The similarities between Tony Soprano and Facebook Feed

They are both great features.
The Sopranos must be one of the best TV Series ever made, it also started (some other great series before that like The Simpsons) a trend of really high quality, deep characters that evolve with time series.
Facebook is a great platform, with time it gets better, it evolves with its customers as well, I used to use Facebook less, I now use it more.
So both TV series (or products) and internet products are getting really really better, what i realized is it is the same trend that is making them better, and its the same trend.
Both TV Series and internet products are measured by ratings/active users, the more people watch a TV it will be able to get more (ad) revenues, the more users use a product it will generate more (ad) revenues, so why are they getting better now ?
I think they were always getting better, its in comparison to Movies that TV is getting better, and compared to non internet products that internet products are getting better, and that’s since the product evolves with each user, and then its gets more users and the channels to get more users is mostly dynamic revenues Vs. fixed distribution channels .
The dynamic revenues model Vs fixed revenues model, i.e – Paying nce for software and paying once to see a movie Vs using a software for free and seeing ads (or any SAS model) seeing a TV series (pay per view or ads) . In a dynamic revenue model you must constantly improve your product for your users, since barriers to replace products/series are easy, you need to create emotional attachment of your features/characters to your audience, you need to kill characters that your audience doesn’t like,  and you need to make sure the viral coefficient of your users increases in time .
I always wanted as a second career to go into movies, realizing how similar developing cool products and TV Series is, I’ll keep my day job 🙂 

The biggest IPO ever done – the IPO of the internet currency

One of the biggest milestones of the Internet was the shift of the economy to use the new currency system .

They started by offering 1$ for 1 share of the new economy and explained the pace would increase in time, so it will cost 2$ to buy share and then 4 and 8 and 16 etc etc’ each time decreasing the number of people who can buy.

People kept buying more and more of the new currency its price only getting higher as more people were buying it just because prices are going higher. there was no sell side other than people simply accepting the new currency. so everybody had to buy what became standard.

Within a couple of month the new economy already raised a 500B dollars

Purpose of a generic organization and state

A lot of companies today are searching for their purpose, they search for purpose because as work becomes more sophisticated and people become more skilled, people want a purpose.

So it only makes sense for governments or states to have a purpose as well.

It is important to understand that every organization has an generic purpose, that is the purpose to survive. So in lack of a better definition of a purpose that definition will always be stronger. if it is an economical organization (company) then its generic purpose will be profits, since the lack of profits (or losses) will cause the company to go bankrupt. The easiest purpose for a company would just to maximize profits, that purpose would be most efficient in private small companies where the owners/managers/employees are the same people. It cannot serve as a valuable purpose for anyone who does not share the profits of the company directly.
So if the first purpose of a state is to survive, it is an obvious conclusions that the state first needs to make sure it does not “loose” people or “power”, therefore it should defend it self. that is why the basics elements of most states ill be the army and police. The question remains what should be the purpose other than surviving as a state, and how well defined is it ? a purpose of gaining more geographic “power” would be colonizing, a purpose of more economic power would cause countries to enslave their citizens to work harder and harder (i.e – the western world).
The purpose of most people should be to create a better world for themselves and for everybody else (in that order). Specifically for states or governments i think the average longer life time of its population should probably be its main purpose, that would be a much better metric then GDP or population.
Who knows maybe our grandchildren will live till they are 200…

The Internet Revolution – Chapter 2

Someone once told me that if I want to explore an idea “too outrageous for our generation”, I should use culture as opposed to standard communication. He explained that using culture (music, plays, story, movie picture) helps explain an idea even if the people watching it are not ready for it yet.

After watching the movie Avatar I realized that the Good vs. Evil story line is very simple relatable; as such, our story is about the Internet people vs local governments.

The timeline for these proposed events is about 2018, when the main revolution is supposed to begin.

Part 1 is how the creation of the group “Free Internet” (FI), and the first phase of the Internet revolution. I will describe this chapter in a future post.

