Category Archives: Business

What is the rationale for charging the poor more than everyone else?

Business, Economics, News, , , ,

I was dropping off a friend of mine at a car repair place on the other side of town last night when I decided to pick up some McDonald’s chicken mcnuggets on the way home. I’d never stopped at any place in this neighborhood before, but this was one of those ethnically diverse areas where most of the signs were in Spanish, bordering on an African-American-based population area. This was the kind of area where a lot of economically struggling families live, although not so bad a neighborhood as to constitute a fear for anyone visiting the neighborhood. 

I’m a creature of habit. I tend to buy the same thing constantly, so the meal I always get costs me $6.46 at the McDonald’s I normally frequent. This time, however, the charge came to $6.66. For some reason, a few miles from the other McDonald’s, my cost was twenty cents more than what it normally cost me. I paid it, but it left me thinking, why is the charge more here than in the nicer area where I normally get my food? 

It’s not like the people in this area can afford more. Economically, they are less well off than the people who frequent the McDonald’s in my neighborhood. Yet, because they are figuratively in a completely different universe than the other McDonald’s, the pricing is completely different. 

I remember when I lived in San Francisco, and I worked at the Hilton downtown. The people at the Hilton liked to say they were in the “financial district”. In reality, they were in the Tenderloin, one of the lowest of the economic areas in San Francisco. 

Across the street from the hotel, I used to grab a carton of milk every day. It was one of those habit things where I never thought much about it. However, one day, I was a paying more attention than usual, and I noticed that the Arabic clerk always looked at a sheet of tax prices that was centered under a glass sheet on the main counter. My milk cost 99 cents, but the clerk looked on his list and then told me my price for the milk (with tax) was now $1.35. Right then and there, I thought, wait, nowhere in the country is the local sales tax 36 percent. NOWHERE. So, I inquired about this. The clerk said, “tax.” I informed him that 36 percent is outrageous. 

His response wasn’t “Wow, you’re right” and then charged me the correct amount. Instead, he took the milk out of the bag and proceeded to kick me out of his store. When I protested, I actually saw his hand moving towards a spot under the counter, where I noticed there was a revolver. Taking my losses, I left the store. 

What this taught me is that there’s an outright intent to screw people over whenever you can. In the Tenderloin district, I suspect that store owners figure the people are too stupid to realize they’re being cheated, and they’re dimed and quartered (as opposed to being nickle and dimed) endlessly. 

So, what are your thoughts? Is this capitalism at its norm? Is this corruption? Or do people just generally not care because it’s happening to the poor, and they’re supposed to be victims any way?

The Problem with Investing in Imaginary Goods

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Today, Zynga’s stock kind of went into a tailspin downwards. Zynga, in case you’re not aware, is famous for building software that used to consist of games you could play specifically on Facebook. Then they went public, making lots of money and continued to try to make games (sometimes in Facebook and sometimes outside of it). At the time of their IPO, all I could think to myself was “this is a company that doesn’t really make anything that’s profitable.” Their profit comes from trying to get people to pay for virtual goods IN A FREE ONLINE GAME. While pay for play works in some venues, like MMO’s like City of Heroes and Lord of the Rings Online, people didn’t go to Zynga because they were interested in playing a specific game. Zynga, on the other hand, tries to interest people in their site and THEN trying to get them to play some of their games. And then if that works, they try to get them to pay money for the game they’re already getting for free.

Does anyone see a problem here?

Well, their stock is continuing to go down, mainly because their “hits” are very old, and they’ve never really done anything to convince potential customers that they have something just as good. Farmville was their famous property, and even though I played it at the time, I never invested a dime in the game, and after I grew bored with it, I stopped playing it and anything else Zynga had to offer.

Facebook, however, has been interlinked with Zynga since the beginning. Facebook gets a bit of profit from anything that Zynga makes from its transactions.

Which means I should probably talk about Facebook, too. This is another online company that has absolutely no value whatseover. Basically, it’s value is to get people to sign on and then tell other people who are signed on what they’re doing. Facebook offers nothing other than being the park bench where people are sitting.

When Facebook went public, it was already feared that there was no real revenue stream available from the company. All it really did was advertise, and it doesn’t do it very well. In its early days, I paid for an ad to sell one of my books on their site, and the results were horribly bad. I never paid for the service again. Instead, I got much better returns from places like Goodreads.com. Facebook, as people have started to realize, has a customer base that shows up, looks at traffic and then goes away. Some stay online forever, but they NEVER press any of the buttons that take them to the ads. In other words, Facebook has absolutely no revenue stream whatsoever when it comes to advertisements. The only way they could make money is to charge people for using the service, but once they did that, their service would become a graveyard.

