All the jobs I ever had

Today my daughter asked me what jobs I have had. I think it's
been 20 years since I actually tried to list all my jobs. Normally
when I've written a resume, I've just put the positions that are
relevant to the one I'm applying for.

Anyway, this was a fascinating exercise and I'd love to hear each of
you list out all your jobs too. A few of these I didn't get paid for,
but I was at least expecting some compensation, like at the Hollywood
Bowl I got concert tickets in return for helping seat people.

K-12 Student Jobs

1974 Paper Delivery, Orange County Register, Santa Ana CA (3 months, $1/hr)
1975 Bruno the Clown, Presto Magic Shows, Santa Ana (2 years $1/hr)
1977 Babysitter, Parents & Friends, Tustin CA (2 years, $1/hr)
1979 Weed Puller, Uncle Jim's Garden, Blackfoot ID (3 months, $.50/hr)
1980 Piano Teacher, LoKnoPla Institute, Santa Ana (4 years, $5/hr)
1982 Window Washer, Sunshine Window Washing, Santa Ana (2 months, $6/hr)
1982 Gas Station Attendant,Union 76 Gas Station, Santa Ana (3 months, $4/hr)
1983 Usher/Sweeper, Edwards Cinemas, Costa Mesa & Westminster CA (1 year, $4/hr)

College/Gradschool Jobs

1984 Archivist, Loyola Marymount University Library, Los Angeles (2
years, $4/hr)
1985 Sales Clerk, Radio Shack, Tustin (2 months, $4/hr)
1986 Burger Cook, Del Taco, Santa Ana (2 weeks, $4/hr)
1986 Sales Rep, Telemarketing Co, Irvine CA (2 hours, $0)
1986 Programmer - Music Synthesizers, Digital Media Systems, Lake
Forest CA (3 months, $6/hr)
1987 Math/Physics Tutor, LMU Learning Center, Los Angeles (1 year, $5/hr)
1987 Research Assistant, UCLA Classics Dept, Los Angeles (1 year, $9/hr)
1988 Usher, Hollywood Bowl, Hollywood CA (3 months, $20/hr in Concert Tickets)
1988 Hardware Specialist, Home Depot, Santa Clara CA (3 months, $7/hr)
1988 Computer Operator, LifeScan, Mountain View CA (3 months, $11/hr)
1988 Partner, Elipsis Media Services, Santa Clara CA (3 months, $0)
1989 President, MetaVerbal Technologies, Evanston IL (1 year, $3/hr) *
1989 Apprentice Electrician, Gerhard Electric, El Toro CA (3 months, $7/hr)
1990 Teaching Assistant, Northwestern University Linguistics Dept,
Evanston IL (1 year, $10/hr)

"Think & Grow Rich" Period

1990 Computer Programmer, LifeScan, Milpitas CA (6 months,, $16/hr)
1990 Systems Analyst, LifeScan, Milpitas (6 months, $23/hr)
1991 Partner, MetaVerbal Media, Fremont CA (1 year, $4/hr) *
1992 Investment Manager, COBY Investments, Fremont (6 months, $20/hr)
1993 Customer Services Systems Manager, LifeScan, Milpitas (3 years,
in Milpitas, $32/hr) *
1995 Multimedia Edutainment Producer, LifeScan, Milpitas (1 year, $36/hr) *
1995 Investor & Property Manager, Self, Oakland CA (4 years, $90/hr) *
1997 IT Help Desk Manager, Tandem Computers, Cupertino CA (1 year, $38/hr)
1998 IT Project Manager/Webmaster, Tandem Computers, Cupertino (1 year, $38/hr)

Post-Retirement

1999 Sheet Music Specialist, Tupper & Reed, Berkeley CA (6 months, $7/hr) *
2000 English Teacher, Berlitz School of Languages, Mainz Germany (6
months, 22DM = $11/hr) *
2001 Investment Manager, Real Estate Partnerships, Long Beach CA (2
years, $95/hr) *
2003 Investment Manager, Affinity Properties, Compton CA (2 years, $100/hr) *
2004 CEO, Affinity Neighborhoods, Los Angeles (3 years, -$100/hr, yes
I made MINUS $100 for every hour I worked)
2005 VP Research & Development, New Affinity, Greenwich CT (8 months, $58/hr)
2006 VP Research & Development, Key2Own Real Estate, Phoenix (9 months, $9/hr)
2007 Partner, Springport Properties, Atlanta (1 year, $4/hr)

What's Next

???

If I had my druthers, my next job would be organic farmer, or maybe
inventor, music composer, or installing solar panels or something like
that. Many interesting opportunities have come up recently, and I have
applied for a bunch of jobs, but the process has been so impersonal
that it gets me all depressed to work really hard on one application
after another and hear nothing back. So I've been thinking, maybe the
thing to do is make a universal resume, describing what I learned from
each of these jobs, and then submit that to any position that looks
interesting to me. I'm sure most HR people would toss such a resume
into the waste basket without reading it, but at least I won't have
spent much time on it, I will just do it once and then submit it to
lots of jobs. It's an idea, anyway.

How to live sustainably

There are lots of sites out there which tell you how not to live sustainably. But I haven't seen one that tells you how to do it.

First of all, "sustainable" has to include the "what" (the activity) and also the "how many" (6.6 billion people) and finally the "how long" (say, 10,000 years, starting now).

So, for example, driving a gasoline car to work each morning -- we need to imagine 6.6 billion people doing that. I think we'd run out of oil in a few years, if we didn't die from the smog or get run over first. Not sustainable. And so on for pretty much everything we consume in the USA.

The flip side is reusing discarded stuff, growing food to eat without clearing any more land or adding any products from anywhere except your own neighborhood (moved around with hand carts), and harnessing energy locally, using local materials, such as are found in discarded buildings, junked cars, and dead appliances.

Not buying anything or using any "utilities", unless you can really verify where every bit of it comes from, and it's a sustainable source (good luck). We all wish someone really trustworthy would do all that research for us and certify stuff as sustainable, but about a million documented cases in history have taught us that you have to verify it yourself if you want to be sure. I might begin to trust such a certification agency if every employee of that agency lived completely sustainably, for starters, and was compensated only when they reported that something Wasn't sustainable.

OK, now this is probably sounding about as fun as living without running water. Yeah, that's because it is exactly that! However, something nearly everyone has learned at some point and forgotten again: Fun has nothing to do with products and services -- fun is all about attitude.

To me, trying to save the planet and get everyone to live sustainably sounds fun, believe it or not. Starting with me. So far, in the past few years, I have taken the following steps:

1. Switched all my lightbulbs from incandescent to flourescent. Also became very vigilant about turning off the lights when not in use. Have only one or two 13 watt bulbs in each fixture (instead of four, or however many the fixture holds, like eight in my bathroom).
2. Stopped buying disposable batteries, use rechargeables instead.
3. No Christmas or Birthday presents that the person wouldn't have bought anyway (like one of my favorite presents is organic locally grown fruit).
4. I will never own a car newer than 1999. No commuting to work or school by car. Keep tires inflated and car tuned up. Use smallest car available (3 cylinder Geo Metro). Never buy gas from Exxon/Mobile or Chevron/Texaco.
5. Limit airplane trips to once every 12 months (and counting).
6. Live in a townhome rather than single family detached.
7. No lawns. Converted dozens of lawns to low maintenance (wood chips, rocks, drought tolerant plants) or fruit & vegetable gardens.
8. Plant lots of trees (hundreds per year).
9. Buy recycled toilet paper and give it away (so others will use less virgin-fibre paper -- thousands of rolls).
10. Buy lots of compact flourescent bulbs and give them away (about 250 so far). Also gave away about 100 used incandescent bulbs, to help reduce the demand for them.
11. Eat only 100% organically grown food.
12. Reduced my milk intake to 1 glass daily. Eliminated butter and margarine. Reduced cheese intake not sure how much).
13. Eliminated candy, chocolate, cake, cookies, ice cream and other sweets from my diet. No soft drinks, beer, coffee, energy drinks, or bottled water. Limit organic wine to two glasses a week.
14. Buy most things in large quantities with less packaging. No more cereal boxes, raisin or nut containers, flour or rice bags, oatmeal cannisters, etc.
15. Eat only homegrown eggs, from foraging chickens.
16. Eat no meat, except occasional fish.
17. Flush toilet once per day. Usually pee outside in the woods.
18. Eat at restaurants less than once a month.
19. Downsized computer from desktop to shared (5 year old) laptop with shared internet service.
20. Switched my home page to www.blackle.com.
21. Recycle all paper, plastic, glass, and metal.
22. Removed dozens of ceiling fans, and instead provided tiny 6 volt fans that do the same job.
23. Experimenting with much more energy efficient air conditioning system.
24. Never buy or use toxic pesticides, herbicides, cleaning products, personal products, etc.
25. Use a plunger or drain snake instead of draino.
26. Stop junk mail, put it back in the mailbox with return to sender on it. Cancel all paper catalogs, magazine & newspaper subscriptions.
27. Pay nearly all bills online. Use credit or debit card instead of cash or check.
28. Use almost exclusively hand gardening tools. Occasionally I use electric powered tools for one-time jobs, no gas powered tools.
29. Rescue stuff on its way to the landfill.
30. Do not landfill any food items. Chickens and worms get all of our kitchen waste.
31. Do not waste food, or much of anything.
32. Buy less stuff. Collect other people's cast-offs. Buy used stuff instead of new. Never buy clothing (there are plenty of extras out there).
33. Buy stuff that lasts a long time, and take care of it.
34. Use heat sparingly in winter, and A/C sparingly in summer. We keep our thermostat for A/C at 81F, except occasionally turning it down to 79 or 78F. In winter we keep it at 65 normally and dress warmly. Insulate the coldest walls and rooms -- I add an extra layer of insulation inside and outside the walls.
35. No pets, besides chickens and an occasional goldfish. Maybe will spring for a hamster or rabbit someday, if we can feed it kitchen scraps.
36. Never buy pressure treated wood. Buy only wood certified from managed forests, no redwood or exotic woods.
37. Never use primer (isn't necessary). Reduce paint usage. Never use paint sprayer.
38. Almost never buy carpet. Reduce rug usage.
39. Don't wear underwear.
40. Never buy furniture or cabinets made from pressboard (wears out too fast and is sent to landfill).

OK, that's enough for now. These are things I am already doing. I feel like I am about 25% of the way there, given where I was as a starting point, living like a "normal" American yuppie, sort of. "Earthbonk" is a term that refers to your total pollution and ecological destruction. Mine was very high, even for an American. :/

The Girlcott project (as opposed to Boycott)

(Written November 10, 2007)

I am committed to transforming the paper industry.

I was wondering what one person could do, in the face of such a monster. I thought and thought about this and talked to many people. And then one day in the Summer of 2006, I had an idea.

Stores that sell paper are very sensitive to demand. They tend to give more shelf space to the products that do more volume. And they put the high volume products in better, more visible, positions.

So I did an experiment on Toilet Paper at a particular Safeway store in Phoenix AZ (the one at 47th St and Indian School Road). When I started, they had only one non-virgin-fibre brand, it was buried at the very back of the section, and it had only 6 rolls wide of shelf space, with no extra boxes up on top or in the warehouse. Several store employees told me that was their least popular TP brand.

I started going there every couple days and buying all but one of their stock (generally 0-8 packs of 12 rolls were in stock, they replenished on a somewhat random schedule), and then I would ask them to order more, and then I'd go put a package on each neighbor's doorstep, starting with the residents closest to that store (the ones most likely to shop there, I reasoned). I kept track of where I had delivered packages by putting green dots on a map (see above picture).

After a couple weeks, I noticed the first change. Up above the shelves, there started to appear overstock boxes of the tree-free brand (called "Earth First", by Royal Paper). I continued to buy their entire stock, minus one or two packages (I didn't want other customers to come in and find no tree-free TP). So now I was buying between 0-16 packs every 2 or 3 days, and delivering them out to the neighborhood.

This has three effects: First, the store and the manufacturer are loving it, of course. They see the tree-free stuff flying out the door. Second, many of the neighbors had probably never considered buying tree-free TP. I left a little note on each package, explaining what I was doing. So this probably converted a few people. Third, even for the majority who probably didn't convert, they still almost certainly used the free product, delaying their next purchase of virgin fibre TP. Because all these purchase delays were concentrated around that Safeway, the store was likely to notice a slowing of sales of the virgin fibre TP.

The second effect I saw was a few weeks later. Nearly all the virgin fibre TP went on sale. Really deep discounts. Ha! I thought. I just increased the marketing costs of virgin fibre TP! The tree-free TP didn't go on sale. But I kept buying it up.

The third effect, a few weeks later, was the one I was aiming for. The tree-free TP got moved from the back to the FRONT of the aisle! I am told by retail specialists that this is very difficult to achieve. And yet, I did it! Without any meetings or events or campaigns or convincing the management to be greener.

And then there was a fourth effect I had never expected, they actually introduced another tree-free TP brand, and put it next to the Earth First brand. This other brand was made from cotton, which unfortunately is probably just as bad for the environment as virgin tree fibre, but I think they meant well. I think they were trying to respond to the obvious increased demand for tree-free products. And of course, when the store pushes products like that, they move.

After all was said and done, this project cost me about $3000 and took about 3 months. I checked back periodically, and 1 year later the tree-free TP was still in front, even though I had stopped buying it for a year. I am doing this again here in Atlanta, with 4-pack rolls instead of 12-pack rolls, so it should cost closer to $1000 to cause the same shift this time. If I can find 10 other people to join me, for $100 each we can move a retailer.

I am also doing it now with recycled copier paper from Staples. The thing I like about TP though is that it's unlikely people will use more just from having more. You only poop and sneeze a certain amount. Whereas with paper towels, for instance, there's a good chance people would use more if they were given a free pack, and this would reduce the positive impacts outlined above.

I dubbed this process a "girlcott", as opposed to a "boycott".

If anyone is interested in looking at how to spread this to more stores, and maybe even take on an entire retail chain, let me know. I am committed to transforming the paper industry. If I can cause that effect working alone, imagine what a team of people working together could do...

Thanks for listening, :)

Environmental Activism Idea

Today I had a new idea (at least new to me :).

There is a site that shows which toilet paper to buy to have the least damaging impact on the environment.

http://www.nrdc.org/land/forests/tissueguide/walletcard.pdf

Toilet paper is a great product to start with because it's use is almost exclusively determined by "need", there is very little danger of excess consumption, no matter how much is available. And to my knowledge there is no viable reusable alternative.

Here's my plan. Find a store that sells a "good" brand of toilet paper. Make sure this store is also a strong store overall, i.e. not overshadowed by much larger and more popular supermarkets nearby. Draw a 1 mile radius on the map, around that store. Find all other grocery stores in that same area, and make an official photographic record of what brands of toilet paper they sell and how much shelf space they give them. (This will be our baseline).

Ask the manager of each store in the area to add more good brands of toilet paper, and increase the ratio of good/bad brand shelf space. Explain to them if they decline, that you are going to promote their competitors to the local community.

Then call the manufacturers of the good brand and ask them to donate 10,000 rolls of toilet paper for this promotion, designed to increase their sales and market share, and raise awareness for their particular brand's key advantages. If they won't donate it then buy 10,000 rolls (this should cost less than $3000 wholesale, which we can easily raise).

Next we call the local newspapers, radio programs, environmental newsletters, and other media that might be interested in this groundswell effort, and tell them our plan.

Then we go door to door in a spiraling path around our target store, delivering to each resident a roll (or 4-pack) of good toilet paper along with a card (printed on recycled paper) that has a brief explanation along with the list of good and bad toilet paper brands on one side, and a map of the target store on the other side, along with the phone numbers of all the store managers in the area, and instructions to call them and request that they carry more good brands.

We then go back to all the stores each week for the next 4 weeks (while people are using the toilet paper we distributed, there should be a drop in sales of competitive brands), ask the managers if they noticed anything different, measure their good/bad shelf space ratio again, and report the results to the media.

If we succeed in having any measurable impact, I believe the good toilet paper manufacturers and environmentalists will be all over it, reproducing our results in thousands of markets. I bet a point of market share is worth millions of dollars in that industry.

The bad brands will have to respond, at least by pretending to make progress, but possibly also by making actual progress in producing a less destructive product.

The World We Want

Universal Declaration of What We Want For Everyone

Whereas, all human beings have certain desires in common, and there is a universal tendency to strive toward these goods when they are lacking;

We hereby declare our intention to acquire for all humanity permanent access to the following rights and freedoms, thereby furthering the cause of peace and universal prosperity.

Security
Freedom from violence or threats of violence.
Right to live under rule of law. Not to be arbitrarily deprived of property or privileges.
The ability to put aside wealth for future use.

Health
Sufficient food, including a healthy balance of protein, carbohydrates, fat, fibre, vitamins, and minerals. Availability of natural, locally grown food free of undesirable additives or contaminants. Access to list of ingredients in processed or packaged foods.
Clean water for drinking and washing.
Sufficient exercise to maintain healthy muscles, bone, and cardiovascular system, and to prevent obesity.
Sufficient rest, medicines, first aid, psychotherapy, and other items required to maintain health and ensure speedy recovery from any readily curable illness or injury.

Environment
Clean land, air, and water, freedom from toxins and pollutants.
Preservation of natural resources and restoration of habitats which have been destroyed. Maintainance of healthy forests, rivers, lakes, wetlands, oceans, atmospheric layers, and local and global biodiversity.
Pleasant surroundings, conducive to productive lifestyles. Freedom from eyesores, visually offensive scenery, noise pollution, foul odors.

Housing
Weather-proofing, heating, cooling, lighting, air circulation, and waste disposal systems sufficient to maintain the occupants' comfort, cleanliness, privacy, and safety, including during Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Droughts, Floods, and other predictable natural events.
The ability to secure one's dwelling against unwanted entry.

Property
Ownership of Property.
The ability to put something down, go away, and have it still be there when one returns.
The ability to safely store valuables.

Movement
Freedom to leave any place, city, country, or region, and to return. (This right may be restricted to persons of full age and those not wanted for criminal prosecution or suspected of promoting criminal activity.)

Association
Freedom to choose with whom one associates, and to live together in mutually consensual relationships. (This right may be restricted to persons of full age.)
Freedom to leave a relationship with an individual or group and seek new associations. (This right may be restricted to persons of full age.)
The ability to meet and get acquainted with a wide variety of new people.

Expression
Freedom to express and publish one’s opinions, beliefs, values, and religion.
Privacy
A sphere within which one can act free from the awareness or intervention of others.
Protection from outside surveillance.

Work
A broad selection of productive, sustainable occupations, such that each person can match their job to their personality, talents, and inclinations. (This right may be restricted to persons of full age.)
The ability to earn sufficient income to allow regular saving. (This right may be restricted to persons of full age.)

Education
Access to efficient and effective education and training in at least the following subjects:
First Language Literacy
Health Education, Biology, Birth Control
Arithmetic, Geometry, Algebra, Logic
History, Civics, Law, Social Studies, Geography
Foreign Language Instruction
Psychology, Interpersonal Relationships, Negotiating, Conflict Resolution
How to Grow Food, How to Survive in the Wilderness, How to Build, Maintain, and Repair One's Home
How to Start and Run a Successful Business, How to Get a Job, How to Advance and Succeed in a Career
Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Architecture
Music, Rhythm, Creative Writing, Dance
Techniques & Strategies in a wide variety of Sports and Games
Preparation for a wide variety of entry-level and advanced occupations
Philosophy, Critical Thinking, Self Reflection & Transformation
Science, Information Technology, Computer Applications

Diversity
Access to wide variety of personalities, cultures, philosophies, ideologies, lifestyles, languages, landscapes, cuisines, art, literature, and opinions.

Performance
Freedom to participate fully in society and be evaluated based on performance, regardless of arbitrary personal features or group membership.

Governance
Right to vote, or otherwise participate in directing government. (This right may be restricted to persons of full age.)
Right to voice suggestions and concerns to the governing authorities, and to be listened and responded to. (This right may be restricted to persons of full age.)

Records
Access to public records, libraries, the internet, personal and family medical records (except where this violates individual privacy).
To know the names of and to contact one's birth parents and other relatives.

Any Persons Who Are Not Able To Care For Themselves Have the Following Additional Rights

Care
The right to be cared for, supervised, and protected at all times by at least one adult who voluntarily takes full responsibility for the person in need of care, and is accountable for their well-being.

Adolescents Ages 13+ Have The Following Additional Rights

Friendship
To meet and interact with others in their age group in the context of friendship building and companionship.

Dating
To meet and interact with others in their age group in the context of dating. (Dating may be restricted to people of full age.)

Children Ages 0-13 Have The Following Additional Rights

Touch
Daily loving embraces and caresses by a parent or guardian.
Freedom from sexual molestation.

Play
Time to play alone and with other children.
Access to a variety of child-safe toys and play experiences.
Freedom from overburdensome work responsibilities.

Discipline
Gentle but firm training and guidance aimed at developing good character and encouraging felicitous social interactions.
Clear explanation of rules governing behavior.

