Category: Retired

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50 Things That Made the Modern Economy - Market Research

US car makers had it good. As quickly as they could manufacture cars, people bought them. By 1914, that was changing. In higher price brackets, especially, purchasers and dealerships were becoming choosier. One commentator warned that the retailers could no longer sell what their own judgement dictated – they must sell what the consumer wanted. That commentator was Charles Coolidge Parlin, widely recognised as the man who invented the very idea of market research. The invention of market research marks an early step in a broader shift from a “producer-led” to “consumer-led” approach to business – from making something then trying to persuade people to buy it, to trying to find out what people might buy and then making it. One century later, the market research profession is huge: in the United States alone, it employs around half a million people. Producer: Ben Crighton Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon (Image: Market research, Credit: Bildagentur Zoonar GmbH/Shutterstock)
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50 Things That Made the Modern Economy - Plastic

A couple of decades after Leo Baekeland invented the first fully synthetic plastic – Bakelite – plastics were pouring out of labs around the world. There was polystyrene, often used for packaging; nylon, popularised by stockings; polyethylene, the stuff of plastic bags. As the Second World War stretched natural resources, production of plastics ramped up to fill the gap. And when the war ended, exciting new products like Tupperware hit the consumer market. These days, plastics are everywhere. We make so much plastic, it takes about eight percent of oil production – half for raw material, half for energy. And despite its image problem, and growing evidence of environmental problems, plastic production is set to double in the next 20 years. Producer: Ben Crighton Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon (Image: Plastic bottle tops, Credit: Taweesak Thiprod/Shutterstock)
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50 Things That Made the Modern Economy - Seller Feedback

Why should we get into a stranger’s car – or buy a stranger’s laser pointer? In 1997, eBay introduced a feature that helped solve the problem: Seller Feedback. Jim Griffith was eBay’s first customer service representative; at the time, he says “no-one had ever seen anything like [it]”. The idea of both parties rating each other after a transaction has now become ubiquitous. You buy something online – you rate the seller, the seller rates you. Or you use a ride-sharing service, like Uber – you rate the driver, the driver rates you. And a few positive reviews set our mind at ease about a stranger. Jim Griffith is not sure eBay would have grown without it. Online matching platforms would still exist, of course – but perhaps they’d be more like hitch-hiking today: a niche pursuit for the unusually adventurous, not a mainstream activity that’s transforming whole sectors of the economy. Producer: Ben Crighton Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon (Image: Hand touching stars, Credit: Cherezoff/Shutterstock)
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The Nod - Good For The Blacks

Snoop Dogg has a TV show with Martha Stewart. The Tyler Perry movie "Boo! A Madea Halloween" made almost $100 million at the box office. A Black man once held the nuclear codes for President Trump. Sometimes in life we have to decide if a thing is good or bad for the Culture.

RELATED LINKS

Read Vinson Cunningham’s work at The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/vinson-cunningham

Follow Aminatou Sow on Twitter. She's @aminatou.

If you are struggling to decide if something is good for the Blacks, email us at goodfortheblacks AT gimletmedia DOT com.

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50 Things That Made the Modern Economy - Paper Money

A young Venetian merchant named Marco Polo wrote a remarkable book chronicling his travels in China around 750 years ago. The Book of the Marvels of the World was full of strange foreign customs Marco claimed to have seen. One, in particular, was so extraordinary, Mr Polo could barely contain himself: “tell it how I might,” he wrote, “you never would be satisfied that I was keeping within truth and reason”. Marco Polo was one of the first Europeans to witness an invention that remains at the very foundation of the modern economy: paper money. Tim Harford tells the gripping story of one of the most successful, and important, innovations of all human history: currency which derives value not from the preciousness of the substance of which it is made, but trust in the government which issues it. Producer: Ben Crighton Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon (Image: Ancient Russian money, Credit: RomanR/Shutterstock)