The Startup: Best option for retirement.

So, I am 42. I have no retirement. I had some at one point, but had some brilliant idea that if I fixed my house up (cause otherwise it would have either fallen down or been condemned) then, it would be a pretty good place for my family to live and we would have a decent amount of equity built up. So I cashed out my retirement and by the time I got the place fixed up, most of our equity evaporated in the housing meltdown, and my company which serviced the real estate and mortgage industries kind of went with it. Fortunately, we were able to sell before we lost the place, but we got a lot less out then we had put in, even though we bought a major fixer-upper and it was a pretty decent place with a little bit of key work needing to be finished on it when we sold it.

I know, long sob story. I am not the only one who lost just about everything in this downturn. We moved to Texas looking for work, which never panned out, and ate through what little we had left. We finally ended up in my parents basement and I picked up an online consulting gig. We managed to pay off all of our debt with the consulting before I got a regular job. It doesn't pay that bad, all things considered. But it doesn't have any retirement benefits, no options, no future. I should probably have opened up a IRA or something by now, but I haven't cause we have been catching up on years without insurance other things where anything that could be put off was. So, back to where I started. I am 42, and have no retirement.

Funny thing. My father was exactly at this same point when he was my age. He went and got a job with a big mega corporation, that put a decent amount into a 401k. That lasted about 10 years, and then he got laid off in his early 50s. He was able to land a similar position with a much smaller company, but it was big enough to have 401k support as well. He put in his time there and retired at 62 1/2. Turns out, what he saved wasn't enough. They have social security, and a little bit from his retirement savings, but big things keep eating into their principal. He needed at least double what he put aside, if not triple.

So, here I am in a similar situation, only no 401k. I make enough, and have no debt, but I don't have much extra. I also have no equity in a home or real estate anywhere. So, I have been figuring what I am going to need for retirement. Trying to figure out what my best options are. Where I live is very close to work, but doesn't have the lowest cost of living. The schools are good, but still have the typical problems public schools have. In any other direction from my work at the same distance, the cost of living stays about the same, but the schools are not as good and some of the neighborhoods can be quite creepy. I have 6 daughters, so, I get a little paranoid about safety sometimes. I can lower my cost of living if I go far enough away, but then the commute becomes very long, and I don't really save much.

If I were to try to get a comparable job with another company in the area, I could probably get better pay and a 401k, but when I started to do the math, I found myself looking at the same situation my father has found himself in. He worked himself nearly to the bone and when he finally retired, he doesn't have enough. So, this led me to think about what my options are, and how each of those options might affect my eventual retirement. I looked at doing contract work and freelance work. I looked at setting up my own consultancy. One option was to find a better job I could do with a much lower cost of living. There were only 2 options I came up with that had an expected outcome that exceeded my expected needs. All of the other options would use up the next 20 years of my life and leave me short of what I need.

Both of the positive options had to do with startups. First, if I were to come on as a very early founding team member or early key-hire, and the company had a successful liquidity event after 3 to 5 years, I would probably have more than enough cashable equity to cover my needs and then some. This is even more the case with the second option, where I am the founder of the startup, and it also eventually gets to a liquidity event. If it were successful, it wouldn't have to take the next 20 years either. In both cases, it is not a sure thing, but it is a big risk.

I have done startups before, but there were lots of things wrong with how the business was set up. One of which, they were primarily service oriented where I was exchanging my time for money. There is only so much you can get when you exchange your time for money. Sure, there are a few (patent lawyers?, brain surgeons?, industrial spies?, former presidents?) that can charge very high rates, but I am not one of those. While I can make a decent living doing doing service oriented work, it will never create wealth like a successful startup that has a product can.

So, since startups are not a guaranteed route to success, and the other roads are dead ends, what is to be done? Well, make sure you pay attentions to the mistakes you make, and learn from them. The thing that makes startups the best option is that, you are not limited to one. Even successful startups have a tendency to be on a short time table. A solid liquidity event often is within the first 4- 7 years. Even when it isn't, startups are very quick to adapt compared to established companies. And, then there is the whole lean iterate and pivot approach. One startup, many shots on goal. If it isn't working, take what parts do work, and try something different with them. Sounds easy right. Well, if it was, there would be tons of successful startups out there. Oh, wait, there are. Still is easier said than done. Just don't quit. Kind of a bit harder with a large young family and a day job to support them. I guess my iterations just have to move slower. But, fortunately for me, I have never been short on great ideas. I just need to get one to the point that its greatness is readily apparent.

If I can do that, I am sure I can create enough wealth and get to an adequate liquidity event. That will take care of my retirement needs. Even if my retirement looks a lot the same as what got me there. The difference, I won't be financially dependent on it's outcome, and I might just get there a lot sooner.

Is growing income inequality inevitable?

I recently had a short twitter conversation with @RepBrianKing regarding wealth and income inequality. He had posted a link to this YouTube video that discusses the subject. I had responded that "our policies that have become more slanted towards so called socialism, have made things worse not better" and later that "Income inequality is a big threat, but neither socialist nor conservative approaches will work. They both make it worse." This led him to ask the question in the title of this post, "Is growing income inequality inevitable?" Well, the short answer echos the Lorax: "Unless.". The not quite as short answer is "It will be difficult to do, and certainly not guaranteed, and will require some very new approaches to government policy." The long answer needs a lot of explanation. I will first address the problems, then the solution, and then the challenges of implementing such a program.

THE PROBLEMS. (You can skip this section if you know all this already.)

1. Wealth and income inequalities. Wealth and income inequality are not the same and often get confused, but they are both problems. They affect everyone, but not in the same ways. Extreme wealth inequality will ultimately result is chaos, civil unrest, or even war, and perhaps even widespread slavery (think Roman or Mayan empire slavery, not just revolutionary war American slavery.) This is because ultimately, all the resources of an economy become concentrated in the hands of the very few, and the entire rest of the society ceases to have any stake in it, but become serfs in a new feudalism. We are not there yet, but it can happen. One of the most significant modern implosions of a strong society was the implosion of the Argentine economy in the early 1900s. It was a very robust and powerful economy, but the wealth had become concentrated. This led to war lords and ultimately the horrors that followed under years of political purges and dictatorship. Income inequality leads to wealth inequality, but it also has some immediate problems of its own. It has the tendency to lead to vast growing over-indebtedness.  Eventually all of that debt will turn into a massive default, which will wipe out the wealth of even most of the upper class (the 10% through 2%). True, they might maintain a slight income advantage over others, but their wealth will mostly be eliminated.

2. Broken safety nets. Today, we have social safety nets that are supposed to help keep the poor from abject poverty and misery. These include social security, medicare and medicaid, welfare, unemployment, disability, food stamps, and myriads of other lesser programs. Each of these are designed to address some specific ill or condition, but often contain elements that penalize real success at getting back on their feet again. For instance, unemployment provides up to 40% of what a person made (up to a cap), but if they happen to make a few dollars doing freelance or temporary work, it takes dollar for dollar from what they would be getting. They are immediately penalized for any small success, and the only incentive the unemployment provides is to not get a job or have any outside income. Any partial success they get immediately tears into what little safety net that they have. Also, some of these programs have cliff like cutoffs. One minute you have vital help, and as soon as you get a little success, the rug gets pulled out from underneath you. Another example is the minimum wage. Raising it does seem to help in the short term, but the prices on basic items, that have the smallest margins for businesses, get raised first and hit the poor the hardest, resulting in eventually lowering their standard of living.