The Not Yet Born Have The Following Additional Rights

Prenatal Care
Freedom from diseases, disabilities, and defects caused by malnutrition, substance abuse, or other unhealthy behaviors or conditions affecting fetal development.

Non-Human Lifeforms Have The Following Rights

Pain Relief
Freedom from torture, arbitrarily induced pain, or senseless killing.

Continuance
Right to continue one's species. Freedom from extinction.

Conflicts arising between various rights are to be dealt with and resolved by impartial adjudication, applied evenly across all of humanity.

A biographical note

I am an INTP. Before I could talk, I was playing with numbers. I sorted all the books in our house by the number of pages, and at age 3 I learned the order of frequency of initial letters in English from counting encyclopedia and dictionary pages. My favorite toy was these triangles you could make just about any shape out of.

I studied electrical engineering for 4 years and then switched my major to Latin. I applied to three graduate schools (in German, Classics, and Linguistics) and was offered fellowships to all three. I picked Linguistics at Northwestern University, mainly because it was the farthest away. I drove my 1964 VW bug (nickname "suicidomobile") from Los Angeles, over Vail Pass, to Chicago, towing a tiny trailer with all my worldly possessions. (My adventures in that car, whose every part I had rebuilt or replaced several times, make up a very exciting chapter of my life.)

My first successful company (after window washing, magic shows, and such) was the world's first online Latin-English dictionary, which I sold to university Classics departments and made about $800 after paying my typists and proofreaders. My next successful company was an online CD wholesaler, in the days before amazon.com.

In the early 1990s, I spent a lot of time working out formulas to find inefficiencies in the stock options market, and did a bunch of successful trades in a row. I started pooling money from friends and family, but stopped when I couldn't figure out how to peg the value at any given time (some difficult math is involved, if you want to be fair and take different people's money at different times).

I then turned to real estate and discovered some major inefficiencies in that market. I preferred real estate over other investments because I could see and directly control where my money was ACTUALLY going. I started buying properties and helping others buy properties in Oakland CA. I was doing really well, so well, in fact, that I was able to retire from my computer job. At the same time, the neighborhood I and my partners invested in underwent an amazing transformation that took me by surprise. I realised then that I had way more power than I thought.

But my main goal was to be a composer of music, so I wandered around Mexico and Europe for a few years looking for people to collaborate with on operas and chamber music. I was content to live on about $10,000/year, which meant I would never have to work again.

Then I met my wife and I'm not sure she said this explicitly but somehow I felt like I should make a little more money for her, maybe $30,000/year. I could have gotten a cool computer linguistics job in Switzerland but thought, well I know how to do this real estate thing and I could just do it again and then retire again.

So I went back to the USA and picked another neighborhood (I analyse gigabytes of data on thousands of cities in order to do this). This time I was smarter, because I had seen how things worked in Oakland. I and my partners bought 22 properties in a neighborhood in Long Beach CA, and repeated the same process.

One of my other goals in life is to get a massage every day, but I didn't want to pay $50/day, so I put an ad on craigslist for a massage therapist that would give massages in exchange for rent (I had lots of places available). One of the massage therapists that took me up on this deal invited me to an introduction to the Landmark Forum -- she told me about it while I was getting a massage. My experiences with Landmark are another amazing chapter of my life; I discovered so much about myself and about how relationships work that I don't even know what to compare it to.

Perhaps to the Britannica Great Books (another goal of mine was to read them all in the original languages, which is why I taught myself Latin, Greek, German, Italian, and Spanish, and have nibbled at the edges of Russian, French, Japanese, Turkish, Sanskrit, and Mandarin).

Or I could compare Landmark to Classical Music, which also had that sort of impact on my life, which is why I taught myself piano, harpsichord, organ, recorder (SATB), trombone, voice, and guitar. I also dabbled in violin, cello, hammer dulcimer, and clarinet. I have written about 100 songs, mostly variations on nursery rhyme tunes for piano or small ensemble. Biologist and author Lewis Thomas and I share our predilection for Bach above all other composers.

Two of my real estate partners took the Landmark Forum too and we all got really excited about the potential and created a company, pooled $1.6 million from friends and family, and bought, renovated, rented, and sold 35 homes in and around Compton CA (the investors got 27% annualised returns, over 2 years).

We were doing such cool stuff in distressed neighborhoods that the Los Angeles Times plastered us all over the front page of the Sunday real estate section. Then we started getting calls from all over the place. We raised another $2 million and bought dozens more houses. We were on CNN, we were in Fortune, they did a documentary on us on HD.net.

Now we are raising $50 million to do it bigger. When we show that it works at this level, I expect we will do it again even bigger. My ultimate goal is to transform all the distressed neighborhoods in the world. I believe this will have a major impact on sustainability and peace.

Whether this ends up solving any major global problems or not, I hope to be remembered as someone who cared about the poor and designed win-win investments that create wealth for the community as well as for investors.

Another solution to poverty

I had a vision the other day of a new solution to poverty. First, list all the governments and groups that are donating money to help the poor, including welfare in rich countries, and sort them by how much money they are giving.

Start with the biggest one, perhaps it's the US government's assistance to Brazil or whatever it is. Maybe it's our own welfare programs. Anyway, instead of money, give solar panels.

Use the money to buy solar panels, and then donate the solar panels directly to the people we were giving some other kind of assistance to. Publicise this fact, so that anyone who wants solar panels will know that these poor people now have them, and will probably want to sell them in order to buy stuff they need.

A small number of the solar panels might end up on poor people's roofs or leaned up against their tents powering radios or electric fans. But most will get sold.
Keep doing that. The beauty of it is that the only way a solar panel has any value is (1) it has to be out in the sunlight, and (2) you have to have a use for the electricity generated. So the panels will quickly find themselves in the hands of either people with electricity needs or entrepreneurs who want to sell electricity to others.

Solar panels that don't satisfy (1) and (2) are worthless and yet can be sold for real money. The point is that a large electric generation capacity will grow up overnight. This infrastructure will enable other industries to develop, particularly in useful electronic devices.

You can monitor the street price of solar panels, and if it ever drops too low (unlikely, if everyone knows about this, on ebay solar panels don't sell for any discount at all, there are way more buyers than sellers) then you switch momentarily to something else, like bicycles.

The assets you donate instead of money all have to have the same traits, they are worthless unless used to create wealth, and (unlike food or clothing) they last a long time without depreciating in value, and there is a resale market, or one could arise instantly.

The ultimate goal of socially conscious business

>I, for one, am very interested in the intersection of business and social improvement.<

This is an interesting statement, because on the face of it all business seems to be about social improvement. No one is forced to buy anything, in spite of the stories we tell. Since transactions are freely entered into, both buyer and seller must believe they are benefiting.

I guess there are two problems which socially conscious investing has arisen to address.

First, the free market allows people to repeatedly make choices which lead to financial ruin. For instance, spending too much on alcohol or gambling can lead to loss of your home and job. Kind of like a mountain road with no railings or lane markers.

We see the smashed cars below and think, we should make that road safer. Then we lobby and campaign to convince everyone to agree to put up railings. That's an uphill struggle in the case of products and services; freedom is such an important value to us.

Society has outlawed a few things like cocaine and asbestos, which arguably lead people to ruin. It has put some restrictions on tobacco, guns, sex, loan sharks, and gambling, presumably to protect individuals from their own free choices.

Socially conscious investing has this protection built into it, as part of the goal of the business. That is, a business which is designed to consistently and reliably improve its customers' (and employees', suppliers', owners', and neighbors') quality of life, and which succeeds at it, is socially conscious.

The other problem is that some things are really profitable which end up being bad for everyone, like strip mining, or tobacco growing, rhinoceros hunting, or feeding sheep brains to cattle. This is often an even more difficult struggle to restrict, because there is so much money coming out of the enterprise before anyone complains, that all the politicians are in debt to these bad boys, kind of like Chicago's court system under Al Capone.

Socially conscious business ought to leave the world at least as nice as we found it. Currently it is enough to simply do less damage than all the other companies providing the same product, as is the case with Seventh Generation disposable diapers, or organically grown vegetables that are shipped to us in diesel powered trucks.

What seems apparent in looking at this situation is that socially conscious businesses have arisen to fill a gap in government's stewardship of the common good. We are doing the government's job, because the government is being paid not to do it.

So the ultimate goal of socially conscious business has to be to transform the government. I never thought of it that way before.

Vaccine for Poverty (part 4)

If you have been following this multi-part essay on solving poverty, by now you know my rule #1: Take on the easiest cases first.

I want to say a bit more about what makes a case "easy". As you can imagine, for example, it is easier to help someone get a job if they are disciplined, qualified, and have a "good attitude", and the only thing they are lacking is some coaching on how to apply and what to say in an interview.

I am not saying that we shouldn't help poor and desperate people. I am saying that if we focus our efforts on comforting the desperate cases and ignore the marginal cases, we risk never getting there. I want to end poverty, not die trying!

I am also not saying we shouldn't seek sweeping improvements to the tax system and other aspects of government and economy. I am saying that unless you've got a track record of winning big political battles, I suggest starting with something smaller. Reform the taxes of one small town in a repeatable way (i.e. such that your influence and resources grow, not shrink, in the process), and I will join you in taking on the next easiest target.

Another way to construe what makes a case "easy" is to look at the "bang per buck". When we spend time, effort, and money on something we expect something back. Sometimes we get back less than we gave, for instance when we buy a lottery ticket and we get the fun of scratching it but it's not a winner.

Other times our effort pays off more than we put in, like I recently spent $58 on a bicycle and I've ridden it to work dozens of times so far, which is fun for me, keeps me healthy, and gets me to work, where I make money and write long essays on o/net. The kicker is that after reaping all those benefits, I still have the bicycle, which is basically still worth $58! So that investment is paying off pretty amazingly.

Buying real estate (if you know how to do it safely, and consistently) is even better. You get a place to live (or you get to provide someone else with a place to live), a tax deferral, a source of really cheap financing, and then thousands of dollars in profit when you rent or sell.

One might argue that prenatal care is an even better investment than that, the child might enjoy better health for their entire lives. Ten dollars in multivitamins might yield millions of dollars in value later.

Those are the kinds of investments we want to make! The stories I have heard about microfinance are exciting, a $50 loan transforms a person's life and provides them with the means to dig their way out of poverty, and they even pay it back! What's more, that person doesn't just impact their own family. By working and improving their lot, they inspire everyone around them.

People are incredibly sensitive to the behavior of those around them. Think about how you feel when you are in a noisy crowd. And then imagine the crowd suddenly gets quiet. Peer pressure is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. It is the wave we surf on, in all our self-actualisation.

Think of how people behave in a church or temple or a museum. Even gang members are quiet and respectful in those situations. Think of how you feel when you see people dressed in business suits rushing for a cab. Or when you see people strolling in the park. Or lurking in an alley. Why do new clothing fashions catch on so fast? Do our individual preferences actually change every season, and all in the same direction?

Most crimes are committed when no one is looking, but the blatant exceptions to this, e.g. people being mugged on a crowded street or in the subway, really prove the rule -- the mode of behavior in these places is to avoid touching others, remain aloof and separate, as if there were an invisible bubble around each person. Helping someone fend off a mugger would break the bubble, and enmesh you in their affairs. You would then stick out in the crowd as a bubble breaker.

Malcolm Gladwell discussed the power of the environment to influence our behavior in "The Tipping Point", and many books have been written on the subject of peer pressure. The bottom line is that people are profoundly influenced by their surroundings, and in particular, the behavior of the people around them.

Consider the most expensive real estate in the world. There are three general categories of places on this list, (1) religious, historical, or artistic landmarks, e.g. Taj Mahal or the Statue of Liberty; (2) natural resources or beautiful landscapes, e.g. a gold mine or Niagra Falls; and (3) places where people behave in a highly sought-after manner, e.g. Oxford University, Wall Street, Beverly Hills. This behavior includes the kinds of buildings they build and how they maintain them.

The amazing thing about these three causes of high real estate value is that on closer examination, they all boil down to human behavior. Religious significance exists by agreement, as does the value of gold or the beauty of a particular landscape feature. If gold went out of fashion, it's value would drop, just like Beverly Hills.

Our behavior has a huge impact on the quality of life of the people around us. And their behavior has a huge impact on ours. But all behaviors, just like all fashions, and all religions, are not created equal. Some are more contagious than others.
In designing the Active Ingredient for the Poverty Vaccine, we are looking for a behavior with the following characteristics:

a) It enriches the person doing it.

b) It is easy, legal, safe, and FUN to do, and not at all embarrassing, scary, or controversial.

c) It is done out in the open, in full view of the public.

d) Rich people can do it in places where poor people live.

e) Poor people can do it too.

Part (a) ensures that it will reduce poverty, when engaged in. Part (b) ensures that once they start, people will continue doing it. Parts (c),(d),(e) allow for an effective delivery mechanism.

There may be many behaviors that fit these criteria. The one that I know intimately is buying real estate and fixing it up, and beautifying the whole neighborhood in simple, inexpensive ways, enriching the community and creating opportunities for the most enterprising poor people to quickly work their way out of poverty and inspire their less enterprising neighbors in the process.

Real estate values depend on the behavior of people in the community, and we can influence that behavior, improving the quality of life and the desirability of the real estate, which in turn rewards the community, and us.
Now the question is, "Which properties should we buy?" This is my favorite part. :)

The Poverty Vaccine, Part 3

Let's face it, solving poverty is a huge task. Huge tasks behave a little differently than small or medium sized tasks.

For example, consider weeding your vegetable garden. All the vegetable gardens I have weeded have been small enough so that I could finish weeding them in less than 2 full days. This is shorter than the reproductive cycle of a weed, so I always finish weeding before the existing weeds reproduce.

Now imagine weeding a 100 acre farm, using the same technique (pulling out each weed by hand). I imagine that would take me at least 2 days per acre, or 200 days. I'm no botanist, but I know weeds grow and spread faster than that. The point is I'd never get done.

Weeding a 100 acre garden cannot be done using techniques that work fine on a 100 sqft garden. Think about that.

I have done a fair amount of experimentation with all sorts of landscaping, and I have prided myself on never using power tools, whose noise would lower the quality of life for my neighbors. At my first major investment property (back in 1994), 22607 Valley View Dr, Hayward CA, I spent a solid week from dawn to dusk frantically digging out a retaining wall with a shovel, and literally running 20 yards uphill with my wheelbarrow full of dirt, and dumping it at the top, to terrace my steeply sloping yard. When I set my mind to something, I really give it my all.

But I bit off more than I could chew in that job, and ended up completing only one terrace (I had planned for five). See, here's another example of using a technique that is too slow. The mortgage was burdensome; I spent a full year fixing the place up before I could rent it, and I ended up selling the property before I could finish.

The most avid John Kerry supporters can probably understand my feelings. Sure, there is satisfaction in working hard on something you believe in, but a lot of satisfaction comes from succeeding, too. I have learned the hard way to pick my battles carefully.

Life is too short to screw around with slow poverty solutions. We need THE FASTEST solution possible!

Here it is.

1. Solve the easiest cases first. Starting with the easiest country, the easiest state, the easiest city, the easiest neighborhood, the easiest street, the easiest house, the easiest room in that house, and the easiest part of that room.

Remember, our failure to solve poverty in the easiest place works on our brains like psychological proof that we cannot solve it in harder places. Poverty in Los Angeles destroys any hope of ending poverty in Calcutta.

2. Solve the profitable cases first. It makes no sense to pay to accomplish something when you can just as easily get paid to accomplish the same thing.

A large portion of the poverty problem arises due to people spending too much money on things that depreciate in value rapidly (e.g. ice cream, carpet, automobiles). We aren't going to solve it by engaging in that same behavior. Every dollar we spend should come back to us bigger.

3. Solve the cases that yield the most support first. Why start conflicts? I am still alive partly because I have spent the past 10 years figuring out ways of accomplishing the result I want such that not only does no one object, but people spontaneously help me. There is no need to boss anyone around or make anyone uncomfortable.

It might not seem like such a sure thing that this will work, if there weren't soooooo many incredibly wealthy, energetic, talented, outspoken, passionate people who want this result so bad we can taste it. This is the fastest, cheapest, easiest, most sustainable way to get there.

Now I just need to get this idea across to people in a way that sticks.

Vaccine for Poverty Part 2

The Vaccine for Poverty, continued... (part 2)

Many priests and nuns take a "Vow of Poverty" which means they do not amass personal wealth or put a lot of energy into collecting luxuries. But even the poorest priest is actually on the right side of the Poverty Line, because they are "taken care of". They don't generally starve, and the Church takes in more wealth than it needs to keep its priests healthy & comfortable, so their future is secure.

The ones that concern us have no safety net. On average, they consume all the wealth they create each day (or more), and there is no wealthy organisation committed to taking care of them.

We have defined poverty in terms of wealth, but we have not yet defined "wealth", so let us take a moment to do that now. For the purposes of this discussion, wealth refers to everything which contributes to a high quality of life.

Money is the first thing that comes to mind, because we use it to surround ourselves with security, beauty, comfort, and creative outlets. Money and everything it buys is one of three aspects of wealth -- the part that relates primarily to our immediate environment.

Most of us have experienced an acute lack of correlation between money and quality of life at some point or other. Once we have plenty of money, our quality of life still depends on intangibles like loyal friends, harmonious relationships, integrity, courage, and feeling challenged in our careers. This second aspect of wealth includes relationship and character traits required for high quality of life.

Relationship and character traits are attainable in some degree through openness, persistence, and determination, and are therefore available to anyone who chooses to pursue them. However, we can all remember times when it was the advice or encouragement of a friend, parent, teacher, or other role model that motivated us to strive for and achieve these virtues. It is difficult to say by exactly how much, but it is clear that our quality of life would have suffered if we had lacked that support in those moments.

The third aspect of wealth consists of factors requiring the cooperation of others; items ranging from the simple politeness of neighbors to things like common language and currency, institutions of education and health care, rule of law and protections of a national constitution, world peace, environmental preservation, and biodiversity. The wealthiest person on the planet is impoverished if victimised by war or environmental destruction.

Recall my formulation of the Poverty Line, being the distinction between people whose situation we felt called for humanitarian intervention and those who we felt were going to be OK regardless. Under this three part definition of wealth it is possible to imagine people to the left of the line on any one aspect, or two, or all three.

That is, a person can lack money, possessions, supplies, and commodities, and independently of that, a person can lack courage, integrity, wisdom, and role models to inspire and bring out the best in them. And finally, the person's family, neighborhood, city, or society can lack cooperative values and institutions such as freedom of speech or safe drinking water.

Recognising this complexity sheds light on the often puzzling failure of so many well funded anti-poverty programs. To take an obvious example, giving money to people who lack discipline or integrity is not going to accomplish anything meaningful. Giving education, training, and equipment to people whose communities do not support rule of law may have even led to the attacks of 9/11. What a dismal return on investment!

We begin to get a clearer picture of what the people just to the left of that line look like. They probably do not live in a country currently engulfed in civil war, for instance. Their families and communities and cities and nations probably have all the cooperative values and institutions one could wish for, and they are probably reliable, trustworthy, intelligent, thoughtful, and considerate people, who, given all those virtues, most likely also already have enough money.

Perhaps the only thing lacking is some good advice and encouragement to inspire them to take a few simple actions and step over the line, rather than remain in a situation that will tend to get more difficult the longer they stay there.

I am clearly not saying these are the people most in need of our help -- they are not. I am merely describing the situation that is the precursor to the end of poverty, similar to the strategy of injecting dead or weak smallpox virus in order to stimulate the immune system to develop an effective defense against a live, full strength smallpox virus that might be encountered at a later date.

More on this later.

-----

Let's return to individuals for a moment, and consider the case of an unemployed U.S. citizen living in Long Beach, California. Every day I bicycle to work past a group of poor looking people waiting on the sidewalk outside a church where I assume they receive food or clothing or some other assistance. Which side of the line are they on?

It depends on why they are there. Some of them may actually be doing fine, and using some charity just to supplement an already decent standard of living. Some may be there primarily to socialise. However (if my own experience is any guide), it seems likely that many of them are to the left of the Poverty Line.

They are being taken care of to some extent. Many of them receive other assistance as well. If they are freely choosing to seek out those services, because they prefer it to other also-good options, then that would put them on the right side of the line, in my opinion. But if they feel like they NEED that assistance, because all other options available to them involve serious health risks (like not bathing, or not eating a balanced diet), then I'd say their quality of life is unacceptable. I would not want my brother waiting there feeling that he NEEDED that assistance to prevent personal disaster. (And I feel I am related to everyone, so I don't want your brother there either, in that condition.)

To be continued...

A Vaccine For Poverty Part 1

I have been working on a solution to global poverty for the past 10 years and I have come up with one that I think will work, and I am in the process of implementing it. I will describe it to you.

First of all, consider the problem of smallpox, before the invention of the microscope. People came up with all sorts of imaginary causes and (very expensive) solutions, but none of them worked because they didn't have a working model of the disease. Once they saw the little germs under the microscope, and the white blood cells, they started manipulating them with chemicals, etc.