This is the problem with companies that sell imaginary goods. Some, like Lord of the Rings Online, which actually offers something tangible (a lot of fun and a strong customer base that has remained with them for years, first as paying customers), Facebook and Zynga offer nothing really tangible. Zynga doesn’t even offer very good games. They’re casual games, which means that they’re meant to be played as you’re doing something else. Think of their games as almost an afterthought. Whereas, Lord of the Rings Online is a game meant to be played with your full attention.

Facebook, as well, offers nothing but a place for people to report their happenings. If you’re not a celebrity, chances are pretty good that not a lot of people (aside from really close friends and maybe family) really care. Even Google Plus, which does appeal mainly to following celebrities, isn’t all that popular, no matter how much Google wishes that weren’t so.

Facebook has a few days until its reckoning emerges. You see, they have to reveal to stockholders just how well they’re doing. I suspect they’re not doing well. With Zynga’s loss reported today, it’s only a matter of time before we hear that Facebook isn’t doing any better. And then their stock is going to go down really fast.

It’s unfortunate, but then we’re dealing with companies that have no actual value, other than perceived value and fantasies of being more than they really are. I like to think that their value is comparable to my ability to date Jessica Alba. Sure, it’s very possible it might happen, but she’s really an imaginary good (a really, really GOOD good), but the reality of my dating her is pretty dismal. That’s how I see Facebook and Zynga. Slowly, I’m noticing more and more people are starting to feel the same way.

Virgin Mobile’s Iphone Offering Could be a Game Changer

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Virgin Mobile announced that it is now going to selling an Iphone with a monthly plan that costs $30. Of course, the buy-in price is $549 for the 8GB Iphone. If you bought a Iphone from AT&T or Verizon, it would cost you only about $99-$199 but you’d have to opt in for a 2 year activation contract. With this contract from Virgin, you only have to stay as long as you want to stay because you already gave them the cost of the Iphone upfront.

The plan gives you unlimited data and text plus 300 minutes of calls for only $30. For someone like me who rarely makes a phone call, this is probably the phone for me. My Iphone package from AT&T has historically been a major rip-off, and I’ve always known that, but I wanted the convenience of that really good phone, so I stuck with it.

The really only down side to this is that Virgin Mobile is on the Sprint network, and if you’re in a location like Grand Rapids, their service is atrociously bad. I had Sprint for two months at one point, thinking I was moving up to something new, and man I was never so pissed at a phone network before. I had dropped calls constantly, and when you have very few phone calls as it is, that’s just wrong. When I finally gave up the phone, they tried to turn the blame on me and charge me some outrageous deactivation fee, which I argued with them on the phone until they dropped half of the price. I mentioned at the end of that conversation that they have become very successful at burning bridges with former customers. They didn’t seem to care.

The other downside to this plan is that you don’t that Virgin Mobile isn’t going to pull the rug from under you at any time. While the contract is month to month, that works both ways. They may pull an AT&T and then decide you no longer get unlimited data because they are the owners of the service and you can either accept their new terms, or you can pay a disconnect fee for being a bad customer. In this case, there won’t be a disconnect fee, but because you paid up front, they might just say the game is over and leave. And you’ll be holding a nice little piece of metal that doesn’t do anything any longer. That would really suck.

But on the other hand, I was with Virgin Mobile years ago when I was living in San Francisco and didn’t want to pay a monthly fee for a cell phone. It was a month to month thing, and it really worked well for me. So, they’ve proven they can actually do it. Back then, I had what was called the “Party Animal” phone, which I wrote about long ago, convinced that Virgin Mobile would discover I was not, in fact, a party animal and take away my phone. But they never caught onto me, so I was able to use it until the Iphone came along. And we all the know the rest of that story.

When did softdrink bottlers begin smuggling out CIA messages to its agents?

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This afternoon, I opened up a nice, cool, refreshing bottle of diet Dr Pepper and was about to drink it down when I noticed that there were printed alphanumeric characters under the cap. The actual characters were YR6P4E 7HH4E6. I know that in the olden days, they used to have contests and you would try to get the lucky bottle cap, but this is something different.

Something sinister.

As I ran the alphanumeric characters through my Bat decoder ring, I suspected there was something seriously wrong here. These were in fact code symbols that are probably used by the CIA to communicate with secret agents working in super secret locations. I figure the only way they know how to keep in contact is by transmitting these numbers through diet Dr Pepper bottles.