3. Bad socialist policies. Socialist policies of tax the rich and redistribute it to the poor don't work either. They sound great in theory, but in practice, history has repeatedly shown it doesn't work. Look at Russia. After 70 years of the most stark socialist policies in history, their income and wealth inequality are worse than ours. Their rich are richer, and their poor are poorer. The reasons for this are complex and varied, but the fact is it doesn't work. 
(Why it doesn't work: instead of better equalizing the created wealth, it reduces the amount of wealth created while the distribution of that wealth doesn't actually improve. Instead it disappears into hidden, protected, or institutional holdings, and does so at an even higher rate. The rich and powerful find ways to position themselves within an even more influential power structure, and then become untouchable overlords. They only way to apply such a system is through extreme application of force, which dehumanizes both those being forced, and those doing the forcing, and doesn't end up being successful in the long run.)
4. Bad conservative policies. Conservative policies of flat taxation and minimal government regulation have a tendency to get blown out of proportion.  They turn into a wild west type scenario with the attitude of "You have have what you can take"  and the strongest, or best armed have a tendency to turn into thugs or robber barrons and they victimize others. Again, this dehumanizes both the victims and the victimizers. The reasons these conservative policies don't work are a little more clear than the socialist policies. They don't have the negative of reducing wealth creation, and it doesn't tend to hit the middle classes quite as hard, but the results are the same in the long run and those at the top end still get richer while everyone else gets poorer.
5. Corporate usurpation. Wealth and income inequality is made worse with institutionalization of the corporate mindset: a.  Our companies are too big to fail and  b.Employees aren't even slaves, they are numbers and calculations. Corporations are generally not affected by socialist policies as they generally are able to buy themselves an exception. They wield such unbelievable power in influence by the kind of wealth they can throw around, that only other corporations stand in their way. And yet, corporations keep getting bigger and more powerful. Too big to fail. They can nearly collapse our economy, and we will bail them out and transfer their liability to us, because we are too afraid of what happens if they go away. The individuals involved are part of that 1%, and they are untouchable. They can spend money that isn't even theirs to manipulate the world around them. If they do something repulsive or vile, they can hide behind their corporations and stand blameless. Our tax policies hardly touch them.

THE SOLUTIONS (Read carefully)
These solutions are NOT a cafeteria plan. Only a few will be effective without the others, and then, not very much. They all need to be there in support of each other.
1. We need a fair wage act. This act would replace our current wage laws. It is focuses on real earnings of employees in an organization. Organizations with employees generate wealth, and those involved in generating that wealth need to share in that. Organizations (companies, non-profits, government agencies, etc) should be subject to a policy that can be expressed as: the highest compensated individual's total pay can not exceed the organization multiple of the lowest compensated individual's total pay. The organization multiple is determined by organization size. The penalty could be a fine, a corporate tax, or whatever would incentivize organizations to follow the policy. In order to be effective, private contractors would have to be included in these calculations, and total pay would have to include bonuses, commissions, benefits, stock options and any other compensation that has monetary value. The only thing not included in this is dividends paid to stock holders. That is covered later.
2. A better Fair Tax. You may have heard of the fair tax. It is mostly backed by a bunch of tea-partier, anti-IRS types. Sometimes I wonder if they really understand what it is they claim to support. Anyway, they have several things right, and understanding why those are right, and how to use them is important. On the other hand, they have several things wrong, which would make things worse if not addressed and corrected. Things they have right: First, a prebate that is equal across all registered citizens and residents and their dependents which can make even the worst regressive tax system progressive. In fact, if done right, it can be the first tier of a safety net that doesn't penalize success. Second. Taxing income only serves to perpetuate the income divide. Those at the top of the wealth scale don't make income. They make dividends and capital gains, but not income. And often they can offset those by so-called loses. Taxing consumption can be applied more universally, with less tax evasion, and is effective at taxing even those who get around the income tax. It makes shifts foreign trade vastly in our favor, without subsidies or tariffs. Things they have wrong: They want to exclude education and investments. Having worked in the education industry for years, it is an industry. It needs to be taxed just like everything else. It spreads the burden more evenly, and takes away the advantage of those who can afford much better education without paying part of the tax burden. Even more so, investment has to be taxed. It is the primary method of perpetuation of wealth without paying their fair share. The tax level should not be so high as to destroy investment, but if they can pay 5 percent broker fees, surely they can afford to pay tax. They don't have to pay taxes on the gains, just on the investment. It becomes part of the cost of investing. By taxing everything, including education and investment, we can provide a larger prebate, maybe to double what they are currently proposing. That large of a prebate would act as a first safety net buffer to those who are poor. It could greatly improve their financial situation. For those who make more, they still get the prebate, but it is much less significant to them.
3. 20% Accounts. These accounts take care of a large portion of the rest of the social safety net. They are the first tier of unemployment. They help employees feel a little less trapped, and give them a fallback when the worst comes. They are funded by the employer as a 20% match for all compensation for all employees. Who manages them is less important than the fact that they are there. They could be managed by the individual, by investment professionals, or even government agencies. Also, regardless of who manages it, it needs to limit risk for the bulk of the principle while still trying to have some growth. These accounts are generally not tap-able unless the person is unemployed, retired, or in special circumstances as determined by regulation.
4. Inheritance and Gift limits per recipient.  Those with vast wealth perpetuate others with vast wealth. They may have earned it, but they don't help society by creating an upper echelon of society who become untouchable 1%'s. But, what if they were limited in how much they could give to any one person. It could be enough that the recipient could do anything, but not enough to do nothing, or enough to usurp control and power over society. Those with vast wealth would have to spread their wealth out enough to cause it to re-enter the economy. Those who inherit such large amounts might be able to repeat their progenitors success, or they might just live the high life. Either way, the wealth gets spread out, and directly affects wealth inequality for the better.
5. Corporate size and influence limits. We need to make sure no corporation is too big to fail, or even big enough to establish a non-competitive environment. There are many ways to do this. One way would be to limit the number of locations a company can have. This would not limit franchises, as those are generally owned by others, but it would keep them from getting too big. There are other ways to limit the size and scope of corporations, but their size needs to be vastly limited. Some few corporations are of a nature that their size would still surpass reasonable levels, and those should be subject to very rigid restrictions that keep them from engaging in anti-competitive or undesirable behaviors.
6. Self sufficiency programs. It is in individuals', society's, and the government's best interest for communities, families, and individuals to be as self sufficient as possible. This reduces dependency on both society and the government, increases self worth, creates a more stable economy, and improves the overall desirability of the American life. At the same time, self sufficiency is highly dependent on individual attitudes. Attitudes can not be legislated or even regulated. But they can be affected with public service campaigns, and it is well within the scope of government in all but the most minimalist libertarian schemes to perform public education and service programs. Additionally, government can inspire and help develop programs to facilitate the success of those who have this attitude.
7. Limited scope additional safety net programs. There are still those who will be subject to extreme circumstances that prevent them from living at an acceptable level. They will need additional programs for things like disabilities, catastrophic medial conditions, or natural disasters. These programs should be designed, where possible, to help people get back on their own feet as quickly as they can, and should be very carefully monitored and regulated so as to not become abused or ineffective.

