We’ve all sat in a large room filled with silence as a teacher-like presence passes out a 4 x 10 sheet of paper filled with empty circles. We’ve all wondered if two #2 pencils will make it through the next 90 minutes. We’ve all wondered why our performance on 150 seemingly random questions could possibly affect whether the school gets a new playground next year.
Imagine this scenario played out on a town hall stage before an audience. Two participants sit on stage at desks, empty except a box of sharpened #2 pencils. The teacher in this scenario is Anderson Cooper. A sheet full of empty circles is handing to each participant. The test consists of 150 yes or no questions - three each from each state generated via an online mechanism that allows any and all US IP addresses to put in their ideas.
The participants, of course, are the Presidential candidates. The test is designed to eliminate spin. The test is given so that each candidate must answer on their own without campaign managers or speech writers manipulating the system to satisfy all polls. They are given 90 minutes to complete the test. At the conclusion, the tests are digitally reprinted in full on the cover of every newspaper in the land - doodle marks and all.
At this point, the candidates can spin all they want. The #2 pencil does not provide much wriggle room.
Wouldn’t you like to know the straight forward answers to following types of questions?
1. Is a military solution for Iran an option?
2. Will you set a timeline for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq?
3. Do you believe that past performance in the political arena accurately predicts future performance?
4. Is the economy more important than environmental concerns?
5. Is overseas outsourcing of jobs more a concern than efforts to retrain the American worker for more relevant jobs?
6. During your first 100 days as President, will you assign a task force to address why Detroit has a graduation rate of only 25%?
7. Will you create an initiative whereby every individual upon eligibility is mandated to consult with an individual Medicare specialist regarding gap and supplemental options resulting either in coverage or a non-election form?
8. Would you support an initiative to publish an annual audit of government spending to account for every dollar spent?
9. Your question here.
And on and on…
Imagine the conversations and debates that would arise from this simple mechanism. And to keep it equally biased for each side, allow Fox News to select 75 of the final questions and CNN the other 75 from the states’ pool of submissions.
If you are pre-empting a comedy to show this proceeding, you can also have Rush Limbaugh and James Carville take the test at the same time. Don’t let them sit too close to each other, though. I’m sure there would be cheating going on.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
How the outsourcing of jobs increases jobs for Americans
Lou Dobbs, as he flies his helicopter to work each day, believes that since Microsoft’s latest optical mouse is made in Mexico and TVs are made in Korea and alarm clocks are made in China, America is being fleeced by the world. And you can blame whoever lives in the White House, regardless of his/her name. Convenient to have a platform from which to generate ratings, but my personal experience and general knowledge of how things operate tells me that this is bogus - and it assumes that the average American is barely capable of more than assembly line labor.
One example. I once worked in the world of electronics importation of products from Korea, Taiwan and China. We imported goods literally by the truckload and turned around and sold them to retailers throughout the US. The funny thing is the economics of it. A product manufactured in China for $5 sells to the importer for maybe $6. The importer turns around and sells it to the retailer for $12 and on the shelf sits a neat little gadget for only $24.99! Grab a calculator and show me how the outsourcing of this product hurt jobs and earning potential for working Americans.
Maybe we’re collectively barking up the wrong tree. What if the outsourcing of jobs is not actually the problem? What if the problem is the under valuing of the American workforce potential? Maybe instead of protecting jobs that are obsolete in today’s economy, we should make efforts to retrain America’s workforce so that the idea of working an assembly line is replaced by the idea of getting into service, sales, distribution and information content. Do you think UPS minds that the 3 million PS3s shipped to 35,000 retailers in the US were all made elsewhere? Do you suppose that all the stores selling the latest Mariah Carey album care where the disc was pressed? Who makes more from the disc? The maker or the seller? Where does iTunes fit into the discussion?
Can movie theaters, retail stores, cable and internet installation services, roofers, newspapers, bloggers, billboard advertisers outsource? Would you rather make the widget or make a living selling, using and servicing it?
