Value?

What is it? - worthiness to the society. Let us look at three scenarios in my interactions with friends, relatives, colleagues and TV Talk shows. I'm sure you too would have had your own.

• Downloading/copying/bootleg movies, everybody complained about pricing that it is too much. The acceptable price range is between $3 and $5. I'm sure you too would have had such discussions and come up with an acceptable range.
• Regd. NY MTA workers' strike, lot of them complained that $60,000 salary for a bus driver is too much! This is the average pay of an MTA worker (not that everybody earns this much).
• People in the outsourcing world would be facing this from the client - the price pressure, expecting you to quote lesser and lesser per hour (say $12 an hour - $8 an hour).

But what is the value and how much is it worth? Should we be looking at this as how much the soceity pay for a particular functionality or should we be looking at it in the context of people (who are part of the very same soceity) accomplishing that functionality. Because the perception of this value is what is used to sustain the soceity.

There are so many layers and the doers' share as a percentage (max 12%) of the price is negligible (http://www.music-law.com/contractbasics.html). This is the same issue with the Non-profit organizations. A good Non-profit organization needs 30% of the donation to support itself and passes only 70% to the people in need. The infrastructure (Sony, BMG etc. in the music industry, Accenture, Infosys, Wipro, etc. in the outsourcing industry) needed to support the base takes up anywhere between 30 to 90 percent depending on the industry from creative artists to outsourcing industry to the public workers. In the case of public workers they are the nuts & bolts of the government who help to execute.

Probably, People develop a cost-based perception of the functionality when it becomes routine, ubiquous and that could be easily replaceable.

The infrastructure is a necessary evil. Like any other setup, we need to find innovative process model to reduce the evil to enable an equitable share of the value between the producers and consumers.

"Shame on us"

We keep hearing these words often recently from all quarters of the soceity in different parts of the world.

• First from the media and the so called culturalists on the Kushbhu episode.
• Secondly from the so called honourable members of Parliament on the "few members of the parliament" caught on tape accepting money.
• Finally by Michael Bloomberg (NY mayor) and George Pataki (NY Governor) on striking MTA workers.

Shame on - what for? on Kushbhu/Suhasini for speaking the truth or the rest who doesn't want to?
On MPs accepting money or for getting caught? Because this is going on for years and these leaders are speaking now as if they don't know.
Bloomberg and Pataki as recently as october settled with other unions (sanitary workers, teachers etc..) and got their support for them because they were up for relection! Pataki is planning to run for President in 2008. Since people in America like leaders who just stick to what they say (it doesn't matter whether it is stupidity or good) rather than who sees reality and change with it, Pataki is branding himself as a strong leader by speaking tough words. Strong leader = be Obstinate.

So Shame on who? The media! The MPs! Bloomberg & Pataki! Shame on those who doesn't want to and doesn't have guts to face the reality.

Hypocrites - is it another name for Politicians?