Do people still read blogs?

I don't really want to do do the math to see how much I've spent on this website over the years that I've had it up and not really done anything with it. When I first registered the domain I had ideas on what I wanted to do with it but never really had the time or motivation to really finish any of the websites I started or bought the domains for over the years. I've been tempted more than a few times to just let this go, too. Delete the blogs and let at least the .net domain go. When I started writing on the internet a long time ago, blogs were interesting to me but I never fully committed to doing it and they've LONG since lost popularity to numerious other social media platforms that had their "15 minutes" and then ultimately fell out of favor. I never really got into most of the social media sites post MySpace and livejournal. I don't have Twitter/X, TikTok, etc and don't care to. I've started typing posts numerous times here since the last time I've actually posted something but I get sidetracked and when I come back to it I realize that it doesn't matter, nobody is going to read it and once I've typed part of it out I stopped caring about it. So, I delete the partial post and forget about this blog for months, years... and then do it again.

I have themes that I keep coming back to. They're the tags that are on the posts here. I get in cyclic moods where I want to sell and donate all my stuff and just go somewhere else. I want to live in a tiny house in the woods. I want to get in better shape and ride my bike more. I want to read more. Do more artistic things. Spend more time with my family and friends. Go see some live bands. Get another project car and spend time working on it. One thing that's rarely on my list is post on my blog, build a new website or app or do anything with technology.

I get wrapped up in the day-to-day. Work, chores, errands and the little time I feel like I have I'm vegged out in front of the TV with some dumb YouTube video playing. Then I cycle again, start to type another post about how I'm not motivated to do anything, never finish it and then delete it.

I'm actually going to click the publish button on this one.

Writing online when nobody is reading

On all of the various websites I have had (starting with free Geocities and Angelfire hosted sites in the late 1990's/early 2000's and continuing through this site) I have done very little promotion of my internet presence. I have told a few friends and family members about some specific things over the years, but almost all of the things I've written or put online (including this site) were always just meant to be a creative and technical outlet for myself.

Before the widespread use of the internet to post every minute of every day from your smartphone, I (probably like many others around my age) had notebooks of doodles and stuff I wrote that nobody had ever seen. I had physical photographs of myself with people I'd met and places I'd been. It was amazing to be able to put some of the stuff out somewhere (somewhat anonymously) to share with people that I didn't know in real life and didn't feel like were judging me. When I put things up back then I always assumed that nobody was looking at it (and nobody really cared) but still posted somewhat cautiously because anyone could be looking at it.

There was a brief time in the early 2000's where I was a member of an online community that had journals. Through that site I met a ton of really cool people. People that I didn't know IRL, before I got to know them online. People would come around to your journal on the site and ask for updates and share stories and recommendations for things (movies, music, what to do after a breakup, how to cope with a shitty job). They'd come around just to say they missed you and ask how life was. I'd regularly make posts with boring little life updates. When I had nothing to write about I'd ask people to share random things with me and people really did. I'd spend hours reading what my friends has posted and commenting back to them individually. Towards the end of that time period I was busy with work and real life relationships (spending less time online) and short on cash (paying back student loans) and I stopped paying to be a member and very quickly lost touch with everyone there. For a short time after leaving, I tried to keep in touch with people by email and later I tried to keep that online community feeling going briefly with free options like LiveJournal, Friendster and MySpace (remember them?) but they never really went anywhere and I struggled with posting anything regularly enough to keep people interested in coming back on those other platforms.

During the early part of those years, though, I remember chatting in various chat rooms and ICQ (and later, AIM) with people from all around the US and Canada, all hours of the day and night. People I met online who were interested in stuff I'd written or profiles I had on websites that just randomly reached out for whatever reason and we started talking. It felt less weird back then to just randomly say "Hello. I really like your [picture]/[poem]/[story]/[profile]/[whatever]." or "I also like [author]/[band]." and then end up talking online sharing stories, pictures, trials and tribulations, relationship and family drama. Pretty much anything you'd end up talking to a good friend about.