Come on, people. America is supposed to the most advanced commercial society in the world. Let’s stop whining because we are not allow to push the green button on the injection mold machine. One foreigner pushes the button so that 10 Americans can have jobs getting it to the consumer. There is an equation I’ve never seen on CNN.
Just a thought I have nearly every day when I turn on the news using a remote made in China, assembled in Hong Kong and boxed with a TV from Korea. Suppose the manufacturers on the assembly line have a nicer TV than you do?
One example. I once worked in the world of electronics importation of products from Korea, Taiwan and China. We imported goods literally by the truckload and turned around and sold them to retailers throughout the US. The funny thing is the economics of it. A product manufactured in China for $5 sells to the importer for maybe $6. The importer turns around and sells it to the retailer for $12 and on the shelf sits a neat little gadget for only $24.99! Grab a calculator and show me how the outsourcing of this product hurt jobs and earning potential for working Americans.
Maybe we’re collectively barking up the wrong tree. What if the outsourcing of jobs is not actually the problem? What if the problem is the under valuing of the American workforce potential? Maybe instead of protecting jobs that are obsolete in today’s economy, we should make efforts to retrain America’s workforce so that the idea of working an assembly line is replaced by the idea of getting into service, sales, distribution and information content. Do you think UPS minds that the 3 million PS3s shipped to 35,000 retailers in the US were all made elsewhere? Do you suppose that all the stores selling the latest Mariah Carey album care where the disc was pressed? Who makes more from the disc? The maker or the seller? Where does iTunes fit into the discussion?
Can movie theaters, retail stores, cable and internet installation services, roofers, newspapers, bloggers, billboard advertisers outsource? Would you rather make the widget or make a living selling, using and servicing it?
Come on, people. America is supposed to the most advanced commercial society in the world. Let’s stop whining because we are not allow to push the green button on the injection mold machine. One foreigner pushes the button so that 10 Americans can have jobs getting it to the consumer. There is an equation I’ve never seen on CNN.
Just a thought I have nearly every day when I turn on the news using a remote made in China, assembled in Hong Kong and boxed with a TV from Korea. Suppose the manufacturers on the assembly line have a nicer TV than you do?
Why the Government Should Stop Google
Article written in 2008 after news of a possible Google/Yahoo! merger
I am not into big government. I’m not sure that anti-trust laws are good. I am sure that they are enforced selectively and not uniformly. I’m pretty sure that monopolies are sometimes good when it can lead to standards essential to our lives. I’d prefer that only the best manufacturer is in charge of making seat belts.
But the notion that Google may take over Yahoo! should make your spine tingle. The resulting Yahoogle will create an online economy totally controlled by one entity. You would have the #1 most visited site on the internet (Yahoo!, mostly for their mail feature) and the #1 search engine in the world combining. As a webmaster for an ecommerce site, I know that nearly 90% of our traffic is generated from Google searches. With the takeover, this number would approach 100%.
Google is already known to tweak their search system to favor whatever agenda they are pushing at any given time. PageRank is the religion of webmasters. What if they had total and absolute power over your online business…and there was not a thing you could do about it? Sure, Dell would survive. They have multi-million dollar ad campaigns in all media outlets. YouTube would still get traffic. As would MySpace. But what about the little guy? It would be like opening a gift shop in a prison yard. The shop might be nice, but for some reason not a lot of people get to visit.
Isn’t this akin to the day they closed the patent office because every thing that could be invented had been? And this was before the television or the integrated circuit.
In this internet age where anyone with an idea can find a voice via the blog, the short video, the publicity stunt…wouldn’t Yahoogle have the power to silence all the voices who couldn’t afford a six figure Adwords account?
I’m all for the American Dream and I do not resent a billionaire who becomes such through hard work, luck and innovation. I am not for the billionaire who parlays their success into a power play to control the largest public medium in the history of the world.
I find myself editing my language in the hope that the future Yahoogle won’t blacklist my site because of this post. How different is typing this post from writing a pamphlet in support of revolution in 1775 Boston? A stretch perhaps, but from a strictly financial sense I cannot help but consider the risk or the comparison. And the risk is real. Do not doubt that.
