Topic: Ron Paul
Warning: Too Much Ron Paul can be bad for Business It is true that the mainstream media continues to ignore Congressman Ron Paul so the blogosphere and internet community takes command. However, will it necessarily make a difference? And at what marginal cost level should we continue to blog on the Texas Congressman?by Jeff Peters
(conservative)
Friday, December 7, 2007
Quirky, ideological, racist, anti-Semitic,crazy, fringe, Quixotic, spam, unrealistic, unimportant, and just plain stupid are some of the words that I have heard bloggers use to describe Ron Paul, especially in the mainstream media. From the ever so popular Fox News Network, to the obscure PBS, Ron Paul just doesn’t get a fair display. It’s kind of sad to say this in a place that calls itself the leader of the democratic world.
However, people who adore his grapefruits, and others who just plain admire his pure libertarian message, have stepped up to report on his trip on the road to the White House. Just about every link on Technorati and Diggit has something to do with Ron Paul.
That sure sounds great now does it? Yeah, well I am more comfortable saying that about Ron Paul’s followers who tout his name online for four hours a day.
I see a problem with all of this. Sorry but yes, I am going to have to use some economics. For every Ron Paul article that someone writes online, on average, the marginal value of the marginal piece of work declines. Econ freaks title this phenomenon diminishing marginal utility.
10,000 excellent Ron Paul blog posts may not present a whole lot of difference from 1000 excellent blog posts. His name already reached the online community. The supply and demand curves representing Ron Paul posts exceeded the point of equilibrium. Therefore, a deadweight loss exists with respect to blog posts of this theme.
Businesses in general try to avoid deadweight loss especially when it exceeds equilibrium or the most efficient point of market resource allocation.
Now I know that the blogosphere is jam-packed with articulate libertarians but you guys need to allocate some of your most important resource, your time, to a good or service that needs supply.
You are currently supplying the online community with Ron Paul posts at a point where quantity demand has declined.
Or are you actually supplying below the efficient point where the marginal cost of your time (representing the supply curve) did not reach the marginal benefit (representing the demand curve) of blogging on Dr. Paul?
The way you can tell is if you blog so frequently about Ron Paul to a point where you feel no benefit due to a zero change in the number of readers after the marginal article. However, there is a place where I know for a fact Ron Paul articles need supply. Mainstream media sources can significantly boost the number of its readers by writing about the OB-GYN. The Washington Post experienced a significant rise in the number of its readers when it began publishing about Ron Paul.
Hell, this gave The Washington Post an incentive to post on Ron Paul at least once a week.
But notice how they only publish on him once a week. They probably realized that a marginal change in the number of readers of their publication will not occur if they write on Dr. Paul as frequently as two articles a week. Otherwise, they would allocate another post to their newspaper!
In other words don’t let the cost of your time impede on the utility of writing on Dr. Paul.
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The views expressed in this
article are those of Jeff Peters only and do not represent
the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Jeff Peters is
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Posted By: Walt Thiessen
Date: 2007-12-07 15:33:37
Sorry to disagree, Chris, but our website readership numbers beg to differ with your claims. Our readership is skyrocketing. It has been skyrocketing over the past few months, and the rate of growth is increasing. And nearly all of this traffic is due to Ron Paul articles. In short, the more articles we write about Ron Paul, the more people show up to read them.
Take a look at the Be A Columnist page on this website. It shows a live graph of up-to-the-second readership on the website. That's a curve that's truly a laugher! (Get it? Laugher? Laffer? Oh never mind.)
Posted By: Ron Paul Supporter
Date: 2007-12-07 15:55:56
Sorry, but why would anyone care about what the MSM is doing. Nobody cares what they say or do anymore. Wall st. journal, is that a joke, they were bought out because they did not know how to practice journalism, only deception. Everyone knows that the MSM's financials are way down, to the point of no return, soon they will be dust in the wind.
Have you ever heard of supply and demand? Their are so many blogs dedicated to the good Dr. Ron Paul because there is a demand. Obviously you and the Wall st. journal do not understand this concept.
Posted By: Michael McDonnough
Date: 2007-12-07 16:41:26
Chris,
Your assertion were it true and I agree with Walt that it is certainly not then there would not be so much traffic on this site. When someone like the Washington Post which has huge readership says that they see a real noticable boost in their traffic when they post about Paul that tells you that it is certainly good for business.
I just watched a Fox news piece on the Ron Paul Blimp for instance. Do you think it hurt their business? Not likely.
This morning a dozen of the main stream media sites had articles on the Ron Paul Blimp. The fact of the matter is that the Ron Paul Revolution is huge and growing every day so someone must be reading and it must be doing some good.
Meetup membership of Ron Paul activist is over 70,000 and grows by nearly a thousand every few days. The Ron Paul Blimp this morning needed to raise $200,000 by midnight and they made it before 5:00PM. It looks like the media coverage they got really was good for their business.