THE CHALLENGES ()

Obviously, it is easy to miss potential challenges. This list is certainly not exhaustive, but these are definitely some of the challenges.  It will take a lot of effort to overcome just these.
1. Entrenched Ideologies. The first challenge exists because we as a nation and culture have taken our eyes off of what we hope to ultimately achieve. We instead focus on pet issues, programs, and platitudes that have little real chance of reaching those goals. Each political party and faction has these sacred cows, and anything but their way is considered unacceptable. There is a lot of momentum in these false hopes, and to get people to stop and think, and to realize that the status-quo is quickly tearing our country apart, will take a lot of effort and self control to break from the fixed mindset we are currently in.
2. Educating the populace. Our populations are pretty ignorant of how government really works and affects their lives. Most of our people can quote campaign slogans, but have no idea how those would translate into whatever they think they are voting for. Except for the politically active, very few have taken the time and effort to understand much about these processes. Worse yet, they don't even want to know. Getting them to understand that these things will help them will take a lot of effort and patience.
3. Getting the idea out. Before we can address entrenched ideologies or ignorant populaces, first we have to get the idea out there. It will take a lot of people who really believe these policies will work and that these are problems that must be addressed.
4. Finding effective evangelists. Not everybody is equally effective at spreading the word. There are those who, by means of charisma, or public presence, or fame, or some other factor, are much more effective than most at getting others to both listen to what they say and to believe it. It will be critical to find those public opinion leaders who can help establish an effective movement for these proposals.
5. Critical mass. As with many things, there will probably be some sort of critical mass. Once enough espouse these ideas and policies, there will be a landslide to follow. Unfortunately, where that critical mass is and how to get there is generally unknown.
6. Vested interests. Obviously, if you are in the top 1%, these policies do not benefit you. You are powerful and influential and are going to do your best to see that these things never see the light of day. If you are not in the top 5%, chances are these polices will benefit you. These ideas are not designed to punish success, however, and getting those who are in the other 4 percent to see that will be difficult. Still, under these policies everyone can still enjoy the benefits of their success, but will not be able to just pass it on to create a dynasty. The top 1%'s kids will probably start off with a moderate competitive advantage, but not an insurmountable one. They will have to work for their own success just as their parents did.

In summary, these problems are serious and will destroy us as a nation and a culture if not effectively addressed. I have been thinking about these issues for years and have come up with the what I feel is the best policy proposals to address these things overall. Not being a very effective evangelist, I have been called everything from communist to robber baron to fascist when describing these ideas to people. I hope I have done a better job of describing these this time. These ideas are formulated for effectiveness, not for selling. They pass the economic, psychological, sociological, historical and mathematical evaluations I have tried them against. Having said that, these are new ideas, and implementation rarely mirrors theory. Even if implemented, there are likely to be many pitfalls in the way, but in years of searching for solutions to these problems, I haven't seen anything else which seems likely to work.

Planning app

I would like to see an effective app for helping me plan. And not just one kind of planning, but all kinds of planning. It should be effective at helping me prioritize, even helping me figure out the pros and cons to various options. It should also be able to interact with my various calendars to help me schedule the parts of my plan that I am making. It should work on my phone or on the Web. Just an idea.

Conservative politics - big business capitalism = ?

With all this federal shutdown garbage and now the debt limit crisis and the completely unreasonable and unmoving positions of our elected representatives in our federal government, and in state governments across the country, I have been doing a lot of thinking. I totally agree with the whole fiscal conservatism thing, living beneath our means, paying off the debt, and limiting government... to a point. I completely disagree with subsidies of any kind, apart from the prebate in the FairTax. That should be the primary equalizer our government provides. Oh, and the prebate should be twice as big as in HR 25, and education should be fully taxed, and investment should be taxed on the public exchanges. Well, it should be taxed any time it is required to be registered with any public agency, whether publicly traded or not. I also think we should be transitioning away from Social Security and Medicare and the other social programs.

But, and here is where I part from the traditional cut and slash crowd, I think turning any of this over to big business is a huge mistake. Big companies should be automatically excluded from government contracts and prohibited from buying out smaller companies. Too big to fail is too big to be allowed. We need another round of trust busting, and it should hit any company with revenues over a billion, which means a lot of them. Ok, yeah, some companies by their natures will be bigger than that, only have1 product, and make tons on that 1 product. Great, they need to stick with that 1 product. Companies exist to provide service to the greater good, not for enriching the pockets of investors. I know, sounds really like I am off my rocker. I am all in favor of small business. With this caveat: Businesses of all levels need to be responsible contributors to society and provide solid and fair jobs for their employees. Wages should represent contributions of effort and skill. This whole executive pay garbage where they are making millions and tens of millions, and even sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars, all while paying employees less than subsistence level wages is criminal. And should be treated as such.

Businesses of all level should be highly regulated. Not burdened, but regulated in a way to keep the playing field level and make sure they are being good citizens. I feel that most of our current regulation is either ineffective, or misdirected. Corporations, well, all registered businesses for that matter, should have to regularly report on their activities. Maybe if they cannot show they are being good corporate citizens, then they could be entered into receivership, and possibly dissolved and the liquidated assets distributed to creditors and shareholders. The only question is, how do you keep the regulatory environment from being a bully, and limit interventions to only the truly problem companies?

So, as you can see, conservative politics minus big business capitalism equals ... what? I don't know. Maybe the regulation I dreamed up here as I typed is a bad idea. But, would it be any worse than becoming economic slaves to the Fortune 500?

Utilities and service

You may have heard about the latest bruhaha with Comcast and L3 communications. There are a lot of other issues related to Comcast's behavior lately, and they are not doing anyone any favors. Comcast is easily identifiable as a Utility. The problems it seems intent on creating have always been issues with utilities.

The solution is simple. Utilities have 2 parts. There is a simple delivery mechanism that is location based, and there is what those delivery mechanisms deliver. In the case of Comcast, they deliver telecommunications services. The easy way to think of it is connectivity and content. I had the privilege of living in Texas recently, and they have a classic example of this solution implemented with their electricity providers. There is one connectivity provider in Texas. It is actually owned and operated by the state. It is prohibited from providing actual content, in this case electricity. It works well. The service is way faster than in other states, and the rates are generally lower. I actually had a slightly higher rate, because I went with an all renewable electricity provider. That was my choice because I was supporting something I believe in.

