Let me begin by talking about what local stores already win at. They win at customer service. If someone runs a tiny shop, they are much more likely to actually care and know about the products. They also excel at proximity and speed. When you buy something, you get it immediately. Because they are close to your house, you don’t have to travel far to get there. You might even be able to walk there. They have the advantages that all brick and mortar stores have, that you can see and try the product before you buy. And because they are local, money you spend there stays in your community and boosts the local economy, which is good for you. It’s almost like getting a discount in the form of the rising tide lifting your boat.

Now for the problems. Local businsses have a severe lack of product selection. This isn’t just a problem for local stores, though. It’s a problem for brick and mortar stores of all sizes. I look around at a lot of the stuff on my desk, and in my room. Very little of is has ever been available in a brick and mortar store. My laptop, my monitors, many of my books, and almost all of the parts in my computer are almost impossible to find anywhere other than Amazon, Newegg, etc.

How can we increase the selection of goods at a local shop? Right now distribution is setup such that the giant warehouses ship things to a few relatively spaced out big box stores like Best Buy. What if instead of a Best Buy ever few towns, there was a tiny electronics store in every town, more like Radio Shack size. Now what if all of those stores got a daily shipment from a regional warehouse that carried absolutely everything. You could order online, but then pick it up in a very local store within 24 hours at no shipping cost. I’m not a distribution expert, so I don’t know if this would work, though.

The other major problem in local shops is higher prices. Look at the insane discounts Amazon is able to give on just about everything. Even if you go to a big store like Borders can you get that kind of discount without a coupon or special deal. Those discounts are Amazon’s every day prices. How can a smaller store possibly compete? They can’t work in the same sort of volumes as bigger stores, and thus can not get the same bulk discounts.

I think the answer to this might lie in taxes. I’m talking about business taxes. Obviously the employees of small businesses will still have to pay income tax on their wages, but there should be no taxes on businesses that have smaller than X employees and make less than $X in revenue. Amazon will still be able to lower their prices and pay their taxes no problem, but a local business with no tax might be able to compete. Maybe we can do something with sales taxes, too. If you live in the same town as the store, you pay less or no sales tax. Something like that.

Another problem with local businesses is hours, even with restaurants. Most people with money work all day, and maybe they evne commute. They can only patronize a business that is open before or after work. When I was in college, many things were open 24/7. Near my house now, many places open late, close early, and are not open at all on Sunday, holidays, etc.

For non-food businesses I think the simple answer is technology and delivery. Imagine if instead of going to Amazon.com I went to my local bookstore’s web site. It would have live updates of what was in stock, prices, everything. As I said before, I would be able to order something that could arrive in store the next day. However, I should also be able to get home delivery for a much lower cost, since only local postage would be required. Heck, the proprietor of the store might even be able to deliver it themselves, or have an employee do the deliveries. This way, even if the store is physically closed, it is effectively open 24/7.

With things the way they are now, shopping online is really the only way to go for someone like me. Even in the cases where a local store has great customer service, which I do appreciate, that doesn’t justify the higher prices and decreased product selection. I do think, though, that if local businesses step up their game, they can definitely compete, if not beat, the big competitors. As of now, they just aren’t.

Pretend you are at the movie theatre. There is a movie there that you want to see very badly. You’ve got your money ready to buy a ticket. There are two other movies in the theater. One of them you hate, and you wouldn’t watch it unless under duress. The third movie seems ok, but you don’t actively want to see it.

While you are waiting in the ticket line someone comes up to you and offers free tickets to the third movie. You are now choosing between paying for a movie you really like, or paying nothing for a kind of ok movie. You might go either way, depending on the movies, the cost of the ticket, and other factors. The point is that if the second movie were not free, you would not watch it.

The same goes for digitally pirated music, movies, videogames, etc. Back in college I decided I was going to try to watch all of the top 250 movies on IMDB. I haven’t finished that, but I’ve seen a lot of them. Of course, I saw most of these movies by downloading them. If I had to actually pay for all of them, how many would I have paid for? Probably zero. I was in college, I couldn’t afford to start collecting DVDs.