Then someone invented the vaccine, and convinced the government that it worked, and then the government made everyone take it. Problem solved. All the other "solutions" went poof.

Poverty is like smallpox, or hiv. What we need is to invent an effective vaccine, and then for everyone to take it. I have invented a vaccine. The reason I say it like this is that to understand what I'm talking about it helps to realise that (nearly) all the noise out there about "poverty" is just that, noise. Just look at the results produced, and then you will know how effective all the solutions that have been tried are.

Now I will describe my "microscope" which allows us to see the actual cause of poverty and address it.

Imagine we were to sort all the people in the world at this moment, by how affluent or economically successful they are. It would go from the wealthiest most successful person alive, all the way down to the person who when I finish this sentence will immediately die of starvation or thirst or suffocation or bleeding.

Somewhere in the middle of that sorted list is the Poverty Line. That is, the people to the right of that line are "OK" by our standard. Just barely, but we look at their lives and think, they may have lots of serious problems, but overall, they are doing ok, we can pretty much leave them to take care of themselves, they are going to be alright.

But the people just to the left of the line, we think, just barely, are not ok. Some (tiny) essential thing is missing from their lives. We want to help them, and get them over to the right side of the line, so we can sleep better. That's the definition of the line, it separates the cases we feel a desire to act on from the ones we feel (healthy) apathy about.

Of course, as we go farther left toward the more extreme cases, we start to feel more like Mother Teresa, like oh my god these people are in dire situations. We see those kids with distended bellies and flies on their faces and we are strongly moved to do something. People whip out their checkbooks and send $30 to FeedTheWorld and then do their best to forget about the fact that they have no idea where that $30 is going or what the ultimate effect of this action is. In the back of their mind, they are in a panic because they are worried if they spend too much time thinking about those kids they will end up going to Africa or India and giving up their lives like Mother Teresa did.

Mother Teresa was an amazing person and thousands of other amazing people followed her and did whatever she told them. Millions of people sent millions of dollars to her. And yet Calcutta still has dire poverty but no smallpox. Her work, while noble and admirable and directly beneficial to thousands, was not a vaccine for poverty.

So we have the list of people sorted by wealth. If we take the 0.0001% who are just left of the line, we are looking at the 6500 very easiest cases, requiring the least effort to get them over the line. If it were just about money, and we had $6500, each these people would require only $1, so we could redeem all of them. Wow, that'd be a big bang for the buck. Compared with the most desperate cases all the way left, which perhaps require $10,000 each to save from imminent torture and death, and another $10,000 each week thereafter in medical attention and care. We couldn't even save a single one with our $6500. That's depressing.

However, it isn't just about money. Everyone is in a different situation. A few of these people do just need a little money, others need advice, others need a workout partner, others need some encouragement to take a risk and go for an opportunity they otherwise are going to pass up.

This is why giving $6500 isn't the vaccine for poverty. Extra money only helps a few people, and just confuses the issue with all the rest. So only $10 of that $6500 was used efficiently to help someone, and people get tired of spending $6500 to get $10 worth of benefit. This is how welfare works, except that there are other disincentivising side effects so along with the $10 of benefit we also get $500 of extra problems.

And neither are job placement programs the vaccine for poverty, because they help a few people and everyone else is not in the position to really take advantage of them. Same with soup kitchens, homeless shelters, rent control, affordable housing, section 8 housing assistance, food stamps, habitat for humanity, literacy programs, etc. Each one of these strategies provides something specific for people in need. The problem is what they are providing is only useful to a few people, and it is actually harmful to many others, and they aren't careful about picking out which is which. So they do some good, but not enough, and it tends to get cancelled out. Ultimately people get frustrated because the dream isn't materialising and they go back to their day jobs.

This is how all the cures for smallpox looked, before the vaccine. Some people got the disease and survived, because they got plenty of rest. Others survived because they ate lots of food. Other survived because they kept a positive attitude. But each of these techniques worked on only a small percentage of the people, and it's depressing to keep trying "cures" and having 95 out of 100 of your patients die.

To be continued...

A Suggestion For Environmentalists

Today I had an amazing insight about environmentalism (and other such causes). Environmental groups often talk about why Exxon or Dow Chemical or Philip Morris are bad. Of course if any such group begins to pose a real threat, the companies under attack will retaliate, working to discredit or otherwise neutralise the environmental group, just like the group is working to neutralise them. So it's a kind of mini-war.

What if we looked at it another way. Let's say the people in charge of Exxon are not bad people, they are just doing what to them seems the most fun and profitable thing they can think of, given their situation. They have many options, and they have chosen what they think is the best one for them, at the moment.

Now, what if we could present to them something better, I mean something THEY perceive as more fun and more profitable to do, rather than what they are doing. This involves a strange reversal, instead of trying to hurt them, we are trying to make them even more successful and happy (not just from our point of view, but from theirs). Once it became clear this was our agenda, they might even invite us into their office and tell us some of their challenges. Suddenly it would be in their obvious self-interest to work closely with us.

It seems like there is already critical mass in the environmental movement to make big things happen. The problem seems to be the individuals in the movement can't agree on what to accomplish, what is step 1. Otherwise I can't imagine we would still be watching fuel efficiency drop, deforestation accelerate, and air & water pollution continue to increase.

I suggest this as step 1, a very big victory we could all go for and win. List all the people who are directly causing the most environmental harm. Then try to figure out why, from THEIR point of view, are they doing that. What problem does that solve for them? Next, brainstorm alternative solutions to THEIR problem, and present those ideas to these people in a spirit of friendly cooperation. Open a dialogue, with the goal being to come up with something more fun and profitable than what those people are now doing.

Note that this step doesn't cost anything at all. It will have been worth it, even if it fails.

Solving Poverty

I think differently than (most) other people. The solution to poverty which I have developed is a paradigm shift, and most people do not believe it is possible when they first hear about it. I know it works because I have done it over and over and over again (and I am a skeptical guy).

It was a hypothesis but now it's a law, based on the same concept as Malcolm Gladwell's "Tipping Point", the same methodology behind "Guns, Germs, and Steel", or "Think & Grow Rich". None of those things make sense under the "normal" paradigm. (Who would've thought sleeping with animals was a good strategy for ultimately conquering the world?) My methodology is like a microscope, it allows you to see things that are otherwise invisible, and because they were invisible, people don't believe they exist.

What if poverty were really easy to solve? That poses the bizarre problem of why haven't we done it. You've heard conspiracy theories, you've heard Democrats blame corporations, Republicans blame immigrants, Greens blame capitalism, Christians blame Muslims, Whites blame Blacks, Rich blame Poor, and on and on. Those were the kinds of explanations people had of smallpox before the microscope.

The answer that appears under the microscope is -- brace yourself -- that we don't care. Sometimes we do care, and some people care a whole lot, but the amount of time we spend caring about people we don't know is way less, on average, than the amount of time we spend caring about hub caps, or spiders.

This might sound like a criticism of humanity, but it really isn't. The microscope was not a criticism of the germ world, just a tool for describing it. Once we saw those little microbes we began coming up with ways of manipulating them for our benefit.

So, in a nutshell, the trick is coming up with ways to make it easier and more fun to care about people you don't know. That is what I have been working on for the past 15 years. And, by George, I think I've got it. :)

Suggestion for Wikipedia

It seems to me Wikipedia ought to be able to handle multiple points of view.

There shouldn't just be one entry on George Bush, for instance, there should be one Republican version, one Democrat version, a Libertarian version, a Green version, a Muslim version, a Jewish version, etc.

Users should be able to select which version of history they want to read, including fictional ones. There isn't, after all, any "true, unbiased" version. The one you have now sounds like a high school teacher wrote it. Why present that one as official? Other people's points of view are just as valid.

Offering multiple versions of the same article would make the resource vastly more useful, and would limit vandalism to posing as a member of an opinion group when in fact you belonged to an opposing group, which would be easy to nip in the bud if posters had to identify themselves with at least a screen name, because authentic members of the group would see through it immediately and expose that screen name's dastardly schemes.

Filtering is the key

We are bombarded by information and choices all the time. The richer you are and the more successful and the more you get out there and meet people and see places and buy things, the more choices you are faced with.

The key to taking productivity and success to the next level is learning to filter out less productive options and less critical features. This is not to say that we should do this all the time. There is a time to brainstorm, and a time to focus in like a laser on the best available option.

Following is an article I found on www.digg.com

November 29, 2005
Are smarter people better at ignoring things?

People frequently complain that they can't remember things -- and they wish their brains had more storage capacity, like today's ever-expanding computer hard drives and RAM. If we could just improve the sheer size of our memory, we'd be able to retain and manipulate more data, and we'd become smarter and smarter -- right?

Not according to an intriguing new experiment by brain scientists at the University of Oregon. Edward Vogel and a team of students took a handful of volunteers and tested their "visual working memory" -- their ability to maintain awareness of events and objects around them. The test asked them to pay attention to red or blue bricks in a visual picture.

Now, visual working memory is highly correlated to intelligence: People with a bigger VWM tend to score much better on an array of cognitive challenges. For years, scientists have assumed that VWM is roughly analogous to cramming info into your head: The more you can fit in there, the smarter you are.

But when Vogel mapped the brain-wave activity of the volunteers, he noticed something much weirder. The people with the largest capacity in their VWM weren't retaining tons of information. No, they were being quite selective. Their genius lay in being able to strip out inessential information: To pay attention only to the red bricks -- to hold only those "in mind" -- and to ignore the blue ones. The upshot, as the editors at Nature summarize, is that ...

... this also implies that an individual's effective memory capacity may not simply reflect storage space, as it does with a hard disk. It may also reflect how efficiently irrelevant information is excluded from using up vital storage capacity.
That chart above shows this relationship: The more efficiently the subjects' brain worked, the bigger their memory capacity. This is not to say that people who can't screen out stimuli are dumber. As Vogel noted, "Being a bit scattered tends to be a trait of highly imaginative people." The more you rattle the marbles around in your brain, the more creative new connections you make, as it were -- connections that might be lost on those focusing intently on just the red ones.

Give away the stuff you aren't using

You know how if you buy bananas and don't eat them they turn brown and then black and eventually get really mushy and fruit flies seem to come out of nowhere and devour them?

With fruit it's really obvious when you aren't using it. Now think about all the other stuff in your house and garage, and office, and storage space. What if everything rotted after a month of disuse?

As a matter of fact, something is constantly rotting, something we can't quite see, but it is the time value of all these unused things. And it is huge. Probably bigger than the national debt and gross domestic product combined.

How can we tap into that unused wealth? First we need a website like ebay, but for free stuff (freebay.com or freebay.org would be the perfect name, but they are taken).

Next, we need to establish a culture of passing things on quickly. Remember when you could fit everything you owned in a VW bug? Let's bring those days back. Why have tons of stuff stored that we aren't actually using? Are we afraid that we won't be able to get that stuff again, if we really wanted it? If we could get people to reduce their stored goods by 10% it would have a giant positive impact on the real economy, improving quality of life not only for the recipients but also for the donors of all that stuff.

What gets people off the couch and into the world?

Inspiration.

This is part of our human machinery that is always running. We constantly become aware of things we want, and actions we could take, and then reasons why we shouldn't.

It's an ongoing conversation that never stops. I want X, so I could do Y, but then Z might happen.

There are gazillions of examples where we say "What the heck, I don't care about Z," and do it anyway. That's all the stuff that gets done in the world. All of it.
And of course there are gazillions more examples where we say "Oh, dear, if Z happens that'd be simply awful, so I won't do Y." Sometimes we go on to think, "But Y is not the only way to get X. Perhaps I could do A, or B, or C." This is just another iteration of the same process. We either do something or we listen to our reasons not to.

I have found it enlightening to actually pay attention to that conversation in myself, and become aware of my common reasons for not doing things I want to do. I have noticed that THE MAIN REASON that keeps coming up over and over for me is "Someone might criticise me, or get mad at me."

That is so funny to realise, because I would have insisted that I don't care what other people think. Most of my friends and family think of me as something of a social daredevil who does his own thing in spite of other people's opinions. This reminds me of the movie Batman Begins, where he grows defiantly in the direction of his greatest fear (bats).

Anyway, that is the most common thing that stops me (keeps me on the couch). What gets me going again is seeing someone do something or hearing about something that inspires me. Inspiration calls forth the behavior of taking risks and working hard to achieve something we want.

I noticed another common reason that stops me is "It won't be fun." Someone in there thinks I'm supposed to only do fun things. Another is "It won't work." Yes, possibility of failure, even without criticism, is another great reason for me to stay on the couch.

Will increased prosperity result in environmental degradation?

One difficulty with scaling my solution is the potential for environmental degradation, as millions of poor people with a relatively small environmental footprint suddenly become wealthier and start buying Hummers.

My solution to that is to build into the process a footprint-minimizing aspect. I will explain.

The primary economic driver I am focusing on is the value of real estate, and its ability to serve as collateral for loans. The borderline people targeted by the program will purchase and renovate houses, apartments, and offices, according to a system that yields a consistent profit.

Integrated into this system is the mandate to increase the energy efficiency of the house, and reduce its pollution impact, taking advantage of natural light, solar heating and electricity, etc. The program also calls exclusively for renovation of existing buildings, lowering the impact of urban sprawl, and drastically reducing the total resources spent per habitable dwelling.

We also focus on places with public transit and much lower commute times (i.e. high density residential near high density office space). This reduces the future transportation burden. And finally, we insist on planting local native trees, shrubs, and ground cover.

As we grow, we can add elements such as grey water systems, organic grocery stores and fruit cooperatives, commute free lifestyles, and other waste reduction programs.
Because these behaviors can be encouraged proportionately to the wealth created by the program, we can effectively address and offset any potential rise in pollution and environmental degradation due to increased prosperity.

Make Poverty History

MAKE POVERTY HISTORY
START AT HOME. 100% EMPLOYMENT. INVEST IN SUCCESS.

There are three groups of people in this world. The Well-to-do, the Destitute, and the ones on the fence who could go either way. The quickest, easiest, and surest way to sustainably help the destitute is to prevent the ones on the fence from joining their ranks. We can shrink the problem down to something readily solvable by a handful of activists without requiring government cooperation, if we tip the mass of borderline cases to become sustainable wealth producers.

Global injustices such as poverty, AIDS, malnutrition, conflict and illiteracy stem from the ongoing behaviors of billions of people. Reducing their severity requires changing behaviors.

World leaders are elected by their own citizens and have no mandate to help foreigners. It is foolish to rely on their leadership in reducing global poverty, disease, or environmental degradation. By the same token, a small, well-organized group of dedicated individuals can successfully lead the world out of this situation.

World poverty is sustained by a combination of behaviors resulting in certain groups producing and keeping less wealth than they consume, on a daily, monthly, and annual basis. If borderline cases were tipped to the positive side, there would be more wealth to go around, and more examples for poor people to follow for bettering their situation.

Governments around the world do a tremendous amount of good, along with a fair amount of harm, making and enforcing trade policies and other economic decisions. The same goes for corporations, small business owners, and individuals. It is good to point out where things are broken, but it is also important to actually implement improvements that don’t depend on the agreement of people who may never agree until it is too late.

2006 offers an exceptional series of opportunities for us to take a lead internationally, to start turning things around.

A sea change is needed. By mobilising popular support across a unique string of events and actions, we will obviate government conservativism and create the conditions under which the problems will begin to solve themselves. This requires rethinking some long-held assumptions.

We urge humanitarians, environmentalists, business owners, and all who are concerned about the future of life on this planet to rise to the challenge of 2006. We are calling for urgent and meaningful action on seven critical and inextricably linked areas: housing, employment, food, energy, pollution, transportation, and education.

1.Housing
•Publish an international standard for decent human living conditions and measure all neighborhoods, villages, towns, and cities against the standard.
•Where residents do not own their living quarters, force landlords to upgrade the properties to meet the minimum standards. Offer low interest loans and loan guarantees to encourage renters to become owners.
•Where residents own their own home and it does not meet the standards for decent living conditions, fund educational programs in trades and offer financial assistance to upgrade properties to meet standards.
•Implement policies which discourage commuting long distances to work, phasing in a requirement that employers provide sufficient local housing for their employees.
•Purchase and renovate, or cause to be purchased and renovated, all unused buildings that could provide decent housing.

The first hallmark of poverty is inadequate housing, and inadequate housing has an ongoing negative impact on residents, tending to trap them in a downward economic spiral.


2.Employment
•Provide results oriented employment assistance centers online and within walking distance of communities with high unemployment. Pay commissions to recruitment agents based on how many people they successfully place in jobs and how long these clients remain in their position. They should also be incentivized to assist workers in switching jobs where the switch results in higher job satisfaction and longevity.
•Provide incentives to businesses for opening stores and offices in communities with high unemployment, hiring local residents.
•Provide free entrepreneurship training and mentoring in communities with high unemployment.

Until one is independently wealthy, steady employment supplies the cashflow required to participate fully in society while developing and improving one’s skills and abilities.


3.Food
•A variety of healthy and appealing food choices must be available to all people. Nutritional labels should be redesigned along the lines of hazardous waste insignia, to immediately hilite for the consumer the fat, sugar, sodium, cholesterol, and dubious chemical content, as well as the vitamin, mineral, protein, complex carbohydrate, and fiber content.
•Grocery stores and restaurants should be given a grade (similar to the health department’s grade for cleanliness) for how much prominent shelf space they devote to healthy food products vs unhealthy, and this score should be posted prominently at the entrance.
•Organic, and locally grown products should be made available to all, and the fertilizers, pesticides, and other chemicals used in the processing of conventional foods should be disclosed prominently on the packaging and labeling.
•Fruit and vegetable coops should be instituted in all neighborhoods, starting with the most economically disadvantaged.
•The ratio of packaging material to food contents should be posted prominently on every product.

As one of the essentials of human existence, food plays a major role in everyone’s quality of life. To eliminate poverty we need to change is the way food is grown, processed, packaged, marketed, distributed, and stored, to enhance the ratio between wealth created and destroyed in this process.


4.Energy
•A combination of photovoltaic cells and solar water heating should be installed on the roof and south facing (in the northern hemisphere) side of every building.
•Wind powered generators should be installed wherever practical.
•Biodiesel and vegetable oil powered vehicles should be subsidized to reduce the use of fossil fuels.
•In dry places, roof water runoff should be collected and used to irrigate landscaping.
•In hot places, shade trees should be planted to reduce building cooling needs.
•Smart ventilation systems should intake cool air (e.g. from floor crawl spaces) in summer, and warm air (e.g. from attic) in winter, reducing energy usage for heating and cooling.

Energy is key to increasing wealth on a global scale. It is used to improve on our environment (e.g. a network of public transportation and communication systems increasing the reach of the individual), and also to convert waste materials back into useful products (e.g. water purification, aluminum recycling).


5.Pollution
•All consumer products should be graded on the total emissions and dumping involved in their manufacture and distribution, and this grade should be prominently displayed on the packaging.
•All businesses should be graded according to the environmental destruction they cause.
•Gasoline cars should be converted to electric, where possible.
•Recycling, organic farming, bicycling, walking, buying nonperishables in larger packages, skylights, composting toilets, and other earth-friendly behaviors should be encouraged.
•All dumping of toxic or otherwise hazardous substances into the air or water must stop. Waste materials should be sent to processing centers to be broken down or combined into benign compounds.

Pollution degrades our environment and lowers our standard of life. It’s primary cause is laziness, and the short term solution is constant oversight and publicity. Longer term, we need to develop a culture of sustainability and respect for other people we have not met (something missing in the practice of most religions, which should be added).


6.Transportation
•Traffic laws prohibiting tailgating should be strengthened (minimum 5 car lengths at all speeds, including stopped) and aggressively enforced, allowing cars to pass and continue moving regardless of congestion.
•All dense urban areas should become pedestrian only zones.
•Multiple forms of clean public transportation should be encouraged and subsidized.
•Areas around train stations should be zoned for mixed use high-rise where practical.
•Large employers should be forced to phase in shuttle service for their local employees.
•Shopping centers, amusement parks, airports and other popular destinations should have frequent shuttle services to rail transit hubs if direct rail service is not feasible.

Transportation systems increase our quality of life by connecting us with more options for work, shopping, education, and entertainment activities than we could achieve by walking. Most existing transportation systems have not been well thought out and could easily be improved, reducing travel time, fuel consumption, accidents, and pollution, and raising quality of life.


7.Education
•Results based advanced learning systems should be made available to all (e.g. Pimsleur Language System, Hooked on Phonics, Tony Robbins).
•Curricula should be expanded to include useful things adults wished they had learned, including how to start a business, how to negotiate your salary, how to find a suitable marriage partner and how to have good relationships, how to get a good deal on airfare and hotel, how to play bridge, etc.
•Schools should be responsible for finding out what each child is best at and encouraging them in especially that area, while helping them to become well rounded by results based coaching in areas of weakness.
•Teachers should be rated (and compensated) on how well their students do in the following year, compared with how well they did in the previous one.

