W Revenue dot ComDouble Your Site’s Revenue - Scott Wainner on Web Business

Yelp Allows Merchant Replies

Posted by Scott on 10th April, 2009 | 2 comments

  4/10/2009: “The balance of power on Yelp is about to get a shake-up. The San Francisco consumer review Web site blasted out an email to its Elite Squad today with the news: business owners will be allowed to publicly post their response to Yelp reviews in as early as a week.”

-SFweekly.com

Is this big news?  For Yelp and Yelp businesses, yes.  I hate to state the obvious but once again, like with Merchant Circle, Yelp is behind the times here.  ResellerRatings has been allowing merchants to post public comments in replies to reviews for more than a decade.  There must be a balance between consumers and merchants.  Both sides should be fairly represented.

Popularity: 18%

MerchantCircle.com Encourages Companies To Delete Bad Reviews

Posted by Scott on 28th March, 2009 | 24 comments

Straight from their blog. (heard about this at Sugarrae.com)

“Other sites give complete control to customers and their reviews. We give complete control to you, the business owner. Don’t like a review? Delete it.” -MerchantCircle.com

Wow. That about says it all. Yeah, other sites, like ResellerRatings.com, do give complete control to customers and their reviews and that’s a very good thing because it means that ResellerRatings actually has value. ResellerRatings doesn’t neglect merchants, however: we offer tools to let them contact customers to resolve complaints (since customers can edit their review at any time if they become satisfied), to post public reply comments, be notified when customers post reviews, and a whole host of other ethical tools and options. ResellerRatings NEVER removes a review upon request or pressure from a merchant. To do so would create a joke of a website, one that serves no purpose other than to stroke the ego of merchants. Reviews are only removed from ResellerRatings if they were submitted by non-customers or other similar reasons as listed in our public TOS, not because a merchant asks.

Yet, ResellerRatings is very important to merchants, because we rank very high (usually page 1) when you do Google searches for merchant names or merchant names + the word rating or reviews. So it’s win win for us and our policies. ResellerRatings helps consumers, and it encourages merchants to sign up and participate in order to satisfy any customer issues, even though 70% of the reviews at ResellerRatings are positive. There’s no need to compromise ethics on a ratings site and indeed wreck the site’s usefulness, to earn the business of merchants.

Popularity: 24%

CNN is Fearmongering Suckage

Posted by Scott on 12th March, 2009 | 12 comments

I used to like CNN and really, it’s actually a great resource for major breaking news.  For all other times, they suck.  Take today for instance. The market is up for the 3rd day in a row.  The dow is up over 9.5% in the past 3 sessions.  Our devastated economy may be in the early stages of a recovery.  Is CNN reporting this on the home page in big bold letters?  Nope.  Not one mention until you scroll down to the business section and see a tiny link to “A three-peat for Wall Street’s bulls”.  Apparently, “Mom patrols U.S. border from her den” is more important. But on days when the market is down, it’s front page news.

CNN homepage 3pm PT 3/12/2009:

Compare that to Marketwatch.com homepage 3pm 3/12/2009:

And the Wall Street Journal homepage 3pm 3/12/2009:

I’m tired of all this economy fearmongering by mainstream news like CNN.  Yes we’re in a recession.  Yes foreclosures are a mess etc.  But companies are still making money. Most people still have jobs.  The only people who should be spending less money out there are those who lost their jobs or their homes.  Everyone else should be spending, focusing on their unchanged incomes, but they’re not, because they only hear about bad news on wonderful sources like CNN and the good news is lost, so they fear, they hunker down, and they drive our economy further into the toilet.  News moves this market and the media has a huge role to play in boosting both consumer and investor confidence that yes, we can repair, recover, move forward and grow again.

Most investors out there are not pros.  They are John and Jane Q. Public with their 401k’s.  They need reassurance and confidence.  If they held $100,000 in stock last year and sold last week, they might have $46,000 now.  If they held through today’s 3 day rally, they’d have $51,000 today.  Everyone needs to gauge their risk tolerance and their asset allocation, being well diversified, make sure they have enough cash etc, but sell low and buy high is not a good strategy.  Selling when CNN gives you bad news and buying when CNN gives you good news is not a good strategy.  Be greedy when others are fearful!

Popularity: 22%

Wikimedia = $192,000/day in donations?