The same thing needs to be applied to phone service and internet service and cable service, and maybe even natural gas and water and other utilities. The provider of the connectivity needs to be separate from the provider of the content. That way, there is no conflict of interest, and market competition keeps the price of content down and the quality of content up. Only the connectivity provider needs be regulated. For companies like Comcast, the choices would be simple. Provide the connectivity, and be regulated, or provide the content and compete. You can't do both. If necessary, split the company into two, one for the connectivity and the other for the content.

That is the best solution. It could be done at the state level. Then, our rights as consumers would never be infringed by a monopoly connectivity provider that forces us to use their low quality and high cost content.

Political ideologies vs reality

Well, the midterm elections were yesterday. Today, my wife was listening to Obama talk about the message of the elections. He was first trying to make the point that he "get's it" in regards to why people are upset. He continually mentioned the results of their efforts were weak, and that people are mad about the economy. When asked about his health care bill, he defended it left and right. It was a good thing, etc. etc. When asked specifically about other actions by his administration, not once did he ever seem to "get it" that there are things he has done that people didn't like.

I realized that somewhere in there, it never occurred to him that perhaps the ideology he espouses is potentially wrong in the eyes of the people. It probably also never occurred to him that ideology does not solve problems. We as a people are tired of ideologues who can't understand that first and foremost, we want the problems solved. Particularly the ones that naturally fall in the purview of government. As for our own problems, let us solve our own, but don't make it more difficult for us to do so.

This got me thinking about what people want, and what upsets them. First, they don't like their freedom being taken away. They don't like being told that they have to do something. They don't like being manipulated. They like having options. They like to feel independent. They like to feel valuable. The like comfort. They like adventure. They like to feel intelligent and capable. They don't like to be told they are wrong. Perhaps government would be better off if instead of mandating programs, they just made things available to the people.

The one exception is regulation of business. Business needs to be regulated, just not too heavily. A business that takes care of it's employees and is honest with it's customers and follows good business practices should not incur any cost in following regulation. On the other hand, those who do not do those things should feel the incentive to change.

So, there you have it. Limit government to just serving the people, limit business to good business practices, and let the people be. When they need something, well, that is why government should have voluntary programs, and those programs should be easy to use, but hard to abuse. Is it really that hard? Well, I guess in reality, maybe it is.

Local sustainability

Some time ago, shortly after I started this blog, I created a whole list of topics that I wanted to do posts on. Today, I realized that I still had a few that were not done, so I am finishing all the posts I had sitting in my backlog. Then I can move on with some other ideas that I have.

One of the ideas I wanted to write about is what I call local sustainability. The idea of local sustainability is that a locality, whether a city or a town or a county or what ever distinction it might have, should be able to provide for its own needs, and not depend on outside resources for the necessities of life. It has been a long time since this sort of thing actually was common, but I don't know that it is necessarily a bad idea. Lets evaluate why.

First, lets look at what our current situation is. We mostly live in large cities. Our cities mostly provide services, with a few very large concentrations of finished goods manufacturing. Our cities certainly, with very few exceptions, do not provide raw materials. In some degree, they do process raw materials into finished goods (or some form of intermediate goods). People in cities mostly consume, and produce little. Our raw materials and even most of our finished goods come from elsewhere. Lately, most of it seems to be coming from China, but there have been other sources at other times. Our food doesn't come from where people live either. We have an estimated 3 days of food on shelves in most American and Industrialized cities. Our energy is generally not locally produced either. Some power plants are thousands of miles from the cities where the energy produced is used. Much of our oil and finished products now comes from overseas. Even most of the oil and finished products that are produced domestically still has to be shipped thousands of miles.

There are benefits to our current situation which unless maintained, would not make a switch to local sustainability an acceptable choice to most people. In our current system, we have very low cost, high end or high tech goods that are available from a large variety of sources. We can get almost anything we want nearly instantaneously if we have the means to pay for them, and even for those with smaller means, the amount of goods in their economic reach far exceed anything available in past eras.

In order to make a switch to local sustainability one of two things has to happen. The most likely and least desirable of these is some form of economic collapse affecting infrastructure, and lowering the availability of goods to crisis levels. The variety of goods would shrink 100 fold, and the costs would out pace all but the wealthiest of people for anything but the most basic goods. Famine and death would be rampant and most of us would die or wish we were dead.

The other option would be a new set of technology, business, and regulatory developments which when functioning jointly, would enable localities, or at least city sized regions to become able to produce 95% of what is consumed in those cities, using either directly produced or recycled raw materials or at the very least, with raw materials being primarily the goods being shipped into the cities from multi-regional or semi local supply sources. These developments would have to be able to produce almost anything on demand. The one thing that would be truly global would be the designs and manufacturing blueprints use by flexible micro manufacturing facilities which would need to be able to produce anything within a very large range of materials. For instance, there would need to be a electronics manufacturing facility that could use designs and blueprints from any developer to produce whatever the local consumer wanted, and produce it on demand.

In order for this to work, there would also have to be certain green space requirements primarily concerned with organic food production. The food production would have to have a much greater level of automation in its production, but instead of the mammoth machines currently being used by agricorps, these would require smart, possibly robotic, cultivators which would be able to produce higher quality and healthier crops in relatively small spaces. They would also need to be able to cultivate a wide variety of crops simultaneously, and with a minimum of pesticides and other chemicals. Larger green zones would also be needed for the raising of animal crops, with other more novel approaches facilitating the raising of the animals. Energy would have to be a local product, but with photovoltaic, wind power, and other systems becoming more efficient and less expensive all the time, this is become a real possibility today.

Of course, this kind of development would take a huge effort, but it would also have huge payoffs for just about everyone, from rich to poor, government, business, and just the lay consumer. The question is, who is willing to devote time, effort, and resources to the development of such a system.

Industry Acceptable Innovation

A while back, I was talking with a friend of mine that is almost always got his fingers in some form of disruptive innovation or other. Since then, I have thought a lot about some of the things he told me, and I think I have come up with a new (or at least, new to me) concept, relating to innovation and what could be successful or not. In any industry, there are major forces at work fighting innovation. I am not talking about incremental evolutionary changes, I am talking about the big, in your face, revolutionary innovations. There are many of these forces, some of them from somewhat surprising sources.

Lets say you were to invent a megawatt wind power generator that cost less than say, $5,000. That would be a very disruptive development. Why? Because it would require changes on the part of almost every other aspect of the energy industry. The current cost of approximately $1Million per 1 megawatt wind power generator unit tells you that things would change immensely. In this case, no longer would the investment for such generation unit be limited to major power players, investors, and idealistic billionaires. At that cost, they would be springing up all over the place, putting thousands and tens of thousands of people in the current energy industry out of work. Not that the industry would stand idly by. They would refuse to connect them to the power grid, and even then, they would require new wind generator users to pay for costly upgrades to the power grid. If that didn't work (and they probably wouldn't wait to see if it did), they would seek all sorts of legislation to make it both much more costly to own and run such a unit, and much more difficult to produce. It would be in their interest to make your supplies and manufacturing process much more costly and inefficient. They also would want a piece of the action as a way to hedge their bets, but with this much disruption, they would be more encouraged to buy up the technology rights and hide them (maybe use them, but only to the degree that it doesn't negatively affect their bottom line). What most innovators seem to forget, is that energy companies are not in the business of making energy, but in the business of making money.