Take a look at something like World of Goo. Ars TEchnica says it is a crying shame that the piracy rate is near 90%. World of Goo is a very good video game. There is no denying that. But how many people out there really like it a whole lot? How many people have $15 worth of like for it? Apparently the answer is 1/10. Those people who are pirating it might like it, and might have fun, but if piracy were not an option, they simply wouldn’t pay.

There’s this conception that piracy is stealing. And true, it is illegal. But illegal doesn’t mean wrong. Ever hear of no harm no foul? Who is hurt by piracy? If you believe me that the people who pirate would rather not play than pay, then the copyright holders are losing almost nothing to piracy. In fact, they are gaining because when their products are enjoyed by people who would have otherwise ignored them, it is excellent marketing. It creates more fans, and makes sure that the maximum number of people willing to pay money get that opportunity.

Let’s pretend we have perfect replicators. We can create perfect copies of any inorganic object at no cost. First we woudl replicate the replicators until everyone had one. Then everyone would have the best TV, the best car, the best furniture, the nicest house, the best everything.

In such a world, would it not be cruel to deny someone something? How could you deny someone the best food if it cost nothing to create? How could you deny someone the biggest television, or the most luxurious car, if it were free to produce and equally easy to produce as a smaller television or a less luxurious car? If replicators didn’t exist, of course those people wouldn’t have a luxury car. But replicators do exist, so how can you deny them to everyone who wants one? How can you not replicate the Mona Lisa for everyone who wants one in their house?

Just to reiterate the point. Let’s pretend I had infinity apples. Literally infinity apples. Everyone knows I have infinity apples, and they are the best tasting apples in the world. If I try to sell those apples for $5 each, am I not an asshole? I have infinity of them! It wouldn’t hurt me at all to give them to everybody at no charge. What’s better for the world as a whole? Infinite delicious apples for everyone, or $5 for me? Would people even pay the $5 for my apples if they had to? No, because I’m a jerk and nobody will give me money.

We all know what is legal and what is illegal. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about what is right and what is good. In a world without piracy the company that made World of Goo ends up with roughly the same amount of money that they do in the world with piracy. However, in the world of piracy, ten times as many people experience the joy of playing World is Goo. The world without piracy is only different in that there is less joy and more jerks hoarding apples.

You may go on about the consequences of copyright for artists and such and such. And I may even agree with many of those things you say. The reality is that any sort of copyright on anything that can be expressed digitally is absolutely unenforceable. That’s reality. Piracy is here, and it can’t be beaten. There is no way. If you’re against it, you’ve already lost. The only possibility is that you may temporarily reduce the amount of joy in the world for some people who are not technologically inclined.

I really think that digital piracy just needs a makeover. We need to stop thinking about pirates as thieves, and start thinking about anti-piracy folks as apple-hoarding jerks. It will take some marketing, and probably won’t ever happen. The saddest part I think is that so much energy is being spent fighting a battle that is already over. If those resources were spent elsewhere, the world would be a better place twice over.

Let’s think about stereotypes of Florida: immigrants from the carribbean, senior citizens from the Northeast, Disney, and a few major universities. Sure, plenty of people down there don’t fall into those categories, but the stereotype is predominantly true. That truth has some very large economic consequences.

The generally bad economy made the real esate problem of Florida painfully obvious. You’ve got lots of cheap land. Builders bought this cheap land and constructed housing developments for seniors to live in. Seniors came from the North to fill them up. Demand was up, prices were up, times were good.

As time went on, the developments got old. The builders bought some more cheap land, and built newer and fancier housing developments. People kept retiring and moving down South. Newer developments had higher prices than older ones, but they all kept filling up. The lower prices of the older developments actually made it possible for less wealthy people to retire in the sun. They kept making newer, bigger, better developments and filling them up at high prices.

There’s also decreasing demand for houses in Florida. People are retiring later in life, and Florida is not as popular a retiring destination as it once was. Arizona, Texas, and other places are increasingly more popular than Florida. This decreased demand combined with the bad economy is dropping housing prices across the board. The people that do move to Florida can live in the newest and nicest houses at very reasonable prices. The older developments remain empty, and become more empty as people pass away. If you already own a place in an older development, good luck selling it.

On top of all those real estate troubles, you’ve got some more cascasing consequences. If you drive around town near those senior developments, you will notice that most of the economy revolves around supporting those senior citizens. Pharmacies, doctor’s offices, and restaurants with early bird specials stretch as far as the eye can see. You should see the size of the Social Security Administration office down there.

