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Showing posts with label How 2 Do It. Show all posts
Showing posts with label How 2 Do It. Show all posts
Friday, April 03, 2009
Everything You Wanted To Know About Twitter
Take Home Quiz: What is the difference between profit and value? Answer in the comments.
Fill Full
Recently, an Ivy League professor studying the world religions traveled the world interviewing enlightened teachers. In Japan, a renowned Buddhist priest greeted the professor as well as all visitors with a tea ceremony. Graciously, the professor sat down as the master placed a cup and saucer on a small stool before the guest and began to pour. The cup soon filled with tea and began to overflow. The tea soon filled the saucer and began to flow onto the stool and then the floor. The professor, who had been patient and respectful, jumped up and shouted “its full, can’t you see it can’t hold anymore?” The Zen master replied “You are like the cup. How can I teach you if you have no place to put it?”
Friday, March 13, 2009
Jon Stewart 4 Oversight Czar!!!
Finally, someone calls these guys on the carpet for the common man!! This is a MUST WATCH!!
Note: There is a problem with the following videos. In the meantime, go to this link.
Note: There is a problem with the following videos. In the meantime, go to this link.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Slow Down, You Go To Fast
If we are to rediscover meta-economics, then it will be found through a reaffermation of the primacy of nonviolence and beauty.
Woody Tasch
Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered
How is this for "radical":
Dante Hesse runs a small organic dairy farm in Ghent, N.Y. Hesse lets his herd of 60 or so cows graze on open pasture. He avoids giving them growth hormones and antibiotics. Hesse says his cows might live a decade or more, and they stay productive longer than the average for more industrial farming.
A couple of days each week, Hesse makes the trip from his Milk Thistle farm to farmers markets in New York City. Even before he finishes setting up his stand, customers start lining up for his milk, at $5 a quart. Hesse says he could sell even more milk — plus butter and cheese — if he could just build a processing plant right in his barn.
For that, he needs to raise about $700,000 — a sum of money that has been hard to come by in the current recession and credit crisis. Hesse has a particularly hard time borrowing money because he has nothing to back up the loan. He rents his barn and his land. He's got no co-signers. Last fall, unable to get a loan through ordinary means, he turned to his customers and asked them for help.
"We feel pretty strongly at this point that there are a lot of people out there who are interested in helping, and the way the economy is now, one argument might be that it's a bad time to be doing something like this," Hesse says. "But I think the inverse is true, that it's actually a good time because people are scared of the stock market, and they know that food is a vital part of survival. And local food is going to become very important in the very near future."
Hesse is offering 6 percent interest for an unsecured loan of $1,000. His business plan taps into a pair of burgeoning movements — the first characterized by an interest in organic, locally grown food; the second by an environmental approach to economics.
That approach is championed by Woody Tasch, a venture capitalist and author of the new book Inquiries Into the Nature of Slow Money. Tasch argues that money is flying around the globe too fast. He rows hard against mainstream economics, which says growth is good and the marketplace knows best. "I've just had it with all of this so-called 'making-a-killing expertise,' which is actually killing the planet," he says. "I think one of the antidotes is daring to move to the other side of our brain, and kind of put down all that economic and fiduciary nonsense and just act like regular people."
Tasch and his Slow Money Alliance take their name and inspiration from the Slow Food movement, which started 20 ago in Italy. Tasch isn't arguing against all growth. Rather, he's saying that some as yet undefined portion of capital should be steered toward smaller, local farms and businesses that are friendly to the environment. His group aims to raise as much as $100 million this year, then let regional funds start investing in businesses they like.
The idea of investing in a farmer like Hesse, who's got no collateral to back up a loan, might seem overly risky to some. But one customer at the market stops to ask Hesse about the deal.
Josh Goldstein of Brooklyn says he and his wife are interested in lending money to Hesse. They've lost faith in the stock market, and are ready to put their faith instead in a business and product they can see — and taste.
"The milk, first of all, it's like no milk you've ever had," Goldstein says. "We've been looking to invest some money in local green companies. We just thought it looked like a good opportunity — somebody local, somebody we know, somebody we can trust."
For now, Hesse is putting the finishing touches on his plan to seek investments from his customers. He's also hoping he might get the backing of an outfit like the Slow Money Alliance. He knows it might take him a while to get where he's going. In this economy, he's almost got no choice but the slow road.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Collective (Un)Consious
In economics, there is a theoretical method to find someone's utility curve, that is the potential imputations or combinations of consumption goods that give someone the same level of satisfaction or, alternatively, the same level of happiness. For now, let's ignore the foolishness that someone may say 4 cokes and 12 bags of Cheetos makes me as happy as I would be if I instead had fourteen cokes and three bags of Cheetos. The "economic model" says that if we observe mix 1 of products and the consumer can't make up his or her mind to exchange if offered a trade of mix 2, the faith is that they offer the same level of utility and the consumer is indifferent.
