Enlightened Capitalism

Essays about how to harness people's natural desire to create wealth and improve their quality of life to solve global problems such as war and poverty.

Saturday, January 28, 2006

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.

Friday, January 13, 2006

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.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

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.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

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."