With fewer seniors moving there, and the existing ones dying off, these other business will be in big trouble. The influx of money from the North will dry up, and the working people in Florida will have to move elsewhere to find jobs.

At least in other parts of Florida, there is an influx of money from tourism. Especially Disney, but other things like Daytona, cruise ships, the keys, etc. bring a lot of money into the state. Even before the economy went down, popularity of amusement parks was going downhill. With the Internet, people are entertaining themselves more and more at home. Disney is giving away free hotel stays because attendance is down so much.

Tourism going down, fewer retirees from the North, real estate drying up, how is money going to go into the state of Florida? Kids going to the big universities, and selling oranges. Florida still has those two ways to make money.

As long as people are drinking Tropicana in the morning, and watching college football, Florida will have something to go on. Even so, the situation in parts where the population is primarily seniors does not have a very good outlook. I fully expect in my lifetime to see urban explorers posting photos and videos of entire towns full of abandoned housing developments. Maybe they’ll be able to start up a new economy using them as airsoft and paintball arenas.

Recently I’ve become unemployed. I’ve got a lot of money saved up, so I’m not in any sort of financial situation. However, now that I don’t have to go to work, I have the time to try to sell or give away things I have been trying to dispose of for quite some time. I’ve already given everything to friends and family that they were willing to take, so everything now has to go to Amazon and/or Craigslist. eBay is dead, but that’s a discussion for another time.

In getting rid of things, I have noticed something pretty interesting. There are a lot of books being sold on Amazon at ludicrously low prices. I even saw some popular manga, like One Piece, selling for just one cent. I have the first eleven volumes of One Piece that I want to get rid of, but for one cent it’s not worth it. I’m better off giving them away. No, it’s not because I need the money. It’s because the time it takes to go to the post office is worth a lot more than one cent.

Here’s the phenomenon I think is happening. First, you have a bad economy. People are buying less. If they are buying, they are buying used and cheap. Places like used book stores are in trouble. They need to clear out whatever isnt’ selling, even if it’s for a neglible profit of a few cents. Manga publishers, and others like them, print way more copies of something than there is a demand for. Book stores buy it up like crazy. However, unlike actual books, manga are read very quickly. This is why there are so many manga cows. You can’t read War and Peace in the store, but you can read multiple volumes of Naruto, no problem. Even if the fans do buy and read the book, they don’t re-read it very much. Thus, a money-starved teen in a bad economy is very likely to resell whatever they have.

And there you have it. Lots and lots of people with manga volumes, and everyone who wants them has already read them. Used book stores who have extra stock sell it for a penny on Amazon. If they can ship it for less money than Amazon’s shipping reimbursement, then they can make some green if they sell in quantity.

I really wonder how long this will last, and how long publishers can have their new books compete with their old books selling used for a few cents. I can tell you one thing, Amazon has it made. They get paid whether a copy is sold new or used.

Regardless of what I think about insurance, this got me thinking about a new idea, reverse insurance. If I can make a bet that bad things will happen, why can’t I make a bet that bad things won’t happen? There should be a place I can bet money and get a better return than any savings account, certificate of deposit or savings bond. However, if something bad ever happens to me, they take away a bunch of my money. Good times would be better and bad times would be worse. Since most of my life is good times, this is a great bet for me.

People who defend insurance as a worthwhile investment say things like “bad things will happen eventually” or “better safe than sorry”. You know what? The reality is that bad things probably won’t happen. If the reverse was true, insurance companies would be losing money, not making it. If bad things were more likely, then insurance companies would have to pay out to most of their customers very often. Since premiums are lower than payouts, this scenario would quickly make insurance companies bankrupt.

Think of it like this. You go to a casino to play roullette. They let you make a bet on 0 or 00 because most of the time, you will lose. They even let you bet on red, black even and odd because you will still lose about 51% of the time due to the existence of 0 and 00. They wont let you make a bet on “not 00″ because you would win most of the time. Buying insurance like betting on 00 over and over again. Reverse insurance is betting on “not 00″. Which would you bet on?

