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From Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics:

There is no such thing as “the” cost of producing a given product or service. Henry Ford proved long ago that the cost of producing an automobile was very different when you produced 100 cars a year than when you produced 100,000 cars per year. It is estimated that the minimum amount of automobile production required to achieve efficient production levels today runs into the hundreds of thousands. What is our most efficient rate of production?

It does not cost as much to deliver 100 cartons of milk to one supermarket as it does to deliver ten cartons of milk to each of ten different neighborhood stores. When building a beer brewery, construction costs are about one-third less per barrel of beer when the brewery’s capacity is 4.5 million barrels per year than when its capacity is 1.5 million barrels. Although A-B spends millions of dollars advertising Budweiser and its other beers, its huge volume of sales means that its advertising costs per barrel of beer are about $2.00 less than that of its competitors, Coors or Miller.

In short, the cost of producing a given product or service varies with the volume being produced. This is what economists call “economies of scale.”

Tchaikovsky

Below is one of my favorite classical pieces of all time.

With Summer coming sometime in the near future, I’ve decided to put together a collection of my favorite Summer tunes:

Atmosphere – Sunshine

The Hold Steady – Constructive Summer

Mungo Jerry – In The Summertime

Cat Stevens – Here Comes My Baby

Delta Spirit – Ode to Sunshine

Louis Armstrong – That Lucky Old Sun

Matt Costa – Sunshine

Switchfoot – The Shadow Proves the Sunshine

Weezer – Island in the Sun

Louis Armstrong – Sittin’ In the Sun

Tim Armstrong – Into Action

Rancid – Ruby Soho

Blink 182 – Feelin’ This

The Chemical Brothers – Sunshine Underground

Coldplay – Strawberry Swing

Dashboard Confessional – Carry This Picture

Joe Purdy – Wash Away

Judy Garland – Get Happy

If I’m missing any great Summer songs, please add your recommendations in the comments.

#MusicMonday

Joining in on the Twitter Trend, here are favorite songs of the past week:

Great Northern – Our Bleeding Hearts

Dan Head – You’re So Cool

The Who – A Quick One While He’s Away

The Chemical Brothers – Asleep From Day

Sigur Ros – Hoppipolla

Delta Spirit – Trashcan

Atmosphere – Not Another Day (acoustic)

The Beta Band – Dry the Rain

Underworld – 8 Ball

Queen – Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy

For the last four months I ran a prominent politicians Twitter account. Over the course of that time I built up his account to over 8,000 followers with about 75 tweets. His staff recently took over the reigns of the Twitter account and now they are in control of the updates (His com director was kind enough to call me and thank me for starting up his Twitter account). Anyways, for politicians looking to engage in Twitter, here are a few tips to take note of:

- Find your fans. Utilize Twitter Search and start adding people who support you. This is the best way to start off on Twitter: tapping into your fan base first.

- Track your Tweets. You should be using Tweetburner or another similar site to track how many times your links are clicked. My top link that I posted was clicked 500 times. This is a great way to monitor what people are interested in.

- Make it Retweetable. Obviously each one of your tweets will be less than 140 characters, but you should make them even shorter than that. You want to give people the opportunity to Retweet without having to do any awkward edits because what you typed was too long.

- Use Autofollow. You will likely get way too many followers to keep up with. There is no way I would have followed back 8,000 people on my own. Some people are turned off by the use of Autofollow and feel as though it makes Twitter less personal, but I think politicians and other notable people get a pass on this. I saw numerous tweets from people who were excited and happy that I followed them back. This is another way to gain positive feedback on Twitter. I used the autofollow feature on SocialToo.

- Give them Content. Use Twitter daily to link to news stories, videos of yourself on YouTube, blog posts, and anything else that can inform people on what you are doing. Politics is a battle of ideas, therefore you should be communicating your thoughts and ideas as much as possible.

- Use the @ reply. Answer questions, let people know where they can get more information, and engaged with your supporters. You obviously don’t have to respond to every question, but at least show that you care what people are saying to you.

- Twitter is not solely a campaign tool. Barack Obama hasn’t tweeted since taking office and that is a shame. He could be linking to news stories, his YouTube channel, and a number of other things. Yet for him, it appears Twitter was just a campaign tool. Above all for politicians, Twitter is a great communications tool. Just because you take office, it doesn’t mean you no longer have to sell your ideas to the public.

Feel free to leave your own advice to politicians in the comments. Bonus points if you can guess which politicians account I was running (hint: He is a Governor).

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