One more example. Lets say I created a new ERP system that increased productivity by 10 times for those implemented it. Lets say I created it in such a way that it was 10 times easier to install. Now, lets say I price it very closely to the existing systems. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Well, maybe. Most companies love increases in productivity. They especially like it in little bites. 10 to 40 percent productivity gains make a company just thrilled. But what would it mean to have 1000% productivity gains. Well, they are either producing 10 times the product or need 1/10th the workforce to produce it. The might decide to produce only twice as much with only 1/5th of the workforce, but the changes are extreme. People, and companies, do not like that much change. It hurts. It is uncomfortable. Not to mention, existing ERP providers wouldn't like my creation of such a new disruptive presence in their market. They would scramble to develop enhancements of their products to make them more competitive, but again, as we are talking about dollars being the main purpose and not product effectiveness, it would probably come to an attempted buy-out situation or extensive use of legislation, courts, and negative marketing.

Beyond the items listed in each example, I have heard that some companies or executives (but not most) get even dirtier, and do things like economic or social or even literal assassination to get the people involved to stop ruining their party. I have never been shown any incontrovertible evidence that this has happened, but I have heard at least one businessman say that he had taken out a contract on the life of someone they found particularly troublesome. Now, whether or not this is a common consequence of radically disruptive innovation isn't really the point. The point is that there is a limit to how radical an innovation can be in any given industry and any given point before it is too radical for acceptance by the industry and consumers. It therefore follows that there might be an optimal level of innovation for any industry at any specific point in time, and that the more that optimal level is exceeded, the more difficulty there will be in turning the innovation into successful products. Most industry sponsored innovation will usually be well within that acceptable innovation limit, and generally moves much slower than that.

Better news service.

I just got a CNN Breaking News email. The subject of the breaking news really doesn't matter, but it brought to mind some ideas. Some years ago, during some political something or other, I signed up with CNN to get their Breaking News email updates. They come in this nice little string of text with just enough information to let you know what is going on. I have learned that a Breaking News email update usually means that they now have a great article on their site for me to read if I want to know more. Most of the time, if it interests me, I want to know more.

If you are not familiar with their Breaking News emails, you might guess that it would include a nice little link to the related article or maybe a stub or topic page that links to all the related articles if it is an ongoing story.

Nope. Nada.

They have an unsubscribe link. They have links from the ads that they stick in them. But nothing to get me to their site so they can do their job of getting me to read more of their content. Come on people, my kid could program that. The whole concept of hyperlinks in emails is almost as old as the web. This should have happened 15 years ago. Think of the change to readership and the bottom line in terms of ad revenue.

I should probably thank them, though. If I clicked off to CNN every time I got an interesting Breaking News update, I would probably spend a lot more time on their site, and consequently, less time actually trying to be productive. That brings me to another point. More than half of the Breaking News updates I get, I don't care about. For some, yeah, I am sure they are interested, but different people have different interests.

Let me pick my interests. Please. I don't care about sports, or entertainment, and there are only a few sub topics that interest me in travel, health, and living. Come to think of it, I really don't care about most of criminal proceedings under the justice section either. Constitutional law, business law, and patent law, yes, but the rest of the stuff, just let me opt out of it.

Make a general list of subject tags, arranged categorically, and let me pick whole sections, sub-sections, or even individual subject tags, and only send me the links on those. If you did, I can promise I will click the link much more often. Yeah, that link that doesn't exist yet. I figure, if you can tailor my content to me, you certainly can make it easier for me to get to.

Big Water Projects

I am not a nature freak, and do not consider myself environmentally active. I see a lot of the environmental propaganda, and it usually ticks me off that they are so slanted and usually are either flat out dishonest, or leave out the full story. However, I do believe that we are stewards of the world we live in and will be held accountable for how we treat it. Furthermore, I think we as a species often do things that are less then optimal, simply cause we don't want to take the time to figure out the optimal or because we just can and we don't like anyone to tell us that we can't.

One such activity that can be handled this way are the building of huge dams and reservoirs. I can understand that we often have a need to collect and store water, and that a reservoir is often the best way to go about it, but too often, we are building these things for electricity and not for water storage. There is a better way. What brings this to mind are some articles I have read about the Belo Monte Dam Project in the Amazon. It is a hydroelectric dam, and not intended for water conservation. Unfortunately, it will destroy millions of acres of amazon rain forest. More so than that, the indigenous locals are completely against it. If they were all for it, well, even though the amazon is the lungs of the earth, it is their home, and really their vote should matter more than anybody else's vote.

Here is a better way, that won't cost as much, will be more resilient, won't take as long to start providing benefits, would destroy hardly as much amazon rain forest, and might even be well liked by the locals. In-stream generators. A large series of small dams or dikes which then sends the water through small hydroelectric turbines each involving a vertical drop of only a few feet, not more than 5 or 10. Yes, there would still be some forest loss, but a tiny percentage of what the current plans entail. Each dam or dike would be a small separate project, but would be able to be put in much faster. You still get the hydroelectric benefit, but now you have much smaller localized generation units, but in a mass quantity. If one has a problem, the others are still fine. They could also ensure a more regular flow without the flow stoppage involved in the larger dam. River wildlife would be virtually unaffected in the long run. Sure this is different, but wouldn't it be better than destroying so much precious rain forest? It would be a lot easier to replicate lots of other places, and could be scaled out to meet demand on a much more continual basis. How about it folks. Who is in favor of a better way?

Health mess continued

The health care debate has nothing to do with health care, but everything to do with money. Mostly, it deals with insurance coverage. It does nothing about the quality of health care and very little about the accessibility of health care. It doesn't address the problems with our pharmaceutical industry or with the FDA or with the shortage of medical professionals, or with any of a myriad of other health issues, except abortion and euthanasia, which aren't about health care, but religious and moral issues instead (we are not going there on this post).

I have seen many instances where the medical treatment offered was not the best available for the situation, but was instead based on how much money the practitioners would make. The bigger the size of the organization, the worse this seems to be, in general. I have however seen a fair number of cases where they practitioner is a small operation and they still push everything based on what is best for their finances rather then what is best for the patient.

I have had people tell me that the answer to this situation is insurance, but I believe it is just the opposite. I think that the insurance industry is the primary cause of this greed. Sure, there would be the small time medical scam operators that push their patients into something that either they don't need, or that is the most costly of the viable alternatives, but for the most part, before our insurance industry did their takeover of the health care system, practitioners did seem more concerned with the actual health and well-being of their patients.

Part of the problem is that the insurance industry has been making health care choices for all of us. The doctors don't really get the choice of the best treatments, just the choice of the best treatments the insurance covers. The patents don't get informed of their options, cause usually there is only one covered option. It no longer is about the best care for the situation, but about what the coverage is for the situation.