Childhood education is routinely given more credit than it deserves for the success of adults (studies show that children’s success levels correlate with those of their parents, not those of their school), but the opportunity remains to have a major positive impact on a child’s future quality of life, and that of the whole community, if we effectively teach and encourage cooperative wealth producing behavior.

Comments on further points in the original

Poverty can be eradicated without any increase in international aid.
The money flowing from rich countries to poor countries does not tend to significantly and sustainably change behavior.

All countries are rich. All poor countries were subsumed by rich countries and no longer exist as separate entities. Certain people are poor because they are not given the opportunities or tools with which to succeed, or the environment which encourages them to do so.

More successful countries providing a fixed percentage of their national income in aid to struggling economies does not make sense. People must mobilize around the desire to achieve a lasting goal, and invest in a process that works. The same problems we spend money on today will reappear later on an even grander scale, unless their root behavioral causes are addressed.

MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY was created by an alliance of organizations in the UK, but this document has been rewritten to be a manifesto capable of unifying people interested in dramatically reducing world poverty. To read the original document or learn about the original organization, use the following link:

www.MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY.org

Essentials of Organizing

In my experience, there are 3 factors which distinguish an organized (and therefore powerful) group from an amorphous one.

1. Leadership. Everyone knows who makes the decisions, and how.

The challenge here is legitimacy, i.e. people agreeing to follow the leader, and actually doing it. There are three common ways to achieve this: (a) election, (b) hiring people to work for you, (c) being charismatic and inspirational. We should use all three of these tactics.

2. Communication. Members know how to voice their opinions and where to find out what is going on.

Web sites, newsletters, and yahoo groups work great for this part. When many conversations are going on at once, user-friendly indexing is very important, to allow users to contribute where they are best able and not waste time in other areas.

3. Action. The group does something, and tells everyone that it did it.

The key is designing an algorithm for a string of constant ongoing successes. I have developed a methodology for doing this in real estate, following the doctrine: never lose money and always beat the market (while increasing quality of life for those affected).

We need to do the same thing for all sustainability issues. Some easy goals would be for instance to increase the use of solar and wind power by a specific amount greater than the current projected growth rate in a particular state. Or to increase the proportion of food grown organically in a particular region. Or to reduce the crime rate, or increase the literacy rate in a selected city. Or increase the proportion of native plants in a neighborhood.

Our first meeting should be to brainstorm projects that answer the question, "How can we measurably increase the sustainability of our high quality of life on this planet?" and then each project should be rated for cost, time, and chance of success, given the talents and level of commitment of people on our team.

The ones that cost the least (or make money, like Affinity), take the least time (best would be under 3 months), and have the highest chance of success would be scheduled first. The point is to tell the group we are going to accomplish this one project, do it and measure the results, take credit for it and tell the press, and then start the process over for the next quickest, cheapest, surest win.

People will rally behind a winner, so as we get a string of successes it will be easier to take on larger projects, and easier to get more media attention, attract powerful partners, etc.

What I have learned working with the media is that it is very important to stay on message, and keep your elevator pitch short.

"We want to measurably increase the sustainability of our high standard of living. Then we want to do it again, and inspire other people to do it too."

Organization

There are at least 6 million people (0.1%) on the planet who are dedicated to keeping the earth healthy and habitable and who are willing to spend significant time energy and money toward this end. There are thousands of nonprofits and foundations focusing on the environment and spending billions of dollars each year.

A much smaller group could take over the world. The largest international corporations could be fully taken over by this group in 1 day (do the math). So why are the rainforests still vanishing, why are oil companies still predicting growth, why are we degrading nearly every aspect of our environment faster than ever before?

The answer is simple, lack of organization. Organization means people get behind a common set of goals and a common action plan. They then do what every successful conqueror does, look for an easy target, and take it over. Then look for the next easiest target, and take that over. and so on. The leverage from each victory makes bigger targets feasible.

Now, what goal could everyone rally behind? this is the key. I would love to see the end of pesticide use, destructive farming and herding practices, war, poverty, race discrimination, fossil fuel burning, etc. but in many cases these goals conflict (at least regarding the next step to take), and it is tricky to come up with a strategy that gets us from A to B intact. So environmentalists end up fighting each other (often without realizing it, like when someone is against petroleum so they buy a diesel car and run it on soybean oil, which is grown using pesticides.)

Upon reflection of many alternatives, I believe the proper goal has three parts:

1) Maximise the earth's carrying capacity
2) Ensure a minimum standard of living for all humans
3) Improve the median standard of living

Guided by broad agreement on these commandments, we could map out a strategy for accomplishing them.

Or we can continue to fritter away billions of hours trading recycling strategies, alternative fuel toys, and ecosafe packaging solutions, shaking our heads while we watch millions of species go extinct.

Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches

This post gets its title from a fascinating 1974 book by anthropologist Marvin Harris. I will summarise his main points in my next few posts.

Cows: In India there are people who are starving, while apparently useless cows wander around causing a public nuisance. It seems like the Hindu doctrine of the sacred cow is costing the country billions of dollars, using up scarce agricultural resources, and effectively causing large-scale human suffering and death.

On closer look (including analysis of artificially induced gender imbalances in cow populations, differential treatment of cows by different castes, and the various ways in which cows are fed and used in different situations) it turns out the cows are integrated into the economy rather more efficiently than the farm animals and machines found in more developed nations. The practical reason behind the ban on cow killing is similar to the practical reason behind the bans on lying, cheating, and stealing: it counteracts the temptation to reap short-term personal gain at higher long-term societal costs.

It's easy to assume that the people with the highest standard of living are doing things right, and the people with the lowest standard of living are doing things wrong. Whereas in some cases the latter may actually be doing better, if we were to control for the diverse starting points and environmental factors.

The solution to poverty is not to get all the poor people to act the way rich people are now acting. The solution involves getting all people to act a little differently than they are acting now.

Messages To Outer Space

Ever since the first time I saw a satelite photo, I have wanted to write a message that could be seen from space.

For a while I researched buying land in Nevada or Wyoming, and by planting different kinds of grass and trees, I figured I could spell out words at a resolution of about 1 pixel = 1 acre.

But recently, flying over Phoenix, I got a better idea. Many suburbs are built on a square grid, and so the rooftops actually line up like pixels on a computer screen. If we could rent those rooftops we could spell out words extremely clearly.

The owners of the roofs wouldn't necessarily be affected, either, because using the same technology used to make those giant movie posters, comprised of thousands of tiny scenes from the movie, with just small changes to the tone of the roof, barely noticeable on the ground, we could paint clearly legible words using contrast.

What would we spell? Of course, advertisers like Coca Cola and Exxon would have an idea. But I think cities like Phoenix could also differentiate themselves with aerial signage, the way Hollywood does with its hillside placard.

Rent Control

Rent control is intended to solve the problem of people getting priced out of their homes and communities. The idea is that if you already live somewhere, even if you are renting, you have a right to stay there, as long as you pay your rent on time and follow the rules. The landlord has the right to raise the rent, but only at a "reasonable" rate.

In Los Angeles and many other cities, the "reasonable" rate is something like 3% per year. On the other hand, housing in Los Angeles has been appreciating at many times that rate, for the past 5 years. The data understates the discrepancy, because when a duplex is sold with tenants, the price is going to reflect the current rents, because the tenants usually can't be evicted.

To give an example, a client of ours owns a classic old 4-plex on a nice residential street near the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. The previous owner was a slumlord who neglected the property for about 20 years. It shows. He didn't raise the rent, either, so the tenants are paying around $280/month for each 1 bedroom apartment. Since my client has owned the property for a year, he gets to raise the rents 3%, or $8.40 per month.

You might be thinking, "Hooray for the tenants!" But this is really a lose-lose situation. The landlord figures, with annual rents at $13,843, the place is worth around $200K (about 15 times the annual rent). Hmm, but vacant? The apartments across the street rent for $1500/month. It would take $20,000 to renovate these units, but then they would easily go for $1500/month too, and using the same math the place would be worth over $1 million (a more conservative estimate is around $800K).

So, if the tenants move out, and the Landlord puts $20K into the property, he makes a quick $600K. OK, but the tenants aren't going to move out. So the landlord isn't going to put $20K into the property, and the place remains an eyesore.

I got a bright idea. Since the tenants have the power to make or break this deal, why not split the profit with them? Sell the property to the tenants for $500K, making a profit of $300K, and the tenants get a property with $300K instant equity, or they could sell it an pocket the $300K profit. I actually proposed this to the tenants (I had to explain it about 20 times to all the different family members, in English and Spanish) and gave them a written contract which included $20K for renovations, but they turned it down.

So the landlord is simply watching their every move and hoping they make a mistake. One of the tenants is planning to go to college, and I assume another one (they are all related) plans to use her room while she is away, but this will violate the guest provisions of the lease, and she could be evicted.

This is not a good situation for anyone.

How could rent control be made more neighborhood-friendly? Well, for one, there should be a time limit -- I propose 5 years per tenant per property, after which the rent can be reset to market rate. There is nothing wrong with renting, but it is supposed to be cheaper than owning in the short run and more expensive in the long run. When it becomes cheaper in the long run, it sets up reverse incentives for creating wealth. We want people to invest in their future, and in the future of the neighborhood. Tenants paying decade old prices are not doing that.

Another idea would be to apply it in phases. After 1 year the rent can be raised 3%, after two years it can be raised 4%, and so on, until the cap no longer has any impact. This would give the tenant a predictable below market rent pattern and allow for planning, but would not be so severe as to disincentivise them from ultimately buying, or disincentivise the landlord from improving the property.

The first objection to this would likely concern the elderly or disabled on fixed incomes with no assets. This is a minority of the urban population (or we are in big trouble), and it would be much less expensive to simply pay these qualified needy people some monthly amount to offset rises in the cost of living.

In the context of wealth being created by behavior, I want to take a moment to extol migration. The richest nation in the world is a nation of immigrants. All the richest cities in the world are teeming with people who come from somewhere else, and who migrated to improve their lot. In all the neighborhoods that declined in the past decades, the people who left were better educated and earned more than the people who remained. Moving to a new place is a wealth-creating behavior.

We should encourage this, especially for people who are currently economically below average. Every time real estate prices have doubled in a particular place, nearly all my friends and relatives who lived in that place have left. They go to another place, less desireable on the surface -- that's why it's cheaper -- but more desireable in the sense that they will have a better life there, because it's cheaper and poised to grow faster.

This is how people get wealthier, by constantly taking steps to improve their lot. It is counterproductive to incentivise people to stay in a place where they are less economically successful than they would be somewhere else.

So, my alternative to rent control is to allow the markets to work, and spend some more time effort and money helping people take advantage of the best opportunities available for them right now. That means looking at housing and jobs across the whole country (or why stop there, why not the world?), and picking the best ones for each individual.

Competing Buyers Protect Sellers

In any financial transaction, the party with more information has an advantage.

Say I am selling you my house, and I know about the midnight airport noise but you don't.

Sellers often have this advantage regarding problems with the property, since they have had more time to discover them. Disclosure laws, which force the seller to answer certain questions about the property, attempt to remedy this inequity, protecting the buyer.

But who protects the seller from getting ripped off? The answer is competing buyers.

Some real estate agents do protect their sellers. But unless you know real estate better than your agent, you will never know whether your agent is cheating you. It is too easy for them, and, under the current laws and industry practices, totally commonplace and acceptable (read "Freakonomics" by Stephen Levitt, in which he proves that real estate agents pervasively and systematically cheat sellers). What's worse, the agent listing your house often doesn't even know he is cheating you. It takes a fair understanding of economics and/or game theory to make sense of the situation, and few agents ever studied any of that.

The bottom line is that unless you are a savvy investor and can figure out for yourself what your house is really worth (in which case you are on a level the playing field with your listing agent), your only hope is to advertise your house to as many potential buyers as possible and have them bid against each other. This is relatively easy to do in active markets. Here's how.

1) List your property on the MLS with a discount service like "Help-U-Sell" Realty, which charges a flat rate of something like $200-500. Or call dozens of "full-service" agents until you find one that will sell your property for the lesser of 2% or $5000 (with the same amount for the buyer's agent). In my experience, about one in eight agents will do this, though the other seven will swear that the eighth doesn't exist. You can save several thousand dollars by calling around for an hour, so unless you are a rock star, it is totally worth your time.

2) If you sign a listing agreement, make sure it expires in less days than the Average Time On Market (ATOM) for your property type in your area. Friendly real estate agents will tell you the ATOM over the phone for free. If they refuse, call someone else. You don't want to work with someone who keeps information from you, or makes it difficult to get all the facts. It's already difficult enough. If the market is hot, agents tend to be flexible, but still half of them will say "no" to any modifications of their listing agreement. You must be firm. Call someone else, who says "yes". Do NOT sign a listing agreement for longer than the ATOM, and do make it clear that if the agent doesn't sell the house in that time, you are going to take it off the market and not relist it with them.

Do NOT list your property with anyone you already know. The moment you think of your sister-in-law the agent and feel a little guilty or generous, go online to your ftd florist and send her flowers, the huge deluxe $200 ones with a vase and a "thinking of you" note. Or send your agent college buddy or neighbor a check for $200 with the note, "Thanks for not listing my house." You will be glad you did.

[The only exception to this is if your neighbor the agent completely owns your neighborhood and continually lists and sells dozens of houses there. In that case they might be the best choice, but still, only if they agree to your terms.]

2) At the same time as listing on the MLS, advertise your property in craigslist.org, other online sites that allow you to post for free, and in the local newspaper or a circular that carries dozens of homes-for-sale-by-owner ads in your city. Pay the $70 or whatever it is, for a descriptive ad. You stand to gain many thousands by attracting the right eyeballs.

3) Price your property high. If your listing agent says it's priced too high, call around to other agents and ask them what they would list it for. Pick the highest one and add some on top of that.

4) If you get more than 1 offer in the first week, you probably priced it too low. If you like the offers anyway and just want to get it over with, counter back to all of them saying there are multiple offers and they have one more chance to give their highest and best offer.

5) If you get lots of interest but no offers in the first week, then wait another couple weeks, up to about half the ATOM.

6) If there are no offers by half the ATOM, and you advertised it aggressively as advised above, congratulations, you really did price it high! Note that you can never know what the market will bear unless you price it too high and they say no. This gives you valuable information. If you still want to sell, drop the price, but not below what you think it is really worth, based on what similar properties are listed for in your area. Put "REDUCED--Priced to Sell!!!" in the ads.

Note that Appraisers like to use only "sold" properties as the basis for comparison -- they don't trust "available" listings. Buyers, however, who are the ultimate decision makers, care much more about other available properties than already sold ones.

7) If it doesn't sell by the ATOM, take it off the market, cancel the listing, and relist it with another agent, which you find in the same way as you found this one. Repeat this process.

Patience tends to pay off handsomely, especially when the market is rising. If you are desperate to sell, or the market is falling, follow the same procedure, except cut all the timeframes in half and lower the prices a little.

Seek and you shall find

I am very good at finding things.

Let's say mom has misplaced her car keys again. Normally, we would "look for" the keys; that is, we look at an object and compare it to our mental picture of "mom's keys". If it matches, Eureka! If not, look at another object, and so on.

The problem with this approach is there are too many objects. A spoon is an object, a fork is an object, and a fork and spoon stacked together make a third object. Lumps in the upholstery are objects, pictures in the newspaper are objects. A fire in the fireplace will cast shadows on the wall creating millions of fleeting objects. This is why the "looking for" method often seems kind of endless and hopeless.

Elimination, on the other hand, is the opposite of "looking for" the keys. I know how big the keys are, and I have an idea where they might be, so I start in the most likely places, and prove that the keys are not there. Rather than "looking for" the keys in mom's purse, I prove to myself that the purse is key-free. Same with on the table, on or in the sofa, on the family room floor, in the entrance hall closet. Sometimes this can seem ridiculous, probing and shaking old shoes and such to prove the keys are not in there, but it's quick and guaranteed to work. The best part is that after eliminating a room, I no longer have any interest in looking there. If I eliminate the whole house, I am confident the keys are not at home, and I can proceed to check the grocery store, grandma's house, or wherever mom could have left her keys recently. In the positive "look for" approach, I'm always wondering, perhaps the keys might still be there, hidden.

This same principle works when seeking jobs, dates, apartments, investment opportunities, or anything else that can be hard to find. Here's how I apply it to real estate.

Assume that a great deal on real estate could be anywhere. By "great deal" I mean a great property at a great price which I can afford. I start by eliminating all the places that are too expensive. Then I eliminate the places that are too cold, too hot, too dark, too sparse, too polluted, too dangerous, too dilapidated. What I am left with are great deals. If my criteria are too stringent and no place on Earth qualifies, then I can relax my criteria and try again, confident that there is no deal available which is THAT great. With this approach I will identify the best deals available.

Compare that with the normal method, looking at deal after deal in search of a good one. Not only does it take longer, but when I find a good deal by the "look for" method, I am not sure how good it is, relative to what's available.

Managing Renovations

Creating nice housing on a tight budget is not an easy task for most people. There are several skills one needs in order to be good at it.

1. Spacial Imagination. You have to be the kind of kid who builds intricate Lego structures that aren't in the instructions. You have to imagine different options, e.g. where you could put a staircase or a closet or a microwave.

2. Design Ability. You can match colors and shapes and textures.

3. Bargain Hunting Talent. There are so many options for every product and service relating to housing, and the price variations are enormous. You comparison shop and get good values.

4. Investor Instincts. Timing and cashflow are crucial. So is the ROI (determined by the price paid by the final renter or buyer).

While most people don't have these skills, there are lots of people (of all income levels) who do. Here's how I would test for them.

1. Spacial Test: Give them 50 Lego blocks from different sets, and tell them to build something. Say they get extra points if they use all the blocks. Judge their structure on the following merits: a) stability, b) complexity, c) length of longest dimension, d) number of dots showing (extra credit for extremely many or extremely few).

2. Design Test: Give them a big pile of paint swatches and tile and carpet and upholstery and cabinet samples and half a picture out of Better Homes and Gardens or Architectural Digest. Ask them to select items for the other half of the photo, and compare with what the experts selected.

3. Bargain Test: Give them a copy of Consumer Reports and tell them they have a $50,000 shopping spree for items in that issue, and they can buy any number of each item. The winner will pick items with the highest ratio of trailing to leading derivative in the curve of value vs price. To make it more interesting add random volume discounts to each item.

4. Investing Test: Give them a budget of $1 million, and a random list of houses and apartments each with different rents and amounts of required renovation, and different expected appreciations and timeframes for renovation projects (all the numbers can be random). Ask them to make a month by month plan to invest the $1 million.

A person who scored well on all four tests would make a great Renovation Manager, provided they also had basic project and people management skills.

The Value of Land

The value of land depends partly on its natural beauty and climate, partly on reputation, but mostly on the behavior of the people there.

The most expensive land is office space in places like Hong Kong, London, and New York City. The reason those offices are so valuable, compared to an equally lavish office 50 miles outside the city, is because the people around those offices buzz about in a way that is particularly advantageous for closing a high volume of high value business deals, and which provides a convenient and pleasant atmosphere for closing the deals.

A person who wants to run a certain kind of business can make exorbitantly more money by running it in that exact location, which explains the exorbitant price tag.

In some cases a place has a fancy reputation, like Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles, and some people will pay exorbitant prices just to have that address.

And in some cases a place has incredible natural beauty, like Waikiki, or Yosemite Valley, and people will buy land there just to camp there and enjoy the view. They might not need anyone to do anything for them in that case.

But 99.9% of the time, the value of land depends on the behavior of the neighbors.

The bad news is that the neighbors are free to choose how they behave, so the value of your land is partly out of your control. The good news is that people, and especially groups of people, are somewhat predictable, particularly in the specific circumstances studied by economists and social psychologists.

So, if we can figure out which behaviors of our neighbors make our land more valuable, and what we can do to cause those behaviors, then we can actually increase the value of our land.

And if we can figure out what causes people to change their behavior, and either do that or find out when and where it is being done, then we can predict where the real estate is going to rise or fall in value.

This is valuable information to an investor. It might also be valuable to a society. With that knowledge, a government could actually legislate economic prosperity. That would be cool, especially in places like Liberia.

So what are the behaviors that raise the value of real estate? One is opening lots of small shops, restaurants, and bakeries all within walking distance of one another other, and keeping these areas clean and free of disturbance.

Another is neighbors talking to one another about common issues, and attending civic meetings and functions in significant numbers.

Another is parents volunteering at their kids' schools and paying close attention to the quality of the education.

Another is planting trees, adding speed bumps or closing off streets, and beautifying the buildings, streets, and parks. When a community puts in large beautiful monuments such as fountains, museums, and memorials, with shady benches to sit on, it is behaving like Paris, or Boston. This tends to raise land values.

In general, when a community behaves the way the most expensive communities do, then the land tends to get expensive.

Some of those behaviors don't seem that difficult to incite. The interesting question is "What is the simplest, fastest, and most inexpensive way to incite a community to behave in such a way that the value of land doubles?"

How to get humanity to the next level

My philosophy is as follows.

