The importance of followers

The beginning of a movement (less than three minutes) -- though I think that if you want something more stable that gets money and power, at some point you have to accumulate administratively competent followers. The details are left as an exercise for the reader.

From the other angle, if you are administratively competent, be very choosy about who you follow.

Link thanks to richardthinks.

Human beings show modest capacity for learning

Snarky article about people overpaying for amazon gift certificates on ebay.

The study the snarky article was based on. (pdf)

The article notes that 10.1% of the overpayments are more than 10% of the amazon price, so paying 50% more must be pretty rare.

On page 3 of the article, there's a table of Overbidding and Winning Bidder's Rating. The most experienced bidders are about half as likely to overbid as the least experienced.

I have to admit, I was curious to see whether amazon gift certificates could be used as a money pump, but it looks as though the overpayments are too small to be all that useful.

First link from Geek Press.