Buddhist Marketer

Elsewhere: Gubmint, Career Nirvana, Slothy Content

Killing time while waiting for the cops to show up so that I can fill out a police report.  So, here you go!

• How should governments use web 2.0?  Add your ideas!
• Are you happy to be doing what you do, professionally?
• Content creators:  is your content lazy?  Click here to fix!

Just called them AGAIN and they haven’t even dispatched anyone yet.  I mean skeeriously.

Audit the stimulus package

Just finished chatting with Cambridge-based entrepreneur and fellow classically liberal Academite Aaron Day, Founder and CEO of “We help companies lower the cost of their healthcare by incentivizing their employees to get healthy” Tangerine Wellness, Chairman of “We parse text and spit it back out in a way that helps people read faster on any digital device” Reading Stream’s Advisory Board, and now this — founder of Daylight Networks.

Daylight’s reason for being is to peek at the wizard behind the curtain and open the government’s kimono.  Project #1:  auditing the stimulus package.  It exposes it and allows its users to vote on whether it will actually achieve the stated objectives.

I can’t do it justice here and admit the user interface is as-yet clunky (which Day acknowledges), but love the idea of the wisdom of clowns poking around government documentation and letting their will be quantified in the forms of charts and graphs.

From their press materials (bolding mine):

Free, Independent Social-Networking Site Allows Everyone to Audit the Federal Government and Propose Non-Government Alternatives

• Follow the money through interactive graphs of the entire federal budget.
• Predict what government will do through the Daylight $5000 Obama Prediction Market, where members can apply their knowledge to predict key developments during President Obama’s first 100 days in office.  (The top 50 traders will split a $5000 cash reward pool funded by the Daylight Network.)
• Share, rate, and discuss information about government performance by submitting content (news, online videos, etc.) about federal departments, then discuss and debate through Daylight’s discussion board.
• Promote and create alternatives to government-run programs by sharing ideas for private or non-profit solutions, and connecting with like-minded Daylight members for collaborating on turning these ideas into reality.
• Reflect on the structure and relevance of government through the Daylight Blog, by debating political and economic theory, and re-examining the role of central government in an age where information, money, and people can flow freely on a global basis.

More in this Mass High Tech article.

A ton of potential and my firm can’t wait to help them figure out their business model.  Right, Aaron?  ;)

Should the gubmint build a social network?

Hot off the presses, I ruminate on the idea of a government-erected social network. (Watch me experience SYNTAX ERROR at the six minute mark when I think for a moment that I may have forgotten to click “record”!)

Background reading:

A. Social norms go bye-bye

‘melting the solids’ left the whole complex network of social relations unstuck

– Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman in his 2000 Liquid Modernity

As quoted in my 7/21/2008 post: Has our composition of interactions shifted away from social norms towards market norms?

B. Peeps use thug calculus when making decisions

… teenage delinquents could really care less if stealing that old lady’s handbag is going to hurt their chances at getting into college. Applying to college is three years away; $20 and a crusty tube of lip balm is three seconds away: “I need to get some cash right now!” not “I need to maximize lifetime earning potential.” The timeframe over which mental calculus is conducted is significantly shorter for the teenage delinquent and their behaviors and actions crescendo accordingly.

From my 7/1/2008 post: Are middle managers like teenage delinquents?

C. Taxes = Club USA membership dues

Membership benefits include a stable financial system, air quality that’s better than Mexico City, and a buncha other stuff. But I’ve never looked at my taxes this way, and I’ve gotta say … man, that’s a lotta taxes.

From my 4/14/2006 post: Aren’t taxes simply membership benefits?

My line of thinking regarding the government erection of a social network is loosely organized as follows:

1. We do not interact with our fellow citizens in the way we did 25 years ago, in part due to technology
2. As a result, social capital gained from the walking neighborhood has plummeted, arguably resulting in increased demand for social services
3. This drop in social capital has resulted in suboptimal decision making on an individual level which, in aggregate, negatively impacts society / increases my taxes
4. Could the government launch a CLUB US and A social network to attempt to replenish the lost social capital, with the end goal being a more efficient use of public funds (by decreasing the need for social services and replacing top-down community policing with socially normative, flat community policing) ?

Curious to hear what y’all sink about siss.

The taxman giveth; the taxman taketh away

My brain is bleeding, but I’ve just finished turbotaxing — hooray!

The Anittah Patrick report

• My dues for Club USA membership come to $1,100/month
• Club NY State membership dues: $390/month
• Club NYC membership dues: $220/month

Membership benefits include a stable financial system, air quality that’s better than Mexico City, and a buncha other stuff. But I’ve never looked at my taxes this way, and I’ve gotta say … man, that’s a lotta taxes.

Anittah Patrick’s Tax Tips
Alright, I’m no frosted-hair Suze Orman, but since 100% of the people I know (correctly) confirm that I am rather, ahem, bossy, here’s what I do to milk the prostate, I mean, finagle the lowest membership dues possible out of my various Clubs.

• Itemize deductions. If you work from home twice a month, then 10% of your home office is eligible for a deduction. And you prorate the cost of your overall household expenses, like the jacked up cost of Keyspan, into the square footage of your desk. Or, if you have a three bedroom apartment, you just pretend that extra bedroom is a dedicated home office *cough* *cough*. It helps if you anally have an .xls that records every utility expenditure.
• Depending on your industry, deduct your cell and your cable bill. Have someone pay you $5 to model for them and suddenly you can deduct every $500 haircut and every ill-advised $700 splurge at Zappos.com. I’m not kidding.
• Get Lasik and get a therapist. If you’re in NYC, where the cost of therapy is 2-5x the allowable maximum for most health insurance providers, you’ll blow through the 7.5% health cost in no time. (If you’re getting Lasik, go to the dude at 10 Downing. Hell, if you’re getting therapy, go to the dude at 10 Downing too.)
• It’s super helpful to buy everything on credit cards. I’m not just saying that because I hawk credit cards. I’d advise this well before I started pushin’ the plastic. It’s all about the paper trail. Get an AmEx or a Citi Professional Card and you’ll get the helpful annual summary of charges, which helps you easily sum up all those meals you’re buying which you can …
• Deduct every dinner you have out with friends who may offer you a job in the future. This is where the Thin Upper Crust effect is super beneficial. My friends include former and current coworkers and probably future employers. So long as one iota of tangentially industry related blah blah is mentioned at a meal, I say that’s good enough to count as a potential Job Search deduction. Who knows when you’ll follow up on that lead? You never know. And yes, I consider, “So what do you do?” a tangentially industry related blah blah. Deduct!

Even though I gotta pony up loot for NY State thanks to Club NYC, with Club USA I’m still coming out ahead. Now I can finally buy a big juicy photograph by my friend Ms. Katherine Newbegin!

What kinds of tax tips do you have? And how should I prepare the red meat in my fridge for my dinner tonight?