There are lots of examples where offshore clinics have far better care at a much lower cost, using much more advanced techniques. We don't have those options here, because even if the techniques are approved by our almost non-function governmental agencies, the insurance plans don't allow those treatments. They say they are trying to save us money. I have a hard time believing it. I have seen a system wide case where the US health care industry continues to do thallium treadmill tests to gauge arterial blockage, when other tests exist that are more than twice as effective, cost less than a fifth and often less than a tenth of the cost of the thallium test, and are usually up to five times faster. I say system wide because I have seen it happen to multiple people, in multiple states, in multiple hospital systems.

I have also seen and heard of many instances where the doctors (the good ones) pull people aside to a corner and whisper that what they recommend is some kind of do it yourself homeopathic or over the counter treatment, but that they have to issue this prescription or that. I even had one doctor explain that they have a quota that they have to meet in prescription writing in order to keep their license. I don't know the validity of this claim, nor the mechanism it would work by, but just the very mentality of the industry pressuring doctors to always prescribe the latest drugs in the maximum of situations leaves me thinking that the whole thing is just another corrupt system of greed.

We need some kind of impartial informing diagnosis web based system, perhaps not to be required use for doctors, but freely available so individuals can at least see what their options are and to get a non-biased second opinion. Sure, such a system would not be able to write prescriptions, nor would it recommend courses of treatment, but it could show possible diagnoses with all the known courses of treatment and what forms those treatments take. It could even show experimental treatments and list locations where different treatments are available. It could also show how reliable various treatments are shown to be. To put this together would require the input of many people, but if it were built correctly, it would be a learning system. Therefore, it's diagnoses would increase in accuracy over time. I can even picture it being a valuable resource to doctors, regardless of their expertise, experience, and training.

How much wealth is too much?

I was reading a wikipedia entry yesterday about globalization. One of the statements was that "The three richest people possess more financial assets than the poorest 10% of the world's population, combined." Now, it said there was a citation needed, and the link they listed there got a 404 error (meaning not found). However, it got me to thinking. How much wealth is too much wealth. Is there a problem when someone is vastly successful and thereby amasses amazing wealth. I don't have a problem with people being successful, as long as they were honest, and didn't abuse people to get there. However, I do have to agree that having too much wealth in the hands of too few is a problem, but it wouldn't be fair or right, or productive, to restrict people from earning as much as they can. So what is the answer.

What about those who inherit significant wealth. Well, I think about my own children, but I wouldn't want to dump ridiculous wealth on any of them, but I would want them to have enough to be well established. I thought about Warren Buffet, who has often indicated that he won't give significant inheritance to his children. He is strongly in favor of the inheritance tax. I began to think about this. If there were some kind of limit on inheritance that would meet with Buffet's famous statement that "I want to give my kids just enough so that they would feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they would feel like doing nothing", but that provided that kind of limit for everyone, then that might provide a better distribution of wealth.

I often think of wealth in terms of the poverty level. And by poverty level, I mean the poverty level in the United States. If there was unlimited inheritance up to say, 500 times the poverty level, that should be enough to provide a great start for anyone. Those who then have way more than that, would have to look for additional heirs to distribute their wealth to. Beyond just an inheritance tax or limit, I would also apply it to gifts given before death. The total anyone could receive should be the same whether the received it before their benefactor's death or after. If donating to a trust, then the total number of full beneficiaries of that trust should be multiplied by the limit. Buffet's donation of over 30 billion to the Gates Foundation would be just fine in this instance, since the trust specifies everyone as beneficiaries. All assets should fall in this category, whether cash, stock, real estate, or anything else. Any assets not specified to an heir would then be liquidated and turned over to the government. By distributing wealth better, there would be less pooling and reduction in economic activity, and also result in greater opportunities as there would less plutocracy and fewer inherited power positions in big companies (think Walmart or Ford).

I would say that this would be one of the first requirements for the Good Government Initiative. It wouldn't work if there was a permanent royal or elite class. Distribute that wealth and get it back in circulation. That is what will benefit the nations and individuals.

The follies of globalization

The last couple of centuries have witnessed an ongoing march of a phenomenon that most people in business applaud, but which often has been fought against, protested, and accused of the worst of atrocities. I speak of the phenomenon of globalization. The economic practice and concept is the removal of barriers between national borders in order to facilitate the flow of goods, capital, services and labor, so that all parts of the world make specialized goods and compete in a global marketplace for these things. There is much debate over the benefits and ill effects of globalization, but perhaps the strongest effect is that no-one is immune.

For the poor of the earth, good times under globalization means that they have sweatshop type job opportunities and many chances to be exploited. For the richest of individuals, good times under globalization mean a great increase in wealth and expansion of power. For the bulk of us in the United States, good times under globalization means we have ever increasing options of cheap consumer goods to purchase to pad our consumption centered lives. Under bad times, globalization means much worse news for the poor, not much difference for the richest, and probable economic discomfort for those with a standard of living equivalent to the average Americans.

There is some mobility between groups, and globalization has generally had the effect of increased mobility for the highest and lowest performers from each group. However, for many, globalization means the loss of dreams and traditions. Especially for those engaged in the more traditional forms of business. Most of the small independent retail and service business are gone world wide. The more industrialized an place, the worse it is. Besides the obvious loss of quality and custom hand made goods and custom lunches at the local diners, there is significant loss of opportunity to build ones own future with your own hard work. Beyond that, and perhaps most tragic of all, is that now it is very difficult to be truly self sufficient as individuals and impossible as communities and towns. I applaud the global dissemination of technology and even culture, but at the cost of destroying any long term security, and often the freedoms that come with it, I have to conclude that unrestrained globalization isn't all that it is cracked up to be.

A while back, I applauded a move by Walmart to help restore some local viability into local markets, but the effort so far has been weak and insufficient to have much of an effect. I suggested at the time that they should try to get more of what they sell manufactured and produced locally. I recognize that some things will always have to be brought in from elsewhere. Wisconsin will never grow bananas or pineapples, but they can do a lot of other things. If the means for local economies to produce their goods locally were more prevalent, then perhaps all this social and economic upheaval that we call globalization might not be so bad.

Bootstrapping

Bootstrapping (in Business) is to start a business without external help or capital. The hard thing about bootstrapping is that there are a whole bunch of business processes and areas of expertise that have to be known and executed correctly. Now, often when someone is talking about bootstrapping a startup, they have some minimal and often much more significant financial resources, and they are able to outsource a whole bunch of those business processes and just pay for them. What happens if a startup doesn't have the funds to pay for such services. Well, they better be good at accounting, and have a thorough understanding of legalese, and be technologically savvy, and know hr policies, oh, and not just regular accounting, they also need to know enough about merchant accounts and banking to be able to make sure they are getting paid. They need to be an expert at taxes, which while most people think that means accounting, there is a whole separate class of accountants that deal with taxes.