Posted by Scott on 28th December, 2008 | 47 comments

I was on a Wikipedia page today and saw a huge “Please read this message from Jimmy Wales” banner at the top of the page.  His letter (dated 12/24/08) asks for donations to Wikimedia to support the site, and explained how they hoped to raise $6M to cover their annual expenses.

The Wikipedia donations page states that they’ve earned $4.5M of that $6M so far, but after analyzing donations that they’ve received just over a 30 minute period this afternoon (about $4,000, with many donors giving $100 USD!) and extrapolating that data out to one day, it looks like they’re currently getting $192,000/day in donations, or $70M/year. At $192k/day, they’ll hit their $6M goal in 8 more days.

Wales explains that, like a “national park or school, [he] doesn’t believe advertising should have a place at Wikipedia.”

“Do I like Wikipedia? Yes.  Is it valuable?  Yes.  Is it some kind of altruistic gift to humanity, or a public resource like a national park?  No.   Wikipedia is a community-built, privately owned, Internet resource.  Capitalism works.  Why not apply it to Wikipedia, if even in a very controlled way accepting limited ads from specific ad partners, and earn tens or hundreds of millions?  Why ask for charity?

If Wikipedia costs $6M to operate, and ads could generate $100M/year (probably far more actually), then why not take that $94M surplus and give it to social programs, schools, etc — pay to put Wikipedia kiosks in every school and library.  Become an organization that spreads charity and funds other programs, rather than just a charity that sucks resources to operate itself.  Wikipedia could do far more good in the world that way.

So here’s my takeaway from this:  a) if they’re doing $192k/day in donations, maybe this charity model will actually work for Wikipedia better than advertising, as a gimmick, if that donation rate continues, and b) Should other sites that help people consider a donate model — are you using a donate model and is it working?

I just don’t buy the whole donation thing.  Maybe it’s working for Wikipedia ever since they launched this new “give us money” campaign on 12/24, but it sure wasn’t working for them before that, and I can’t imagine that donations will prove to be a viable model as the only revenue model over the long term for any entity.   Maybe 1% of your users will donate, and if you get as many users as Wikipedia, that’s a lot.   But for most businesses, ads will squeeze $ out of the other 99%.

Popularity: 27%

Is Your Domain Safe? Better Check the Fine Print.

Posted by Scott on 27th November, 2008 | 34 comments

My company owns several high value, high traffic domains, but I’m not a domainer, so domain registrars and their policies and prices are about as fun and interesting to me as watching paint dry.  As long as the registrar does its job and leaves me alone, I’m happy.

What would happen, though, if the registrar decided to one day hijack and suspend one of my domains, for some arbitrary reason, under authority granted to itself by a little known fine-print policy in its registration agreement?  Could they do that?  Could traffic to my domain cease for days or weeks, destroying one of my businesses in the process and leaving me with little recourse without a protracted court battle?  Could my multi-million dollar domain be arbitrarily canceled and then registered by a domainer? The answer to all of the above: YES and it has happened again, and again, and again.

It’s important to take a close look at your domain registrar and make sure that you’re comfortable with how they do business, even if you’ve never had a problem with your registrar in the past.  It’s like data backups: you might not have had data loss in the past, but you backup anyway knowing that data loss can occur and would be catastrophic.  Failing to research and select the right registrar could be just as devastating.

While at a session at Pubcon in Vegas a couple weeks ago, someone in the audience mentioned that they have their domains at Godaddy, a bunch of people gasped, and the moderator expressed concerns over Godaddy’s policies and practices.  That got my attention — all of my domains were at Godaddy.  I chose them because they were (are) the largest registrar, and because I had many problems with NSI and register.com in the past.  I’ve never kept my ear to the ground about Godaddy because I just never cared: they’ve been fine so far.  But since the conference, I’ve come to learn that GoDaddy has a history of suspending people’s domains arbitrarily, and that there are a lot of complaints out there, which prompted me to reevaluate whether or not they were the best choice for our domains.

When it comes down to it, what was most important to me in evaluating registrars was 1) the general buzz out there, complaints and praise, and 2) the legalease fine-print of each registrar’s domain registration policies.  Ultimately, I need to know that my domains are safe from both hijacking by an outside party, and safe from service interruptions due to the registrar itself.

