We've already had two terms of an obstructionist governor and legislature that can't compromise. The race will probably come down to Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown. I'm for Brown, because his administration, while sometimes "out there", was forward-looking and correct on energy policy. His only fault was under-spending or not returning money during budget surpluses. He should have redistributed the money back to the taxpayers, but he didn't and that led to the passage of Prop 13.

Meg Whitman's claim to fame is eBay, but she was hired on from Hasbro, and not a founder or innovator. She was supposed to mainstream the brand, but, what happened was that the world came around to eBay, and she got rich. eBay then bought Skype, and later sold it for a billion dollar loss.

Craigslist sues eBay, and CL is owned partly by eBay. CL accuses E of stealing ideas and trade secrets to open up Kijiji, a CL competitor.

So, eBay buys Craigslist, but then opens a competing site? And the competing site's done a lot worse than Craigslist.

eBay upset its sellers by raising rates, even as the market was declining. While the rest of the web was pursuing "web 2.0", eBay was engaging in "rent seeking behavior". They could have spent more money innovating, but, they just copied or rested on their laurels.

They announced that the auction feature would be discontinued (it didn't happen, yet). Is this "brand management"?

See Governor Meg Whitman? on fool.com.

Ads

I don't watch TV, so I'm not aware of her ad campaign, but it seems to be working in the polls. Brown is going to have a hard time contending with her money - and her unwillingness to debate.

Whitman's come out with a series of ads attacking Poizner. The basic theme is that he is a RINO on tax cuts. (Kind of funny coming from a RINO. Whitman didn't ever vote. She probably doesn't view politics as part of our democracy - she views it as a path to exercising corporate power. One dollar, one vote.)

This seems foolish. With the budget a mess, the last thing we need is tax cuts. We need some revenue to keep the pump primed, to prevent rises in unemployment.

Tax cuts combined with spending increases are what got us into this fiscal mess in the first place.

eBay-nomics

eBay has become a "race to the bottom" swap meet.

In some areas, categories are dominated by sellers from Hong Kong. Their cheap deals are nice, but, small sellers can't get an ad in edgewise to sell unusual or niche product.

In other areas, you have bubble economies. When a fad explodes, prices on eBay for that category shoot sky-high. The market gets flooded with junk, or fraudsters, crowding out the established vendors. A year or two later, when the trend is over, prices are low again, and legit sellers are trying to rebuild the market.

Hand crafted or art objects are mixed in with mass-manufauctured product, leading to distortions in pricing. Mass-produced goods always dominate, and tend to devalue the hand-crafted (as has always happened), because people expect everything to be mass-manufactured.