Microblogging on a macroblog

There are a number of interesting articles on the RSS reader, thought I'd do a "microblog" commentary on each.

WSJ - Bill Gates calling for a kinder, gentler capitalism, ie taking account of what economists politely call "externalities" (ie costs can stick on you without me paying for it, like pollution etc). Yes, thats right - that Bill Gates. I suspect all those eager wannabe-capitalists who have not yet made their pile are going to immediately sit up and take notice - not

Read/Write Web - the "work from home" generation. Maps very well to our experience. The economics show that it will increase. Big changes in comms drive big changes in socio-economic structures.

TechCrunch - Federated Media's John Battelle refuses $100m price - this is the same guy who wrote yesterday about Google's stock decline from $750 to c $550, and who, in the dotcom crunch, rued the day that his then boss refused a decent offer before the crash. Its Santayana time again - in Techcrunch words:

Now that Battelle is the controlling shareholder, you’d think he would be careful not to repeat that mistake again. He must be pretty confident that he can get more than $100 million for FM.

Techdirt - linking to PC Magazine saying that "the ongoing demise of DRM is actually bad for the music industry -- and even claiming that it goes against basic economic principles". He needs to listen to Bill's talk about a kinder, gentler capitalism clearly Techdirt skewers him so no point me doing it, question is why did he write it - its so clearly wrong, and a small amount of research would have told him that, so whats the hidden motive?