Wait a minute, it just came to me. When you bet on 00 it’s the same as the casino betting on “not 00″. When you bet on insurance it’s the insurance company that is betting on reverse insurance. The way to buy reverse insurance is to sell regular insurance. Insurance companies are the only people betting on reverse insurance, and they’re winning a fortune. Not only do they have enough money to fix all the bad things that happen to everybody, but they can buy luxurious lifestyles for many of their employees.

How can you seriously say that insurance is a good bet when the people making the reverse bet are ludicrously wealthy? Insurance companies are loaded with cash while insurance buyers are so poor that they need insurance to dig themselves out when bad things happen. If insurance really were a good bet, the opposite would be true. If there are people out there willing to bet on insurance, then I should be allowed to bet against them. It really bothers me that the government forces me to be stupid and bet right along with them.

I think the only course of action for me is to start an insurance agency. If you disagree with what’s in this blog post, then I think I might be able to interest you in one of our policies. You give me a pile of money every few months, and I will use that money to make more money by investing it in various ways. If disaster ever strikes, I’ll use some of my vast riches to help you out. Any takers?

Let’s start out with definitions.

Consumerism

Attachment to materialistic values or possessions

Materialism

The theory or attitude that physical well-being and worldly possessions constitute the greatest good and highest value in life.

The way I see the world, consumerism and materialism are evil. Personally, I have little to no attachment to physical goods. Physical objects are just arrangements of atoms, so are people. Nothing in the world has any intrinsic value. Simply owning, or possessing, objects is completely meaningless.

Now, I’m not going all Buddhist monk on you, don’t worry. Objects do have value, just not in their existence alone. What you have to understand is that the value of an object lies within its function. A computer is an incredibly useful and powerful tool, and thus it is worth more than a paperclip. Some objects are more valuable because they are necessities to life, e.g.: food, shelter, water, etc. You might note that I’m not talking about monetary value, but intrinsic value. The intrinsic value of any object is not contained within the object itself, but within the use of that object.

Now, people in our society have gotten it into their heads that somehow possession of goods is important. This materialistic viewpoint is incredibly harmful and wrong. I buy things and I own things, but not for the sake of owning and buying more. I own things so that I have access to their functionality. Buying things and having things does not make me feel good. I feel good when I do useful things, and owning objects is simply a way to facilitate many of the things I like, or need, to do.

Let’s use books as an example. I own quite a few shelves of books, but I down own them for the sake of owning. If I could get rid of them, I would, because they take up too much space. The reason I have the books is because I want to read them and I want to share them with others to read. If I don’t have them, then it becomes very difficult for me to read them whenever I wish. Buying and owning books is not an end unto itself, but simply a means to make it more convenient for me to accomplish other real goals.

In the society I live in, I am a rare breed. Everywhere I look I see people caring very deeply about what they own. Let me tell you a semi-true story about someone we’ll call Bob. Bob was not a cool guy. Bob had nothing interesting to say, and his personality was grating. Bob was highly skilled at certain video games, but he had no other useful skills whatsoever. Bob was basically a waste of space. So what did Bob do? He bought things. Bob bought imported video games, yet didn’t play half of them. Bob bought a drum set and never played it. Bob had a problem.

Bob’s problem is one that most of our society has. He judged himself based on the goods he possessed. Martin Luther King Jr. famously stated that you should judge people based on the content of their character and not by the color of their skin. I like to further that statement by saying you should judge people by the content of their character and nothing else at all. The only criteria I use for judging good people from bad are their words, actions and thoughts. Since there is no way to read thoughts, I have to assume that people’s words match their thoughts. What you own means nothing. However, if you think that what you own is important, if you are a person who judges yourself and others based on material wealth, then that is a trait of your character I view as negative. And that is how I view collectors.

I used to be a collector in my childhood. I collected baseball cards, comic books, superhero cards, Magic: The Gathering (Money: The Wasting) cards and a lot more. I enjoyed the activity of organizing and reorganizing things. I fantasized about how valuable my collections would be in the future. But worst of all, I judged myself and others based on material wealth. It was hard not to, since all the other kids did it as well. Every recess it was disputes about who owned more Nintendo games. If you had a full set of cards you were suddenly cooler than every other kid on the block. In my childhood what you owned defined how good you were.