1. Sufficient raw material & energy & infrastructure & technology is available to create world peace, plus a drastic reduction in violence, disease, poverty, and crime, and a drastic increase in people's quality of life (i.e. fun, happiness, health, and creative output).

2. The reason the huge gains in global quality of life haven't occurred yet has to do with inertia in our political, economic, communications, and education systems.

3. The way to overcome this inertia, and get humanity to the next level, is to look for tipping points, or areas of high social leverage, i.e. little actions that can cause big changes.

4. The key to success is accurate comparison of cause/effect relationships, e.g. being able to predict what will happen if $1 is spent here, or here, or over here. If the model covers a wide range of causes and effects (like all the available properties one could buy, and all the possible renovation projects one could perform on those properties) then a supercharged sequence of events can be developed, yielding massive results.

5. The parameters to pay most attention to are
a) cashflow (i.e. activities that return investment quickly)
b) fun (i.e. activities worth doing for their own sake)
c) the pied piper effect (i.e. activities others will want to copy)

6. Designing and running the experiments that yield this information (i.e. which activities will have the biggest impact, fastest) is the number 1 priority for humanity.

7. Let's do it! In addition to an experiment designer (which could be me or you or anyone with a scientific mind), we need a team of 1 webscraper programmer, 1 statistician, 1 field manager, and 2-10 field workers.

Non-profits could be For-profits

Much of the best work going on in the world is being done by nonprofit companies.

My question is, can people make money doing that work?

In general, employees of nonprofit companies get paid. The only difference is that the people supplying the money don't expect their money back, or a return on investment.

Why not? In some cases, the work itself is donated to poor people. But I am wondering if this is the best way to help people. Maybe charging them money would cause us to address the reasons behind why they "need help" in the first place.

I used to think that working without profit was somehow more noble than working for money. Now I think money is a good thing and trade is healthy.

The One Minute Millionaire

I just read "The One Minute Millionaire" by Mark Hansen and Robert Allen.

The book is bursting with valuable ideas and insights, and I recommend it to everyone.

I have the following suggestions to the authors on how to improve it. First of all, it is really two books, and the gimmick of alternating pages seems awkward and a waste of paper. Print the stories one after the other (or even better, in two separate volumes).

[The rest of my comments are about the left side, i.e. the nonfiction how-to book.]

First of all, it feels a little scattered and disorganised, and toward the end a bit repetitive. Create an outline and sort things under topic headings to give it a stronger sense of beggining, middle, and end.

Regarding the title, the tie-in with the "One Minute Manager" and other such books is a clever idea. However, don't get carried away. You can't make a million dollars in one minute per day.

Even if you spent this one minute meditating, or scratching lottery tickets, or cold calling billionaires, making $1 million takes more than one minute. You have to pay the phone bill, set up your computer, open your mail, and do hundreds of other things for your one minute of highly focused work to pay off. Granted, your point is that ordinary people can add a small amount of focused activity to their daily routine, with million dollar results. But this strategy will fail if they stop doing some of the things they are already doing which take more than a minute per day. And some of the things you recommend take hours and hours. Which is fine. Your message would be clearer if you skipped the part about making $1 million in one minute per day.

Your example of making $24,000 in 24 hours is misleading at best. It took you years to create the material and develop the relationships which allowed you to do that. Besides, that might not have even been a good deal for someone in your situation. Why does Disney release only one classic video at a time, for a premium price, when they could indeed make millions in minutes by offering all their intellectual property simultaneously at a deep discount? Or, in other words, why don't you continue running that program and make $24,000 every 24 hours?

The concept of the enlightened millionaire also needs a little work, in order to achieve congruence. You advise people to invest in mutual funds, without making sure that those investments are really making the world a better place. Does every company in your portfolio act in alignment with your principles? We investors are financing these activities, and it is our responsibility to see that our money is not working at cross purposes with us.

Most of your real estate advice is excellent. But does it really match your principles? You advise people to seek out sellers who are forced to liquidate due to the need for immediate cash. What would you advise these sellers to do? Does your advice work when everyone follows it?

Please don't take any of this criticism personally. I enjoyed the book and recommend it (I bought nine copies already, to give away). I see your commitment to helping people live in abundance and possibility. I am committed to that too. Please accept these suggestions in that context.

And check out my blog www.enlightenedcapitalism.blogspot.com
and my company www.affinityneighborhoods.com

Ways to lower crime in a neighborhood

1. Pick up litter in the streets sidewalks, and front yards.
2. Ask residents to help pick up litter.
3. Plant trees along parkways and in front yards.
4. Plant flowers along parkways and in front yards.
5. Water the trees & flowers we planted.
6. Mow & edge grass, trim overgrown bushes and trees.
7. Fix stucco, siding & facias. Paint houses.
8. Replace, repair, &/or paint fences. Add trellises and arbors.
9. Paint over graffiti. [Or, decorate the graffiti and frame it such that it becomes art.]
10. Pray. Then act.
11. Ask residents to pray for their next door neighbors.
12. Ask residents what they like about the neighborhood, how it could be better, and what they could do right now to make it better. Inspire them to visualise a great neighborhood.
13. Use the tactic from "Excuse me your life is waiting" of feeeeling what it is like to live in a great neighborhood, and pumping up this feeling for at least 16 seconds.
14. Invite the residents to the Landmark Forum. Have a bunch of neighbors do it together.
15. Open a healthy restaurant in the neighborhood.
16. Find every 15 year old and get them to apply for a job. Find an assortment of jobs so that we can match up the jobs with the skills and inclinations of the teenagers. Provide transportation, or find jobs along public transit routes.
17. Clean up the public transit, make it quiet and comfortable. Play Enya over the PA system.
18. Make an offer on every property in the neighborhood so that people know what they are worth.
19. Have a LOCAL Realtor offer to list all the properties.
20. Have three LOCAL loan brokers offer competitive loans on every property.
21. Have three LOCAL contractors bid on renovation projects in conjunction with an appraisal service to explain what added value the projects would bring and a loan specialist to explain how to finance it.
22. Offer a class on personal finance, career growth, and investing.
23. Have a LOCAL property manager offer to manage each property.
24. Offer classes in self-help, relationships, success, overcoming adversity, and inner dialogue.
25. Offer credit repair assistance and debt restructuring.
26. Get everyone in the neighborhood a bank account, and train them to use it effectively.
27. Get every 18 year old to apply for college, whether or not they finished high school.
28. Start a football league, a hockey league, a baseball league, a basketball league, a soccer league, a lacrosse league, a racketball league, a golf league, a swimming league, a ping pong league, a tennis league, a badminton league, a volleyball league, a track & field league, and an equestrian league.
29. Offer martial arts programs, fencing, and tai chi.
30. Start a barbershop quartet. Start a men's chorus, a boy's chorus, a girl's chorus, a women's chorus, and mixed choirs. Have gospel choirs and classical choirs and hip hop choirs.
31. Start an orchestra. Start a jazz band. Start a Dixieland band. Start a bluegrass band.
32. Start an opera company. Start a children's theatre troupe. Start an improv group. Open a live theatre. Open a cinema (have strict rules, constant supervision, and security at all times).
33. Open a cafe. Open a bookstore. Open a music store. Open an art gallery. Open a toy store.
34. Offer art classes. Teach painting, drawing, sculpture, glass blowing, arts & crafts.
35. Create a matching database for friends, activity partners, and dating. Require full identification and limit enrollment to residents in order to ensure accountability.
36. Hold mixers and dance parties.
37. Get neighbors together for regular meetings to brainstorm ways they can help each other.
38. Offer healthy food. Open an organic grocery store. Open an organic or raw food cafe. Offer healthy alternatives to unhealthy meals and snacks.
39. Open an excercise gym. Create exercise teams and fitness buddy groups. Form bicycle clubs.
40. Open a yoga studio. Hold aerobics and pilates classes. Offer physical fitness training.
41. Mount cameras in places where crimes repeatedly occur. Mount cameras on every porch until the crime rate is zero.
42. Install lojack in cars.
43. Get everyone to voluntarily get fingerprinted.
44. Ask all residents to voluntarily allow an elected committee to perform a visual inspection of their premises. Work to build trust to the point where this would be acceptable. Advertise to everyone that this is the goal, that people would have nothing to hide, and that there would be sufficient trust in a selected group of community volunteers, that they could take a scientific view of the neighborhood and note what the actual situation is.
45. Offer language classes, in ESL, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, etc. Encourage everyone to learn Spanish in particular. Offer language tapes and books.
46. Get everyone in the neighborhood to vote in all elections.
47. Get everyone in the neighborhood to attend all city council meetings.
48. Establish a path of intense beauty, using trees and flowers and sculpture and signage and monuments, that starts at a particular intersection and winds through the neighborhood on the streets with the highest percentage of supporters of the project.
49. Encourage people to walk and bicycle in their neighborhood.
50. Hold lecture series with motivational speakers.
51. Get a dumpster and let everyone on the street throw stuff away.
52. Hold a streetwide garage sale, where everyone is encouraged to get rid of everything they aren't using.
53. Make a list of all residents and what they are good at.
54. Have a block party, barbecue, or common meal.
55. Install solar energy on the roofs.
56. Install wind power, cisterns, greywater systems, and mulch piles.
57. Create a fruit cooperative, where neighbors agree to share the fruit from their backyards.
58. Review each residents utility bills, and figure out ways to lower them by conservation.
59. Encourage residents to get their cars smog checked, drive lower emission vehicles, reduce driving, and reduce other polluting activities.
60. Encourage residents to reduce the size of lawns, and use native and low water usage plants.
61. Get the residents to recycle more than 50% of their waste products, and buy recycled products where possible.
62. Establish a biodiesel club, where members share the cost of a good mechanic and loaner cars, and cooperate on fuel delivery and storage.
63. Make a list of all the neighborhood's leaders (political, religious, academic, business, social, artistic) and have them meet regularly and discuss ways to help each other.
64. Set up a program for residents to regularly visit hospitals, nursing homes, and jails.

Homeless

I have been thinking a lot lately about the word "homeless".

At first blush, it looks like it means "doesn't have a home". "Having," in this case, clearly doesn't refer just to ownership, but simply the right to be there. You aren't homeless when you are renting, or staying with your parents.

"Home" refers to something habitable. We might go further and require that it be enclosed from the weather, with adequate ventilation and heating/cooling, and access to a bathroom or latrine. But does that mean if a window doesn't close or there's a hole in the roof or if the heater is broken, the person living there is homeless? I don't think so.

In most cities there are building and safety codes which define habitability, so in those places we could raise the bar and say a home must comply with local ordinances. Except that would make just about everyone homeless, because so few structures actually comply with all the laws.

Are people in jail homeless? They do have the right to be inside in the jail, and it does seem to qualify as a home.

Is a camper van a home? I suppose the idea of home also refers to the spot on the earth where the structure sits. So if you have the right to park in a particular spot, and you park your camper van there, then it could be a home. Could a blimp be a home? People live on ships in the ocean, but if they are not allowed to dock, then maybe they are homeless too.

At the time I got divorced, I owned five houses but didn't have the right to live in any of them. I slept at the office under my desk for two years (it was fun, actually -- they had a great gym with showers and lockers. I just had to move my car each morning to keep up appearances.) Was I homeless then?

If they had kicked me out of the office, I had other options. I could have stayed with my parents, or any number of relatives or friends. I could have stayed in a hotel. Does having enough money for a hotel automatically disqualify you from being homeless? Because I might have chosen to sleep in a park or on the beach, to save money, rather than stay in a hotel. Would I be choosing homelessness then, or would I merely be a homeful person choosing to sleep outside?

When I travel I never like to book a hotel in advance, I always like to check the place out first and then choose where to stay. Sometimes this entails unexpected adventures and little sleep, like when my friend and I tried to stay in Phoenix and ended up practically in Flagstaff before we found a room, or when we tried to stay in Venice (or Padua? or Verona? or...) and ended up sleeping on the train all the way to Milan where we finally found a room.

Note that everywhere I go, people I've met have offered to let me stay with them. On a flight to Los Angeles I met a woman who let me stay with her family in Kiel. On my way to Kiel I met people who let me stay with them in Heidelberg. On my way back to San Francisco I met a family who invited me to stay with them in Melbourne. On a flight to London I sat next to a woman who let me stay at her apartment in New York (no, we didn't do anything :). I have been offered free room & board by friendly people in hundreds of cities.

When we talk about the homeless, we aren't talking about people in my situation, we are talking about people who seem to have no choice but sleep outside, generally illegally. They have no money, and no one will let them stay over. So it seems like a good idea to donate space and give them a clean safe place to sleep, a shower, and a hot meal.

We don't want to be a crutch for these people or keep them down. So we give them job counselling and drug rehab. For some it works, and they get back on their feet. For many others it doesn't work, and they remain "homeless". One step we can take toward solving this is to realise that people do have a choice. Even "homeless" is a choice. Friends of mine have made $40/hr begging, and that is enough to rent a motel room every night and buy new clothes every day, or even buy a house, for that matter. I have helped dozens of people with no credit and no money buy houses. And they didn't really need my help -- they just needed to know it was possible and choose it.

When you look at how easy it was for me to find places to stay, it's clear the problem is not really lack of places to stay. Certain attitudes & behaviors work and lead to peace and prosperity and happiness, and certain other attitudes & behaviors don't work and lead to poverty and illness and violence. The problem is that for a certain category of people we have failed to adequately encourage the former attitudes & behaviors and discourage the latter.

And the big question is do we care. See, if we care about these people, then we will take care of them. Millions of dollars are spent each year on shots and treats and flea collars for cats and dogs. Pet lovers go to great lengths to make sure their pets are happy. Scientists study the pets in detail to see what works and what doesn't, because they know the pet lovers will pay for products that keep their pets safe and healthy. I won't even mention what people spend on their cars.

The good news is, if we want to make a world that works for EVERYONE, we can. Let's start doing that! Tell your representatives and the media and the charitable foundations that you want them to sponsor studies about what really works to encourage prosperous choices and improve lives, and tell them you want to see results.

Thanks. :)

Caring & Safety

As you know, Affinity Neighborhoods sponsors neighborhood cleanup events, where we pick up trash, plant trees, and talk to residents about how great their neighborhood can be. Lots of people worry about me when I go alone into high-crime places, but for the last 12 years, somehow I have always known that when I am going there to serve and to show respect for the people there, I am safe. I have never been confronted or threatened, though I have witnessed thousands of crimes in these neighborhoods.

Our Director of Neighborhood Revitalisation, Dimitri Hodgkinson, plans and coordinates the street cleanup events in Compton and the surrounding areas. He has the following anecdote to share.

I just want to preface it with the following challenge: Be open to the idea that YOU cause everything in your life! Care for others, and caring will be all around you.

David Frayne
Founder, Affinity Neighborhoods
www.affinityneighborhoods.com
www.enlightenedcapitalism.blogspot.com

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: dimitri@affinityneighborhoods.com [mailto:dimitri@affinityneighborhoods.com]
Sent: Friday, June 24, 2005 12:46 AM
Subject: Affinity Reaches Gang Members Unknowingly

Hey Affinity,

Before I share with you how our very own Compton/Watts Revitalization Area Manager, Hector Fernandez, evaded a mugging, I want to let you all know the clean up event we were planning for this Saturday, June 25th, was postponed at the request of the resident whom we are teaming up with. I will update all of you when we put it back on the calendar.

So get this. Hector is in Compton the other day waiting for the bus after dropping off his van at the auto shop. Low and behold, a big fella, likely a gang member, decides to push Hector and interrogate him for why he happened to be hanging out in "his" neighborhood. As you can imagine, Hector is thinking, great my car breaks down, now this. Hector explains he is on his way back to work, waiting for the bus, all while realizing this guy is either about to threaten him for his wallet or jump him simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You'll never guess what happens next. So the guy says, "oh yeah, who do you work for?" And Hector, who happens to be wearing one of our bright green Affinity t-shirts, points out the shirt and tells the guy about Affinity. So this guy goes, "oh, Affinity, I've heard about you. Didn't you just do a clean up at the alley over by the Douglas Park Apartments* the other day? I was supposed to go help out over there, but got there a little late." He proceeds to acknowledge the work we are doing and tells Hector how great the alley looked when we got done.

Thought you might like to hear that. Can you imagine? Would have never guessed that a bright green shirt and picking up some garbage would earn that kind of respect. Apparently it does.
Have an excellent weekend everyone.

*The Douglas Park Apartments were one of the worst crime zones in Southern California, with weekly shoot-outs, constant drug dealing, arson, burglary, etc. They are now under new management, with a totally new attitude. Affinity catalyses these changes.

Dimitri Hodgkinson
Affinity Neighborhoods
235 E. Broadway Ste. 920
Long Beach, CA 90802
Off: 562-437-6476
Fax: 562-268-8789
Cell: 310-984-4361
Email: dimitri@affinityneighborhoods.com

Privacy & Trust

On my recent flight from JFK to Long Beach, in the middle of reading Viktor Frankl's account of life in Auschwitz (Man's Search for Meaning), I used the restroom on the plane, and noticed that in the bathroom mirror I could watch myself urinate (yet another advantage of flying JetBlue). This took on a strange significance in the context of that book.

There is nothing inherently shameful about urination. It is a natural, healthy act that everyone performs several times a day, and yet we rarely ever see anyone else do it -- or even ourselves, unless there happens to be a low mirror in the bathroom. What struck me was how we connect our dignity with our ability to hide certain things from others -- something concentration camp prisoners were deprived of.

It is interesting to me how certain people in nudist colonies, or in public showers, strut about as if fully clothed, where others are ashamed and never fully comfortable being seen naked. This bashfulness doesn't seem to correlate with beauty or lack thereof, but rather is determined by one's expectations of how other people will use the information. It is all about trust.

Privacy is desired to the extent trust is lacking.

Imagine this scenario. The mayor of Compton announces, "We are tired of drugs and gun violence in Compton. Starting tomorrow, we are going to search every house, building, and vehicle, and confiscate any contraband or unregistered firearms. That will keep our streets safe."

Of course, everyone would freak out. But why? Because the people don't trust the government. After all, we have Hitler and Stalin and Mao to worry about. It's too easy for the government to oppress the people and get away with it.

So, how about making the government more accountable? Here's my proposal. Make the government a reality television show. Cameras and microphones in every room, every car, following every elected official around 24/7. Then we could keep track of them and make sure they weren't doing anything illegal or unethical.

Of course, the elected officials would object. Why? Because they don't trust the people with that information. OK, it could get a bit disruptive. How about publish it 2 years later, edited of anything irrelevant to the official's public duty. (Have the decision about relevance made by a panel comprised equally of all political parties and some independent judges.)

This publication delay would allow politicians to continue about their business without constant immediate debate on Oprah, but would still cut their careers short if the reality of what they were doing strayed too much from the appearance (sorry, Nixon, and Clinton, and Reagan...). Campaign promises would take on greater significance, because we could all watch the moment when they changed their minds.

Subjecting the government to this level of transparency would dramatically increase the people's trust. Hitler and Stalin and Mao, and all their cronies, would have been exposed for what they were, and their evil plans would have been nipped in the bud.

Crime and Employment

Viktor Frankl points out (in "Man's Search for Meaning") that when builders want to stabilise and strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load on it. For him this is analgous to how the human spirit is refined and strengthened through stress and ordeal.

One of the best predictors of neighborhood crime is unemployment.
And most violent crimes are committed by 18-24 year old males.

The most obvious way to reduce crime is to put the 18-24 year old males to work doing something useful.

One problem with this is that the typical at-risk youth is undereducated, unskilled, and often exhibits an uncooperative attitude, slovenly appearence, and open disrespect for authority. So (short of performing an extreme life makeover on them) they aren't ideal candidates for most paying positions.

Another problem is that most employers don't want to have operations in high crime neighborhoods. Insurance rates are higher, and there are all sorts of difficulties with doing business in run down areas. With the notable exception of pawn shops, liquor stores, check cashing places, and certain unlawful operations, the vast majority of businesses do better financially in more affluent areas. So high crime neighborhoods lack a wide variety of local entry level jobs for 18-24 year old males. Commuting to jobs is an option, but owning a car is more difficult and dangerous in these areas (in 2004 Compton had 3 car thefts reported per day, and dozens of car arsons) and public transit, where available, tends to be dangerous, and is often the target of vandalism.

So the question remains, how could we put all the 18-24 year old males to work doing something useful? It could be local, or we could provide transportation to a remote location. The army is an obvious possibility. But I don't think training people to identify enemies and commit acts of violence is a good way to reduce violence. A large percentage of homeless people are veterans, which indicates that the military as an employer doesn't have a very good track record for improving people's lives.

On the one hand there are the things I want done in the neighborhood: cleaning, landscaping, beautifying, networking, commerce, looking out for each other, personal education, and community recreation.

On the other hand, there are the things that the residents of these neighborhoods are spending lots of money on right now: security, small luxuries, peace & quiet, fun, food, sports, entertainment, banking services, automotive services, transportation, childcare, furniture, insurance, utilities, clothes, music, excitement, parties.