People were a little worried about online stalkers and weirdos, but many of the platforms today are tied a little too closely to the real world to feel safe about posting a lot of things or just randomly commenting to strangers. (Not even going to get on the topic of trolls.) Back then, if you wanted to avoid people you just made a different ICQ/AIM name and shared it with a smaller group. I didn't post my phone number, address, where I went to school, hometown, who my real life friends and family were, what I ate for breakfast and where I ate it... and that was the norm. I picked funny city names to live in for profiles like Eek, AK or Boring, OR (real places) but told online friends where (roughly geographically) and eventually real city/state when I had talked to them for a little while. A few even knew my full name and address (as we mailed physical gifts, mix CDs and stuff to each other) but I think what made it fun for all of us was the ability to connect with people easily based on genuine interests instead of primarily based on physical location.

I bring my personal internet history up, because lately I've been thinking about how the internet has changed over my two decades of using (or not using) evolving technologies and platforms. I'm sure a lot of it is just me growing up and out of my teen (and twenties) angst and drama. It's been quite some time since I've ranted about a bad breakup or raved about traveling hours to see my favorite band(s). It's been even longer since I posted an extremely cryptic one line post and had multiple people I've never met in real life who knew instantly what I was talking about (and laughing with me or being supportive, whatever was appropriate). I rarely write about politics or religion due to the fear of offending someone I have to sit near at work on a daily basis. The remainder for me is the fact that online is much more like (and intertwined with) real life now. If I wouldn't talk about it with someone I don't know that well at work, I don't post it on Facebook. I don't like liking things because they're just using the information I give them to sell advertisements. The different groups of people that are friends on these platforms don't overlap on many/most interests and I don't care enough (or have the time) to break them into groups to post to different groups, anyway.

Most of my online friends now are people I actually knew IRL before connecting with them online. Facebook (and Instagram) are shared with family, friends, coworkers, classmates and the occasional person you didn't really know all that well in college/high school/middle school and even probably even some parents of your friends and acquaintances.

There's obviously nothing wrong with any of this, but these days my feeds are primarily posts about real life friend's families and pictures of their children, lots of doom and gloom about politics, and so many pictures of food. Some of it is interesting, some of it is infuriating and some of it is just shares to scroll past, but it just doesn't feel like it used to. It feels like a curated glance into the good parts of someone else's life and things that they want you to be [happy]/[sad]/[angry] at with them. It's nice to have a convenient way to keep up with people's lives but I feel like there's little to no actual interaction short of clicking the thumbs-up (or now long press for the heart, etc...) and typing a quick "Congratulations." post on major life events.

I feel more disconnected even though I know more about what's going on in friend's lives now compared to when I actually saw a lot of them every day in school, work, etc.

Corporate profit before all else.

Certainly there will come a time when the "corporate profit before all else" mentality has to come to an end. The questions are: When and how are we going to get there?

As a younger, more idealistic version of myself, I used to think that I had a strong dislike for "corporate America" but didn't completely know what that meant. Now that I'm a little bit older, I realize that I still don't know what it means.

I remember standing in a corporate bookstore flipping through a copy of Adbusters magazine, but (of course) not buying it. (Aside: How can you justify buying something with the whole profit model based off of convincing you not to buy something else? Wait, isn't that how a large portion of our consumer culture works? "You'll certainly be happier if you buy this brand of dishwashing liquid instead of that cheap ass one that's sure to leave your dishes dirty and make you the laughing stock of the whole neighborhood!!!") I'm sure I stood there for a few minutes in my [brand name] sneakers also flipping through a stack of magazines about mountain bikes, cars, running and whatever else I was interested in at the time thinking about "culture jamming" and the destruction that corporations were causing the world.

I remember eventually coming to the conclusion that it's hard to walk the line between feeling like a socially conscious, responsible person and a complete hypocrite... and the days I feel like I'm more on the former side, it's just complete and total ignorance.

The fact is that it's close to impossible to opt out of the "system" and still survive. Even if you pick an area of focus and do something that you think is a better, more responsible choice like buying "organic" foods at the supermarket from smaller companies, chances are good those brands are now owned by giant corporate conglomerates that have snatched them up for the brand name and the increased profit that comes with them.

