The Economist took a look at the business of car dealerships:

• In the past buyers would go to dealers to figure out what car they want to buy. Nowadays customers research on the internet and come to the dealership with a model and price in mind.
• Some dealers are trying to increase convenience by bringing cars to potential buyers’ houses for test drives.
• But customers have realized that test drives are largely pointless, since there’s usually little that can be learnt from a quick spin, and taking one may create an irrational emotional attachment that a dealer can exploit.
• What budding car owners do want however is someone who can talk them through the various features – without trying to sell them so they can make an informed decision.
• They also would prefer not to haggle.
• This is all to the carmakers advantage. Having a showroom that focuses on features could create brand loyalty through an Apple store like experience.
• Having customers believe that prices can’t be bargained with could also help carmakers raise prices.
• And since cars are increasingly connected to the internet and communicate data back to the carmaker, auto manufacturers are beginning to build a relationship with customers anyway.

Read more about the business, its history, the legal protections that it has, and how Tesla is trying to upend everything over here.

Source: The Economist

Netflix is a time sink…or is it? Rob Toledo looked at the amount of time Netflix actually saves you:

• The average show on TV has 15 and a half minutes of ads. The average Netflix subscriber watches 1.5 hours of TV a day.
• This means that Netflix saved users 130 hours of advertising every year.
• And the savings are only going to increase. Networks are increasing the speed of shows to create more time for adverts.
• This translates to 5.4 days of saved time every year.
• A Netflix viewer could use this time to watch 65 additional movies or binge on eight seasons (177 episodes) of a TV show.

See more here.

Source: Exstreamist

In a wide ranging article with fascinating observations Eugene Wei looked at the changing role that food is playing in society:

• Back in the day music used to be the heart of cultural conversation.
• Now anybody can listen to anything at any time. Indie bands are instantly available and the sense of exploration and discovery has ebbed.
• MTV no longer dominates the airwaves. These days you hear about cooking shows.
• Instead of lauding rock stars and guitarists we now laud chefs and restaurants, such as Jiro from Jiro Dreams of Sushi.
• Now food offers true scarcity. If you get that one dish at that one famous restaurant, then you’re having an experience that a tiny fraction of the world will ever get to share.
• Yet paradoxically this is because food, in general, is more abundant than ever. We experience it as art more than sustenance. Things like cronuts or cookies and cream shots are creative experiments that excite the world.

The full article talks about a lot more. You should read it here.

Source: Remains of the Day

Via: Marginal Revolution

Go to any hotel in the United States and there’ll be prominent signs directing you to the ice machine where guests can go and get their own ice. It’s actually a little weird if you think about it. Heather Schwedel looked into it:

• Ice machines came about in the 1890s and hotels were the first to adopt them so that they didn’t have to rely on ice miners who brought down ice from cold mountains.
• As they were expensive customers were expected to pay for the privilege of getting ice…even decades later, when ice machines became commonplace and affordable.
• However the founder of Holiday Inn found all the upcharges at hotels irritating so when he launched his own chain he made free ice a feature.
• As he strongly believed in franchising – the idea that no matter where a customer is they get the same experience if they walk into a Holiday Inn property – soon all buildings belonging to the hotel chain had free ice machines.
• This set customer expectations and competitors were quickly forced to adapt the practice.

Read more about the history of hotel ice, and the icy forehead head massages you used to be able to get back in the day over here.

Source: Slate

The Economist took a look at countries that attempt to mess with the time-space continuum:

• North Korea has decided to go back in time. A few days ago it turned its clocks back an hour to establish a new time zone for itself.
• The insular country probably thinks the unique time zone is a metaphor for the country’s exceptionalism.
• The rest of the world probably thinks that the country going backwards in time is a good metaphor for the economic and social policies of the Hermit Kingdom.
• Other countries use time zones to assert their authority. Despite their size, India and China, for example, impose one clock on their entire populace.
• Hugo Chavez turned Venezuela’s clocks back so that it wouldn’t share the same time zone as the United States.
• Messing with time is a millennia old practice. The Roman Senate named the month of July after Julius Caesar.
• When they decided to honour Augustus Caesar with his own month, they had to mess around with the days in several other months so that Augustus’ month was no shorter than Julius’.
• Not all changes stick. France once tried to introduce a ten hour clock and Turkmenistan’s former President tried to rename every day and month, including a month just for his mother.

Read about other changes that haven’t stood the test of….time here.

Source: The Economist

Your favourite city restaurant is probably struggling to find somebody to put food together writes Roberto A. Ferdman:

• Housing rents in big cities mean that lowly paid cooks have to live far from their kitchen if they want to work in the industry.
• And since restaurant shifts end late, people must contend with long commutes at the end of even longer nights.
• Pay in the industry is poor and the debt required to pay through culinary school is large.
• Cooking shows have created unrealistic expectations. Most real kitchens are cramped, sweaty, and stressful.
• It’s not like restaurants can just offer higher pay. Most can’t rely on television contracts or book deals, and the vast majority are struggling financially.
• Yet more and more people try to start their own restaurants, increasing the demand for cooks.

Read more about the role that Mexico has to play in all this, and what industry insiders have to say over here.

Source: The Washington Post

Via: Marginal Revolution

Countless hours have been wasted in offices across the world playing Solitaire on Windows PCs. James Hunt looked at Microsoft’s secret agenda in having people do so:

• Solitaire arrived on Windows in 1990 for a generation of users that were used to text based command line input ways of interacting with computers.
• People didn’t know how to use a graphical user interface which involved dragging and dropping things with a mouse. So through the game Solitaire Microsoft trained an entire generation to use the mouse to manipulate things.
• Two years later Minesweeper come out for similar reasons. It taught people how to effectively right and left click on their mouse.
• Similarly Hearts came out for the first networked version of Windows, and taught people how to connect with other players over networks.
• Now in Windows 10 those who want to play Solitaire have to use the Windows app store. The company’s aim is to teach users how to use the store to find other apps.

Read more here.

Source: Mental Floss

Communities are experimenting with creating their own cash writes Dan Crane:

• Individual artists and communities are providing their own take on what currency should look like.
• Some designs honour people such as JK Rowling or other contemporary figures.
• They may also commemorate local landscapes, culture, and heroes.
• This currency is then sometimes used to pay for goods. The currency only works in small, localized communities where people agree to use the notes as a form of exchange, since technically the notes aren’t real currency.
• This system of a specialized currency that can only be used by local merchants and vendors, instead of by chain stores, appeals to a generation that tries to support local businesses.

Read more about why this might be “the last burst of glory” before cash disappears entirely from our world, how such currencies address piracy concerns, and what some of the currencies look like over here.

Source: The New York Times

Relentless consumption promoted by economic growth is killing the planet, or so some people argue. Adam Posen outlined why, in fact, economic growth is the key to saving the planet:

• A cleaner planet requires that unclean industries are overhauled.
• This is easier to do if there’s economic growth. A dirty power plant might be shut down but industrialists and workers can hope for a different, brighter future in a new industry.
• Growth also promotes efficiency – doing more with less – key to helping the planet.
• The empirical evidence backs this up – over the decades it is economies that were growing such as Japan, Germany, and China, that have led the fight to reduce carbon emissions.

The full article fleshes out other reasons for the importance of economic growth, and provides a rebuttal by Tim Jackson who argues that low or no growth is the key to stability. Read it here.

Source: The Economist