First we should consider whether we could profitably employ members of this group in providing any of the above things. Next we should look for additional ways this group could create value and who their customers would be. More later...

Man's Search For Meaning

I just read a fascinating book by Viktor Frankl: Man's Search For Meaning. The title turned me off at first, because I thought it was going to be either a sermon on "right behavior" (which, coming from the 1950's always comes off a little ludicrous now) or a surreal philosophical poem. The narrative reminded me of Art Spiegelman's "Maus" -- it's an incisive, analytical reflection on the author's experiences in Nazi concentration camps. But to my surprise, the book is actually a seminal work on the psychology of happiness and success.

What makes it more than just another personal account of the atrocities of Hitler's Germany is that Frankl focuses entirely on what he learned and how he grew, spiritually, socially, and even professionally through the ordeal. He turns his unique position as world authority on being oppressed, an expert sufferer, if you will, to his advantage, and in so doing, demonstrates his unshakeable belief in human free will and self-determination.

I am curious as to whether Werner Erhard (founder of EST, of which Landmark Education is a later development) was a disciple of Frankl's. Frankl figured out on his own the central concepts of Landmark Education: that we create our own reality by our choice in how we interpret our experiences, that our vision of the future (rather than the past) is what determines who we are in the present, that trying to change doesn't work, whereas accepting "what is" (he recommends paradoxically trying to stay the same, in persistent problem cases) allows us to change effortlessly. He even espouses nonjudgement of people, and in most cases says neutral or positive things about his tormentors.

He was truly an enlightened man, ahead of his time.

Trees

Today I am going to talk about trees, why I love them, how to plant and water them, and lastly I am going to ask everyone to support my mission to create a greener planet Earth.

First let’s look at the advantages trees offer. Perhaps the most important advantage is oxygen. Trees produce a large portion of the oxygen we breathe. They also clean the air of many contaminants. Many forms of Cancer, Emphezema, Asthma, and other serious illnesses are caused or aggravated by poor air quality. More trees lead to better air quality and better overall health.

Another advantage trees provide is a nesting place for birds and other small animals, and food for many microorganisms and insects which play an important part in the food chain. Trees increase the biodiversity of our ecosystem, making it better able to withstand climate change and other stresses. Trees also protect the soil from erosion, and enrich it with nutrients.

Then there are the practical human benefits, which, sadly, are often overlooked by homeowners and city planners. Trees provide shade to parking spaces. If you’ve parked in the sun on a hot day, you know that the temperature inside your car can reach intolerable levels, and the parking spaces under shady trees are the first to get taken. Having shade in your driveway or in front of your house can save you thousands of dollars in depreciation over the life of your car. Having a tree shade your window can reduce your energy bills.

Shade is also important for being comfortable outdoors. The exception to the famous song “Nobody walks in El Eh” is on tree-lined streets and avenues which lead to shopping or entertainment destinations. Bicyclists and rollerbladers also cherish shady lanes to ride down. The availability of tall trees enhances the quality of life for the community. Studies have shown that trees reduce crime, and promote healing. If a hospital patient can see a tree out of the window, it significantly reduces their time in the hospital. So you see, trees can alleviate the rising cost of healthcare.

Another way trees benefit homeowners has to do with their aesthetic value. Homes with tall trees in the front and backyards sell quicker and for more money than their barren-yarded counterparts in the same neighborhood. Planting a tree can increase your home’s value by tens of thousands of dollars.

Lastly, fruit trees provide delicious, healthy, locally grown fruit. Over 10 years, a fruit tree can easily yield fruit valued at $2000 or more, based on grocery store prices.

So, with all these advantages, you can see why I love trees. Now let’s talk about some of the costs. The cost of the tree itself depends on many factors. Some of my favorite trees are free. I merely collect seeds as I walk around the neighborhood, and plant them in my backyard. Ash trees, Palm trees, and several other varieties seem to sprout of their own accord, and are easy to transplant.

Ruiz Nursery, on Long Beach Blvd at Greenleaf, just north of the 91 Freeway, sells Ficus trees in 1 gallon size for $2, palms for $5, and other varieties for under $10. At Home Depot or other nurseries, 5 gallon trees typically cost between $10 and $30. But remember, even $30 is a very small price to pay for something that gives so much back.

The other main cost associated with trees (in dry climates) is watering. Water costs about 2 cents a gallon, and trees need about 2 gallons a week, so the cost of watering is around $2 per year. Most people tend to overwater, if they water at all. The key is simply to prevent the roots from drying out. This only takes a small amount of water, enough to fill the pot that the tree came in.

Now I am going to tell you how to plant a tree. The first step is to pick the location. It’s important to consider whether the tree will survive there, and also whether it will cause problems as it grows. Stand back and picture the full grown tree in the spot you have picked, so you can make adjustments if it will be too close to the house to walkways, or to other trees. If you are planting in a place with foot traffic, make sure you can somehow divert the traffic around the small tree so it doesn’t get stepped on. Support posts or metal cages are two ways to protect young trees.

The next step is to dig a hole. Dig the hole a little bigger than the pot, put the tree in, and fill it back up, patting it firm but not too tight. Make sure the tree is not too deep, its bud joint should be above ground level. And make sure it is not too high, or else the water may run off without soaking the roots. Slowly pour about 1 gallon of water around the hole immediately after planting, to keep the roots moist and fill in any air gaps. It’s that simple. You don’t need to add any fertilizers or other chemicals. A little mulch or bark around the trunk can help keep competitive weeds down and reduce water loss by keeping the soil cool, but it isn't absolutely necessary.

Now that you know why we should plant trees, and you know how to do it, let me further request that you support my grander plans in this area.

I want to designate a Path of Trees, from the ocean to downtown Los Angeles and beyond. This will be a contiguous sequence of streets which are treelined, spanning Los Angeles County. To do this I will need the help of volunteers and residents.

Another project I request your support for is a Neighborhood Fruit Cooperative. The problem with many fruit trees is they bear all their fruit in a few weeks, and it’s too much for any one family to eat. The best solution is to share this fruit with our neighbors, and I would like to set up a reciprocal arrangement so that each participant shares the fruit they produce and receives different fruits in turn. That way, everyone wins.

And lastly, I just want to ask that you plant a tree. Join with me in creating a greener planet Earth.

Thanks

The Median

There is a lot of talk about median home prices in the news these days.

I watch this stuff very carefully, but I wanted to explain something so you can properly evaluate these news items when they come up.

The whole discipline of statistics is based on the desire to simplify the world. Instead of giving a list of home prices, the statistician gives one number, the median, and it is supposed to reflect the whole list of prices,or give you an idea of what a "typical" price on that list would be.

This sometimes works, but not always.

For instance, the median of "1,2,3,4,5" is "3". This seems reasonable. But on second thought, "3" really isn't a typical number in that list. Those numbers are all over the map, and 3 is very different than 5 or 1 or 2 or 4. Imagine if those numbers represented wheels on a vehicle, or children's ages, or hundreds of thousands of dollars. The difference between $200,000 and $300,000 is huge, but saying the median price for an area is $300,000 makes it seem like somehow this difference isn't very important.

So be careful with the idea that the median is "typical". It isn't always typical.

Next, note that the median of "2,3,3,9,9" is still "3". Wow, the market is exploding but the median is flat.

Whereas, the median of "1,1,4,4,4" is "4". The median went up, but themarket is crashing.

So don't get too caught up in this kind of news, other than to get a general idea of what might be going on. These number games are tricky and most people aren't very good at them, but that's one reason why we can do what we do. Affinity's analysis and rating systems get at the core of what makes real estate valuable, and those features are visible only to people who take the time to look closely at each property, neighborhood, and metro area, like we do.

Punishment?

It is easy to get trapped by our own notion of fairness. Someone does something we don't like, and apparently profits by it, and we want to punish them.

We want to punish bad behavior partly because it stops that person from continuing in that behavior, and partly because it deters others from engaging in similar behavior.

The problem is, this is not always the best thing for US. The whole point of punishment is to make life unpleasant for the punished, not to make life better for the punishers.

The trap is believing uncritically that punishing the criminal is the best thing we can do for ourselves. That is like automatically going on the same vacation every year, without considering other options.

We have the ability to sit down in each situation and consider our best course of action. It will probably be different for every single criminal, and every single crime. Our legal system does not appear to do this. Instead, we fall back on the notion of fairness, like every person doing a certain thing should be treated the same way by the law. Unfortunately, this is not always the best thing for us. So we inadvertantly continue the damage which the criminal started.

There are hundreds of ways to deter people from committing crimes. Severe punishment is not necessarily the best way. There are hundreds of ways to stop a person from committing further crimes, once we have caught them committing one. The way our society does it now doesn't work very well, and it's expensive, and not very fun. We are a very creative people, we can come up with much better solutions.

What if it were your job to ensure that no crimes happened today in your city? If you were mayor and had a budget of $1 million, what kinds of things could you try? What if it were your job to make sure a convicted murderer didn't kill again? How many ways could you think of to accomplish this? Be creative.

Affordability?

"Affordability" is a very slippery concept.

Some government agencies define "affordable" as "housing that can be purchased by people who earn the median income for the region."

There are a few problems with this definition, which render it all but useless. First, the word "housing" is not defined fully. For instance, mobile homes qualify as housing, as do condominiums, artist's lofts, hilltop mansions, duplexes...even four houses on one lot. These items are not comparable. The actual square footage of the living space and the yard area should be specified, including what constitutes a kitchen, bathroom, closet, door, window, garage, peace and quiet, safety, and all the other things that go into making a place habitable.

Second, "can be purchased" is problematic. When I bought my first home many people were saying it couldn't be done. Every one of the 26 people I helped buy properties in Oakland had been confident that this was impossible. The government will point to a so called industry standard acceptable debt to income ratio, and half the lenders out there have made up their own standard. There are a million ways to buy a house.

Next we have "the median income". In neighborhoods with significant underground and cash economies the median income is way underreported. But even if it were correct, last year's "income" only tells a small part of the story. This year's income is more important, and credit is even more important than that, because anyone with good credit can get a loan where they don't have to document their income at all. And of course, assets matter too, because someone with $100,000 equity in their house will have no trouble buying a $200,000 house, putting 50% down.

But what about the monthly payment? Well, the government makes the assumption that the purchaser is going to pay the whole thing. When in fact, millions of homeowners rent out part of their property to others who help with the payment. A $1 million fourplex is affordable to anyone, if the rent from three of the units pays the entire mortgage.

And finally, "the region". Why do we use a different measure for people in Santa Monica vs those in San Bernardino? Does everyone have a right to live where they are born, regardless of what they do? If so, then why is that right only protected in a few places?

Here is another way to look at this whole issue. There are places where lots of people want to be, and places where only a few people want to be. The former will be expensive, and the latter will be cheap. So everyone gets to choose how important it is for them to live in their favorite place. There are activities which produce lots of wealth, and activities which don't produce any wealth. Everyone gets to choose which activities they pursue.

There is a problem here, though. Most people do not know that they have this choice. They are not aware of the incredible opportunities for rapid wealth creation that are all around them. But it is fun to educate people about this. Whereas it isn't as fun (at least from my point of view) to try to derail the real estate market, in order to protect people from having to pay a market price for the privilege of living where lots of other people want to live.

Real Estate Trend

This is the first real estate article in a looong time which I actually agree with. :)

People are starting to wake up...

http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/15/real_estate/behind_hot_zips/index.htm


What makes a hot zip code hot?
The hot zip codes aren't all glitz and glam. They're affordable, close to the city or on the coast.April 18, 2005: 11:41 AM EDT By Sarah Max, CNN/Money senior writer

Salem, Ore. (CNN/Money) – Scrutinize our latest list of zip codes with the strongest price appreciation and you might wonder how some of these places could ever be considered "hot."
The neighborhoods are still a little rough around the edges. The houses need updating. Yoga centers and martini bars are few and far between. Paris Hilton, the aficionado of all things "hot," has never heard of these places.
(Click here to see the original story on hot zip codes.)
So we asked local real estate agents to tell us what they saw happening in New Jersey's 08008, Seattle's 98126, Chicago's 60632 and other zips that made our list.
Three distinct trends have influenced home prices in these zip codes, said David Stiff, senior economist for Fiserv CSW, which provided the data.

1. Affordability is everything.
Looking closely at the zip codes with the most appreciation over the past five years, you won't see places like Beverly Hills, Beacon Hill or East Hampton because home prices in these areas – though increasing – are just too dear.
In the priciest metros, buyers must search far and wide for affordable housing.
"In Boston, all of these zip codes are far from downtown," said Stiff, referring to New Bedford, Lawrence and Worcester. "They are former mill towns that are having a resurgence in price because they're so affordable."
In Los Angeles, the hot 'hoods are in the eastern suburbs where median home prices are still under $500,000. Prices in Rialto, Calif., have appreciated 191 percent, but the median home price, $270,000, is still extremely low for the area.
The same is true in the San Francisco Bay Area, which has some of the highest home prices in the country.
"People are trading distance for dollars," said Ray Brown, a real estate agent with Pacific Union, explaining that some of the zip codes with the greatest appreciation are near Sacramento, which is about 80 miles away. Some people commute the distance.

2. Urban trumps suburban.
While buyers in the priciest metros have no choice but to head to the suburbs, in cities where housing is relatively affordable buyers are shopping for property within city limits.
In Chicago, married couples are no longer fleeing the city for the suburbs and empty nesters are leaving the suburbs and moving back into the city, said Nancy Suvarnamani, president elect of the Chicago Association of Realtors.
"People want to live in Chicago and are willing to explore and purchase in areas that were once, not long ago, considered undesirable," she said. Because a lot of the established areas are too expensive, buyers are going to Logan Square (zip code 60639) and Uptown (60640).
"Irving Park and [the areas near it] are highly desirable areas because they contain large older, single homes, with a lot of character," she said. "People can purchase single-family homes in this area for under $500,000, and this is no longer possible in many Chicago neighborhoods."
Archer Heights (60632) and adjacent Brighton Park (60638), meanwhile, have experienced tremendous appreciation because of the expansion of Midway Airport, she noted. People want to live close to where they work, which has a ripple effect on the entire neighborhood.
The same trend is playing out in Seattle.
There, the neighborhoods with the strongest appreciation range from still-affordable West Seattle (98106), where the median home price is $233,000 to the more established Queen Anne-Magnolia (98109) where the median priced home is $556,000.
"But what's similar is they are all within a stone's throw away from downtown," said Edward Krigsman, a real estate agent with John L. Scott. Although Microsoft and other large employers are east of the city, he said, buyers are looking for reasonably priced areas within the city.
"The closer the better, the cheaper the better," Krigsman said.

3. Go coastal.
In the New York and Philadelphia metros the zip codes with the most price gains are primarily New Jersey shore towns.
"There is huge demand for waterfront homes," said Stiff. "Right now, if you look at the Florida coast, the Jersey shore you see second-home buying driving appreciation."
According to Bonnie Fitzgerald, president of elect of the New Jersey Association of Realtors, buyers have been buying what were once year-round houses, fixing them up and turning them into vacation homes.
Although prices in these New Jersey shore towns have increased tremendously, she said, they're still a relative bargain compared with beach towns on Long Island.
"Some of these places have some stigma of 'Well that's not the best area to live,'" she noted. But if they're on or near the beach, stigma doesn't matter. "People renovate the houses and the whole demographics of the town changes."
Click here for the top zips in 10 metro areas.
Ultimate home guide 2005

The Future of Real Estate

By 2010, real estate is going to migrate entirely to the internet. A site like ebay for real estate is going to show buyers everything they need to know and walk them through the transactions, virtually eliminating the need for real estate agents as we know them.

The following steps will enable this to happen.

1) We will have a standard protocol for describing properties. Everything about a home, commercial space, or vacant lot that is relevant to its value will be catalogued and displayed in tables, maps, drawings, and photos, allowing for accurate comparisons across properties.

2) Inspections that are now optional (e.g. professional home inspection, soil report, pest control, roof inspection, zoning & permits, police activity, air quality, comparable sales, tenant info, etc.) will become a mandatory part of the process. The seller will simply pay one time for the service that compiles and posts all these reports. Currently this costs between $1000 and $5000 per transaction, however, better tracking and economies of scale will bring that price down to less than $500 per transaction.

3) The process of obtaining real estate financing will be further automated. This has already been done with Home Equity Lines of Credit, where you can walk into a bank and get a loan on your primary residence as quickly, cheaply, and easily as getting a credit card. The credit reporting, FICO score, and loan application process will be improved to give a more accurate picture of borrower risk. Sites like eloan will preapprove and process the entire loan before the buyer even selects the property. The typical escrow period will be 3-5 business days.

4) Rent back provisions will be standardised. Because escrow will be so fast, whereas arranging a move sometimes takes longer, a standard contract for renting back the property from the new owner will be added to every transaction.

5) Contract repair work will be standardised. There will still be contractors and unlicensed individuals willing to work for less, but a standard menu of construction options and prices, similar to the ones used by auto mechanics, will smooth negotiations involving repairs.

6) A standard service (bonded & insured) for showing homes to prospective buyers and inspectors will be established. This is already being done by discount brokerages.

These six changes will virtually eliminate the need for commissioned real estate agents.

The happy side effect will be a dramatic increase in the liquidity of real estate, which will lead to the rapid revitalisation of all distressed neighborhoods. I will explain how this works in a future post.

Who Would Jesus Bomb?

Jesus said, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

So my question is, when would you want someone to declare war on you and drop bombs on your relatives?

Jesus said, "Love your enemies; do good to those who persecute you."
Jesus said, "If someone strikes you on the right cheek, offer him the left as well."

In reference to these and similar quotes, my father used to say, "Those are difficult teachings."

But Jesus said, "My yoke is easy, and my burden light."

Either Jesus was God or he wasn't. Either the Gospels quote him accurately or they don't. If you believe he was God, and the Gospels are true, then do what he says, or at least try. Don't use the old testament to contradict Jesus and then say that you are a Christian. And don't stand in righteous judgement over people that Jesus died to save.

Jesus said, "Judge not, lest ye be judged."

So-called Christian theologians have come up with elaborate justifications for war, based on the idea that sometimes, killing a few wicked people can save many innocents. But then, why didn't Jesus do that? Are we supposed to act differently than he did?

Jesus said, "Love one another as I have loved you."
Jesus said, "Love your neighbor as yourself."

When faced with these kinds of arguments, my brother used to say, "That's the great thing about the Bible, you can use it to prove anything you want." That's a pretty Zen way to look at it. :)

Let's Eliminate Poverty Now

I have been studying poverty for the past 12 years, and experimenting with ways of ending it. There are thousands of other people engaged in this too, of course.

But what is exciting now is that we are actually nearing the tipping point. Read Malcolm Gladwell's book "The Tipping Point". It talks about how small actions can cause big changes. There are a number of conditions that have to be met before the situations "tips".

Would you like to help set up those conditions? Think about how the world was before Martin Luther King decided to champion civil rights. Or before Gandhi decided to get the British out of India. That's how the world is now, with respect to Poverty.

No one likes poverty, but we may feel like there is little we can do about it. Just like the average African American might have felt that there was little one individual could do about race discrimination in the 1960s.

This feeling of being unable to solve a problem is exactly the feeling people had about going to the moon in 1950. What changed? Thousands of smart people devoted lots of time and the government spent lots of money on putting a man on the moon. But way more smart people are spending way more time and money on eliminating poverty.

So why haven't we eliminated poverty yet?

The difference is tactics. Think of the battles where a handful of soldiers take on a much larger army and win. Like the American revolutionary war. General Washington wanted at many points to engage the British army in the open, like any courageous soldier would, but every time he did this he was trounced. So he changed tactics. He didn't confront the enemy, but used guerrilla warfare and played cat & mouse with the British until they finally got tired of it and gave up. In some sense that was a very unsatisfying way to win. But it was victory nonetheless, and Washington's first choice of tactics would have led to certain defeat.

This is the lesson. Our favorite ways of fighting poverty haven't worked! It's time to give them up and switch to tactics that work. Here is an outline of how to eliminate poverty very quickly.

A) Start with the easiest cases. Our charitable instinct is to start with the most desparate cases, like Mother Teresa did. That's admirable, but it does not solve poverty. Mother Teresa's calling was a personal one, to care for the poor and dying, which she did heroically. Her mission was not to eliminate poverty. To eliminate poverty, we need to shrink the problem. There are too many poor people for us to help them all. Instead of trying to help the most helpless, focus first on helping the most people! The more people we help out of poverty, the smaller the problem becomes, and the more new helpers we create.

For instance, start in the richest countries. It is folly to think we can solve the problems of Calcutta when we haven't solved those same problems in Phoenix, Arizona! Eliminate poverty in Phoenix (the easiest place at the moment); THEN go to the next easiest place.

B) Use trade to boost the economy. Do not rely on donations. People give billions of dollars each year to charity, but we spend trillions on entertainment. People donate dozens of hours each year volunteering, but they spend thousands of hours working at their jobs. Harness these bigger forces. Make eliminating poverty profitable and entertaining, rather than trying to increase the level of sacrifice and tithing people can tolerate.