My personal experience with bootstrapping wasn't quite that bad, but close. We got a pretty big contract right out of the gate which paid for things like an accountant/tax professional, got some legal advice on trade, and had enough cash that when our merchant account got messy, we were able to make it through that without too much problem. We had the technology understanding, so we were able to get around that. They problem was, we wanted to do far more than what we could afford. We did contract work for other companies with the hope that it would pay enough for us to work on our own projects. Well, being our first attempt at running our own business, we didn't execute it flawlessly or even close. We did survive being stiffed $40,000 by a client, and were able to continue operations for 2 years until the economy collapsed and most of our clients went with it (for some reason, we had a lot of mortgage and real estate clients at that time).

Since then, I have reverted to the garage band version of business. I am developing a big software system in my spare time with two partners, but we have no business at this point, as we have no product to sell. We have no cash, and all our work is done on our personally owned machines. We would love to try to venture a small trial balloon offering to see what kind of response we would get, but that would constitute conducting business, which would mean bank accounts, business licenses, accountants, lawyers, taxes, and so forth. I think back to the days of yore when you built something or had something or provided some service, and you just went about doing business. Sure, the tax man would want his share, so some simple accounting would be needed to track what you did so you could pay your share of taxes, but that would be the end of things. I know there are some who still try to do it that way today. The problem is that complying with the law and regulations has become more complex than most people can manage unless that is all they focus on.

It shouldn't have be like that. We need some kind of established system that in a very cost effective way, provides all these services so that a businessman/bootstrapper could focus on what they are doing. Intuit provides a lot of those services, and even pretends to integrate them, but it really doesn't meet the needs. They, or their competitors, need to provide a complete small business we take care of your headaches so you can take care of business package. No nickle and dime marketing, just a single upfront, complete, take my headaches away small business startup solutions package. Yeah, I know, each small business has different needs, so they can offer an a-la-carte service selector, but when all is said and done, they take care of the headaches. They business registrations, the tax payments, the payroll, the hr, etc, etc, etc. Yeah you will need to sign off on things, but they do all the prep work. Much of it could be automated, and the rest could reach into a community of providers that work from a standardized set of requirements. And, I should be able to get price without committing to the purchase, just in case I am not ready to pull that trigger yet.

The most awesome job search/hiring system.

Ok, from the title, this sounds like a review or some kind of plug. I wish it were. If the system I am describing really existed, I would be plugging it left and right, and so would everybody else out there, on both side of the hiring fence.

So, the other day, I was called by some company to tell me they wanted to know more about me. They said, that perhaps, they would want me to do some small oDesk jobs for them so they could evaluate my abilities. I am fine with this, so, after putting together a very quick and dirty project portfolio, I went through the process of qualifying on oDesk. Well, I have had people do stuff on oDesk before, but I didn't manage it, someone else did. I had started signing up a long time ago so I could see what kinds of jobs were listed there, and truly, they have created a global job marketplace, but mostly just for small non critical programming jobs. One thing they have that I really like is tons of tests that you can take for free to show what your abilities are. Unfortunately, their tests are kind of oversimplified and not really representative of the abilities they are supposed to represent. It would take more work to make their testing system really rock, and then it would be a lot more useful, but I don't know if it would be cost effective for them in their current system.

The other tool that I have really come to like is Linked In. It is awesome for networking, and has become an important thing to have up to date for people to work on. Unfortunately, it wasn't around when I had most of my jobs, and a lot of the people I have worked for or with either don't have a Linked In profile, or don't do anything with their profile. Linked In has great things like discussion groups, questions, group memberships, and a bunch of other tools, but they don't do anything to validate your claims apart from their referral information.

I found myself wishing that Linked In would acquire oDesk, and create that more robust skill verification test system, and even integrate it with those organizations like PMI and Microsoft and Oracle and Cisco, and so forth that do certifications so that you could see automatically what people have. Then, create a new set of tools that allow much of the HR function of a company to happen in a portal from the site. Then you could have the user/employee be able to partially determine what kinds of things were publicly available. Anyway, I can envision a hiring process to go like this.

Since almost everybody, or at least a majority of individuals would have a linked in profile, whether or not they actively maintained it, when you wanted to hire someone, the best candidates would be on Linked In. The profiles would be up to date because companies (many of them) would use it to help manage their HR, and the certifications would be up to date because the certification companies (most of them) would use it or interface with it.

The hiring manager would sign on to linked in, and, in their approved status as a hiring manager for their company, would create a job requirement, (assuming it is a new job, and not filling an old one, cause then they would just edit the old one), and then look for qualified applicants. Everybody would be available for searching, depending on status (Most people would have something like "Only serious opportunities" or "Make my dreams come true" but some would have "actively looking"). Yeah, I know, companies would want to keep tabs on employee's status, so employees could hide their statuses if they wanted to for specific companies, users, or even demographics.

Anyway, they would get a short list of who is available, be able to sort by skills, other qualifications, rankings, proximity, or just about anything else that is in the system. They then could offer inteviews to those they are interested in, and be at the final decision hiring stage in a few days. If they are just looking, they wouldn't have to create an actual job, just a "just looking profile" and find applicable individuals. That way, instead of just throwing your hiring out into the wind, you can really get the best available candidates, or if you are desperate enough, you can try to "make someone's dreams come true". For job candidates, you can see where you are showing up on applicable jobs, change statuses of where you are looking, set your relocation requirements, and even find new training and qualification options and opportunities.

If that were the case, you can find out pretty quick where you measure up, what your strengths are and what you need to improve. Oh, and the time you spend out of work might dramatically drop as well.

Public Spectrum WiMax Mesh

Ok, I have held onto this one for a while, but I have talked it around, and even got a wireless services guy at AT&T to listen to it. His objective was that it wouldn't fit the business model, even though it would work and be awesome. He also said that their investment into their current technology was far too high to want to try a different approach. His last objection, although, he wanted this off the record, was that AT&T would view this as a big potential loss of control and don't want people to have options cause they wouldn't make as much.

Well, this one is good enough that we don't need a big brother type company to implement it, but whoever did would make bank on it cause the mentality of all the other players would keep them out of the market for too long.

The idea is that we use WiMax or some similar wireless broadband technology, but configure it to use public spectrum and build low cost wireless repeater mesh units to provide internet connectivity to anyone wanting to participate. Now, it would be best if there was some kind of backbone access control system that made sure that every so often, one of these repeater units was plugged into a fiber line. Otherwise, likely there would be too many freeloaders wanting free access, but really, once figured out, one of these units should be able to be made for less than a couple hundred dollars, and the cost would really come down over time.

Naturally, the repeater density in metropolitan areas would greatly exceed that in suburbs and rural areas, and, there might be a slightly higher cost per user in rural areas, but I can picture that monthly internet access could easily be as low as 10 to 15 dollars for near unlimited access. (Oh, sure, I can also picture a bandwidth cap or a tiered system, but for most of us, like, 99% of us, we would be on the bottom tier, cause we just don't use that much.)

How about it people, should we do this? It would take some time and resources, but it would be a great solution. (I can picture all the neighborhoods and HOA's out there providing this as part of their services). Once it started becoming common, all the devices would start being made with the capability built in. Then, we really could get great access from everywhere, and the money grubbing, control freak big brother companies like AT&T could be gone, and we wouldn't miss them one bit. How great would that be?