In this example, larger companies snatch up smaller companies with good ideas / market share / turf that they desire and then slowly kill them off internally, fold them into their massive corporate structure and then "downsize" or just grab the brand and/or patents and sit on them. There are hundreds of things that are done purely in the name of profit that are much more questionable or unethical than buying up your competition, but I don't want to turn this into a massive list / rant.

Now usually when people become outraged by something they clamor for "increased regulations" but that usually just makes things worse. Tying shit up in bureaucracy for years and trusting someone that somewhere up to half of the population didn't vote for based on the side they label themselves as or even just how familiar their name is. Then these "representatives" hopefully ignore their convictions, biases and contributors and do the right thing for the country and the majority of the people. Yeah. That sounds like *exactly* what happens. (/sarcasm.)

There have been some headlines in the past few years about "corporate personhood" here in the United States (in light of a recent Supreme Court decision regarding Hobby Lobby, contraception coverage by insurance and religious convictions) and how it's probably time that it's ended. Many of the comments about these type of articles tend to lead to the conclusion that if a corporation was actually a person it would be a heavy-handed, greedy, money-driven psychopath with no empathy, sympathy or conscience.

That's the whole game, though. If (corporate) profit drives all available choices, and every one of those choices is a bad choice for someone or something else, why not just pick the best choice for you and get on with your day? Why care at all?

Acknowledging this isn't me giving up. This is me realizing that just saying you don't like something isn't going to change it. It's time to break free of conspicuous consumption and unchecked corporate profit and power.

We need to find better ways of defining what it is that makes us happy and better ways to get there if we want to have any sort of a future.

• We need to figure out how to destroy the notion of corporate personhood.
• We need to take away incentives to destroy everything (the environment, people's rights and freedoms, etc.) in the ruthless pursuit of profit.
• We need to tweak the legal system to end frivolous lawsuits.
• We need to stop funding government organizations that don't have the best interests of the people they serve as their only reasons for existence.

Most of all, though, it starts with making better choices as individuals. Some things that will help:

• Stop coveting other people's stuff.
• Pick some concerns that you're passionate about to focus on (environment, local business, etc.) and try to work them into all purchasing decisions.
• Take a few extra minutes to consider whether you really need something when making purchasing decisions.
• Try to buy secondhand goods, when possible.
• Donate or sell things that you've accumulated that someone might make better use of.
• Look for more durable, locally made products as an alternative to the mass-produced junk at the local big-box store.
• Services aren't exempt, either. Find a local Credit Union to do your banking. Skip chain restaurants, haircuts, stores...

The more we can shift power (money) back into our local economies and businesses, the more quickly change will come.

Rebirth

The idea of a new year being a chance for resolutions or a new start hasn't been something that I've found myself believing in. However, this past year, I've been feeling more and more like it's time to start doing things a little differently.

I don't want to say that I've been "in a rut" but it definitely feels like it's time to shake things up and see how they settle out.

One of the things I've been thinking about for awhile is a rebirth of this blog. When I registered the domain name and started posting, I had some ideas as to what I wanted it to end up being about but, as with most of the things I start on the internet, I always seem to end up holding back because I know that people in my "real life" (family, friends, employers and such) have seen or may possibly end up finding things I've put up. I still struggle with the issue of keeping my private ideas private and separate from my professional life and I'm sure that I'll always have that struggle. So, I'll take this opportunity to issue a disclaimer that anything here is solely my own opinion. However, there have been things that I've been thinking and would love to put them somewhere. Why not here?

So, as a new start to this blog, here is a list of topics I was planning on working on in my personal life, as well as writing about on my recently retired "motivation" blog:

• eating more healthy / in-season / local food
• cooking at home more
• eating less prepared / fast food
• incorporating more enjoyable physical activity into my life
• finding ways to reduce stress
• worrying less
• meeting new people
• spending more time with family and friends
• keeping in touch with non-local friends
• simplifying and decluttering
• learning new things
• attempting to work on more creative / artistic things
• sharing thoughts and ideas
• starting new hobbies and revisiting old ones
• reading more books
• spending less time in front of TV
• spending less time aimlessly browsing on the internet

The plan, as it stands right now, is to roll the (modified) ideas of that blog into this one and actually share things that I want to share. I'll probably still hold back a little bit, but hopefully be a little more open that I have been in the past.