So as you consider who to vote for this November…encourage your local or national media to ask this question: Do you support a world where one entity controls the internet? If so, is that entity the government (that is supposedly representative of every American) or a corporation that appears to be immune to the law?
If one company owned 90% of the stock market, would the government step in? If one company owned the majority of the railroads, would the government step in…oh, wait. If one company controlled the telephone technology in this country, would…oh, another bad example.
What is the solution? Sure, Yahoogle can be the most used search engine in the world, but shouldn’t someone, somewhere, without a personal interest in the internet economy have oversight in how those search results are generated?
Shouldn’t any and all sites be allowed in…and let the user filter the criteria for their own searches? Wouldn’t it be great to filter, say, a search to include only the top 1,000,000 sites based in a particular country? Or, say, only sites that have been updated in the last week? Or sites over 1 year old? Give us the option of deciding which database we wish to search.
So spread the word and save yourself from never getting to see the next great thing. Remember, YouTube was not launched with a PageRank of 9.
I am not into big government. I’m not sure that anti-trust laws are good. I am sure that they are enforced selectively and not uniformly. I’m pretty sure that monopolies are sometimes good when it can lead to standards essential to our lives. I’d prefer that only the best manufacturer is in charge of making seat belts.
But the notion that Google may take over Yahoo! should make your spine tingle. The resulting Yahoogle will create an online economy totally controlled by one entity. You would have the #1 most visited site on the internet (Yahoo!, mostly for their mail feature) and the #1 search engine in the world combining. As a webmaster for an ecommerce site, I know that nearly 90% of our traffic is generated from Google searches. With the takeover, this number would approach 100%.
Google is already known to tweak their search system to favor whatever agenda they are pushing at any given time. PageRank is the religion of webmasters. What if they had total and absolute power over your online business…and there was not a thing you could do about it? Sure, Dell would survive. They have multi-million dollar ad campaigns in all media outlets. YouTube would still get traffic. As would MySpace. But what about the little guy? It would be like opening a gift shop in a prison yard. The shop might be nice, but for some reason not a lot of people get to visit.
Isn’t this akin to the day they closed the patent office because every thing that could be invented had been? And this was before the television or the integrated circuit.
In this internet age where anyone with an idea can find a voice via the blog, the short video, the publicity stunt…wouldn’t Yahoogle have the power to silence all the voices who couldn’t afford a six figure Adwords account?
I’m all for the American Dream and I do not resent a billionaire who becomes such through hard work, luck and innovation. I am not for the billionaire who parlays their success into a power play to control the largest public medium in the history of the world.
I find myself editing my language in the hope that the future Yahoogle won’t blacklist my site because of this post. How different is typing this post from writing a pamphlet in support of revolution in 1775 Boston? A stretch perhaps, but from a strictly financial sense I cannot help but consider the risk or the comparison. And the risk is real. Do not doubt that.
So as you consider who to vote for this November…encourage your local or national media to ask this question: Do you support a world where one entity controls the internet? If so, is that entity the government (that is supposedly representative of every American) or a corporation that appears to be immune to the law?
If one company owned 90% of the stock market, would the government step in? If one company owned the majority of the railroads, would the government step in…oh, wait. If one company controlled the telephone technology in this country, would…oh, another bad example.
What is the solution? Sure, Yahoogle can be the most used search engine in the world, but shouldn’t someone, somewhere, without a personal interest in the internet economy have oversight in how those search results are generated?
Shouldn’t any and all sites be allowed in…and let the user filter the criteria for their own searches? Wouldn’t it be great to filter, say, a search to include only the top 1,000,000 sites based in a particular country? Or, say, only sites that have been updated in the last week? Or sites over 1 year old? Give us the option of deciding which database we wish to search.
So spread the word and save yourself from never getting to see the next great thing. Remember, YouTube was not launched with a PageRank of 9.