So, this got me thinking that perhaps I accidentally bought a soda that was originally intended for a super secret spy who is now desperate to find out super secret information that can only be decoded from this particular bottle of soda. So, if anyone comes across a wayward super secret CIA spy hanging out at the local Quickie Mart on Main Street (right next door to the strip joint where that black-haired girl works…you know the one that called the cops on me and went all psycho with the restraining order?), then please let that secret agent know that the instructions YR6P4E 7HH4E6 have been successfully relayed to him as intended.

And thank him for keeping America safe. And drinking diet Dr Pepper as well.

Author’s Guild gains class action status vs. Google but do they really represent all authors?

Books, Business, Social Networking, Technology, Writing, , , , , ,

There’s an interesting case that’s making headlines right now about how Google was attempting to push the Author’s Guild out of the suit to sue Google for its Google Books initiative (where they would be the end all source for practically everyone’s book material with their all-inclusive Google Library). Yesterday, a judge determined that Google can’t push the Author’s Guild out of the picture. On the surface, this isn’t all that big a deal, but there are a couple of things that are probably important to point out.

First off, most of the critics have already addressed the fact that not every author really wants to be part of this lawsuit, as quite a few independent authors have zero problem with what Google is doing. However, unless they personally choose to opt out of the action, the Author’s Guild is going to go forward pretending it has a lot more power and influence than in really does. And most people tend to ignore these sorts of things, so they’re now going to be “included” in this action even if they’re not really interested in what’s happening. This is one of those things that always bothers me with class action lawsuits because in cases like those against Apple and their antenna for the 4G debacle, a lot of us who owned Apple iPhone 4s didn’t really care that much for taking action against Apple. We were kind of happy with our products. Yet, a class action lawsuit moves forward as if it is representing a lot of people who may never actually be a part of the settlement. There’s a lot of presumptuousness that takes place with class action lawsuits, but that’s a completely different story.

A more important issue to me is the one that isn’t getting any attention yet, and that’s the fact that the Author’s Guild, a writer’s advocacy group, is an extremely exclusive club that lets very few actual authors into its ranks. According to their guidelines for eligibility, if you want to be a member of the Author’s Guild, don’t even think about it unless you have been published by an established American publisher, and I mean VERY established. Using a subsidy publisher, Amazon Kindle direct services and such, or anything along those lines, and you’re guaranteed to be turned down by the Author’s Guild that keeps a tight hold on its allowance for membership. While their elitism has dwindled a bit over the last year (Matt Paust, who regularly publishes to Open Salon, updated us with an article on April 27, 2012, in which he pointed out that their new requirements indicate that you can gain membership if you’ve received at least $500 from publishing in the last year, although their web site is still heavily leaning towards pointing out its old archaic standards of exclusivity).

As a writer myself, I’ve been on the fence about the whole Google books thing. I sell books through Amazon Kindle as well as Barnes & Noble’s Nook, so I haven’t been all that focused on Google, as most things Google does tends to be overly complicated and often unusable (like their advertising service that I finally gave up trying to figure out one day after I ended up getting charged $5.00 to make a listing that could never be approved and then left me unable to even remove the ad that wouldn’t ever run). So, I’ll be interested to see what happens with this, as I’m sure a lot of others will as well.

Why Don’t People Trust Facebook?

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There’s an article today on MSNBC, indicating that according to a poll, people generally don’t trust Facebook. The reasons the article comes up with are interesting, but it left me wondering if there’s not something a bit simpler going on in the minds of people who are focusing on the social networking site. Let me put it into my theory:

1. People don’t trust a company that continues to chip away at something it claims it’s not trying to do, and by that, I’m referring to compromising privacy. Since day one, Facebook has been trying to gain more and more information about people and then use that information for its own personal profit. When called on it, they back down, a bit, and then turn around and try another attempt at circumventing their own rules, while pretending that’s not what they’re doing. It’s like a romantic partner who claims never to cheat, and you keep finding him/her with someone from the opposite sex, and once confronted, he/she claims it will never happen again. And then next week, it does. That’s the main problem with trusting Facebook. It’s almost as if they feel they’re too big to be held responsible for their actions. And when confronted, they really don’t care.

2. People don’t trust a company created by young people who galavant around as rich, privileged asses. Since Zuckerberg became the new billionaire on the block, people generally don’t like him. The corporate world doesn’t like him because he shows up at fancy meetings in a hoodie. The common people don’t like him because he’s that geek kid that screwed you over in secret and then tried to pretend it was someone else. Girls don’t like him because he’s a womanizing prick who wouldn’t ever get a girl if he didn’t also happen to be a billionaire. Face it. Every social situation that appears around him displays him as an ass. Sure, he could be the greatest, nicest guy around, but the movie about him makes him look like a backstabbing smart kid who even screwed over his own best friend for money. It’s hard to trust someone like that, even if the movie was completely false and it turns out he’s nicer than Mother Teresa.