C) Pay attention to all the psychological elements that cause people to do things, and develop tactics accordingly. Many of these factors are discussed in "The Tipping Point", and other books like "Gifts Differing", "The Sedona Method", "Change Your Life in 30 Days", "What to say when you talk to yourself", "NLP: The New Technology of Achievement", "Tony Robbins: Unlimited Power", "The Richest Man in Babylon", "Chester Carrass: Negotiating", "The Landmark Curriculum for Living", "Napoleon Hill: Think & Grow Rich", "Rich Dad Poor Dad", "Richard Carlson: You Can Be Happy No Matter What".

D) Join together in a coordinated effort. The American Revolution would have failed if the 13 colonies hadn't joined together. Right now there are hundreds of organisations working to eliminate poverty. When we all become one organisation, we will win.

Check out my company at www.affinityneighborhoods.com.

Crime and Prison

I really like the analysis of crime presented in "The Tippping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell.

This is my understanding of it:

1. Everyone has a different genetic disposition to crime. So there are people who are very likely to commit crimes (genetically defiant, rebellious people), those who are very unlikely (genetically docile, rule-following people), and everything in between.

2. Everyone has a different upbringing and history and culture, which tends to incline them more or less towards committing crimes.

3. BUT, the biggest factor in crime is neither of those two things. The biggest factor is the physical environment in the time and place where the crime is committed. The next biggest factor is the physical environment in all the places along the path the person took for the 24 hours before they committed the crime.

Our prison system locks up people who got caught doing a crime. We only lock up people after the crime is done, and new people are constantly being born, so this model isn't very good at preventing crime.

Whereas, the environmental model of crime says that everyone will be acted upon by the environment, and the worst environments will cause the most susceptible people to commit crimes. By altering the environments that cause crime, we can reduce crime without needing to lock anyone up.

Just like when you childproof your home you don't need to discipline your kids as much. Some kids are safe even in non-child-safe places. But all kids are safe in child-safe places. It's not that difficult to childproof a home, and it's not that difficult to crime-proof a city. In either case it's totally worth it!

Bizarre

In reading the book "The Bottomless Well" by Peter Huber and Mark Mills, I came across the phrase "the bizarre phenomena of quantum physics".

It got me thinking about what "bizarre" means. We have two models which we find useful in different situations -- Newtonian physics for everyday events and Quantum physics for very small and fast things -- and it isn't easy to integrate these two models in our minds.

It reminds me of language. It seems bizarre when someone makes foreign sounds to communicate what we would say in English. We realise that other languages exist, and we mostly ignore their existence when we are communicating in English. When we switch to speaking Spanish or Japanese, then suddenly within that framework, English seems bizarre.

The survival value of models changes over time. In my lifetime (from 1965 till now) Newton's physics has been quite useful to me, in fixing bicycles, cars, and boats, launching projectiles, fashioning home-made parachutes, skateboard ramps, etc. Whereas I have used quantum physics only as a conversation piece -- usually the real subject was karma or spiritual freedom or some aspect of consciousness. Yogis, Zen masters, and new age teachers often use principles from quantum physics to make their points about the nature of things. So in this sense it has been useful to me.

However, it wouldn't be too difficult to imagine a society where quantum physics is more useful than Newtonian. Perhaps Los Alamos National Labs is already such a place. But I mean even for a nonscientist, the value of Newton's physics might be insignificant, and Quantum physics might be really important, if it was somehow made integral to the culture, as among physicists, or among the Yogis I referred to.

And then, one might go about thinking of Quantum physics as normal, and Newtonian physics as "bizarre".

Take Action

Get rich by helping others get rich.
Plant trees and flowers. Pick up litter.

Create a happy environment for kids.
Be extra friendly to your neighbors!

Take action

Questions

MAKING THE CASE FOR OUR METHOD

How can we show that our activity makes real household incomes and net worth go up faster than housing prices, making housing more affordable rather than less?

How could we show that our activity reduced crime in specific areas. Could we sell that service to governments?

How can we show that we bring money & jobs into the local economy?

How can we show that our activities cause overall quality of life to go up in our neighborhoods?

INCREASING EMPLOYMENT

How can we further reduce unemployment in our target area?

Where could we get real unemployment data for zipcodes such that we could track what impact we have had on unemployment already?

How can we legally cause undocumented immigrants to create wealth for themselves and us?

COMMUNITY ENROLLMENT

How can we get the other owners to borrow against their equity and beautify their properties?

How could we enroll tenants in visibly improving the neighborhood?

How do we get graffiti painted over (immediately) for free?

How do we get beautiful murals painted on walls and buildings for free?

How can we get internet cafes, restaurants, and bookstores to locate themselves in our target neighborhoods?

How can we get business owners to upgrade their facades?

How do we get other investors in our target area to (deliberately) cooperate with us?

How could we get the neighbors to plant and maintain trees and flowers?

How could we get free reliable clean housesitting?

How can we create peace and respect and good positive feelings between different groups that in the past have seen each other as enemies?

How can we get gangs to take pride in making the neighborhood better?

NEIGHBORHOOD IMPROVEMENT

How could we get the cars off the street (in places where it's hard to park)?

How could we improve safety?

Could we cost effectively put security systems and security lights in all our houses, and webcams on all our front porches?

How could we enroll the neighbors in making sure our places don't get broken into?

How can we get our target area recommended in an international guidebook for tourists?

How else could we get the residents to be really proud of their neighborhood?

How do we make our neighborhoods smell good?

How can we make it so flowers are seen everywhere?

How can we establish visual themes for each neighborhood, so there is a sense of architectural continuity?

ECOLOGY

How can we make it profitable to put solar panels on our roofs?

How can we make it profitable to conserve water in all our houses?

How could we reduce the air pollution in our target area?

How can we reduce the impact our painting has on the environment?

Is there less poisonous paint we could use?

How can we use earthfriendly materials in all stages of the fixup process?

How can we get light rail or electric trams to serve our neighborhoods, connecting to metro stations?

How can we get trucks and cars to switch from regular diesel to biodiesel?

ANALYSING REAL ESTATE

Where can we get the crime statistics for each zipcode updated on a monthly basis?

Can we get the actual dates and addresses of murders, burglaries, etc, from police records?

How can we get monthly air pollution data for each zip code or neighborhood?

REAL ESTATE PURCHASING

Where can we get a list of houses for sale by owner in our target area?

How can we get more off the market deals, and more clients for our agents?

How can we get HUD (and their contract agent Golden Feather Realty) to do their job?

How can we buy HUD properties?

GOVERNMENT MONEY

How could we get the government to pay us to fix up blighted buildings and streets?

Pay business owners to upgrade facades?

How can we most effectively use redevelopment money for our fixup process?

How can we get the government to plant trees on our streets and fix potholes and clean up graffiti, or pay us to do it?

Will the government pay for upgrades to parks, such as playground equipment?

Murals on walls?

CORPORATE SPONSORSHIP

Where can we get free trees to plant on the street, and free labor to plant and water them?

How can we get Home Depot or Lowes to donate materials or invest in us?

How can we get free playground equipment to put in parks?

FINANCING

How can we get someone to lend us 100% of the purchase price of our properties at around 8-12% interest?

The Solution To Poverty Is Wealth

The Solution To Poverty Is Wealth
In this essay I enquire into why poverty persists in spite of the best efforts of thousands of dedicated people and organisations to eliminate it, and describe a way that ordinary people like you and me could actually succeed where others have failed.

What Is Poverty?
Poverty is the lack of the following human goods:

1. Security
Security is the belief in a bright future; or in other words, the knowledge that bad things are not going to happen to us.

People seek security in many ways, such as: fleeing corrupt governments, getting a steady job, storing up money in a safe place, moving away from crime, having a strong army, police force, and emergency response services, eating healthy and following medical advice, seeking education and career training, voting for incumbents, making smalltalk with neighbors, locking doors and windows, filtering the water, hiding valuables, buying insurance, working hard, planning ahead, maintaining good credit, putting up walls, fences, and barbed wire, and making sure our friends are more powerful than our enemies.

Of course, since security is a belief about the future, it doesn’t really require doing any of those things listed above. Anyone, rich or poor, can believe in a bright future, and feel safe in the knowledge that bad things are not going to happen to them. (If this sounds new to you, I recommend attending a free introduction to the Landmark Forum in a city near you – check out www.landmarkeducation.com). So there doesn’t have to be any correlation between security and government, health, friends, money, privacy, education, career, or housing.

Still, there exist high crime neighborhoods, with unusually high concentrations of people with below average security. These people typically experience higher unemployment and higher turnover at work, as tenants they are more frequently evicted, they are more likely to be laid off, denied employment & housing, attacked, stolen from, injured on or off the job, falsely (or justifiably) accused, arrested, convicted, incarcerated, drafted, and killed.

We can’t blame them for feeling insecure, even though the source of their insecurity is actually their own beliefs about the future. The simplest way to alter their beliefs about the future is to reduce the crime in these neighborhoods, boost the economy, and raise the quality of life. While this may not wholly eliminate insecurity (which exists in safe neighborhoods too), it does eliminate this facet of poverty, by neutralising the abnormally high levels of insecurity in distressed communities.

2. Health
Like security, health is something available to everyone who makes healthy choices. The government, medical associations, and other groups have had much success with advertising and educational programs aimed at raising public health and awareness. Messages about nutrition, dental hygeine, drinking and driving, smoking, and sexually transmitted diseases have successfully altered mass behavior and enhanced the public health.

And yet there are concentrations of people with unhealthier than average lifestyles, which is a condition of poverty. As a group, these people have more frequent and severe health problems, and are less likely to receive adequate medical care. Their nutritional choices are limited, compared to their wealthier neighbors, they are more likely to be injured, and they are more likely to be exposed to hazardous chemicals and extremely unhealthy lifestyles.

The simplest way to eliminate the condition of poverty resulting from a concentration of people making unhealthy choices is to directly target the community with educational and motivational messages which inspire them to make healthier choices. This will be most effective when done alongside the other actions described here.

3. Education
Commonly seen as the way out of poverty, the quality & variety of education available to the poor is lower than that available to other groups.

The solution to this is easier than it might seem, because the system of education used by the majority of wealthy people is itself still rather primitive, compared to what could be made available. What is needed is for someone with an open mind to take an interest in each child, and guide them through a course of study and training that matches his or her natural talents and inclinations. This would necessarily involve exposure to many fields and disciplines, and would produce far superior educational results than what we are used to.

The simplest way to implement such a program is to create a pilot with a handful of new teachers, and select children at random to participate. Publish the methodology along with the results not only to educators, but to every parent. Show them how they can take their kids’ destinies into their own hands.

4. Freedom
Freedom is a belief in possibilities rather than in limitations. While this in fact has nothing to do with money or politics, there is a widespread belief that it does, which is to some extent self-fulfilling.

There are residential concentrations of people who feel disenfranchised, unrepresented, and uninvolved in their government. These people often feel inequipped to stop others from polluting their air, water, land, and soundwaves. They experience less freedom of movement within and across national boundaries. And they are less likely to start their own businesses, pursue their chosen careers, enjoy high quality entertainment, or take advantage of all the transportation options available.

The simplest way to mitigate this situation is to demonstrate to the residents of these neighborhoods the realisation of new possibilities. Virtually anything new will work to inspire people to begin considering change from the status quo. The most effective demonstrations are of things that seem totally out of place in the status quo, such as people voluntarily picking up trash, and residents upgrading their houses and yards in a way not customary in the neighborhood.

What Poverty Is Not
Poverty is Not the condition of having annual income below “the poverty line”. Millions of wealthy individuals have incomes below the poverty line for various reasons (including avoidance of income tax), and many people living in poverty have incomes above the poverty line. Income is not an accurate measure of wealth and is not the determining factor in eliminating poverty.

The Solution
The difference between the amount of wealth people create or bring in and the amount they destroy or consume each day is the factor which determines whether an economic entity such as a neighborhood is getting better or worse.

To reduce poverty we must cause a shift in behavior such that people consistently create more wealth than they destroy or consume. Focusing on anything else besides causing that shift in behavior will not reduce poverty. This is why impressive efforts like those of the Department of Social Services, the St Vincent de Paul Society, United Way, Mother Teresa, and programs like Feed the World, though admirable and in many cases beneficial, have not eradicated poverty.

Now, there are many different ways to change behavior. One of the strongest motivators is the desire to look good (and avoid looking bad) in front of others. This is the primary reason people behave outwardly so well in “nice” neighborhoods (and in theatres, churches, and supermarkets). In distressed neighborhoods, to avoid confrontation, people learn to look the other way, and then those who want to behave badly can do so with no one watching. Those with higher standards of behavior are the first to leave, rather than complain without the support of the community, which creates a vicious cycle.

What is missing is people paying attention. So we do something that grabs their attention; like paint our house bright yellow, introduce ourselves to all the neighbors, and request that they help keep the street clean. As more and more neighbors follow suit and beautify their properties, keeping up appearances becomes a question of pride, and ugly behavior feels more conspicuous.

To do this on a grand scale, we take advantage of the fact that when a neighborhood changes in this way, the quality of life goes up, which causes a rise in the price of real estate. By buying into the neighborhoods we want to work in, we can pay for the whole operation with the appreciation in real estate values which we cause. Thus we are not forced to rely on volunteers, but can hire dedicated employees to systematically transform neighborhoods in such a way that eliminates poverty.

How You Can ParticipateTo be part of this solution, all you have to do is invest in real estate in cooperation with us. There are many ways to do this, from something as simple as buying a bond to something as complicated as purchasing, rehabilitating, and managing investment properties. To learn more, go to www.affinityneighborhoods.com, or email us at info#affinityneighborhoods.com (replace “#” with “@”).

Please respond and tell me your thoughts.

-dav

Creating Wealth By Beautifying Neighborhoods

Introduction
I’m going to start by giving a little background on the company I work for, Affinity Neighborhoods.

Affinity was born of our desire for satisfying and rewarding work. My partners and I had careers like most people, and we were very successful, climbing our corporate ladders and getting paid. Clearly, success and accomplishment are important. But What we succeed at and What we accomplish are important too.

True job satisfaction comes from continually taking on bigger challenges in areas that we really care about; not just solving problems, but solving problems that are worthy of our lives. The catch though, is how to make money doing what we believe in and working on what we care about. Affinity is our solution.

What we care about is the quality of life in neighborhoods where children are growing up. Since we can make money by improving conditions in these neighborhoods, places largely overlooked by society, government, and other investors, we have a wonderful combination, work that is both highly rewarding and deeply connected to our values.

Affinity creates wealth by transforming distressed neighborhoods into beautiful, safe, and vibrant communities.

We define "wealth" as a high quality of life. This includes not only money, but a wide variety of healthy things to spend money on; convenient shopping centers, markets, and entertainment. It includes interesting and satisfying work, and clean, attractive, safe housing.

I can't emphasise this point enough: creating wealth means improving the quality of life in our target neighborhoods. A recurring problem in history is that we define wealth as money, or control, or popularity, rather than quality of life. The story of King Midas illustrates how gold doesn't make us rich. High quality of life requires security, health, supportive relationships, education -- all the things that make life great. To focus only on money is to be a slumlord. It puts us in competition with everyone else. Wealth as Quality of Life is cooperative, mutually beneficial, win-win.

Neighborhood Selection
Now, exactly how do we transform neighborhoods? I’ll give a brief overview of our methodology. Affinity targets neighborhoods based on two criteria. First, the quality of life there must be unacceptable, which is our definition of a distressed neighborhood - conditions in which no child should have to grow up. Second, we have to see a clear opportunity to substantially improve the situation, within our schedule and budget.

To pick our neighborhoods, we research and analyse every zip code in the country, on all the factors which we know affect quality of life. By the way, if you’re interested in working cooperatively with us, we’ll be happy to explain the details of this selection process. We are always looking to share the wealth with people who share our vision. Because we know all the intimate details of real estate investing and property management, we can rank each zip code based on the impact we can have there.

As long as we are a small company, we’ll continue to target the very best zip codes, to ensure a successful project. After each investment cycle, we compare our predictions to national real estate appreciation data, which so far has confirmed our selection process. As we succeed and grow, fewer and fewer neighborhoods will meet the first criteria (that is, distressed), because we revitalise them one by one, and the transformation we cause is self-perpetuating.

At the same time, as we grow, we have more resources to invest, so more neighborhoods meet the second criteria – that we can have a significant impact there. The more properties we can buy in a given area, the more certain our results are, and the more consistent our performance. When every neighborhood in the world is beautiful and safe, and every child is growing up in a place they can be proud of, then we’ll make our final distribution to investors and work on something else -- perhaps transportation, or renewable energy. But for now the priority is clear: children don’t choose to grow up surrounded by drugs, violence, and urban blight. It is unthinkable to allow these conditions to persist when we can get paid to do something about it.

Property Selection
After selecting our target area, we begin the selection process for individual properties, using a detailed comparative analysis of all the properties available for sale (and even some that aren’t). We rank each one and select the best deals. As with neighborhoods, we choose properties on two basic criteria. First, we look for the properties that are "bringing down the neighborhood". Dilapidated buildings, neglected landscaping, piles of debris, building and health code violations, public nuisances, law enforcement problems, drug hangouts -- we see golden opportunities in each one of these, because we ask the question, “How nice would this neighborhood be if that situation were cleaned up?”

Next, we ensure that each transaction is profitable. So the set of properties we buy is the intersection of the ones that are crying out to be fixed up, and the ones that will make the most money for our investors. This set changes constantly, based on market conditions, our purchasing activity (which rapidly eliminates the low end of the market), and our other activities in the neighborhood. So typically we download a complete list of available properties each morning and do the whole analysis over again to determine which ones to bid on that afternoon.

If you've been a home buyer recently, you know what it means when the seller gets multiple offers. Prices tend to go up rapidly. Our persistent bidding on all the most underpriced properties in our target area causes a technical jump in home values. Low priced properties no longer sit on the market for months and months, but are sold within weeks or even days. When new properties come on the market in this environment, they tend to be more aggressively priced, and realtors and investors start to get interested.

Note that, by definition, "underpriced" means that, initially, realtors and investors are not interested in the areas we target. In our neighborhoods, realtors would have to work harder, even risking their lives in many cases, and get paid half as much as in affluent neighborhoods, so it is rare to find any local realtors serving the communities we invest in. As for investors, we are usually the only bidder on the properties we buy, at least until our project gets going. When realtors and investors get interested, money flows in, and the community starts to deal more effectively with its quality of life issues.

Another point to keep in mind is that when home values rise, so does the net worth of homeowners. Even in some of the most distressed neighborhoods homeowners make up a substantial portion of the residents. These owners receive a huge windfall when their home value rises, bringing an influx of money into the local economy. Property tax revenues also rise substantially as properties change hands in a seller's market. Investors who pay more to buy into the neighborhood are more likely to make necessary improvements, and building codes are often enforced as part of the conditions of sale. These are just some of the effects of our buying activity on the local economy.

Negotiating Purchases
When one of our offers is accepted, we begin negotiations with the sellers, agents, appraisers, escrow officers, home inspectors, and all the other services required for closing the deal. In our experience, the fees charged by all these middlemen are wildly variable and difficult to decypher. In the first 50 deals in which we tracked all closing costs, I don't think any two of them even had the same names for the fees, much less amounts. Clearly there is a lot of negotiating latitude here.

Because we use these services over and over, we have hired many of these people on as partners, so we pay low fixed transaction fees or hourly wages rather than commissions. In exchange our agents get a steady stream of work and they participate in the ownership of the company and profit sharing. Hiring local people, who spend their incomes locally, also helps the economy.

Rehabilitiation
Once a property is acquired, we enter what we call the "fix up" phase. First we address all health, safety, and habitability issues, such as broken windows, missing stairway railings, and faulty plumbing or electrical. Next we upgrade the "curb appeal", replacing chain link fences with cute wooden ones, planting flowers and vines, patching stucco, and repainting flaky exteriors.

And finally, we focus on the "walkthrough impression", refinishing wood floors, remodeling kitchens and bathrooms and adding skylights, where cost effective. We pay special attention to everything in the house that humans interact with, such as door handles, faucets, window latches, and light switches. These improvements have a huge impact on the quality of life of the inhabitants, which means we create wealth when we transform the property in this way. Our typical rehabilitation costs range from five to twenty-five thousand dollars, and we typically expect twice that amount back in equity from this portion of the investment.

But the larger impact (and much of our job satisfaction) comes from the reaction of the local community to the visible work we do. When we proactively clean up piles of trash that have been sitting there for years, people’s attitudes change. Neighbors start to clean up their yards and fix their fences. People outside maintaining and beautifying their properties becomes a common sight. Each small visible improvement spawns a series of similar actions. This is why we don’t have to buy every property. A certain amount of care and attention is required to tip the neighborhood over the edge, toward becoming a sustainable community. Catalysing this process is far less effort than actually doing all the work involved, because the number of people affected by each change is enormous, particularly when we are focusing on visible beautification and the neutralisation of eyesores.

