Sandy Hamilton - Perspectives

Milton Friedman - Free Market Iconist

Milton Friedman died today. I've always loved his approach to economics and social responsibility, I'll miss his writings. Friedman is an icon for free market economist. Long an anti Keynesian, Friedman was all about freedom of choice, freedom of markets, letting the pendulum rest where it needs to until the people choose otherwise - without government intervention. I loved his style, his beliefs - one of the greatest pillars of our society. He framed a lot of great minds through Business Schools that eventually went on to run some of the most powerful corporations in the world. He preached to have individual accountability within a compassionate society. Most thought of Friedman as the consummate capitalist where the strongest survive and the weak perish, but he was also known for his negative tax concept where the government would pay people making below a certain floating level of income. Supply and demand to the limits. What a brilliant mind, one of our best.

NBC Nightly News does Web 2.0

I TIVO NBC Nightly News - I like Brian Williams. Tonight they promoted the fact that podcast versions of the broadcast will be available at 10:00pm ET every night. How cool is that! Now I can subscribe to that podcast as an RSS feed, watch it on my video IPOD (if I had one - hint Christine. Christmas is coming up) or watch it on my PC. And soon my cell phone. Ah, no longer tied to my TV.

Also - I was reading the paper (as archaic as that may sound to some) and there was a great article on Level 3 and CEO Jim Crowe talking about where Level 3 was heading. He indicated that "the future is all about delivery (bandwidth) and content." With companies like NBC getting hip to 2.0 he's right on point. Level 3 at $5.75/share and companies like Akamai that store and optimize content on the web at $49/share have got to be very well positioned. I just set a reminder to check back in on this 12 months from now.