Top rated registrars, via a domainnamewire.com survey:

Registrars by size, 11/15/2008, registrarstats.com:

Were my domains safe at Godaddy?  Should I switch registrars?  To find out, I compared the fine print in the registration TOS agreements from several of the top registrars, Godaddy, Register.com, eNom, Networksolutions, 1&1, and Moniker. Here are the highlights from those agreements that you must read.  I’m not a lawyer.  The “translation” comments below are simply my business opinion and my own interpretation that I used in my decision making process, and my comments should not be construed as legal advice:

register.com: “You acknowledge and agree that Register.com may suspend, cancel, transfer or modify your use of the Services at any time, for any reason, in Register.com’s sole discretion and without notice to you. You also acknowledge and agree that Register.com shall not be liable to you or to any third party for any such modification, suspension or discontinuance of the Services.”

Translation: Nasty — Register.com can suspend your domain in their sole discretion for any reason at any time with no notice to you and they are not contractually liable to you or anyone in doing so.

godaddy.com: “You agree that, in addition to other events set forth in this Agreement, (i) Your ability to use any of the services provided by Go Daddy is subject to cancellation or suspension in the event there is an unresolved breach of this agreement and/or suspension or cancellation is required by any policy now in effect or adopted later by ICANN, and (ii) Your registration of any domain names shall be subject to suspension, cancellation or transfer pursuant to any ICANN adopted specification or policy, or pursuant to any Go Daddy procedure not inconsistent with an ICANN adopted specification or policy;”

“You agree that Your failure to comply completely with the terms and conditions of this agreement and any Go Daddy rule or policy may be considered by Go Daddy to be a material breach of this Agreement and that Go Daddy may provide You with notice of such breach either in writing or electronically (i.e. email). In the event You do not provide Go Daddy with material evidence that You have not breached Your obligations to Go Daddy within ten (10) business days, Go Daddy may terminate its relationship with You and take any remedial action available to Go Daddy under the applicable laws. “

“Go Daddy’s failure to act upon or notify You of any event, which may constitute a breach, shall not relieve You from or excuse You of the fact that You have committed a breach.”

“You also agree that if Go Daddy is notified that a complaint has been filed with a governmental, administrative or judicial body, regarding a domain name registered by You using Go Daddy, that Go Daddy, in its sole discretion, may take whatever action Go Daddy deems necessary regarding further modification, assignment of and/or control of the domain name deemed necessary to comply with the actions or requirements of the governmental, administrative or judicial body until such time as the dispute is settled. In this event You agree to hold Go Daddy harmless for any action taken by Go Daddy.”

Translation: Godaddy can suspend or cancel your domain, in their sole discretion, if someone files a complaint against your domain and if Godaddy believes that the suspension or cancellation is necessary.  Godaddy can cancel or suspend your domain if they say you breached the agreement, even if you disagree, if you do not resolve that breach in 10 days.  If Godaddy fails to notify you of any breach, it’s not their fault and it doesn’t excuse you from the alleged breach.  Thus, you have 10 days to tell them that you didn’t breach, even though you may not have received any notice from them about that breach.  A breach could be as simple as not updating a phone number in the whois record, but it could really be anything they want.

enom.com: “We and your Primary Service Provider may reject your domain name registration application or elect to discontinue providing Service(s) to you for any reason within 30 days of a Service initiation or a Service renewal. Outside of this period, we and your Primary Service Provider may terminate or suspend the Service(s) at any time for cause, which, without limitation, includes registration of prohibited domain name(s), abuse of the Services, payment irregularities, serious allegations of illegal conduct, or if your use of the Services involves us in a violation of any Internet Service Provider’s (”ISP’s”) acceptable use policies, including the transmission of unsolicited bulk email.”

“You acknowledge that providing inaccurate information or failing to update information promptly will constitute a material breach of this Agreement and will be sufficient basis for suspension or termination of Services to you. You further agree that your failure to respond for over ten (10) calendar days to inquiries by us concerning the accuracy of account and WHOIS contact information shall constitute a material breach of this Agreement and will be sufficient basis for suspension or termination of Service(s) to you.”

