Making money...

Everyone has to live somewhere. Fewer people have credit. Less people are willing to take risks. Times are tough. Bad news, right?
Not if you own rental property! Even though the US Government has been trying to close the #1 path to wealth, smart people are still buying properties and renting them. Even smarter people are buying them, and having a management company rent them! The number one reason for people to get out of the rental business is dealing with tenants- which is a necessary part of the rental equation.
With lower prices in the housing market, there are beginning to be some bargains that look like decent investments. Of course, you need to remember the 100 to 1 ratio. A house that brings $1000 in rent ought not to cost more than $100,000. It's simple, but will put you in the right arena for profit.

Tom's Shoes: it matters to the shoemakers you put out of business!

This morning's Wall Street Journal has a seminal book review about "Start Something That Matters", the story of Blake Mycoskie and Tom's Shoes. You know, the good folks who when you buy a pair of shoes, give a pair of shoes to someone, somewhere, somehow. This accomplishes two goals- it assuages the shoe buyers' guilt, and destroys the free market industry of countries that need it so desperately.

Worse though, is that this review and book may encourage more of this behavior. The particular behavior I would like to zero in on here is the one that encourages rich people (all of us) to go "do something" that we think "they" (the poor people) need. And we do this usually without ever asking "them" what they want or need. That is a problem! But somehow, these fair haired children either don't understand, or worse, choose willingly to use the poor to achieve their personal satisfaction.
Africa and Haiti are particularly full of foreign people who fly in and impart free things without ever reading the first book about the culture, let alone make the first observation about the country. Free shoes, free water, free food, free health care, free housing, free education, and free advice. A US AID officer once bemoaned to me that he wished all of the NGO groups in Uganda would just go away so that a normal society could exist.
I agree- but it won't stop, for the same reason the March of Dimes did not stop after polio was eradicated. Too many people make too much money and feel too good about their largesse for it to just end.
Too true to be good? It is...but getting people to actually admit it is difficult at best, and usually ends up blowing up in your face at worst.
Here's some advice- quit buying shoes and wear out the ones you have helping people have dignity without abject charity.
And start in your own neighborhood! The ability to buy an airline ticket and get a visa does not make you an ambassador.

the "New Media" and how it changes nothing...

Construction Equipment Trader, one of my favorite free magazines to distract my attention from when my wife drives, had a page dedicated to explaining its demise. How sad! I thought. I will miss seeing all the neat equipment that creative Americans dream up and export all over the world; it can only come to reality in this wild, off the chain world of excess that we call home. Only here do we have the two elements necessary to dream big: freedom and a market that rewards creativity.

But alas, Construction Trader isn't gone. It simply moved online. The page explained that five times as many readers were now accessing the online version, and the cost of distributing the paper magazine had just gotten too high. Real buyers needed online information. The paper version was only going to people like me probably, as a diversion.

Remember when Computer Shopper was a 11 x 14 inch large format magazine, 350 pages long? There was so much to report and sell; and in the 80's, no internet...now, who would dream of looking for a used computer in a magazine? Actually, who even looks for used computers anymore? But alas, that is another topic.

So, when TV came along, radio advertising went away. Right? I believe there are more radio channels today than ever in 1940. Same with newspapers...they have had a pretty good run considering that radio was supposed to end their dominance in the 1930's.

We get our information in the way that appeals to us, and is the most efficient; this is the beauty of the American marketplace. F0r example, in a 1939 Popular Mechanics, there is an article about a machine that would replace the mechanism for delivering the daily newspaper. Can you believe that the news magnates of the old order depended on kids on bikes? Amazing. Oh, the machine? A facsimile machine, with both a sending machine and a receiver that worked over a phone line. Sure took a while, but faxes hit their stride in the 80's...because the Japanese needed a way to send their complicated Kanji letters over the wire, and the Japanese word processors weren't there yet...in the 80's a full half of the installed base of fax machines were in Japan alone! This hunger for information is what drives the technology.

So now I read Construction Trader on my laptop with my broadband anywhere hotspot. And I never have to look up when riding shotgun!

Working to make life simple...

Why the fantastic success of the IPad? Maybe because someone said let's take the basics of what people want to do with technology and sell it for under $500...for example:

• Show off. This means it has to be cool, and new, and an Apple since the technoGods decreed only Apple stuff is cool.
• Do what people do all the time, and forget about doing everything. So, watch TV, check Facebook, and play games...maybe email...oh yea, surf the net. Work? Pffft....
• Forget about interfacing with anything work related. We want this to be cool, right?
• Dump the keyboard. This is NOT for work, remember?

Actually, I applaud this effort, even though through hyperbole I scathingly lob cow patties at the castle. Everything in our lives has gotten way too complicated. Customer service is anything but. People are afraid to do comparison shopping because of all the tricks that used to be just on car lots has spread to all industries. For example, if everyone charges the same for internet, but the difference is in undisclosed fees, how do you make a correct decision? And to save $20 a month, you have to go through the nightmare of the ubiquitous 4 hour installation window, and the hassle of setting your equipment up again. No thanks, right?

Enter the IPad. It's simple, it works 99% of the time, and you can buy it at WalMart. Life is good.