It wasn’t until much later in life when I realized how much time I wasted. I could have spent that money on useful things. Now all I have is a box of useless cardboard with pictures of baseball players printed on it. I could have spent that time learning things or building my skills. Instead, I have a lower skill level in many areas than I could potentially have. I could have spent more time working on being a better human being instead of just becoming an owner of useless goods.

And thus, you see my dislike of collectors and the collector mentality. Yes, there are people who enjoy collecting, and that’s good for them. However, if you ever try to ask the question “Why do you enjoy collecting?” there is no good answer. Let us explore many answers someone might give to this question.

Someone might collect things because they are obsessive compulsive. They enjoy the act of organizing and reorganizing things. Organization and the constant battle against entropy are well and good, but not when done uselessly. If you want to organize things, get a job filing in a doctor’s office. Organizing baseball cards serves no useful purpose other than to satisfy a psychological disorder.

Someone might collect things for financial gain. There are some very valuable collections of rare goods out there, and their owners stand to make a tidy profit. However, if you actually were to analyze collecting as a financial investment you would find it is incredibly bad. The amount of time and effort required to properly maintain a collection is tremendous. The amount of time for a return on investment might not be well until after the collector’s death. Playing craps in a casino is a better investment than the vast majority of collections. The only way to make money in the business of collecting is to take advantage of collectors and their collector mentality. The guy who owns the store selling autographed baseballs and baseball cards has always made more money than the guy who collects them. He realizes that owning those things is not a good way to make money. The way to make money is to sell $10 baseballs for $100 to some guy who thinks it will be worth a lot, or to some guy who thinks it makes him a better person to own such a thing.

Someone might collect things for the sake of learning. That is a good thing. Oh no, did I defeat my own argument? No, I did not. The fact is that there is almost nothing to learn from the vast majority of collections. A comic book collection really has nothing to teach anyone. We already know all about comic books, they hold no secrets. You can gain all of that knowledge without access to a comic book collection. Heck, you can probably gain most of that knowledge without reading very many comics at all. Collections we can learn from are all very ancient things found in museums, libraries, etc. And that is where they belong. They belong there so that everyone may learn from them. So even if you were a noble collector, collecting for the sake of knowledge, it is not good unless you share your collection with the world. I view hoarding knowledge with equal negativity as I view materialism.

Someone might collect things for the sake of preservation. There are many physical goods out there which are not invincible. If they are not taken care of, they will be lost to the world. Whenever we lose a very old object it decreases the power of human beings. There was once something we, as a people, could do, and it required the use of a particular object. Now that the object is gone, that ability is lost. Preservation is indeed a noble cause. However, yet again, all real preservation work is done by museums, libraries, etc. If you are preserving something privately, that is essentially the same as letting it be destroyed. If there is a rare thing which people can not access, then it might as well not exist. Also, most things people collect do not require preservation. The human race does not need you to collect every issue of National Geographic. The publisher and many libraries are already doing a fine job.

The only other reason I can see that someone might get enjoyment from the act of collecting itself is materialism. They feel better about themselves the bigger collection they have. They brag to other collectors about how much bigger and more valuable their collections are. They even view other collectors as being better people if their collections are bigger or better. It’s the old analogy of a sports car being a penis extension. In our society it is often true, even if it is not conscious.

Personally, I look down on people who value meaningless collecting and have materialistic world views. If they want to judge themselves or others based on what they own, that to me is the same mentality as judging people based on how they dress or where they live. Judging people based on such criteria can be viewed as a character flaw, and a character flaw is something you can judge someone by. Therefore, I do not view collectors in a very positive light.

If you disagree, which I’m sure collectors do, then answer one question. Why do you enjoy collecting? An Apple Jacks answer is no good; “I just do” doesn’t cut it. Using the powers of logic you must deduce what exactly about the act of collecting and owning a collection causes good emotions in your brain. If you can not accomplish this task, maybe it’s time to rethink a few things. Are you really living your own life if you are acting on impulse without thought? Are you really in control of your own destiny if you do not know the reasons for your own actions? I’ve thought about these things long and hard, and as a result I stopped collecting things long ago. I am genuinely curious to see if anyone has a good answer.

Engaging in intellectual discussion is a worthwhile use of time. Take a few minutes off from admiring your shelf full of useless trinkets and please think about this very serious question.