Chris is just doing good business for Nolan Chart LLC. The less other people write about Ron Paul, the more in demand the articles on this site will be. And you see those little ads on the side of the site? The more people that come here, the more money that Chris get at the end of the year.
I don't actually agree with him, and have actually written many articles that I have chosen not to publish. Articulating your thoughts is always a good practice, even if only a few people actually read your words. That being said, I think we could all take a step back from the computer once in awhile.
So, I say keep writing.
Warning, Too Much Ron Paul can be bad for Nolan Chart's business plan!
Your economic analysis would be correct if you were dealing with ceteris paribus in your specific model, ie if it were only Paul bloggers providing a supply and readers "consuming" the articles, with no other measurable effects. The problems is that ceteris paribus does not apply in this situation, as it never does outside of economic models, because we are dealing with the real world. Therefore, you must examine further into the possible effects, and determine the statistical probibility of each of them.
A few examples: A significant number of Paul blog posts catches the attention of a content editor at a MSM outlet, and decided to increase their article rate on Paul to correlate with this apparent demand market which is not being satisfactorily met by the bloggers (it must not be met, or else you would see a leveling in the trend of blogs or other factors),
-or- the statistical probibility of voters who have not heard of Paul searching the internet and finding articles. The probability may seem initially low, but given the factors of 1) a high number of voters who have not heard of Paul, 2) the high numbers of Paul aritcles on the net, 3) the likely hood the first group will find the second, and 4) the amount of time available between now and the elections, you begin to find another unseen factor in your model
In other words, your analysis would be excellent for a paper on the subject in 210 econ, but not very effective for an actual functioning model.
Our rEVOLution is on the move, and while I applaud Chris in seeking an original idea about Dr. Paul it is a shear miss, the article is used to display the disparaging names Dr. Paul has been called, and then a very poor attempt to create a business reason to stop writing about Dr. Paul. It is evident that if this author had selected another subject to display his lack of research and understanding of business economics other than Dr. Paul this dribble would never have been read past the first two lines.
The fact that it was written about Dr. Paul I forced myself to read the entire article in hopes that intelligent life form would be discovered. Sorrowfully, it did not happen.
I don't know to what degree your postulate is true. Truthfully, it doesn't make a heck of a lot of difference to me either way. Your article was however at least an interesting addition to my daily Ron Paul fix.
"I got a fever... and the only perscription is more cowbell Ron Paul baby!!!" LOL
Chris, this website readership is sky rocketing. EVER WONDER WHY? NAH! Just stick to your argument no matter how ridiculous even you yourself may think it is.
The article demonstrates why I never hire econ grads for sales or marketing jobs. I took econ too, but I also learned how to build biz. P.T. Barnum said, "I don't care what they call me as long as they mention my name."
Marginal value indeed; you've misdefined the value.
The Incremental value of all these missives is what is raising Paul's numbers, $, and chances.
um your logic is very flawed as for as your economics. the market is going to be flooded any ways, so you may as well be a flooder other wise you will lose all stake in a huge market share. its not price per unit its market share. this isnt retail its advertsing.
There should be no value on the truth. In the end, it doesn't matter how many articles exist, just that people hear and understand the message. If you are writing Ron Paul things just for profit, then yeah I guess it runs your value down. But it ain't about making money for me.
How to tell Ron Paul supporters to stop supporting Ron Paul? Ah, let me count the ways. Ignoring them doesn't work. Calling them names doesn't work. Lying about Ron doesn't work. Predicting failure doesn't work. I know! Feed them some pseudo-economic nonsense about marginal utility to convince them that they should just give up. That ought to do it!
Well, here's were I can disagree, and I'll base it on economics.
Ron Paul polls at 8% of "likely Republican Voters", usually based on who voted Republican in 2006. Considering he's still gaining "market share", both off-line and on-line, then that shows there is still substancial room for growth, and since all RP writing websites all gain readership, simply writing for RP here doesn't diminish from Washington Post readership, or theres to ours. It's a perfectly competitive market. We can't steal marketshare from Washington Post, and they can't steal readership from us, and the market consumes the total production regardless of players and amount produced. In that market, marginal utility is pointless and meaningless as it does not exist.
Not to be snarky, but you might want to take a refresher on your econ class.
I see your point on this Chris, but the only thing that I would say is that if the blog posts and/or articles don't actually say anything accept, "vote for Ron Paul!" or "Ron Paul is the man for the USA!" then they lack credibility. Mr. Theissen tries to emphasize the importance of giving sources, and making valid point in articles. The point that I'm trying to make, and I think maybe your point, is better QUALITY in SMALL quanity, is much better than LOW QUALITY in Large quantity.
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