Wednesday the 9th of April, 2008 | Customer Service | News |
During the Christmas season, I had purchased an HD DVD player from Amazon believing that HD DVD would win the format wars due to superior pricing. Lower prices with comparable quality equals market share...I was wrong. My eight year old DVD player had given out finally so I decided my brand new obsolete player was still worth having to play normal DVD’s. I was pleasantly surprised this morning to receive an email from Amazon that basically said, “Hey we know you f*cked up by choosing the loosing format, but we’re gonna help make it a little better by giving you $50 off an electronics purchase.” This isn’t the same as Circuit City quietly exchanging all HD DVD units but it’s better than a sharp stick in the eye.
Friday the 10th of March, 2006 | Articles | Business | News | Web Apps |
Welcome to 2006, the year Web 2.0 grew up to be just like his bigger, dumber brother. What the hell am I talking about? Google has just purchased yet another web app that still resides in beta. While it may not be exactly the same as a VC pumping gobs of cash into a young company, it is creating an atmosphere for build to flip companies. Because of Google’s apparent need to spend, spend, spend, we will now begin seeing more VC money being pumped into half-baked ideas. Companies, Applications and Services will be built to cater to those with the bling before they get a chance to learn to survive on their own.
These types of acquisitions are hurting our tech economy. Instead of masses of early adopters being able to use apps like Measure Map and Writely, Google is going to have them in beta, under development and unreleased until their engineers can tinker under the hood for a while and launch them as a Google Apps. Why is this a bad thing? A new app needs to be out in the open to allow users to play with it and manipulate it for their uses. The app needs time to grow and have features tweaked post launch to streamline usage. A big fat blob of a company like Google will not allow that to happen. Only the group of passionate developers that gave the app life can do these things properly.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a proponent of larger companies purchasing successful smaller ones that can benefit their core business. Delicious, Blogger, Skype, Myspace, Keyhole, Urchin and Flickr were all proven apps with a strong user base. Measure Map and Writely never saw the light of day. Google is going to send these two apps into the world and have a billion users sign up the day they release with atrophied muscles. I’m disgusted…
Friday the 20th of January, 2006 | Business | Must Read | News |
I read an article in The Economist several months ago pushing the idea of a flat tax solely on sales. I’ve always liked the KISS method (Keep It Simple Stupid) and our complicated tax code is a perfect candidate for review. The fact is, the US spends an increasingly ungodly amount of money on infrastructure to keep our tax system running. If we cut the income tax out and only charged sales tax we would be running on a lean 35% or less of what we currently spend on infrastructure.
What sparked my interest in this topic was another article I read today where Thomas J. Frey, Senior Futurist at The DaVinci Institute discusses why income tax will self-destruct. Here are some interesting excerpts from the article.
The Exponential Nature of Complexity
It can be argued that every major civilization in history has fallen because of unsustainable levels of complexity. In major civilizations such as the Egyptian, Greek, or Roman empires, as well as in smaller civilizations like the Mayan Indians and Mesopotamia, each one reached a point where an ever increasing bureaucracy with an ever increasing number of rules simply overloaded the administrator’s ability to comply with them, and the systems collapsed.
Modern technology has given us the ability to manage systems that are far more complex. And following a similar curve to Moore’s Law, our ability to automate has kept up with our ability to complicate. However, the breaking point will not be the automated systems. Rather, the breaking point will be the human interface and the exacting toll that the income tax system has placed on people to comply.
In our government we have failed to create a checks-and-balance system to mitigate complexity.
We are on an irreversible path, and as complexity of a system increases, the costs associated with it increase exponentially to the point where the costs approach infinity, and collapse is a certainty.
A History of Collapsing Income Tax Systems
While the concept of taxes has been around since ancient times, the idea of a formalized income tax has not. The first income tax in the United States was signed into law in 1862 by President Lincoln to help pay for Civil War expenses. But the amount was relatively small and during this time 90 percent of all revenues came from taxes on liquor, beer, wine and tobacco. Still, opposition arose and income tax laws were repealed in 1872.
In 1894 the Wilson Tariff Act revived the income tax and an income tax division within the Bureau of Internal Revenue was created. Again a firestorm of protest arose and the Supreme Court ruled the new income tax unconstitutional. The income tax division was disbanded.
Today’s income tax has its roots in the 16th Amendment to the Constitution which was ratified in 1913. The amendment stated, “Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.” Later, Congress adopted a 1 percent tax on net personal income of more than $3,000 with a surtax of 6 percent on incomes of more than $500,000. This is when the first 1040 Form was introduced.
Compliance Costs Reaching Unmanageable Levels
A recent article in Forbes magazine stated that director level compliance officers are now being paid over $1 million per year to deal with the increasing demands imposed by government.
Even the professionals who feed off of this overly complex system have grown to detest it. Some IRS audits have become undoable, slowing enforcement to an absolute crawl. Costs of both compliance and enforcement will escalate even further until the system reaches the breaking point.
Wednesday the 18th of January, 2006 | Business | News |
According to a survey of 12,000 small to medium-sized businesses done by Avalara, the year of 2006 is expected to be big for those who are online. The survey sample projects sustained growth in e-commerce through at least 2006.
In all, 84% said that their business was better in 2005 than in 2004, and that same percentage saw their business improving again in 2006. Only 12% felt their business did not improve in 2005, and a small 7% do not feel their business would improve in 2006.
In all, 90% of the SMB owners and operators, who are engaged in e-commerce, feels that not only was the US Internet e-commerce economy strong in 2005, that same number — 90% — anticipates that that economy will perform better in 2006. Only 4% expect 2006 to under-perform 2005.
The one issue businesses are not so keen on are the jurisdictions which force online sellers to collect sales tax from residents of certain states. They feel a tax-free environment gives them a competitive advantage to at least offset shipping costs.
Thursday the 15th of December, 2005 | Business | News |
Virgin Galactic has made it official that normal citizens will be going to space. They signed a landmark deal with the state of New Mexico to build a $200 million spaceport to shuttle the rich and famous to space and back. Why is it that more than 35 years after Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, a corporation is making more headway into allowing individuals a chance to touch the heavens than any government entity on the planet ever has?
With the amount of money NASA has at their disposal, it is disgusting that over the past several years they have done nothing but disappoint us with failed launches, reentries and dead astronauts. If a company were to have failed as miserably as NASA, they’d be out of business and I’m guessing several people would be in jail. Though $10 million and nine years after the X Prize was offered we have a successful, reliable vehicle to transport us into weightlessness and back.
Without the spirit of innovation and competition that capitalism brings, we would still be wondering if our grandchildren might get the chance to leave Earth briefly. Virgin Galactic must be very careful, their security and safety standards must be above and beyond. How many people do you think would continue to fly with Branson if a notable incident were to occur on one of the flights? That’s why I foresee companies like Virgin eventually surpassing NASA. They are held to a higher standard because their customers will only flip the bill if they feel safe. NASA can continue to mess up and the US will still have to have a space program.