3. Facebook doesn’t actually do anything to generate an actual profit. You see, that’s the thing that’s been bothering me since day one. It’s a social networking site where THE MEMBERS are the ones actually doing all of the socializing. Facebook is like the road you drive on to get somewhere. It isn’t cool. It doesn’t make your trip more enjoyable. It’s just there to get you from one place to the next. Yet, it’s like the road then sending you a message indicating that it’s now going to take all of your vital information and sell it to all of your friends (and then charge you for it) because you decided to actually drive on the road to get to work once. The analogy is a bit strained, but I’m sure you get the idea.

I have a few friends of mine who gave up Facebook when it first started to become big. They haven’t looked back since. Sure, it’s harder to keep in touch with them, but I don’t get the impression that they’re hurting for their decision. They didn’t trust Facebook since day one, and as a result they gave it up. To be honest, I may end up doing the same thing myself because it hasn’t proved to be all that useful to me over the long haul. My writing business hasn’t improved, and when I go onto Facebook, all I see is the same kind of messages I used to see before, except now it seems like Facebook has changed its algorithms again so that not everything is showing up as it should. And recently they announced that they want to charge people in order to make their updates appear. To me, that’s bordering on final straw territory. So, I may disappear soon, but not because of anger or anything, but because like the majority of the people in that poll: I don’t trust Facebook.

But worse, rather than just not trust Facebook, I’m starting to realize I may not even want Facebook. It doesn’t really serve much of a purpose for me if it wants to monetize me rather than monetize stuff I do and give me a cut of the profits. I work for a company that monetizes me as part of its agreement to pay me a salary. Facebook doesn’t do that. It expects the activity for free and then wants to profit even more off of it.

Which brings me to the soon to come public release of Facebook on Nasdaq. The owners of Facebook are trying to push that phantom value even higher and profit even more. But secretly, I suspect that there’s really no value in a paper tiger that doesn’t actually do anything other than rely on its constituents to fill in the active feeds. Without the people, Facebook is just another web site, like Myspace and someone useless like a Netscape browser. Talk about bubbles. This seems like the most ridiculous helium bubble we’ve ever manufactured, and when it bursts, I hate to be covered with the Myspace residue that is going to explode over everyone.

Yahoo CEOs Lying Proves Yet Again That Rules Only Apply to Those of Us Without Power

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So, it turns out that the CEO of Yahoo made up information about his college credentials, claiming to have a degree in computer science rather than in something totally unrelated to computer science. In most cases, that wouldn’t be a big deal, but when you’re applying to be the CEO of a large computer organization, that might be somewhat important.  I know that whenever I submit an application for a job that needs a BA in communication and I have a MA in communication, I get turned down because I don’t meet their qualifications. No, I’m not kidding about this. It happens ALL OF THE TIME to me. So I could understand why Daniel Loeb, who runs the Third Point hedge fund (which has a stake in Yahoo’s ownership)  might be a bit miffed at CEO Scott Thompson.

The funny thing is: If this was me, I’d have been fired the second someone hinted that I made up my credentials. Someone from HR would have shown up with an empty box, had security have me clean out my cubicle, and I’d be lucky if the bus driver gave me a ride back to the parking lot where my car is parked. But does this happen to CEO Scott Thompson? No, instead he apologized to investors for misleading them, and Yahoo has gone suddenly silent about any possibility of him leaving the organization. So, as of today, there’s been no move to remove him from his position. He’s still the CEO, calling all the shots.

What kind of message does this send to the rest of the population? If you’re not the CEO, fuck you. Yeah, that’s the message. Sorry for the language. I just couldn’t find an easier way to say that if you’re not the CEO, you don’t amount to anything and you get absolutely no respect whatsoever.

None. Zip. Nada.

So, tomorrow, I think I’m going to apply to Yahoo to be their next CEO. I figure I’ll use my seven separate degrees in computer science to get in the door. After all, I graduated from Harvard, West Point, Western Michigan, MIT, Dartmouth, CalTech, University of the Pacific, Stanford and some other elite university I still haven’t figured out how to spell yet. Believe it or not, a couple of those are actually true, but because honesty doesn’t mean crap any more, I’m not revealing which ones.

Talking About Student Loans Is Pandering; Doing Something About Student Loans Is Progress

Business, Economics, Education, Politics, , , , , ,

The latest appeal to the votes of young people involves the student loan crisis. President Obama has started to “talk” about student loans to show that he’s paying attention to young people issues. Mitt Romney is talking about student loans to show that he’s not overlooking the issue either. Students (or former students with debt) are thinking, hey, they’re finally paying attention to an issue that’s near and dear to me.