Chapter 2

In 2018, a Facebook group called “Free Internet” emerged and within 3 month became the largest group on Facebook with over 500 million members . They have all accepted the Free Internet Constitution, and gradually exchanged their savings with numerous virtual currencies that exist in the Facebook ecosystem. They became completely financially independent of their states. At that moment, they all became free men.

Following these weeks’ events, government officials in several small countries realized their governments were just overthrown by the FI movement. The group demanded that every democratic state of which more than 50% of its population take part in the group should adhere to the FI constitution. No government actually expected this to happen. Most governments seem to be sure that this minor-but-extreme Facebook thing will disappear as soon as it came. Some extreme leaders took this very seriously knowing that more than 90% of its people are on Facebook, and called the US government in distress.

US government officials assured the worried countrymen that the US government can stop FI from spreading if they become significant. They did not realize that the Facebook board will shortly explain that it cannot control it anymore, as Facebook users from every corner of the world to host the Facebook group themselves, in order to keep the system from ever failing. By the time they got the Facebook board to shut down the group there were already 80 million US citizens on the group, hosting its data, videos, books and other media. In order to block 80 million users from the Internet, the US constitution would have to be changed.

In the few weeks prior to the revolution, the Internet was filled with speculation about which country will be the first to top 50% of its population. Everybody were surprised when Israel and Palestine were the first countries to Top 50%, thereby declaring peace between the two countries as the FI constitution explains that no two members of the FI can be at war. By the time both the Arab governments and the US government could realize, their own conflict was also over. China was very quick to follow as it understood that they would be the major force of this new world, and the Chinese government sent out newsletters around China to convince people to join the movement.

People started using the virtual currencies to buy services and supplies directly without any use of the states’ currencies. Within 14 weeks, the virtual ecosystem was the largest economy in the world. people could sell anything to anyone, without tax or regulation. Anybody who tried to abuse the system or violate FI was blocked from the system. As every transaction increases the price exchange of the currency, people had to buy virtual currencies just to protect their devaluing state currency and be able to purchase goods. Within 20 weeks, the prices of most goods went down by 75% to anyone using virtual currencies. When people started to realize that buying goods through the FI is cheaper than using any state currency, it was the good dollar rush.

Violence was not used and governments were not to be over thrown by force as the FI constitution does not allow force unless under attack. Most governments simply accepted the fact that their upcoming elections would be held in the FI system, allowing anyone who lives in their jurisdiction to vote. In countries where over 50% of population was a part of FI, an election date was set, and the more sophisticated politicians started their campaigns over the Internet saying they are a part of the FI movement.

In the US, laws already prohibited the use of virtual currencies, making millions of people outlaws. Thousands of banks around the world started going bankrupt, since they could not stand the run caused by the good dollar rush. The more sophisticated banks immediately approached FI for good dollar credits, transferring trillions of dollars to the FI just to avoid bankruptcy.

To be continued.

 

Currency Wars and Zeitgeist

It’s been 2 years from my first post, and probably 3 years after i realized that there is a significantly better economic framework that would solve all of the efficiencies and sickness of the current one, and over the past 3 years it has been become apparent that we are, as quoted from the trailer of the soon to be released zeitgeist movie (See below) :

We are on the verge of a great transition

Like every transition, it must be accelerated by a “war” or revolution, this one seems to be led by the current Currency Wars though for most people this sounds very complicated, the concept is actually very simple, and very similar to an price war.

a price war between to companies offering competing products, would mean that they focus on “price strategy” to sell more of their products. For example think about 2 companies, X and Y, selling the same exact product, for example a generic computer. company X sells 1000 computers for $100 and company Y sells 1000 computers for $100, they each might have different economics, for example one is online store and the other one has retail stores.

Now, for some macro reason, company X decides it wants to grow faster (faster than the growth of the market), and it allows itself to reduce prices to $950, they start selling more computers (i.e – 1050). company Y see’s its sales went down to 950 (lets assume fixed size market), so it decides to fight by reducing its prices to $900 – and a price war starts ! company X fights back and reduces its price to 850, Company Y reduces it to 800 etc’ etc’.

