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If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is hundreds of pictures worth?

Remember the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989?  What about the Tank Man, the unknown rebel who stood in front of a column of tanks?

Here is some very interesting video coverage of the event synched with dramatic music.

Via Cantillon’s Paradise.

Wonder what really goes on inside that Coke machine? Wonder no more.

See more Rube Goldberg machines here.

My latest article is up over at the Mises Institute: Separation of Sport and State.

See also my helter-skelter archive.

Between summer sessions I had a chance to visit my family in Dallas. On Sunday I managed to hang out at Six Flags with a couple of my siblings. The amusement park has certainly changed its demographic draw, as well as one particular business feature.

The business model of this theme park is interesting. There was almost always a direct correlation between the monetary cost of participating in an event and the relative demand. In other words, the events that cost additional money had smaller lines than their “free” correspondents. It is a good illustration of the “tragedy of the commons” and the management team at Six Flags has an interesting way at capitalizing off of it.

Rather than charging variable prices for each event based upon its supply and demand, every guest is charged a general admittance fee of around $45. However if you want to avoid the extremely long wait times at various events, you can now pay an additional fee to receive a “Flash Pass.” This enables you to skip ahead of the long lines, after waiting an artificially constructed time frame (typically around 5-10 minutes versus the hour+ wait).

In many ways, this is how “tiered” Internet and phone access is moving towards — and it is not a bad thing. Because the people who want something done the fastest are willing to pay more for the service. See more on the fallacies of Network Neutrality here.

While not quite the same thing, this situation reminded me of the long lines at stores most residents of the various Soviet Republics endured during the Cold War. Whether you needed an item or not, if you knew a store had a valuable inventory, you would immediately jump in line and stand out in front of the store for hours and even days on end. Ultimately your goal was to save the items and use them to barter with someone who had something you wanted. And after years of development and evolution, this phenomenon created a market of people whose sole job was to stand in line for others.

Anyone else remember the line simulator in South Park: The Movie?