The Kondratjev Epedemy

Somehow this thing called  "Kondratjeff Wave" is stubborn. I encounter it frequently when the occassionaly business related speaker crosses my path. The idea of Nicolai Kondratjev was that the regular business cycles of boom and bust are overlayed by sixthy year super cycles. The problem with business cycles is that they can not be predicted, we know that there is a boom and then eventualy a bust. We don't know how long a boom stays and when and how long the bust takes. Thats a fact, otherwise the market actors would antecipate each phase change and therefore modify the phases. You see, its unpredictability is native to the markets. Therefore "cycle" might be a term taken with a grain of salt: its periodicity is not constant nor predictable. Now Kontradieff made his proposal of Supercycle 1929 and he figured out three cycles in history. The observation of an invariance of three cycles really means nothing statistically speaking. Take the US GDP per capita since 1961, and tell me where the cycles are?

The six Kondratieff Cycles
we should have witnessed in the past century

Kondratieff Cycles - hard to spot: remember, they are sixty year periods. It just doesn't fit

Ok, If this is convincing, why the Kondratieff spreads like a virus?

1. A regular cycle of boom and bust is a persuasive idea.
2. We are acquainted with the notion of "epoch" and Kondratieff is a visual representation of the "epoch". Therefore by analogy we understand the concept, it is sound. But conclusions drawn from analogy are not waterproof logical operations. They are merely hints.  
3. The host of the meme has the opportunity to show technical skills (it looks kind of scientific) and demonstrate deeper insight into long term mechanics of human condition. What an opportunity for the host.
4. The witnesses of the meme have the succumb to 1 and 2 and humans are such pattern addicts, they can not resist the temptation to see a regularity.

We need to implant a new meme that represents the truth:

Kontradieff is bogus, they want to fool you with business esoterics.

I have hope for this brand new meme, humans are ashamed of being tricked. 

How to decide when more than one criteria is important: ELECTRE

The French School of decision making has a short answer: Apply an ELECTRE algorithm.
Howto:

1. Decide what to compare, e.g. products, actions
2. Define criteria and their scales, importance and veto tresholds (I'd rather die, than choosing a hotel without Internet connection)
3. Measure them
4. Construct outranking relations, in the style of  a better b if. These are called Recommandations.
5. Devise an exploitation procedure that uses the Recommandations to e.g. rank the products.

Sounds promising, after a day of research I must give up because the material found on internet is hard to grasp. But the americans, much more elegalitarian when offering ideas, are doing good job with Analytical Hierarchical Process. Subject under investigation and my next post.