This war will end once one company will end in the following scenario :

At some point one company will not be able to reduce prices (in our case the one with retail stores), due to its cost structure which will cause it to loose money.

so Company Y decide to stop lowering prices, ending in a new or similar equilibrium (either both sell 1000, or one “gives up” and sells less).

Both companies should now have lower profits, unless the lower prices resulted in higher sales (more than the 2000 that were sold before now sell in total).

In companies, the price war is a tactic to gain higher profitability through larger market share, other tactics might focus either on innovation (more features) and product line expansion (sell phones), or focus on cost structure efficiency (move to online, automate process).

In the countries examples, growth/market share would be the total GDP or part of its components, it has become very important for the G7 to grow, and especially to the US to stay the largest economy in the world (China is growing faster). by printing more money (like the US), or other forms of Quantitative_easing, countries are actually devaluating its currency making its exports more attractive to other countries, in effect it basically “lowers” the salary of the total employees in the US so companies can become more efficient.

So how does this specific war ends ? if the US if running the price war, and so it seems, i do not entirely understand what they are trying to achieve, all they are doing is accelerating a process which will result in China becoming bigger and bigger. When China GDP per cap is 6.6K and in the US its 41K, it will be very hard for the US to compete on price alone, so the only question is what are the next tactics.

The obvious “other” tactic is interest rate, though it seems the US cant go much lower than it already is, unless Japan and the US will go into negative interest rates, which is what the good dollar is about. The main problem with negative interest rates is the lack of mechanism to collect such funds, i which case the banking system will start imposing it first leading people to run from the banks, the big question is where will they be running too.

lets hope it ends in a price war and not another type of war…

This great transition is eventually about value, value creation, value distribution and from closed economies to one global open economy. There is no doubt that the transition from inequality to equality should eventually be positive, assuming it eventually also reaches average John (or Wong) .

I find it amusing that while in western countries interesting times might sound fun, the Chinese refer to May_you_live_in_interesting_times as a curse.

Bio –

The_Zeitgeist_Movement

I have just finished to watch the 2nd part of the zeitgeist movie , a really great movement talking about the inefficiencies and sickness of the current economic system.

Although i believe that the movement is a a bit extreme with its messaging, and yet to offer a real solution, the fact that they have been able to show the inefficiency of the current system is very inspiring. I hope that the leaders of zeidgeist if offered a new economic framework would understand that it is not economics or the monetary system that is the cause of the sickness, but specific attributes of the existing system, mainly lack of transparency and corporate interest rates.

Atlas_Shrugged

The words ‘to make money’ hold the essence of human morality. (From one of the great speeches in the book)

Another amazing book I have recently read, is Atlas Shruged. I think truly identifies the problem not having an alternative to a working system, and trying to replace it with nothing. I truly believe that when converged the essence of the Zeidgeist Movement and the quite opposite notions in Atlas Shrugged, create a the foundation of a new economic framework.

The importance of financial transparency

The the latest developments of the World Financial Crisis, including the debt of greece and ongoing development in the involvement of Goldman Sachs in the CDO break, has raised the issue of additional regulation, our view is that the only regulation needed is transparency.

The importance of transparency is due to the nature of financial transaction, all financial transactions create a butterfly effect on the entire value chain (and entire economy), they are all inter related and therefore create an accountability chain .The problem is that lack of transparency of each transaction creates lack of consistency in the accountability chain, a known example of such
is blood diamonds, when an ‘innocent” women wears a blood diamond she is actually a part of the accountability chain, and if all transactions were transparent i doubt any women would wear them.

An example of such transparent value chain would look something like that :
Girl got diamond from Guy
Guy bought diamond from store owner
store owner got them from wholesale manufacture
wholesale bought them from diamond exchange
exchange got them from raw material supplier
material supplier bought them from bad guys

A transparent money system would automatically increase the levels of accountability significantly, and since most honest people don’t have a problem with most of their financial transaction they would be able to use it very easily.