By offering this consumer a variety of choices, say 3.9 cokes and 12.2 bags of Cheetos, and monitoring the resulting behavior, we can graphically tease out a map showing all the different combinations that the consumer would not be able to say which they liked better such as 0.04 cokes and 31 bags of Cheetos. In theory, truth is revealed by making a series of small (read marginal) changes and see what happens to the choice (assuming the person doesn't die from malnutrition in the meantime).
But this is how we as humans do discover things. It is not quite trial and error, because our brains allow us to jump past many possible iterations because we know that razor blades and babies are not good in any combination (yes, economists would make such a comparison -- even if only in private).
In existentialism, we never really learn the truth. We realize others are judging us and we try to fit their expectations. Our ego, id, self, or whatever is feeling out the constraints placed on us by family, friends, social organizations, community, state, nation, on up. Existentially, we grow up when we fit in and allow the reality of time and space to crystallize us in place. But we feel comfortable there in some fashion because we glow or at least minimize pain.
But is it the truth, or is it just a place of comfort?
I was listening to Terry Gross interview someone on Fresh Air a few months ago and heard someone talking about how truth flows in the rumor mill. You get a bunch of people each with little bits and pieces of knowledge talking back and forth until some type of unified theory comes together. Some would call it detective work. But the funny thing is, although there may still be some holes in the analysis, the general picture is pretty damn good in terms of accuracy as to what actually happened. Emptywheel (aka Marcy Wheeler) at FiredOglake is exceptionally good at this in uncovering many crimes of George W. Bush. And now the documents are beginning to flow, we see that Marcy got it right.
Individually, we may have enough knowledge to be able to find the elephants tail. Collectively, we know what has to be done with or to the elephant. Collectively we may have 643 pieces of a 1000 piece puzzle. But as the HeiligeZeitGeist pulls us together in awareness, we can pull this truth together. Any everyone will be aware and they too will get it -- whatever it is. But together we can work a way forward. And we need to do it in a way where everyone's voice counts. Kind of like a worldwide Quaker meeting conducted over the internet. MarcLord believes that this coming together via the blogosphere and/or facebook is literaly the Body of Christ. Just by saying that term, I used the internet to invoke centuries of theology, millions of peoples' personal experiences, a common metaphor, a cooption toward the future, a lens through which to interpret reality, and a potential call to political action. And hopefully it makes sense that by organizing a movement based upon the call from giddeon's blogspot trumpet, others can say "fuck yea, that makes sense. Count me in." Funny thing is, the body of christ doesn't need a profession of god to take collective action.
Consider the lilies. Or the birds then. How do they take off on a moments notice and act in unison? Instinct? Learned behavior? Trust? I don't think it matters why, rather it matters that they do it. We are getting to the point where we need to take action. Serious action. No, not guns. Democratic action with an informed population that has a reason to care. We are almost there. People are starting to care now that the allotments from the great father in Washington are late in being dispersed. Something about the manufactures of those allotments being crooks or worse. But if the bribes or allotments are not being paid anymore, we don't have to keep out mouths shut about all the injustices in the world. Those natives are getting more restless than we are. And don't we want to be on the right side of history?
Arianna Huffington says you (yes you and everyone) should start a blog. Write what you know. Write what you love. Take back your life and make it your own. It is a first draft of history. It is you defining yourself instead of being existentially defined by others.
I Have A Voice!!!
Imagine that you've got the undivided attention of big business, big leaders and big thinkers. Imagine that they're sat on your sofa listening intently to what's on your mind. What would you ask them?
This year, DAVOS let the great unwashed hordes participate. Well, not as equals in terms of Swiss Fondue and rigidly starched bed linens, but even Osama bin Laden could have posed a question to the worlds richest partyers via YouTube' special World Economic Forum channel. Ordinary people got to petition the financial and political royality and say "WTF are you doing?" They also got to make suggestions. Kind of like the YouTube Debates in the primaries. It is an opportunity to throw the Holy Hand-Grenade of Antioch. Although the project is closed for this year, you do have almost a year to come up with new video questions for next year.
This is actually a very important model for solving the world's, country's, state's, city's, neighborhood's problems. Well, maybe "solve" is a strong word -- but what about "slove"? We need to think differently to get out of this soggy box. And I don't think "solve" will get us where we need to go.
How would you use this technology to change your world? I really want some responses here in the furtherist wilderness.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
A Marxist View From the Bottom
Capitalism Hits the Fan: A Marxian View from UVC-TV 19 on Vimeo.
Tired of the talking heads on TV, try this guy. Rick Wolf is an economics professor at UMass Amherst, where he analyzes economic events through a Marxist perspective. You don't have to change you mind, but you should open it. It doesn't hurt.
Here is a preview:
Most US economists are professors in colleges and universities. Their academic positions enable research and teaching that is supposed to be independent of corporate interests. They could, at least hypothetically, provide the critical insights into economic problems needed for their solution. Economists might help to propose, evaluate, and debate the wide range of possible solutions -- from those that minimally change the status quo to those that entail fundamental social change. However, history shows that most professional economists have been subservient to corporate interests rather than constructive critics. They celebrated capitalism, ignored or dismissed alternative economic systems, and only argued over how best to manage the huge social costs of capitalism's recurring instability. The economists' shameful corporate subservience has been the nation's loss.