What is suburbicide?

This really should have been an introductory post written years ago when I started this blog but the truth is that I really didn't know what this blog would evolve into and, honestly, I still don't. Every now and then I'll get a little bit of inspiration and write a few posts and then forget about it for varying lengths of time...

The story begins simply. Anyone who's tried to come up with a .com domain name in the last 10+ years knows that it's a frustrating effort to come up with something that can be easily remembered but isn't already taken and being used or held for resale way more than it's worth.

One day while thinking up possible domain names the word "suburbicide" came to mind. It seemed simple enough. Somewhat easy to remember. Not (too) bad to spell and it was available! My thoughts on the "meaning" of the word suburbicide are already written on my about page so I won't rehash them again here.

These days, I'm finding myself more and more interested in the idea of trying to break down old ideas and find better, more responsible ways of doing things. I'm tired of hearing people blame problems on others while never taking responsibility as their role as a cog in the machine. I'm not excluding myself, I'm definitely guilty of this.

Waaaaaay, back in March 2009 I read a feature that I found interesting on TIME called "10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now" and in particular a portion called "Recycling the Suburbs".

I had already owned this domain at the time and had been working on trying to tie ideas like this into my blog, so I filed this article away for a day that I felt like writing a post about "suburbicide" and why the idea stuck in my head.

I live in an area that is a perfect example of suburban sprawl. there are three "cities" within 30 minutes of each other and suburbs in between and all around. At the place that I work in one of the three cities, most have a commute from suburbs of one of the other cities.

What would bring people back to the cities? Is that what we want? If we did go back to cities what would happen to all of the unwanted things in the suburbs? Are we just going to continue to move and expand leaving a trail of unwanted buildings and decay in our wake?

Thoughts About a Shrinking World

I have just finished reading The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman and SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good by Rosabeth Moss Kantner and noticed some trends that I felt like writing about.

The biggest point that I took from The World is Flat 3.0 is that the overall scale of the world is seemingly shrinking mostly due to the major influences that technology has played in linking different parts of the world together. The bigger the improvements and the greater the advances we make, particularly in the areas of communications, work flow planning, software, information storage and retrieval processes the more the world will seem to shrink.

Friedman calls the shrinking "flattening" which seems to be his way of saying that the proverbial "playing field" is being leveled. Areas of the world that don't have great amounts of natural resources to sell to the rest of the world (particularly oil) are using this technology to start other industries that can leverage their workforce into a competitive force to enable them to become a part of the global supply chain of goods and services.

This shrinking or "flattening" of the world can be used for good or bad. Most technologies are the same way. You can use a delivery van to make deliveries or you can back it through the window of a bank and rob it. You can use the internet to do research for a book report or you can create a "hate site". This is a problem with human nature and not with technology.

Friedman mentioned that terror, war and protectionism are reasons that might be used to put the walls back up and "unflatten" the world but he seems to feel that in most cases everyone involved benefits from a flat world. The benefits aren't limited to improved standard of living, stronger economies and better educational opportunities for countries that are taking on new responsibilities. There are also the benefits of cost reductions, redundant around the clock supply chains and new, large, eager sources of the exact level of labor required for a task for the companies doing the outsourcing.

SuperCorp pointed out many "vanguard" companies that are using their size and global influence to do good things in the world and that as we progress this will become more necessary and almost expected of them.

I can't say that I completely disagree with a lot of the points raised in either book, most of it kind of seems like "common sense" but I was left with a lot of questions about religion, politics and war, "haves versus have nots" and the responsibility of business in the world.

Is outsourcing ultimately good, bad or a shade of gray? Does outsourcing for cost savings really free up money to reinvest in new jobs or does it just go to the bottom line?

Investors always want to see a company that is making more profit than the previous year. At what point does this "growth" become unsustainable?

Are large corporations too powerful? Are they using this power responsibly?

Does human nature ruin everything?