What is the main barrier for such a system, privacy off course, should that be a problem, probably not with the right privacy rules. The transparency should be compulsory only on external transaction (exchange rate transparency) and not on each financial transaction in the money system. this means each owner of Good Dollars can select the privacy settings of his transaction, but “bad money” can’t enter the system because of the transparent connection between each dollar and it’s owner and the “tracks” the money leaves.

Good Dollar Followers – Social Entrepreneurs

This is an invitation to everybody reading my blog, to participate in the initiative to create a better world thorough a new economy.
After 2 posts, I believe people can understand the scale of this concept to replace the existing economic framework.
Our community of followers will establish the the concept on the Internet with a wide discussion to prove that the framework is practical and complete.
The followers are Good Genius People :
  • Good – we are trying to change the world for the greater good
  • Genius – as impossible as it seems, we believe that we can create this change.

Social entrepreneurship is necessary to build this framework. We need to believe that if the framework will be completed then any future business entrepreneurship that will use the Good Dollar will also inherently be a social entrepreneurship (since the base of the creative economy is social).

We have just started to interest people in the Good Dollar Vision. Anybody willing to contribute to our initiative is welcome.

We believe that once the Good Dollar is established, the rate of new followers will eventually turn exponential :

  • An Internet community – to develop the framework and community and to contribute to completing the new economic framework and attract more followers.
  • The Academia – after reaching several known economists, we hope that an academic framework will complete the initial establishment of the Good Dollar.
  • Wealthy Social entrepreneurs will join to help fund the establishment of the philanthropy bank of the world (for both self and social interest).
  • Partnerships with existing non-profit organization will be formed to accelerate the establishment of the Good Dollar, example for ideal partners are google.org and kiva.org.
  • Once the initial development and funding of the philanthropy bank will be completed, the currency will be available to every individual in the world (through an exchange of existing currencies).
  • The more funding the bank will have the more individuals will receive better interest rates on deposits and debt and also use the Good Dollar.
  • The more individuals and organizations using the Good Dollar, its value will increase in relation to all other currencies.
  • Wealthy Social entrepreneurs who joined at the beginning will be able to impact the current economy more efficiently since their old currency value has been increasing exponentially and they will be able to attract more entities and cooperation to use the Good Dollar.
  • Countries and their central banks witnessing their currencies losing their value will either try to censor/ban the new currency, or will adapt its framework.

The new global creative economy will become the standard, and will change the world for the better.

Good Dollar – The Visible Hand

The new currency Good Dollar is the basis of a new economic framework, the main difference between this currency and all other currencies are :

  1. Direct ownership connection between the entities and the currency (transparent money)
  2. Decreasing interest rates on larger deposits (Good Value or Good interest rates)

The first is actually the creation of a true “white market”, where all the money is always connected to the entities transacting it. This was not possible without the Internet and information warehouses, and is also probably the reason that Adam Smith and other economists did not consider it in previous analysis of economics.

Once all money is transparent, we believe that the invisible hand will become the visible hand, and the philanthropy bank could actually direct the economy to create more value. When people are asked what the “bad” thing in capitalism is (although it has a lot of good qualities), the most common answer is:

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

This is caused by what we consider to be the error in the existing economic framework, where the more money you have brings with it better interest rates (allowing you to make more money). This historical essence of this attribute is since aggregation of more funds in the pre-Internet era would require work and this work would devalue smaller sums.

Assuming that the administration of a new currency would be fully automated, small deposits should get at least the same interest rates as large ones, and eventually smaller deposits should receive higher interest rates than larger deposits, because:

  • intrinsic individual/entity value (individual value)

The most important intrinsic value are of individuals, since we believe that human life has value, meaning that individuals should get better interest rates than any other entities, hence a better world for all individuals. As for other entities, the value should be derived from their added value to the world in a democratic way. Academic institutions, for example, should have higher intrinsic value than corporations, and should receive higher interest rates. Culture and education have added more value to the world than can/should be derived as direct payment.

