HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

I am getting more and more disapointed by all these incentives to take public transportation that can only think about making them cheaper or try to make them faster to compete with cars.

It is time that we consider other ideas.

I would like to recommend one of the best Ted talks https://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_.... It is not specifically about public transportation, but about the larger question of what is value - and has a great example of how to apply it to public transportation.

⬐ 0-_-0

Excellent TED talk!

⬐ pornel

In dense cities public transport often already is faster than a car. For example, average car speed in London is 8 to 12mph. It's not hard to beat that, even with an e-bike. https://www.london.gov.uk/questions/2019/19767

Another aspect is that moving people to public transport itself is the way to make it faster. Cars are an incredibly inefficient way of using road space, so fewer cars on the road leave more space for more efficient transport modes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_flow#/media/File:Road_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_flow#/media/File:Passe...

I agree. There is a great old talk from Rory Sutherland called “Life Lessons from an Ad Man” [0] which is worth a watch in regards to our perception of value. Especially relevant is the anecdote about improving the train journey between Brussels and London, which is toward the start of the video.

Edit: I guess my unstated point is that we should be looking to improve the user journey, not necessarily match the existing technology. For example, I take public transport because I can read or even sleep, and not because it’s faster or cheaper than taking my own car.

[0] https://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_...

Sutherland makes strong cases for focusing on experience & the creation of perceived value especially as opposed to more purely engineering solutions. Recommend seeing Rory Sutherland's comments about supermodels and Chateau Petrus on the EuroRail

https://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_sweat_the_small_st...

http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_a...

http://www.cyberfootprint.eu/rory-sutherland-perspective-is-...

I actually agree with a lot of what you have to say, and I will offer that this TED talk gives a very interesting perspective on advertising you should try giving a few minutes to: Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man

http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_a...

A blog citing another blog citing a TED talk. Still a great quote though.

> What is the hedonic opportunity cost of spending 6 billion pounds on a load of railway tracks? Here’s my naive advertising man’s suggestion: what you should in fact do is employ all of the world’s top male and female supermodels, and pay them to walk the length of the train handing out free Chateau Petrus for the entire duration of the journey. You’ll still have about 3 billion pounds left over and people will actually ask for the train to be slowed down.

From Ogilvy UK vice-chairman Rory Sutherland’s TED talk, ‘Life lessons from an ad man’. http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_a...

Seriously, this _is_ the labor theory of value. Don't know why the other comment to point this out is dead. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value

It's completely inadequate. See, for example http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_a...

⬐ marcosdumay

Not so. Here, a quote from the beggining of the wikipedia article:

> the value of a commodity is only related to the labor

The problem is that "only" word. Saying that labor is essential to create value is different from saying that labor is the only component of value.

And to take it further, the article claims neither of those, it only says that if you want to turn labor into value, you must apply the labor in some activity that creates value. Yep, quite tautological once you remove all the interesting parts.

⬐ steveklabnik

Not to mention that there are multiple, significantly different labor theory of values...

⬐ sirgawain33

Great link to the talk, thank you. I haven't seen a good TED talk in years, but this was an exception.

That said, I agree with the other comments in this thread that linking the blog post to the Labor Theory of Value doesn't really make sense. I don't see anywhere in the post that defines "work" in a way that excludes activities that generated perceived value.

I think an interesting follow up conversation is to consider what "doing" really means. The Rory Sutherland talk you link makes a compelling case that there is an entire class of activities that generate value for a product/service but that you cannot directly measure in terms of material result (at least not right away) e.g. Frederick the Great spending time convincing people that potatoes are good wouldn't have tangible results until much later when demand rose.

⬐ steveklabnik

At least in Marx's formulation of the labor theory of value, the TED talk doesn't poke any holes. Exchange value is obviously influenced by a wide variety of things, especially marketing.

⬐ myth_drannon

Thanks , really great talk.

⬐ gboudrias

I've always been fascinated by people's propensity to write about things they don't know, with the excuse that it's just humanistic sciences. There's a huge body of work that's largely ignored on the Internet, because while the average geek knows a lot about hard sciences, they're very ignorant on humanities (maybe because it's not taken as seriously).

(As a side note, it's ironically hard to find out what this guy actually does!)

⬐ zeidrich

The average geek doesn't know a lot about hard sciences. The average geek is self taught and knows how to impress other people with scientific language. Rarely do I run into "geeks" that make me think, "Wow, this guy could write a novel paper on this". More often it's more a matter of "Wow, this guy knows just enough to completely misunderstand the subject but speaks like he has all the answers."

⬐ Crito

You should hang out with better geeks. Geeks that do, instead of just talk.

⬐ themusicgod1

I do not think that you'll find geeks who do without gaping holes in their knowledge.

⬐ smacktoward

In this particular case it may also have something to do with the LTOV's association with Marxist economics. The only thing Americans are expected to know about anything even vaguely associated with Marxism is that it's bad (mmmkay?), so U.S. educational institutions tend to avoid teaching things in that category to students who aren't specializing in economics. Which leads to Americans coming up with their own labels and descriptions for things that Marx observed and labeled long ago.

All of which is too bad, because Marx had a lot of interesting and valuable things to say about the problems of industrial economies (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0 for a good introduction), even if the solutions that were tried in his name didn't work out. It just wastes people's time and energy having them spin their wheels re-discovering things he discovered 150 years ago.

> The sales and marketing economy is zero sum.

This is false. I'll let those more gifted than myself to make the argument:

http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_a...

⬐ FatalBaboon

Exceptions don't make rules, it's the other way around

⬐ ricardoz17

Except when its an "Exception that proves the rule" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rule

⬐ FatalBaboon

What I meant is you don't turn an exception into a generally applicable rule, but rules can infer exceptions.

Have you seen this TED Talk (It's worth a watch): http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_a...

He puts an interesting spin on the fact that in a world of declining physical resources - increasing the intangible value of products is very valuable.

Related and worth watching... http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/rory_sutherland_life_lesson...

Watch this TED talk by Rory Sutherland, "Life lessons from an ad man": http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/rory_sutherland_life_lesso...

And read "Winning Hearts and Minds: Why Rational Appeals Are Irrational If Your Goal is Winning Elections" by Drew Westen, psychologist and neuroscientist at Emory University Professor: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/drew-westen/winning-hearts-and...

Do you still have the same perspective?

I don't know if they're my favorite, but Rory Sutherland's two are excellent, and I think well worth watching especially if you ever think you might be trying to sell something to someone.

Life lessons from an ad man: (http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_a...)

Sweat the small stuff: (http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_sweat_the_small_stu...)

⬐ RyanMcGreal

It seems to me that the word for the fourth quadrant in his latter talk is: "hacking".

⬐ xiaoma

It was clear from his presentation how much of an ad man he is. The delivery of his talk was engaging, funny and still managed to make a strong argument.