Want - Energy Star Certified Gasoline-Powered Alarm Clock

On Inhabitat today there was a story that was reported on NY Times [paywalled link] about the US Government Accountability Office looking into the Energy Star certification process and how easy it was to get an Energy Star label. They created a few fictitious products including a gasoline-powered alarm clock and put them through the system and received Energy Star certification.

The articles made a few good points, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's all well and good but now I want a gasoline-powered alarm clock. Make mine a supercharged LS9 from a Corvette C6 ZR1. I'd wake up to that!

On a serious note, though, it's kind of good that we have government organizations to keep an eye on stuff like this. I mean, Energy Star certification, that's super important! Wow... What's wrong with me? I just can't be serious today.

[02/13/2024: Removed broken inhabitat story link. Noted that NY Times link is now paywalled.]

FairTax, anyone?

I just finished reading The Fair Tax Book: Saying Goodbye to the Income Tax and the IRS by Neal Boortz and John Linder. My brother actually lent it to me months ago and I finally got around to reading it this morning.

At the time he lent me the book, we were in a heated discussion as to whether the Federal government or the State governments needed more (or less) power compared to each other and which should have more responsibility. Honestly, I can't remember how the discussion even started. I believe we were talking about Nationalized health care or something to that effect and we kind of trailed off...

Back to the book, though. I chewed through it pretty quickly. I did find that there was some repetition in the writing which kind of made it a little bit annoying to read in spots, but I understood the need to drive certain concepts home by repeating them.

The main purpose of the book was to explain the FairTax plan of taxation compared to the current web of taxes we're currently paying here in America. FairTax is a consumption tax on all goods and services in place of every other Federal tax that we currently pay. This would mean no more income tax or payroll deductions for Medicare/Medicaid or Social Security. Instead you pay tax when you purchase something new in a retail environment or you are buying a service.

The plan was created to provide the same level of revenue to the government but in a much more simple (but harder to evade) system.

A few of the benefits of this system are:

• the ability to take home your whole paycheck
• the end of the IRS and complicated tax code
• everyone who buys a good or service in America pays into the system (including tourists and people who, through usage of the current tax code, have managed to avoid paying taxes but still benefit from living in or visiting America)
• a "prebate" offsets the amount every individual would be taxed up to the poverty level of consumption (doesn't hurt the poor)
• should (if all of the theories pan out) help lower costs of products and services by eliminating all of the "hidden taxes" that are passed along from companies through products and services - which, even with the added FairTax, should allow the price of things to stay close to the same as they were before the tax
• doesn't tax ANYTHING used/pre-owned which would provide a slight incentive to purchase pre-owned products where possible (better for the environment?)

It sounds almost too good to be true... but I still haven't managed to put any big holes in it.

Anyone out there as interested in this as I am?

American Auto Industry Bailouts

I've loved cars as long as I can remember. I remember just looking out the front window of our living room and watching cars drive by for hours and not getting bored. I could identify quite a few cars just by the shape of headlights or taillights. I had hundreds of Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars that I played with constantly before moving into building model cars and tearing them apart and modifying them. I had a subscription to Hot Rod magazine when I was about 10 or 11 years old. Like I said, I've always been into cars.

I used to drool over tons of American cars including '69 Camaros, '70s Chryslers, 1990's Chevy/GMC trucks like the 454SS as well as the amazing Buick Grand National.

The problem is that the American car manufacturers haven't built anything that I am interested in now that I'm of car buying age and I have to factor in things like reliability, cost, everyday usability and stuff like that into the mix.

Sure, I'd still love to drive a Hugger Orange '69 Camaro or a B5 Blue '70 Hemi Challenger but, realistically, I will never own one and it's not really relevant to the state that the Big Three are in right now, anyway. I know that there is a new Camaro coming out and the new Dodge Challenger has been out for awhile and that they're trying to capture buyers like me with these cars. However, with the American car manufacturer's history of not having the best reliability out there, I'd be more inclined to spend my money on a Subaru Legacy GT, a Nissan Maxima or a Lexus IS. I love the styling of the new Challenger and how much it looks like one the cars I loved so much when I was younger. I'm not going to lie and say that I wouldn't drive the hell out of a new Dodge Challenger SRT8 but I can't say that I'd ever go buy one.