Sharing ideas

I have lots of ideas. I always hope my ideas can somehow be of some value to me. I think, for the most part, I have to limit which ideas I keep for myself. I guess that means I need to share my ideas with the world, and let them do what they will with it.

Well, this morning, I have a few ideas I am going to share. I long have been displeased with the way our modern world works. It isn't that I don't like modern technology. Quite to the contrary, I love modern technology, but I don't like how it is limited to the benefit of the few and the expense of the many. And the truly have-nots are excluded from it.

I think technology is there to bless the lives of everyone, regardless of country, region, religion, race, or social class. I think my biggest gripe is how the utility companies work. Sure, they have to make a profit, and they provide a service that is of great value, but they do their best to limit options and punish anyone not wanting to play their way. I would also extend that to the oil companies. They don't have to do it that way. They could still be wildly profitable and give lots of options to everyone. Sure there would be those who don't want to play that way. I just think they are corrupt, selfish, and devilish in their mentalities and methods.

My next couple posts deal with what I see as systems that should be developed and used where ever possible.

Local Economies

I read an article about Walmart today that kind of surprised me. I have been in the anit-Walmart camp for quite a few years, but I have not been so rabid that I don't shop there. I have a brother who won't shop there if it kills him. Anyway, Walmart is a big corporation focused on it's profits and whatever effects it has on the individual, it generally doesn't care about. It really isn't all that different any other major corporation. The difference is, when it puts its stores in small towns, it decimates their economies, and puts lots of people out of work. It gives people a dead end existence, and leaves no capacity for the local economy to support itself. The small towns then are completely dependent upon large employers, most often multinational corporations such as Walmart and it's most major suppliers.

Some might say, "So, what is that problem with that? It is just capitalism at work." Well, the problem is that it ties these small economies to the downs of the global economy. Due to the nature of multinational corporations, the end production workers and the towns they live in do not benefit from the ups of the global economy, but they are the first to feel the effects of the downs. In the past, if one local economy was badly affected by some economic or environmental event or condition, the effect was limited in its scope. A local economy that was well run and whose participants were wise and careful could almost always ride the ups and downs of larger economic cycles, with the exception of extreme events of nature.

Now, all of our economies are tied to each other to such an extent, that it is almost impossible to run a local economy well enough to be not hammered when the global economy turns bad. It doesn't matter how well the local businesses are run, and how good the decisions made by the local participants are, the bad decisions made by individuals and groups in other locations ultimately lead to the natural consequences of bad decisions and drag the whole economy down, including those of well run localities. Talk about killing incentive for making good business decisions. Take your quick profit now and run. It encourages us all to be unethical and immoral.

Enter Walmart. Well, I guess I should say, Re-enter Walmart. They have this program that is encouraging local production of certain types of produce. Not that produce and food is the core of a local economy, but it has always been a vital component. Now Walmart has learned they can get better goods going to the local economy for things. Not everything mind you, but as much as makes business sense. I realize this is a fragile step in the right direction, and could easily be undone, but encouraging nonetheless.

Ok, here is the thing and a piece of advice to Walmart. Take this approach further. Take a little time to develop the means for a small community to produce a much larger percentage of what they consume. I am not just talking food. This could mean textiles, toys, electronics, tools, personal products. Once you figure out the basic components for local production of each class of goods, don't just push your way into all the towns, co-venture. Take a page from the Leavitt Group of insurance companies. They have tons of insurance agencies, each one operated locally, with policies and support from the parent company, but with a significant, albeit minority, ownership stake by the local operators. Just think Walmart, you could be the primary owners of the majority of production companies in the whole world. The local economies would be much more resilient against outside economic conditions. And, to say the least, your profit would come out smelling like roses, year in and year out. Pretty hard to beat that.

What do I want?

No, this isn't a Christmas list type entry. The title refers to an ongoing deeply contemplative personal experience that I, and hopefully everybody else, constantly undergo. It isn't that I don't have interests, but the question can be better expounded by asking "What is truly the highest priority for me in my life?" or "What is most important to me?"

I have spent several weeks changing my focus in my job search, not because my career goals are different, or that I am different in any specific way, or even that what I what is different. I have just been evaluating whether the approach I have been taking and the kinds of jobs I have been applying for are really what I want to be looking for. I have concluded that perhaps the kinds of jobs I have been looking for would not be most conducive to what I really want most.

So, I have started applying for jobs that are a little less stress oriented. Not that I couldn't do the director type positions. I have done them in the past and in my opinion, done very well at them. But, what I really want is a job that I don't have to carry with me 24/7. I want to come home at night, and not worry about anything at work until I get there the next day. I have quite a fair amount of experience developing data centered applications and web sites. I have found a few jobs looking for someone to do that sort of thing. I had a phone interview with one yesterday, that I really hope I get.

I only have 2 requirements that would keep me at a job and not looking elsewhere. The first is that I get paid well enough that I am not living paycheck to paycheck. That isn't so hard. I don't have an expensive lifestyle. I like simple things. I don't go to movies or expensive restaurants. My idea of a nice evening is going for a walk or playing a game (boardgames usually) with my kids or going to the park. My second requirement is that I am treated fairly and with respect so that I feel truly appreciated. If those are met, what would be the point of looking elsewhere. I would have what I needed from my job, and be able to have time away from the job to do other things that I want to do.

What then would I do with the rest of my time. Well, I want to spend some real quality time with my kids before they get too much older. I want to start taking better care of my health. I want to do more reading for fun, and not so much technical stuff. And of course, being a hopelessly addicted technologist and tinkerer, I would continue to work on new stuff. Websites, programs, inventions, etc. Not that I expect any great big wonderful thing to come from my tinkering, but you never know where the next big thing might come from.

Taxes

I have been working on taxes. Did you know that our tax system is a mess. Ok, well, to be fair, it is way worse than a mess. It is impossible. I have been trying to figure out some obscure tax code machinations that my former accountant did with my corporate books. They don't match what I have in my copy of my books.

I complicated it by not having the software to get into my books with me. My brother and former partner had it. He didn't use it, so I am not sure why he had it, but it is probably just one of those oversights that occurred when we split stuff up in a hurry.

Anyway, I have been doing my taxes. I am late I just found out. That means I am going to be fined. And then, since I am going to be fined, I am going to be charged interest. 5% a month. Wow, I wish I could make 5% a month on anything. Once I have the company taxes done (the company that is no more), then I can do my personal taxes.

Did you know that the Senate Majority Leader says that paying taxes is voluntary. My understanding of voluntary means that I don't have to if I don't want to. My understanding of tax law is that you have to or you go to jail. I guess by the same logic, not killing people is voluntary too. What a crock.

About five or six years ago, I heard of The Fair Tax. I know, you think, taxes are not fair. Some pay more than others, and some benefit more than others, and there is no way to truly level the playing field. However, this idea has a lot going for it. They make a lot of claims that might be too optimistic, but much of it is simple math. I don't think it is a perfect system, and there are quite a few tweaks and modifications I would propose for it to make it more fair and less burdensome to everybody, but compared to our current system, it would be way better.