Taking your neighborhood business online
I have been building small business websites for over 13 years. Thirteen years ago a neighborhood business website basically served as an online equivalent of the yellow pages. Call us to order! Now! Today, a neighborhood business website can often take a business national - and without the need for a bank loan. Unfortunately, most neighborhood business owners do not know how to optimize their internet potential.
So here is how it normally goes: We have this great shop that specializes in selling baby gifts. We cannot seem to keep the vibrating teething rings in stock. If we can sell these things online, just imagine how rich we will be. A credit card and a shopping cart and they are off and running. And six months later they have six orders to show for the effort. Where are all the customers? First, who are they? If you are not Mattel, people will not find you by accident. Second,the site attracts customers like a salesman waiting for the fax machine to print. Now what?
This is where the professionals come in. The neighborhood business owner consults the yellow pages (go figure) to find a company to hire for building the perfect online store. They are quoted $60,000 over 12 months to turn their site into THE destination for baby gifts. Twelve months later they have the best looking site money can buy and dozens of reports explaining why it only generated twelve orders. Renew now because it takes thirteen months to start seeing a trend.
To build a profitable internet business you do not want a graphic designer. Graphic design is for building a brand. Neighborhood businesses do not generate sales online because of their brand. Neighborhood businesses generates sales online based on increasing traffic and making it simple for customers to find products and place orders.
Time to hire an ecommerce pro. In the world of the ecommerce pro, graphics take minutes to create with Photoshop. Site design is based on proven architecture. I personally use eBay and Amazon for design ideas. Both are immensely profitable in ecommerce and neither breaks new ground in internet graphic design. Ecommerce pros spend 5 minutes on product and search optimization for every 5 seconds spent on graphic design. The sites typically are intuitive, simple and fast to load. The sites are typically focused and link HOW the customer finds the with WHAT they are finding (and ordering).
If your neighborhood business site is not seeing sales at least equal with what you do offline, then look into finding an ecommerce pro. If the pro begins the discussion with how neat the site will look, find another one. If the pro can show specifically what they intend to do to not only bring customers to your site but how those customers will find and order an item, offer them a commission of sales. Do not spend more than you are making. It is not neurosurgery, so do not pay for an surgeon.
So here is how it normally goes: We have this great shop that specializes in selling baby gifts. We cannot seem to keep the vibrating teething rings in stock. If we can sell these things online, just imagine how rich we will be. A credit card and a shopping cart and they are off and running. And six months later they have six orders to show for the effort. Where are all the customers? First, who are they? If you are not Mattel, people will not find you by accident. Second,the site attracts customers like a salesman waiting for the fax machine to print. Now what?
This is where the professionals come in. The neighborhood business owner consults the yellow pages (go figure) to find a company to hire for building the perfect online store. They are quoted $60,000 over 12 months to turn their site into THE destination for baby gifts. Twelve months later they have the best looking site money can buy and dozens of reports explaining why it only generated twelve orders. Renew now because it takes thirteen months to start seeing a trend.
To build a profitable internet business you do not want a graphic designer. Graphic design is for building a brand. Neighborhood businesses do not generate sales online because of their brand. Neighborhood businesses generates sales online based on increasing traffic and making it simple for customers to find products and place orders.
Time to hire an ecommerce pro. In the world of the ecommerce pro, graphics take minutes to create with Photoshop. Site design is based on proven architecture. I personally use eBay and Amazon for design ideas. Both are immensely profitable in ecommerce and neither breaks new ground in internet graphic design. Ecommerce pros spend 5 minutes on product and search optimization for every 5 seconds spent on graphic design. The sites typically are intuitive, simple and fast to load. The sites are typically focused and link HOW the customer finds the with WHAT they are finding (and ordering).
If your neighborhood business site is not seeing sales at least equal with what you do offline, then look into finding an ecommerce pro. If the pro begins the discussion with how neat the site will look, find another one. If the pro can show specifically what they intend to do to not only bring customers to your site but how those customers will find and order an item, offer them a commission of sales. Do not spend more than you are making. It is not neurosurgery, so do not pay for an surgeon.
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