I think that many people feel the same way as I do. I think in many circles you're looked down upon if you drive a Malibu instead of an Accord/Camry or a Cadillac instead of a Lexus/Infiniti/BMW/Mercedes-Benz. The American car companies have lost their appeal and status and it almost seems like they might never be able to get that back.

It seems to me that just asking the government to keep pouring money into them so that they can build a ton of different "badge engineered" versions of the same crappy cars. They actually need to cut out the waste and just build reliable platforms that people actually want to be seen in and want to drive. They need to focus on the fit and finish and reliability that they've been lacking for years.

I don't think bailouts will do anything aside from delaying the inevitable. While all three manufacturers seemed to focus too much on their truck lines, GM had years to realize that people were shifting away from buying their mid sized cars in favor of the imports like the Camry and Accord. Chrysler had to realize that they were on the receiving end of a lot of hatred for building horrid cars like the Neon and Stratus. Ford is trying their hardest to make cars that are appealing but I think they're still being dragged down from their ongoing Found On Road Dead reputation.

I must take this opportunity to admit, though, that while Ford has always been my least favorite out of the Big Three they have been the only one out of the group that has been able to impress me lately with the cars like the 2010 Taurus SHO and Fusion Sport! They seem to be "getting it" a little bit more in recent history than the other two...

The Big Three have been so focused on immediate profits that they lost sight of the big picture and now it seems like it may be too late for a turnaround. While I really do hope that they're able to restructure, cut a bunch of waste, stop making different versions of the same car with different badges/brands and focus on making cars that people actually want to drive... it's not looking good.

Obama's election triggers gun sales?

It seems that some people are saying that gun sales are up due to Obama's election. The gun-toting "Real Americans" are scared that Obama will "take our guns from us and create a socialist society policed by his own police force" as it was so eloquently put by Jim Pruett, the owner of Jim Pruett's Guns and Ammo in Houston, Texas.

WTF, people?

[02/13/2024: Removed broken link to Times Union article.]

Maverick?

There's a great article on John McCain's background on Rolling Stone's website called "Make-Believe Maverick". After reading this article I'm even more frightened about the prospect of him becoming President.

The guy crashed 3 military planes, was involved in the "Keating Five" scandal, kicked his first wife to the curb for a richer, younger, non-disabled one and seems to throw temper tantrums pretty frequently.

If you're interested please do some more research on: Keating Five, Vicki Iseman and McCain's first wife, Carol Shepp.

There are a lot of other things out there but doing a little digging into these begins to paint a very bad picture of John Sidney McCain III.

If at first you don't succeed...

If at first you don't succeed, throw some pork in.

"Some of those additions have been assailed by spending watchdogs as "pork," like the $6 million for the makers of kids' wooden arrows, according to a summary of the bill released by the Senate Finance Committee.

Other goodies intended to attract the votes of individual members of Congress include $192 million for the rum producers of Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands, $128 million for car racing tracks, $33 million for corporations operating in American Samoa, and $10 million for small film and television productions."

WTF!?!?! We're not bailing out Puerto Rican rum producers right now. Focus!!!

Edit 10/02/08 - 09:35 PM: More on the matter on time.com and Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Bailout: Banks or Mortgage Holders?

I know I'm not any sort of authority on failing banks and government bailouts but it still doesn't make any sense to me for the government to bail out the multitude of financial institutions that are failing miserably right now.

There's an article that I just came across on time.com entitled
Let Risk-Taking Financial Institutions Fail that seems to say what I hear a lot of other people saying.

However, I think the writers of the article are being WAY too gentle when they say: "Much of the crisis has arisen from miscalculating the risks involved in a large book of positions in these derivatives."

I think that it had more to do with influential people within the banks ignoring the risks because (for the moment) they were making money hand over fist (for themselves and the shareholders of the banks). I believe that organizations that have been taking huge risks (by loaning money to people who couldn't afford it along with many other risky things) should reap the consequences of their actions.