Fact: They’re not. In fact, what both the president and his opponent are doing is called pandering. Pandering is when someone talks about an issue that is important to people, but in reality, they’re not actually going to do anything substantial about it. They might, if forced into a corner, make some minor stride, but when pandering, the point is to show that you care without actually really caring.

Obama mentioned yesterday that he just recently paid off his student loans. So young people should understand that he “feels” your pain. No, he doesn’t. He’s a one percenter who is filthy rich and will never have to worry about paying off a loan again in his lifetime. He mentioned he paid off his loans 8 years ago. 8 years ago, he was in the Senate, which meant he was in a position that allowed him almost unlimited access to the abilty to paying off his debt. THAT is how he paid off his student loans. Not through some great government assistance that came to his rescue. Unless you consider that government assistance to be a position in the Senate.

And Romney talking about student loans is just a filthy rich billionaire who doesn’t give a flying crap about people in debt. He made his money off of other people, and when people do that, they don’t care about the struggles of others, especially when your company that made you rich makes a mint off of people who are struggling anyway.

What’s of more concern here is the fact that so many of us are overwhelmed with student loan debt that we may never be able to pay off in our lifetimes. Generally, the response of the rest of society (usually from people who are well off and have never had to really suffer under any real debt) is that it’s all our own fault for going into debt, that we’re a bunch of lazy young people who need to go get a job, or some other innane banter that unravels once you actually start thinking about it.

Neither President Obama nor Citizen Romney have any intentions of doing anything to upset the apple cart of student loan debt that so many banks are profiting off these days. Government looks after the wealthy and the banks, not students or common citizens. Instead, government panders to the common people, throws them table scraps and then pretends they really care.

Expect more of this kind of drivel leading up to the Election of 2012. Neither Congress nor the President is going to enact anything that really helps students. Keeping a loan rate at a lower interest rate ISN’T assisting anyone in any great way as the debt still exists, the balance continues to increase, and nothing actually got any better. It’s just more of the same, kind of like “keeping Bush’s tax cuts” is somehow supposed to “create jobs” by doing exactly what we’ve been doing before when somehow that wasn’t leading to the creation of jobs in the past, but is somehow going to lead to a surplus of jobs that logical economics can’t seem to figure out how to make happen.

What would solve the student loan problem? Mass forgiveness of debt, kind of like people have been advocating for forclosures, which are forgiven through bankruptcy. The problem with student loan debt is that bankruptcy does NOTHING to assist someone. If you fall under, you fall under for life, and you’ll never get back out under it because the lobbyist groups that put our government people in power were on the side of banks that wanted to screw over students with student loan debt. Think about this for a moment. You can gamble away every cent you might ever borrow from a bank and be forgiven, but if one dime of that was in student loan debt, you’re screwed. As long as that one issue remains, no politician is ever going to help out the little guy. Why not? Because they honestly don’t care.

If they tell you they do care, they’re pandering. Remember that because no one else is going to tell you that. Instead, the media will tell us what a great job both sides are doing at “caring about” the problem by doing absolutely nothing but painting over the broken foundation.

If You Own a Mac, Expect to be Spammed by Companies Who Claim to Fix Viruses

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I’ve just started to receive “virus protection” emails from less than legitimate companies that never could sell their business to PC users in the past. I guess they figure that Mac people are stupid because they’ve never had to use virus protection in the past. So, they’re spamming the crap out of us, convinced that we’re all morons who have never seen the inside of a computer before.

I kind of knew this was going to happen, but I really wish companies like this wouldn’t prey on people all of the time. Yes, I own a Mac. But I’m also a pc technician who doesn’t need a SINGLE FREAKING BIT OF ASSISTANCE FROM STUPID COMPANIES THAT CAN’T SELL THEIR PRODUCTS TO PC PEOPLE SO THEY THINK THEY’VE FOUND A NEW MARKET.

Here’s the moral of the story: Mac people have had it good because virus makers made their crap for PCs BECAUSE more people were using PCs than Macs. Now, the number of people using Macs has increased (not because they’re better than PCs but) because there are more people using computers today than there were 20 years ago. That’s really the only difference.

What this means is that people who make Macs will have to be a little more diligent in solutions. If not, people will stop buying Macs. It’s simple as that. Software solutions in the name of stupid companies that made crappy products for PCs aren’t going to somehow make a mint on “stupid” Mac users. They’re going to lose money in that market, too.

Just saying.