Rentals
When we advertise a property for rent, we select for tenants who are optimistic about the neighborhood and interested in getting involved and doing something positive. Our rental agreements mandate a high standard of property maintenance and ongoing litter cleanup, and of course we have zero tolerance for any behaviors that might lower our neighbor’s quality of life. We encourage tenants to become buyers and investors, and we educate and support them in this process. We’ve prompted just about everyone we know to purchase their first and second homes, many of whom had thought this was utterly impossible before they talked to us.

Conclusion
Of course, there are always obstacles to overcome. We get a huge boost when a city wakes up the way Oakland did in 1997, or like Long Beach in 2001. We are eagerly awaiting this in Compton and Los Angeles, when the government starts investing strategically in their infrastructure and other quality of life issues. But effective government arises from an engaged populace.

Our strategy is to empower the people to create wealth and show them what is possible, even if it means in some cases doing the government’s job for a while. We plant and maintain hundreds of trees, paint over graffiti, haul away trash, and beautify public spaces, especially those visible from our properties. We even landscape the neighbor’s property and replace their falling down fences if necessary. Remember, we’re being paid to do this, because it causes our properties to rise in value. Wouldn’t it be nice if the government were paid this same way? We’re treated with respect by our neighbors, (including drug dealers and gang members) because our mission is to improve their quality of life, and this shows.

Given our commitment to improving the quality of life in our target area, I’m sure you can imagine the sorts of schemes and programs we experiment with; some work and we expand those; others don’t and we scrap them. Our results speak for themselves. Consistent net investment returns of over 20% annualised in project after project, year after year, accompanied by a precipitous drop in crime in places most people wouldn't have dared to get out of their car. Now those places have been transformed into attractive, peaceful destinations. That’s what we call creating wealth.

Don't like gangs? Join one!

Gangs are credited (or is it debited?) with most of the crime in our inner cities. But let's not forget that gangs also created baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer, and virtually every other team sport. Gangs -- that is, groups of friends with a common identity who like to hang out together -- created polyphonic music, jazz, rock & roll, the stock exchange, the industrial revolution, and the US Constitution. Gangs of euro-american settlers took on gangs of native americans in the Old West.

At the end of the day, every group we belong to is a gang. The question is, why don't we belong to the gangs that get blamed for the state of things in our inner cities. Why have we removed ourselves and our influence from the lives of the young people growing up in the hood?

Well, I'm sure we had our reasons. But now it's time to put ourselves back into their lives. It's time to get involved in the neighborhoods on the other side of the tracks. It's time to wake up to the amazing potential that each child and young adult is, regardless of where they were born or how their parents behaved.

Affinity Neighborhoods is a gang of socially conscious investors who buy underpriced houses and apartment buildings in distressed neighborhoods, fix them up, and sponsor events aimed at catalysing neighborhood revitalisation. The key ingredient is PRESENCE. Be there. The inner cities got the way they are through neglect. They will blossom again when we take care of them.

What should be taught in school

I think there's two kinds of subjects that should be taught in school.

1. Specific Skills useful in jobs and survival.
A) Basic Math
B) Reading & Writing
C) Library & Secretarial skills
D) Computer skills
E) The Law
F) How to Have Satisfying Relationships
G) How to Get 100 Jobs (from Burger Flipper to Movie Star to CEO of IBM)
H) How to Make and Invest Money
I) How to Start a Successful Business
J) How to Grow Food
K) How to Survive in 100 Different Environments (from cities to deserts to rain forests)
L) Cooking
M) First Aid & CPR
N) Home Maintenance & Repair
O) Addiction & Recovery
P) Foreign Languages (Everyone should speak 4 languages fluently)
Q) Mastery of 100 Popular Sports & Games
R) Music & Rhythm
S) Art & Photography
T) Drama & Dance
U) Leadership, Management, & Teamwork

2. Whatever the kid is interested in.
Just go to the library and let the kid pick subjects they like.

Why I think the Failing Powerfully class would be awesome

Ask yourself, how many people are failing powerfully at bringing about peace in the middle east?
In other words, how many people could tell you stories about the incredible efforts they put into it, how many would impress you with their persistence and determination in accomplishing that?

Well, I don't know any people with those kinds of stories to tell. We all want peace in the middle east, and up to this point we have all failed, but none of us failed powerfully. No applause from the class.

I'm not saying you should quit your job and work on peace in the middle east. But what would be wrong with some high school students really working their butts off on that?
And the amazing thing that happens when people stop avoiding failure is: They succeed!
Not necessarily at the BIG goal they were going for, but one's successes certainly get bigger when one's failures get bigger. That's unavoidable.
So, whereas now highschool kids (and the rest of us) often feel like they can't really make a big difference in the world, the kids in this class would be succeeding at bigger things than they ever thought possible, while failing powerfully at things even bigger than that.

Educational Idea

Here's an idea I had for a new highschool class. This class would be mandatory for freshmen.

Course Title: FAIL POWERFULLY!

Description:
Over the centuries, failure has gotten a bum rap. Most people seem to think that failure is a negative thing, something you are not supposed to do.
Whereas in reality, ALL successful people fail constantly. In fact, the frequency and size of a persons failures is a reasonable measure of how successful that person is. People who avoid failure may succeed, but not at big things.
This course is an exploration of how big you can be. Success is great but each time you succeed, you are left with the question about whether you could have taken on something bigger. The only way to find your limits is to fail. Of course, you don't learn anything if you fail due to lack of effort or commitment -- sitting on the sidelines is not an option. In this course you will practice failing POWERFULLY. That means you give it your all, you put every ounce of everything you have into the endeavor.

Course Assignments:
Each week, choose one from the following list of assignments. You may choose the same one week after week, but you are responsible for reporting new and bigger failures each week.
1. Bring about a lasting peace agreement between Israel and Palestine.
2. Eliminate the smog over Mexico City, Tokyo, or Los Angeles.
3. Increase the worldwide cancer survival rate to at least 90% for 5 years.
4. Write a book, get it published, and have it be a best seller.
5. Win a Nobel Prize.
6. Earn $10 million in business.
7. Reforest a large enough area to offset the forests destroyed in the past century.
8. Set up a successful resort and spa in Liberia or Sudan.
9. Eliminate starvation.
10. Win a decathalon.
11. Write and perform a musical number that tops the charts.
12. Win a national beauty contest.
13. Get accepted with full scholarship to an Ivy League university.
14. Make a list of every person you know, and tell each one what you think about them and how you feel about them, and listen to them tell you what they think and feel about you, AND have each one of them sign an affidavit that they were honest and complete, they believed you were honest and complete, and it was a fully satisfying interaction.
15. Meet and talk with all your elected representatives, starting with city councilmembers, on up to the president of the USA. Tell each of them what you think about their policies, offer advice, and make a specific request of them as their constituent.
16. Release a motion picture which is a box office success.
17. Successfully market an electric car.
18. Create an operating system more popular than Microsoft Windows.
19. Make a fast food restaurant that serves only healthy food and make it more popular than McDonalds.
[More choices will be added before the course begins.]

Course Rules:
1. You are prohibited from doing anything immoral, illegal, unhealthy, or unethical in this course. Furthermore, you must create more wealth than you destroy.
2. You will be graded not only on your own failures, but also on the size and frequency of your classmates' failures. If you succeed at failing big, but your classmates fail small, then you fail small too. For anyone in the class to get an "A", everyone in the class must fail big.
3. When students report their failures to the class each day, the class will applaud correspondingly to how big the failure was.

Where does the notion of fairness come from?

"Life is not fair." That's what my 7th grade teacher told me, whenever I complained to her -- ooh, she made me so mad. I was actually flunking 7th grade; I was so mad at Mrs. Weber that I routinely sabotaged my own assignments to get back at her.

I remember an art project where I made a rather meticulous color drawing of an advent wreath, and then when the class was finishing, I don't remember what triggered it but I felt the uncontrollable urge to spite the teacher -- I crumpled my drawing and then scribbled all over it in black marker and showed it to her. She didn't react at all, which was kind of funny in its own way, and the drawing went up on the wall along with those of all the other students, for the parents to see on open house night. It was a little creepy, all these nice 7th grade drawings and then the one that looked like Eddie Munster did it. I could see the parents looking at it rather odd too, but I guess they all had 7th graders at home so they probably took it in stride.

Seventh grade was when I first started catching my teacher in all sorts of errors, which of course didn't endear me to her. I felt so superior, like Raskolnikov in "Crime & Punishment". I was constantly arguing with her about test and quiz answers; and in most cases I was technically in the right, but the official rules in academia aren't always the ones that apply. Hence my teacher's relish at pointing out life's fundamental inequitability.

Seeing that I was failing, my parents eventually intervened and took me to a shrink, who said I was plenty smart and good natured, and all that was needed was for someone to clean out my room of all the junk. I collected every kind of junk, I have a talent for seeing the usefulness in everything. The dump was my very favorite place in the world, back then when scavenging was allowed. My dad would unload rocks and debris from our yard, and I would want to fill the trailer up again with cool things that other people had discarded. Anyway, they cleaned out my room and then I got along fine in school from then on. (I still don't quite understand why that worked. :)

Ever since then, I pondered the notion of "fairness". It's a little like religion. It seems like the utility of the concept is primarily to discourage individuals from seeking to benefit themselves at the expense of the group. Individuals may lose their motivation to cooperate if they feel that someone may engage preemptively in competitive behavior and take advantage of their cooperative stance.

For example, if a baseball coach picks his lineup based on his feelings about the kids' parents, this could demotivate the players stuck in the outfield or sitting on the bench. Whereas if the coach bases his choices on reasonable tests of capability and performance, the players will see that their skills and hard work can pay off.

It makes sense for society to want us to base employment or academic decisions on merit. And people are often tempted to base decisions on other things -- our coach might expect some quid pro quo from the pitcher's father, for instance, that he'd miss out on if he put the kid where he belonged, in right field. Hence the need for a morality of fairness.

But nature isn't fair. Some kids are born with incredible talent, while other kids might work harder and still come up short, at least in a particular area, such as sports, music, math, language skills, or good looks. In most situations, society wants us to base decisions on merit, but there are times when we are expected to factor out innate abilities and base decisions on effort, or time on task, or progress.

The most common of these is tracking people by age (as in school), gender (volleyball), weight (boxing, and contrariwise in airfare or theatre seating), income (taxes), parental educational achievement (financial aid for college), and mental soundness (cf. the insanity defense in criminal cases).

Weight is a good example. Bigger people eat more, and so they have to pay more for food. On the other hand, XXL clothes require much more cloth but cost the same as size S. Their cars use more fuel and wear out faster, but their plane tickets cost the same. There are thousands of situations in which being bigger costs more, which seems fair, and thousands of situations in which being bigger doesn't cost more, which also seems fair. If we reversed all those situations, or made them all one way or the other it would arguably still be fair.

What we call "fair" is just that, what we call "fair". There is no external reality called "fair". There are no level playing fields in real life. However, we have the ability to declare a playing field level, and we do this all the time. Some people feel that racial quotas are fair, other people feel that discrimination is fair. Actually, everyone feels each of these things in different situations, we just disagree on which situations. How can we judge who is right?

Well, our goal is that every human being has a high quality of life. So I declare everything that leads to that FAIR, and everything that goes the other way UNFAIR. This might frighten some people. Hitler and Stalin and Mao made this kind of statement, and decided it was OK to kill millions of people. But what was the result? Higher quality of life for everyone? I don't think so. The basis of my condemnation of those actions is that it lowered (or ended) quality of life for millions of people. There may have been a rise in quality of life for some, but not for all.

Another important note I want to make on fairness. Triage is fair. If you want to have a large positive impact on the world, you have to start somewhere. The best place to start is the place you can do the most good (raising quality of life for the most people) the fastest. This is not always the place in the most need. There is an order to the operations that results in the largest benefit, and that is the order we should follow. In my opinion.

How to get wealth producers to come back to a poor neighborhood

There are behaviors that produce wealth, and behaviors that destroy wealth. By "wealth" I mean "factors leading to high quality of life" -- so it isn't just money and property; wealth includes education, harmonious relationships, a satisfying career, clean air to breathe, a variety of entertainment options, etc.

Planting trees produces wealth -- unless you plant them right next to the foundation of your house, in which case it may destroy wealth. Cutting down a tree and turning it into lumber produces wealth, unless you cut them down faster than they are growing back, and destroy forests. Going to work produces wealth, unless your job ruins your health, in which case the net effect of working might be to lower your quality of life instead of raise it.

In every situation you find yourself in, you can produce wealth or destroy wealth. Some people produce wealth everywhere they go. They focus constantly on improving their quality of life, and work persistently at it. At the other end of the spectrum, some people are incredibly destructive. Most of us are somewhere in the middle, we produce wealth in some situations, and destroy it in others.

People generally earn more money at their jobs than they spend each day. Likewise, the employer produces more wealth from the employee than the value of their paycheck. Both the employer and the employee are getting richer every day the employee works. This is a wealth producing relationship.

But the employee probably drives a car to work, spewing toxins into the air. The smog and acid rain lower our quality of life. So while driving to work, they destroy wealth, whereas at work, they create wealth. It's like that with just about everything we do. Wealth is created and destroyed at every step of the food growing, packaging, and distribution process. By purchasing a loaf of bread, we are paying for the whole process, from the manufacturing of the plastic wrapper, to the heating of the oven, to the refining of the diesel fuel that powers the delivery truck and also the tractor used to harvest the wheat.

But when was the last time we considered all of that before making a purchase? It's an enormous tangled web of transactions. This is behind the mystery of poverty in rich countries. Most people are going about their business, creating vast quantities of wealth and destroying vast quantities of wealth, without even realising it.

In some neighborhoods, the balance is positive; the quality of life keeps going up and up. In other neighborhoods, the balance is negative, and the quality of life keeps going down. It doesn't help to blame the people who are there. My goal is to turn this situation around.

Neighborhoods go downhill when wealth-producing people leave. When neighborhood crime rises, the small retail businesses tend to disappear, and storefronts get boarded up. Wealth producing people tend to want to be around other wealth producing people, so when the highest producers leave, it makes the neighborhood less attractive for the medium wealth producing people. Eventually, as happened in Oakland, Long Beach, Compton, and Los Angeles, certain neighborhoods wind up with a negative wealth flow.

To turn that around, we need to get wealth producing people to come back to the neighborhood. Even just making an appearance there makes a difference. People who produce more wealth than they destroy exhibit behaviors that young people instinctively want to emulate.

It's tricky to get high wealth producing people to come to a place where all the high wealth producing people already left. But one way to start is to be a high wealth producing person and go there first. Other people feel more comfortable going there too when they see me there. Another way is to buy into the community and tie our own financial success with the quality of life in the community. High wealth producers like to produce wealth, and it is relatively easy in places where the real estate is underpriced.

Note that I said "produce wealth" and not "make money". Slumlords make money but destroy wealth. Because they are destroying wealth, by allowing their buildings to fall apart and allowing their tenants to break the laws and sell drugs and annoy their neighbors, they limit the amount of money they can make, because the value of their property doesn't rise, but it still seems like a good deal to them to make a short term profit on rent. And eventually someone like me comes along and creates wealth in the community, which results in the slumlords making huge profits too.

But slumlords are not my concern. My point is that when we buy up underpriced properties in a run down neighborhood, and improve them and improve the neighborhood, we create wealth, which attracts other wealth producing people, and it also attracts copycats among the residents, who would have been high wealth producers if they had any examples to follow, but because they grew up in a run down neighborhood, most of what they saw was people collecting welfare and destroying more wealth than they produced.

The cool thing about this is that when the neighborhood turns around, we make lots of money. I have done this over and over now, so I have a long track record of successes. When high wealth producers see that, they realise they can create wealth and make money at the same time, while reducing crime and urban blight. It's an enticing formula.

But aren't you just yuppifying poor neighborhoods and kicking the people out?

I will answer this question in my next post.

The order of operations

There's a saying "Timing is everything". In chess, cooking, computer programming, dating, education, music, indeed in every human activity, the order in which we do things has a decisive impact on the outcome. It's the same way with raising people's standard of living. To succeed we need to pay close attention to the order of operations.

The first step is to see and acknowledge the incredible wealth that the people have, and their desire and willingness to better their situation. You don't start with what the people lack, you start with what they have. Build from strength.

One thing that people in every big city have is a lot of neighbors. This is important, and is the key to raising the quality of life there. The big difference between cities and rural areas is that when you do something out of doors in the city, lots of people see it. Everything you do outside is like instant advertising.

This isn't always obvious. When I started picking up the trash on my street in Oakland, I never saw that anyone noticed. But after a few weeks it was common knowledge that I was doing this. I was approached by strangers in the supermarket and at the bus station, "Aren't you the guy who picks up the trash on the street?" I was amazed. I was even more amazed when other people started doing it too. I only witnessed a couple people actually in the act of picking up litter, but I noticed that my street and the park at the end of the block mysteriously got much cleaner. Another effect of a cleaner street is that it makes people less likely to litter. For every person who picked up litter, there might have been half a dozen litterbugs who cleaned up their act, which has an even bigger impact.

It was the same way with landscaping and fixing up the front of the house. Other people started doing the same. Creating wealth and improving one's standard of living are highly contagious activities. And each time an eyesore is removed it makes all the other eyesores stick out more, and the motivation to deal with them becomes greater at the same time as the community's self awareness and power is increasing. People start to spontaneously complain (and take action) about things that were previously accepted as just innevitable facts of life. It's a wonderful process to participate in.

In my next post I will discuss why, if raising the standard of living in distressed neighborhoods is so easy and fun, everyone isn't already doing it. And how we can sustainably grow this activity.

The paradox of poor people in rich countries

For the past century we have been faced with an odd paradox.

There is enough wealth in the world to afford every person a decent standard of living right now, and enough energy to distribute the goods and information to where it is needed. Furthermore, there is widespread agreement, particularly among the wealthy, that no person should be deprived of a decent standard of living.

And yet, even in the richest and most politically liberated countries, there are still millions of people lacking basic necessities.

I am sure every reader has puzzled over this dilemma at some point in their life. When we think of the desparately poor in third world countries, most of us conclude that politics and oppression are to blame. Corrupt governments are keeping the poor down, and preventing outsiders from helping. But what about in rich countries?

Many feel that poor people are themselves to blame; after all, plenty of them do eventually succeed through discipline and hard work. Many of them raise their standard of living and move up, even becoming rich or middle class. So perhaps the ones left behind are simply lazy, unmotivated, or addicted to drugs. There certainly do exist people who are poor by choice. And there are some who are mentally or physically impaired.

However, in my experience in low income, high crime neighborhoods, I have also met and worked with healthy people who are truly victims of circumstance. I hate to use the word "victim", but in this case it truly describes what is going on. I DON'T MEAN they aren't responsible for their situation and life. My point is that many of them are indeed hard working and motivated, and that isn't always enough.

Their quality of life remains unacceptable, in spite of their efforts. What is missing is the coordination of their efforts with their surroundings to produce a higher quality of life. You might call this "adapting to one's environment", or "blooming where you are planted". The fact is, very few people will bloom just anywhere. All of us (relatively) rich and successful people were nurtured, guided, educated, assisted, supported, and protected by well meaning people, on thousands of occasions throughout our lives, and it's difficult to say what would've happened if we had missed out on any or all of that support. Some of us might have committed suicide, others might have ended up in prison, others might have died in accidents or caught some deadly disease.

The fact is, we depend on a certain fit between ourselves and our environment in order to thrive. Just consider the rate at which we leave home. Why do we not remain where we were born? Clearly because we find another environment more suitable for raising our personal quality of life, whether that means lower rent, a better job, more privacy, better weather, whatever. For one person (e.g. my father, the engineer) moving to Los Angeles was a dream come true, for another (e.g. my brother, the poet), moving AWAY from Southern California was the ultimate liberation. Each of them was introduced to a place they liked better than where they were, allowing them to raise their quality of life simply by moving.

Now, what does this have to do with our paradox? Well, the reason there is still poverty in rich countries, after decades of unprecedented philanthropy, is that the philanthropists have failed to fully acknowledge that people come in a variety of flavors. There are some who simply need to be taught to read, and they will earn a PhD on their own at the public library. There are others who only need to be taught to sew, and they will design clothes that are worn by the stars. But how many charitable organisations actually study how best to raise the quality of life of each individual they serve? Would they have recommended that my father move to Los Angeles?

There are some (rich and poor) who will become alcoholics after their first beer, and others with alcoholic parents and drug dealer neighbors who remain clean and sober.

This is not due solely to strength of will. I enjoy having a bowl full of candy on my desk, eating one piece each day. Most of the people I have lived and worked with cannot do this (and with some of them I have to hide the candy or I don't get any). Whereas, I have great difficulty forcing myself to write appointments in my calendar, while others don't seem to mind this. We each have our strengths and weaknesses, and we each succeed and fail in different circumstances.

The key to making an entire group of people, such as the residents of a low income, high crime neighborhood, more successful, is to change the circumstances such that a larger variety of quality of life enhancing opportunities exist. Just how we can do that will be the subject of my next post.