Why can't the government work out a plan that helps more of the people that are paying for it (the taxpayers that are losing their homes or watching them plummet in value) instead of corporations built on the whole concept of using greed as a business model?

Where is this magical place called out?

I saw an interesting story on Time Magazine's website this morning about a guy named Dave Chameides who is not throwing any trash out for an entire year to help him visualize what his "waste footprint" is. I think this interesting because not too many people stop to think how much trash they throw "out" or where this place called "out" really is.

I've thought about how much garbage my girlfriend and I throw out and where it goes on a few occasions. (Mostly as I'm lugging it down from our third floor apartment and across the parking lots to the dumpsters at the edge of our apartment complex.)

I don't think that we throw out as much as the average partially because our apartment complex recycles most recyclable plastic, glass and cans but we still throw out quite a bit.

It seems to me that a good portion of our waste is the plastic and printed cardboard packaging that pretty much everything is packaged in. It wouldn't be so bad if all of that packaging was actually necessary but in MANY cases it's not even close to necessary.

I'll have to look into ways to help reduce this. (Buying in bulk and things like that will probably help a lot!)

[05/19/2026: Fixed Time link.]

Bad credit card companies!

It turns out I'm not alone in my frustration with credit card companies lately. When I wrote my post "Goodbye to one big bank..." a couple weeks ago, I was pissed off because a major credit card company raised the APR they charged me on a carried balance by 4% for no reason. Luckily, I was able to ditch the bank and ended up making out better in the end. However, I can see that if I didn't have other (not maxed out) lines of credit open that I could easily transfer my balance to, how I could just be stuck paying more with no recourse.

Credit-Card Rage on Business Week's web site today basically tells the same story and adds some information about proposed credit rules from the Federal Reserve Board.

While, for the most part, I'm not a fan of more government regulation of anything, I'm also not happy when companies screw over their customers to add to their bottom line or to make up for mistakes they've made. (ie. Giving credit to customers that aren't likely to be able to pay for it.)

Scented laptops?

Here's another product for the list of "Do we really need this?" products. ASUSTeK is rolling out a line of scented laptops.

Um... yeah. What will they think of next?

For Sale: America

Right when it was announced that Anheuser-Busch was going to be purchased by InBev I started to write a blog entry that was very similar to: "The Great American Yard Sale" that's currently on Time's website. I wrote for a little while and then it turned into a rambling rant and I ended up not posting (and deleting) it.

Anyway, go check out the story. I thought it was a good read.

On capitalism and conspicuous consumption

I've said before that I dislike capitalism but I've never really clarified or elaborated on that general statement here. However, I've been thinking more about it lately (thanks mostly to my boss) and I've edited my "shit list" on the main page of my website today to say "conspicuous consumption." instead of "capitalism. (why do we make so many shiny, awesome things?)"

I think this better reflects my views on capitalism than to just say that I don't like it and the many awesome products that it produces. I think that, as far as economic systems go, capitalism tends to be one of the better ones in practice, compared to other major economic systems that have been attempted. Human nature tends to completely kill any notion of the various socialist or communist economic systems. People aspire to improve their status in life as well as to strive to appear better than or, at the very least, to differentiate themselves from everyone else. This is where the whole notion of "keeping up with the Joneses" (which is also known as conspicuous consumption) comes in. (There are other proposed/theorized systems out there such as Natural Capitalism but they also seem to be compromised by human nature, as well.)

Pure Laissez-faire capitalism is an amazing system where the people who purchase products and services determine what is available (and at what price) by either purchasing or not purchasing that product or service until it becomes attractive or advantageous to do so. Competition between different providers helps to bring prices down and quality up among everyone offering a particular good or service. In this system the government (or regulators of any sort) should only step in to protect consumers from harm. (This system, however, is also not without it's own major drawbacks or problems... but that's a subject for another time.)

Our present system, however, seems to be a bastardization of that system where huge mega-corporations (economies of scale), government regulations/subsidies/taxes, price-fixing, monopolization/mergers/buyouts and intense advertising and marketing all are thrown in with a million other factors and shuffled up leading to a system that is unbelievably complicated but still called "capitalism".

