I’ve started looking at pricing things different then I used to. Once upon a time I’d look at total dollar cost and decide whether it was of value or not. Wow! A $200 pair of shoes! But now I look at an object in relation to the value per usage. Okay, those $200 pair of shoes cost more than a $100 pair of shoes, but I will use them for the next 200 times over the next five years. That’s only $1.00 per use. And since I bought them at REI, they will be covered for their entire life.

Technology is the same way. Now some of the technology products I buy are because we have to for work. I’m certain I would not have purchased an iPad mini except I needed to make sure powerOne was functional on it. But spending $800 on an iPad, given the number of hours I spend on it each year, pays off big time. I’m probably down around $0.05 per hour for that baby!

The election is tonight and many of us will be watching the outcome with baited breath. I, for one, don’t care all that much who wins. It’s not because I’m not political and could care less about the process. It’s that, with minor differences, we will get a president that is in the mold of the past 9 or so presidents and I feel what we desperately need is a new framework to think about the country.

The current frameworks were put in place in the 1960s. The way we think about economic issues and social issues were almost all formed in that time period. But that was 50 years ago and nothing about this world has stood still. Yet we keep spitting out politicians who look an awful lot like Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater.

So I spent the last months listening to President Obama and Governor Romney, hoping to hear a hint of breaking with the past. I haven’t heard it. So for four more years we will fight the same fights again with the usual cast of characters.

And that’s why Clayton Christensen’s article in the New York Times from Sunday jumped out at me. In it he outlines a way of looking at the economy, rethinking the tired approaches that are no longer working, outlining a plan to invest in the areas of the economy that will fuel growth for the next generation of Americans.

The Doctrine of New Finance helped create this situation. The Republican intellectual George F. Gilder taught us that we should husband resources that are scarce and costly, but can waste resources that are abundant and cheap. When the doctrine emerged in stages between the 1930s and the ‘50s, capital was relatively scarce in our economy. So we taught our students how to magnify every dollar put into a company, to get the most revenue and profit per dollar of capital deployed.

But we’ve never taught our apprentices that when capital is abundant and certain new skills are scarce, the same rules are the wrong rules. Continuing to measure the efficiency of capital prevents investment in empowering innovations that would create the new growth we need.

It’s as if our leaders in Washington, all highly credentialed, are standing on a beach holding their fire hoses full open, pouring more capital into an ocean of capital. We are trying to solve the wrong problem.

I’m not pessimistic about it. It is what it is. But it’s going to take a new generation of thinkers to unstick us. I’ll continue looking for those people to emerge.

The news this morning is that Newsweek is going all digital, abandoning its print publication.

Newsweek Global, as the all-digital publication will be named, will be a single, worldwide edition targeted for a highly mobile, opinion-leading audience who want to learn about world events in a sophisticated context. Newsweek Global will be supported by paid subscription and will be available through e-readers for both tablet and the Web, with select content available on The Daily Beast.

To say that Newsweek, like Time, is a storied franchise is an understatement.

It’s 80 years old and through most of that history was known for its high journalistic integrity and output. When I was 18 I subscribed to Time Magazine. In August of 1992, the summer after my freshman year, I was home in South Florida when Hurricane Andrew ripped up Miami. The headline in Time magazine the next week? Mia Farrow and Woody Allen breaking up. I cancelled Time immediately and subscribed to Newsweek.

I remained a Newsweek subscriber through the next 17 years, finally giving up on the magazine when their primary articles became sensationalized pieces of crap. A sad demise.

So now the magazine is trying to shift to being online only, using the same format that used to be on news stands. But this is like taking rotten meat and instead of serving it in a cheap, stale hot dog bun attempting to make it palatable in a fine fresh-baked bread. The content, if you didn’t catch my drift, is the rotten meat.

Well written human interest piece by Jesse Hicks at The Verge on the impact RIM’s slide is having on its hometown of Waterloo, Ontario:

As Google is to Mountain View or Apple is to Cupertino, Research in Motion is more than just a company. It’s a symbol of accomplishment, a defining feature of the community’s self-image.

This is really important: I hope the folks in Waterloo realize what an opportunity RIM’s demise could have for the city.

I just spent a few days camping in the middle of no where in central Oregon. The area we camped was in the Cascades mountain range that runs all the way from Canada down into California. Mt. Rainer, Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Hood, Crater Lake, and Mt. Shasta are all part of this range. There are dozens of beautiful mountains in this amazing, tree- and river-rich landscape.

The forests in which we stayed are decades if not centuries old and over that time period the trees have grown quite large. We saw some that had to be at 200 to 300 feet tall. But those trees form a canopy and that canopy keeps rain and sun from getting to the forest floor, snuffing out new trees in the process. Eventually, though, these trees die and fall over. Not only does sun and rain get to the forest floor but these trees are stock-full of nutrients that new sprouts use to grow. These fallen monsters are called nurse logs.

Waterloo, you are in an amazing position. One of the worlds largest conifers is dying off and could, if the conditions are right, become a nurse log for the next generation of your companies.

I sure wish Portland had one of those!

—

[via Watts Martin]

An email showed up in my inbox about a week ago from Senator Ron Wyden’s aid. He and Senator Cantwell (Washington) were setting up a meeting of local entrepreneurs and organizations, particularly geared around mobile, and wanted me to attend. There were about 50 of us at the roundtable yesterday, an excellent gathering.

We discussed a wide range of issues, including jobs, taxes, privacy, and investment, four issues that the Senators can impact at the national level since they both serve on the Senate finance committee. In particular, taxes are a hot-button issue as the Bush tax cuts expire this year and the Senators are gearing up for a fight.

I wanted to comment in particular on Senator Wyden. I have continually been impressed by the Senator. He reached out to a constituent that he sees as the future of the state but I’m sure is not one who is helping fund much of his campaign right now, looking for input on issues that he admitted he didn’t fully understand. He seems comfortable in his own skin (as did Senator Cantwell). I’ve met a few other politicians who spent the entire time telling you what they are doing for you rather than having a conversation. Neither Senator talked much about their accomplishments, instead content to lead an honest to goodness discussion on what they can do to help us out.

Senator Wyden was fairly unknown for a long time, although I think he started garnering recognition with a health care proposal he and Senator Bennett co-sponsored around the time the country was busy ignoring them and passing Obamacare instead. He became extremely well respected in the tech community earlier this year when he publicly opposed PIPA and SOPA and helped drive nails into the coffins of those terrible pieces of legislation.

He asked for some of us to volunteer, to discuss further some of the issues confronting our industry and help shape his policy perspective for the fall legislature. I am happy to help out. And I hope in return to learn some things, too, including deeper insight into the workings of Congress and the motivations of a single Senator to stand up when others are busy hiding behind benches.