What bothers me is that certain things which could very easily be provided for free, are not. This is completely baffling to me. Imagine if there were a service that that just about anyone with skill and desire could provide it with a minimum effort. Now imagine if not a single person in all the world actually did so. It’s as if a million old ladies need help crossing the street, and not one person in the world will help for free. I have found two particular instances lately of this phenomena, let me share them with you.

The first is Skype recording. First, let me say it would be trivial for Skype to allow recording of conversations in their software. Why they do not do so, yet Gizmo does, is baffling. Thousands of podcasters around the world use Skype to conduct interviews, but it is incredibly difficult for them to actually record these.

The solutions range from hooking up an extra computer to installing shady software. The thing is, this shady software is incredibly simple. Any decent programmer with Visual Studio could code it up in a day. Three or four such groups have developed solutions, but not one of them is free and open source. They are all either shareware or are ad-supported. The only reason I don’t code it myself is because I don’t have the Windows development tools. But why is it that not one other person has done it? There are tons of incredibly complex open-source projects out there with many developers. Yet, one simple piece of software for which there is extremely high demand has not been created.

Another thing I noticed which is not free is online dating services. I’m not really a big fan of these things, but every single one of them charges money for complete service. MySpace, Live Journal, Facebook, etc. none of these charge money to stay afloat. So why does every match.com style site charge a fee? In the span of a month or two I could setup a comparable service with all sorts of fancy web 2.0 features. If I chose not to charge money for it, I could blow all the other sites out of the water. So why hasn’t anyone done it? Craigslist does do the job for free, but it isn’t a dedicated dating site.

I’m constantly amazed at obvious business opportunities that aren’t undertaken. It could be a simple software that nobody has made. It could be building a chinese restaurant in a city that doesn’t have one already. Whatever it is, it’s always puzzling to me. Is nobody taking advantage of the opportunity because it’s a bad idea that will fail? Is nobody doing it because nobody has thought of it yet? Or is nobody doing it because they think it will fail, when it will not? If I knew the answer I could possibly quit my job and start up a hot business.

So the obvious answer is that instability in the middle east, higher demand, lower supply, insecurity of oil fields, etc. all contribute to the higher price of oil. OK, that makes some sense. But the United States gets most of its oil from Venezuela, Canada, itself and I hear even Russia now. So little comes from former Persia that it shouldn’t make a significant difference. The other obvious answer is that in the US there is very little public transportation, and most people have to drive no matter what. So the gas station can charge whatever it wants and get away with it. It’s true, but in the 70′s when there was a fake shortage and people were waiting in line for gas people would drive mopeds and car pool. People aren’t doing that today.

Now usually if you are in the business of selling something, and that good you are selling has an increasing demand and decreasing supply, you raise the price on that good. However, since we have capitalism, you can’t raise it more than the other people selling the same good or else you’re SOL. When prices are high, people are more likely to shop around for the better price. Given that, how can the profits of the oil companies increase while supply decreases and demand increases? I mean, its not surprising there is SOME increase, but such a tremendous one surely requires further explanation.

The answer is obvious to anyone who thinks about it. The oil companies are not competing. There is no capitalism for them. Because they don’t have to compete with each other they can raise the price, for fake or real reasons, and everyone has to pay. The competition is not between the gas companies, but the gas stations. When you go to the grocery store it is your decision to buy Cheerios or Corn Flakes. And if you choose one over the other the retailer purchases more of that particular brand. And thus, the cereal companies compete directly.

Gas companies do not compete directly. The gas stations are competing with the other gas stations that are on the same road, intersection and town. But a Mobil station buy Mobil gas, no matter what. And the Hess station buys Hess gas no matter what. And the gas station owners only mark up their wholesale price buy a cent or three. If the wholesale price that one gas station pays happens to be significantly lower than another, then you’ll see them charge a few cents less for gas. Sure, overall they get maybe a little more business than the other station. But never have I seen two stations, one a few cents cheaper, where one was full of cars and the other empty. Various other factors such as number of pumps, side of the road, speed-passes, credit cards, etc. even out the field. I guarantee that every gas station that stays in business takes full shipments of gas regularly.