Take that mess and factor human nature and the notion of conspicuous consumption into the whole mix we end up with a slew of products that people are led to believe will make others think that they're of a higher status than everyone else which leads to much more expensive (and exclusive) products (of no better quality) so that there can be something better still.

It's a vicious cycle that no one wins aside from the giant companies who sell us the crappy products (with the trendy brand name of the day) that are made in countries where workers aren't paid a fair wage with materials that are probably barely, if at all, different from the crap that you can buy at Wal-Mart. The only difference is that the one with the brand name commands a huge premium over the generic because we have been convinced to pay more for it just because of that brand name.

That is (part of) the side of "capitalism" that I dislike. I know that I (somewhat hypocritically) play into the whole system even just by purchasing anything that goes above and beyond just meeting my basic needs of food, water and shelter. Maybe I am a hypocrite because there are people out there that aspire to buy the products that I have, or things that are better.

I don't expect (or want) us to shift to communism. I don't want to have exactly what everyone else has, no more or no less, based on my needs. I want to be able to purchase the best quality product that I can afford and have many choices when I am shopping for something. However, I don't want to be bombarded with advertisements constantly. I don't want people to look down on each other because they don't drive a BMW/Bentley/Ferrari/Porsche or live in the biggest house in the best zip code. I don't want us to continue to pillage the environment in the relentless pursuit of bigger and better products and higher and higher profits.

I'm not sure how we can change the economy, government and human nature to achieve this... or if it's even possible... but that's how I feel about "capitalism". It's better than many of the options out there but it's not without it's own set of problems. Human nature tends to make these flaws worse as we exploit the flaws in an effort to make more money and be better than the next guy...

The Ecology of Commerce - Paul Hawken

I just finished reading The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken which my girlfriend bought me for my birthday last week.

It was a good read if you're into economics and the environment and you like to think about shaking things up and making the world a better place. However, I found many of the major concepts in the book to be a little too idealistic to make it to the real world without being forced in some major ways. I'm not sure who could or would step up to the challenge and force some of these concepts into practice, such as a shift toward green taxes in place of income taxes and a large reduction in military spending. If they could be implemented, there is little doubt in my mind that they would help us move towards a more sustainable economy that doesn't completely destroy the planet in the name of ever larger profits, meaningless products and never ending conflicts. Large corporations wield so much power in our current political system that making the large changes that are suggested in the book isn't a likely scenario.

One key part of the plan that doesn't seem practical on a long term basis is the entire concept of green taxes. My particular problem with them is that the government in America seems to be inclined to just keep getting bigger and more out of control and the overwhelming majority of Americans don't care or don't know how to change anything. The idea of adding green taxes into the mix but taking out income taxes in an equal amount to encourage work but discourage the use of resources seems like a good idea on paper. However, I'm sure that instead of taking away income taxes in favor of green taxes, we'll end up with both and much less real money in our pockets which will just hasten the downward spiral.

The book also seemed to place the lion's share of both improving the economy and the condition of the environment upon the idea that business (and the government) had to make gigantic sweeping changes that would (at the very least, in the short term) cause them to lose money. It also made the assumption that human nature was something that could be retrained into a state where people didn't over-consume and would be satisfied with a more simple life. I'm not sure that there is any way to go back to a more simple life at this stage of the game.

My views on the future are not all gloom and doom, though. I do think that we do need to start heading toward a direction where our progress into the future is much more sustainable. However, I am coming to the point of understanding that little changes that individuals can make such as separating out their recyclables and driving hybrid cars hundreds of miles to work aren't enough to do much good in the big picture. We do need to work out ways of improving the world we live in that do more than put a little dent in the problem. We need to start looking at the bigger picture.

Our tax dollars at work...

I was going to write about the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout that I just read about on Business Week but then I came across A Fannie and Freddie Bailout=Your Tax Dollars At Work! on Red Herring while searching around on google.

Now I can just be lazy and send you there since this is just a more witty version of what I would have written, anyway.

P.S. I had even this title written before I came across the blog on Red Herring, I swear!

[05/19/2026 Removed dead links to Business Week article and Red Herring blog. Leaving the post for history...]