I've read a book some time ago that mentioned something to this effect - motivating people with external rewards greatly lowers or straight out erases the intrinsic rewards from those tasks. To the point where people stop enjoying tasks they used to if you pay them for it.
This was based on a scientific study, if I recall - so well done on spotting this effect on your own.
I believe the book I got this from is "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us" by Daniel H. Pink.
Thompson's point here isn't about the content itself, but rather the supply chain for the content. Because the internet effectively provides 'infinite' distribution, the traditional models of controlling distribution are worthless. This is a very consistent theme in his writings.
Consider that both the worthless and valuable content that you've defined use the same methods for distribution; Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.
Yes, but production <> distribution. It still costs money to produce something of value, whether it's an article in a magazine or an album. The fact that it costs virtually nothing to reproduce an album or distribute it digitally does not negate the investment it took to produce it. And the fact remains that Facebook and Google, among many others, profited handsomely from this confusion.
Compare with the second paragraph:
"The reality is that Facebook is one of the most powerful companies the tech industry — and arguably, the world — has ever seen. True, everything posted on Facebook is put there for free, either by individuals or professional content creators; and true, Facebook isn’t really irreplaceable when it comes to the generation of economic value; and it is also true that there are all kinds of alternatives when it comes to communication. However, to take these truths as evidence that Facebook is fragile requires a view of the world that is increasingly archaic."
FB doesn't pay for the content, which is a major advantage over traditional companies that do both creation and distribution (newspapers) or ones where content is licensed somehow (television, music labels). FB is agnostic to the costs of creating the content, but their networks necessitate producers to user their platform.
I think that we're going to see how this all shakes out soon enough, and it will probably be one of the business stories of the 21st century.
If the current model is sustainable, then it will continue. I personally think that too much value is being captured on the distribution side, that the content creators are wise to it, and that you're going to see a continual shift in power back to the content creators as they become more and more creative in how they withhold content from free-rider distribution/access platforms that they view as a net negative to their bottom line.
True. I think the author was a bit hasty in how he phrased things here. Given the context of the rest of his writing it's pretty clear that he's talking about the overall supply chain of content as opposed to the demand side.
Basically the insight is that, for a lot of industries, the internet has caused a general shift in the center of power from the supply side to the demand side. Fifty years ago you could maintain a strong and powerful position by controlling the supply chain for media content. Largely this was because supplying media was pretty hard - you had to find and organize the writers/artists, physically manufacture it, and distribute it across a given geographic area. Because it was challenging to supply media, there were relatively few options that consumers had access to, so if you managed to bring something to market it was relatively easy to find people who would be interested in buying it.
The internet turned that dynamic on its head. Now all those challenges with getting media into peoples' hands have evaporated. Of course it's still really hard to produce great content - and individual creators can still do fantastically well - but there is much less money to be made by bringing the content that creators create to the market. Instead, the more powerful position is to control the consumer relationship and let the content creators come to you. In a marketplace where there is a massive supply of different things for consumers to consume it's hard for any one creator/supplier to stand out and get the attention of consumers. So a company that does hold a lot of consumer mind-share and can act as a kind of entry-point to the market for consumers, like Netflix or Facebook, has a ton of leverage over suppliers.
And these companies do add value for consumers. It's overwhelming to have so many different options to chose from. It's nice to have someone help me navigate the choices, or even just present me a steady feed of content I might like.
We're seeing this dynamic not just in markets for media but also in markets for things like furniture and even consumer financial products - Houzz and Credit Karma, respectively, are both trying to be consumer gatekeepers, which will give them tremendous power in their markets.
> It still costs money to produce something of value
It costs rapidly decreasing amounts to produce something of value.
If you want a few stabs from a violin in your song, you rarely need to hire a concert violinist these days, thanks to recordings and software-synthesizers based on infinitely reproducible code and data.
Absolutely, but that doesn't mean that it's still easy to produce the final work. If anyone can do it, then it's obviously not valuable.
Take "Stranger Things" on Netflix, for example. I normally hate sci-fi, but this was one heck of a great season 1 for a series. Did it take a lot less in terms of technical know-how/costs to produce than it would have taken in the 80's ? Sure, no doubt. But, it still is a very unique cultural work that is definitely more valuable than something created by another group of people with access to the exact same technology, but producing something of lesser value. The secret sauce is the people involved and their life experiences, knowledge, and expertise, none of which are "free".
> But, it still is a very unique cultural work that is definitely more valuable than something created by another group of people with access to the exact same technology, but producing something of lesser value
Human cultural value != market-value. This is what I'm getting at.
What was the incremental cost to you to watch each episode?
How much did you pay to watch ET? Buy a Twin Peaks box-set?
> The secret sauce is the people involved and their life experiences, knowledge, and expertise, none of which are "free".
You can find free life-experiences (Medium, Twitter), knowledge and expertise (Github, Wikipedia, Quora) all over the internet.
I'm not saying that people don't need money to exist, or that as we're able to produce more, cultural exhanges are worth subjectively less to other humans (quite the opposite).
I'm saying that the costs of people producing things is decreasing rapidly. What is increasing is the net share of value which is captured by distribution platforms.
It's relevant that you can only watch Stranger Things on Netflix --- you can't 'buy it', you need to pay a rent in perpetuity to watch your favorite shows at your own discretion. This is only possible due to the power which the distribution platform (Netflix) has accumulated.
Of course, there is good, free content everywhere, but it is normally in the form of endeavors that don't take a lot of time or are hobbies. As soon as something starts to take more than X amount of hours per week, it has to either start bringing in revenue or it has to stop growing. In other words, there is no limit to the breadth of the content that can be available for free, but there are hard financial limits to the depth of the content that can be available for free.
Re: Netflix: I think Netflix is a good example of a distribution platform that is in a more symbiotic relationship with its content creators. The content creators get the eyeballs for their work and, more importantly, get paid, while Netflix takes their cut. However, this is also changing as Netflix becomes both content creator and distribution platform. As to being able to purchase Netflix content elsewhere, I think it all comes down to the extra revenue vs. possible loss of subscription revenue. For now I think the equation is tilted towards the latter, hence you won't see that content elsewhere. My understanding is that other content creators are getting more than a little nervous about the Netflix-branded content, so they might start playing hardball.
