Word: profitability
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...year's harvest and persuading farmers to grow something else next season. The counternarcotics officials strongly disagree. Paying the farmers would be tantamount to "rewarding criminality," says a Western official. He adds, "These people knew about the offensive, and they planted the crop anyway. They wanted to make a profit." These officials point out that swaths of eastern Afghanistan have been cleared of opium poppy by provincial counternarcotics teams without any farmers' revolt...
...result is a company that's able to produce profitable content on a scale that traditional news organizations can only envy. Demand estimates that it took in $200 million in revenue in 2009, enough to turn a profit. It helps that none but the company's most prolific content creators get health insurance or, for that matter, a minimum hourly wage. Critics have dubbed the company a digital sweatshop. Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University, has called Demand "demonic," and many writers prickle at the thought of being paid a few cents - rather than a few dollars...
...Austin also illustrates a systematic approach to making sure people have the right skills to match what companies need. For the past two years, Workforce Solutions, a government-funded not-for-profit, has been partnering with businesses and local schools like Austin Community College to develop a series of training courses to help people upgrade their skills and earn certifications. The modules are built to be accessible to people well into their careers - recognizing that a 40-year-old isn't likely to have two or four years to return to school full time - and focus on Austin...
...Employers are stepping up too. A few blocks east of the state capitol stands a hospital, one of 10 in the metro area owned and run by the not-for-profit Seton Family of Hospitals. An adjacent building that used to be a children's hospital now houses a clinical-education center. Wards and operating rooms are filled with patients - sophisticated, computer-controlled dummies that nurses-to-be can use to receive valuable training. One dummy even gives birth...
Today the film and recording industries maintain an iron grip over distribution of their intellectual property through megaplexes and national retailers such as Best Buy, Tower Records and Walmart. These bricks-and-mortar distribution channels take a share of the profit, but they provide a steady and predictable stream of revenue. (See pictures of vintage computers...