Assuming that eventually all money is transparent and all his funds are in the system, an individual who has only $100 should receive higher interest rate since he needs more support to maintain his basic life necessities, while an individual that has $1M in deposit should receive a lower interest rate since he can add more value to the world through investments.

Capitalists would probably wonder why anyone would deposit a $1 M in this new currency if he is getting inferior interest rates than other currencies. There are 2 very good answers:

  • For the greater good: people should understand the benefit of this framework to the better world and aspire to a better world
  • For personal value gain: if we assume that the Good Dollar is a Giffen Good  which can be economically proven, then the exchange rate of the currency will rise constantly until other currencies will adapt a similar framework: i.e – if you exchange $1M USD with $1M Good Dollars, the USD value of your deposit will constantly rise and you can exchange it back as equity profit.

It is essential to prove that the good dollar is a Giffen Good and we invite economists from around the world to suggest a complete proof. I will Shorty post a very rough Good Dollar proof framework, I hope that will be completed with the help of more economists.

Fortunately the technological era has provided more value to good genius people, and while speaking to several very rich people and hearing Bill Gates in Davos, I have no doubt that assuming that the framework is complete and true that they will be the first participants in the establishment of a better economic framework that will lead to a better world.

To summarize the characteristics of the Good Dollar :

  • Its value is always rising
  • It has an intrinsic mechanism that gives value to individuals, and the visible hand is spreading the wealth though value investments. Since there is no interest in aggregating money, all value is being directed to create more value through investments.
  • It has an intrinsic mechanism that allows Good Value Debt, An individual with $1M can decide he wants better interest so he can separate it to 1000 “poor individuals” that receive higher interest rates. This is the actual form of good debt. now a 1000 “poor individuals” can give either some interest rate back to the “rich individual”, or any other value equivalent to the interest rate they are receiving from the debt.

A great example of an actual implementation of such practice is Kiva.org . In the good dollar framework the amazing concept of Kiva is inherently built in the currency and in the economic framework.

 

Spread The Wealth – The “Good Dollar”

This is the first post of hopefully many more to come.  The mission of this blog is to devise a plan to make the world a better place for everyone.

To fully understand this goal, you should ask yourself two questions:

1.  Do you want the world to be a better place for you and everyone around you?
2.  Do you believe we, as humankind, can make it happen?

The concept relies on the assumption that in an ideal world everyone answers “YES” to these questions.

The concept is still in the works, but can generally be defined as an economic framework that will create more value to the world and humankind than the one currently in place.

Since changing the current framework requires a lot of thought and planning, I’ve decided to start by writing my thoughts, and hopefully together we can form the plan which will change the world for the better.

The framework includes a new currency, which is convertible to all existing currencies. We call it the Good Dollar. This currency is unique in that it should reflect the actual value that has been added to the world, rather than the simple form of economic value which can be generated without adding said equal value to the world. This currency will become a Giffen Good, meaning that as more people use this currency its value will increase which, unlike a normal good, will actually cause more people to use it. The fact that the basic underlying asset (Cash Currency) is violating the law of demand implies that other economic “laws” were misinterpreted.

A philanthropic bank, a non-profit organization, will control the administration of the Good Dollar to make sure every Good Dollar really does add value to the world. Assuming the framework is working, anybody purchasing Good Dollars will actually be making an economic investment, since the value of the currency will continue to rise as more people buy it.

There are a lot of questions yet to be answered to solidify the plan, but people in many areas can lead this change:

  • Followers: Can online followers from around the world lead a significant change in the world?
  • Culture: If you can describe the internet as a culture, can this be the real beginning of internet culture economics?
  • Philanthropy: Can the wealthy, those able to improve the world through financial means, participate in a change for the common good?
  • Academia: Is this framework able to change existing economic framework in academia?
  • Government: Will governments and countries participate in a change that will empower them eventually but might require them to delegate authorities?

All of these groups will want to consider the current economic framework: where did it go wrong, and how can we fix it?

In the following posts I will explore these questions, in the process of making the world a better place, with the intention of advancing humanity to its next step.