So, how to fix it? How to end the virtual price-fixing of big oil? Make gaseterias. One gas station that sells multiple brands of gas. If you drive up to the pump instead of seeing Mobil regular, plus, special and diesel you see 4 or 5 different brands of gas in three or four octanes each, then the oil companies will be forced to compete directly with each other. When people need to fill up they hit the nearest gas station, whatever it may be, Hess, Exxon, Shell, etc. But if the nearest gas station offers multiple brands of gas all with equivalent markup by the gas station owner, then the oil companies will have to compete with each other. Because you know damn well that people will consistently choose the cheapest brand every time until the station is out of gas. I guarantee that if this is done, then gas prices will drop by dimes per gallon almost immediately. If they don’t, then it can only mean that there is a price fixing conspiracy between the oil companies. That is not something out of the realm of possiblity.

Keep in mind though, I am not an economist. But this sure as hell makes a lot of sense to me. It should, I thought it up on my own. But if you are an economist or see any flaw in this thinking, I’ll be glad to hear it. As for me, I use the train and my feet to get around.

However, we all know that communistic style communities do work on a small scale. Ten farmers all working together and sharing profits equally is a very communist scenario. And it works. It works as long as the sale of the crops from that farm is sold competitively in a capitalist marketplace. If the sale of those crops was always guaranteed to bring in the same amount the farmers wouldn’t mind growing crummy crops, or fewer crops. They would make one rusty ear of corn, or no corn, and that would be that. But because the better they work the more they all get, they work harder. It is a prisoners dilemma for each and every farmer. One of them can try to go the other way and leech off the others, and that will work. The problem is that the other farmers will notice and kick your ass out. Since the group of people is so small, and they all agree to help each other “escape from prison” beforehand, they all benefit double through their help of each other.

This is how the kibbutz works. In Israel there are small communities just like this. They start a business, build homes, build schools and work together to help the community become bigger and better. Slackers are noticed and weeded out. Some of them grow oranges, but others run resort hotels or manufacture shoes. Its quite a happy existence of people working together to survive in a close knit community working together for the greater good of each other. And as long as the work they cooperate on is beneficial and profitable in the outside world, everything is great.

So I thought to myself, hey. I would love to live like that. Not have to worry about the boss or deadlines or any of that type of stuff. Just every day wake up and get to work doing something I love to do that is directly related to my continued survival and happiness. And I would be with a bunch of friends all working together making life very enjoyable. If you get right down to it, the only things missing in my life are two material goods. Those are a laptop computer and a nice car. I consider the Treo 650 to already be in my possession because I have set aside money for it. Other than that, all I really want is to live near and around other intelligent and like minded people. People I can play video games, D+D and German board games with. People who I can discuss Slashdot with on a daily basis. I want to sit at the dinner table, talk about what I did during the day, and for the other people to be interested and understanding instead of just “that’s nice”. Despite all the flaws, those are the things that make college the greatest place, and I see no reason to give up those things in order to continue with life.

So obviously I propose a geek commune. Like minded geeky people like myself should pick up and move to somewhere where land is cheap. We can spend half of our time developing high quality non-free software for any customer who needs it. We can use this money to feed ourselves, purchse technology, pay the bills and acquire luxuries and other fun things. In our spare time we can all work together on free/open source software that interests us and makes the world a better place. And because we will have a geographically central location we will be much more efficient and higher quality at developing said FOSS software than those who communicate solely through the internet. We can apply techniques like extreme programming and other in order to make some really awesome stuff. Also, because the people there are indirectly “paid” for their work we can maybe get some artists and musicians into the fold to make some FOSS games. It would be geek Mecca and college graduates would embark on pilgrimages to visit and join us if they are deemed (trust)worthy and useful/valuable.

We could also do awesome stuff like lock up all the buildings and caravan to conventions like Otakon and Comic-con with wireless mesh networks between our vehicles. There would be websites documenting our activities and antics for the world to share in. It would be truly a beautiful thing. There are only two obstacles in getting this thing to work. First we need stuff to start with. Difficult to come by a large block of land, a good internet connection, living space and an officy type building without starting funds. Second we have to start a profitable software business that can at least feed all of the founding members.

Barring those two difficulties I think this is the most realistic dream come true I can hope for. Anyone interested can just drop me a line and we’ll talk about it. I especially want to hear from you if you can help out with either of the two problems. I can tell you right now that if I had enough initial investment and a customer/customer base, and my college degree was complete I would be out buying land in the desert as we speak.