The US professional economic establishment -- its members call themselves "mainstream" -- never leads. It always follows. Before the Great Depression, mainstream economists dutifully embraced what they called "neoclassical economics." This economic "science" showed, they said, that what profited business benefited the whole society. In this mainstream perspective, private enterprise and markets worked best for everyone when left free of government regulation or interference. Big business led and publicly promoted this celebration of capitalism. Colleges and universities sought financial contributions from businesses, their owners, and their leaders. They needed enrollments from these people's children (few others could afford the costs of higher education). Academic administrations neither wanted nor supported professors who criticized private business interests or otherwise displeased them (for example, by challenging mainstream economic science).
BTW, this is not an endorsement of his theories, but they are like sex - it only hurts if you do it wrong or are trying.
Monday, February 09, 2009
Micro USA Credit
This following is the complete article from the International Hearald Tribune. I have long been a fan of the Grameen Bank, and now it is coiming to the USA. I wonder if Bank of America can handle the competition? That was not a rhetorical question.
Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh, a Nobel Peace Prize winner for pioneering a micro-lending model for the world's poorest to engage in business, said Thursday his formula can also help recession-racked American families escape poverty.
"This is the right time to come here," Yunus declared as he sought $2 million in seed money to establish North Carolina as another U.S. foothold for his micro-finance institution outside New York.
The year-old U.S. offshoot of the Grameen Bank that the former economics professor founded in Bangladesh three decades ago also is looking to expand into New Jersey, Nebraska, Louisiana and other U.S. states as economic turmoil closes employment doors on more people.
"It was not in our agenda to be in a crisis, but the crisis is here," Yunus said Thursday with several members of North Carolina's banking establishment flanking him. The micro-lending model means "you create your own jobs instead of waiting for other people to hire you."
North Carolina lenders see Grameen America as an economic development organization reaching out to open the way for people with entrepreneurial skills or a business idea but who are too poor even to set up a bank account.
Today in Business with Reuters
Nissan to cut 20,000 jobs amid stormy forecasts
Barclays defends executive bonuses
In Europe, moves to limit bonuses gather steam
Grameen has seen sustained interest in a North Carolina expansion from banking leaders in the home of Bank of America Corp. and Wachovia Corp., recently acquired by San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co. State banking commissioner Joseph Smith has been working since at least April to lure the lending institution that won the Nobel together with Yunus in 2006.
The Grameen Bank model developed by Yunus involves lending very small amounts, mostly to women, as seed money for home businesses. A Grameen staffer meets the borrowers in groups every week, tracks progress and offers advice on managing money and startup obstacles.
The formula also relies on peer pressure instead of collateral to secure the loans. Potential borrowers must form five-member groups that approach Grameen jointly for loans. While each borrower is individually responsible for a loan of up to $2,200, group members cannot borrow again unless all are paid up.
"It's not about redividing the pie, it's about making the pie bigger," said Jim Blain, president of the State Employees' Credit Union, North Carolina's largest. Between the unemployed and the poor, "there are a lot of people sitting on the sidelines right now."
North Carolina's unemployment rate hit 8.7 percent in December — 1.5 percentage points higher than the U.S. jobless rate of 7.2 percent.
Yunus met at The Carolina Inn on the University of North Carolina campus with Blain, Smith, and representatives of the North Carolina Bankers Association and Durham-based Self-Help, a similar community development organization. All said helping Grameen start up could help stimulate the smallest of small businesses.
"I am committed to getting them set up and operating," Smith said. "I want to get them licensed as a small loan company very soon. ... It's going to happen."
Grameen opened its first U.S. affiliate in New York City 13 months ago and loaned more than $1.2 million to 440 women, all lacking assets or credit rating.
About 70 percent of the borrowers are Hispanic, and their loans launched everything from hairstyling to catering and tailoring services and more, said Stephen Vogel, chief executive officer of Grameen America Inc.
Because of strict U.S. banking laws, the New York office doesn't hold the savings deposits borrowers are required to make along with loan repayments. Instead, the money is held by Citibank, which created special, no-cost checking and ATM accounts for Grameen borrowers, Vogel added.
Grameen's model has traditionally targeted women because experience has found them to be more responsible than men and more comfortable with group responsibility. But lending is open to all in the U.S. where anti-discrimination laws are strict.
Yunus has not succeeded everywhere. He was invited to rural Arkansas by then-Gov. Bill Clinton in the mid-1980s. But the effort failed when the Arkansans proved unable to overcome individual preferences to go it alone on lending.
Still, the need and the times make Grameen a worthy experiment, said Blaine. His credit union, which does not lend to businesses, is prepared to provide the costly accounting and administrative tasks and ATM network.
"You've got a proven model that is unfamiliar to the United States. There is very low risk," he said. "It may not work, but what does it cost to try? Not much."
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