Translation: eNom uses slightly less aggressive language than other registrars. They say that they can suspend your domain for cause (as opposed to any reason in its sole discretion).  That said, there are many “causes” defined, including if you send spam, and they will make the “cause” determination themselves and your domain could be suspended while you are disputing their claims for days, weeks, months.

networksolutions.com: “10.Termination.  b. By Us. We may terminate this Agreement or any part of the Network Solutions services at any time in the event you breach any obligation hereunder, fail to respond within ten (10) calendar days to an inquiry from us concerning the accuracy or completeness of the information referred to in Section 4 of this Agreement, if we determine in our sole discretion that you have violated the Network Solutions Acceptable Use Policy, which is located on our Web site at http://www.networksolutions.com/legal/aup.jsp and is incorporated herein and made part of this Agreement by reference, or upon thirty (30) days prior written notice if we terminate or significantly alter a product or service offering.”

“9. Revocation. You agree that we may suspend, cancel or transfer your services, including, but not limited to, domain name registration services in order to: (i) correct mistakes made by us, another registrar or the registry in registering your chosen domain name: (ii) to resolve a dispute under our domain name dispute policy: or (iii) to remedy an unauthorized change in the domain name account.”

“3. Network Solutions Right To Disclose Your Contact Information and Terminate the Private Registration Service. You acknowledge and agree that Network Solutions has the absolute right and power, as it deems necessary in its sole discretion, without providing notice and without any liability to you whatsoever, to (a) reveal to third parties the contact information provided by you to Network Solutions in connection with the account for the applicable domain name, (b) populate the public WHOIS database with the registrant’s name, primary postal address, e-mail address and/or telephone number as provided by you to Network Solutions, or (c) terminate your subscription to our Private Registration Service:

(i)                  if any third party claims that the domain name violates or infringes a third party’s trademark, trade name or other legal rights, whether or not such claim is valid;

(ii)                 (iii) if any third party threatens legal action against Network Solutions that is related in any way, directly or indirectly, to the domain name, or claims that you are using the domain name registration in a manner that violates any law, rule or regulation, or is otherwise illegal or violative of a third party’s legal rights.”

Translation: Network Solutions can suspend your domain if you breach their agreement (in their opinion), or if you don’t respond to them in 10 days.  They can also reveal your contact info and identity to anyone, if any 3^rd party makes a claim or threatens legal action (so much for private registration).

1&1: “2.2.7. 1&1 may suspend performance under or terminate this Agreement, cease transmission of data associated with your domain name, permanently remove Your Data from the 1&1 Equipment, and take any other actions it deems necessary, in its sole discretion, immediately and without notice, to comply with the UDRP or relevant Laws if it is informed or otherwise believes, in its sole discretion, that your domain name violates the intellectual property rights of any third party or is otherwise the subject of a dispute.”

Translation: This TOS is foul and to the point.  1&1 Can suspend your domain at its sole discretion if it believes that your domain name violates the rights of any 3^rd party or if it is the subject of a dispute.

Moniker: “The Registered Name Holder shall agree that its registration of the Registered Name shall be subject to suspension, cancellation, or transfer pursuant to any ICANN adopted specification or policy, or pursuant to any registrar or registry procedure not inconsistent with an ICANN adopted specification or policy, (1) to correct mistakes by Registrar or the Registry Operator in registering the name or (2) for the resolution of disputes concerning the Registered Name.”

“Furthermore, you agree that we may suspend, cancel or transfer your domain name registration services in order to: (i) correct mistakes made by us or the registry in registering your chosen domain name, or (ii) to resolve a dispute under our dispute policy. We will not refund any fees paid by you if we terminate your services.”

“We, in our sole discretion, reserve the right to refuse to register your chosen domain name or register you for other Moniker service(s), or to delete your domain name within the first thirty (30) calendar days from receipt of your payment for such services”

Translation: I was surprised to find that relative newcomer Moniker has the most business-friendly terms compared to the others.  Moniker can refuse to register your domain or delete it within 30 days after you register it.  But after that, they will only suspend or cancel your domain to correct mistakes made by them or by the registry when the domain was registered, or as a resolution to a domain dispute (i.e. if a recognized legal authority, such as an ICANN authorized arbitrator, orders them to transfer your domain to a 3^rd party after a dispute is not resolved in your favor). 

I have never used Moniker in the past, but after reading all of these agreements, their agreement appears to offer the least risk to business owners, in terms of the arbitrary power that a registrar has to suspend or cancel your domain and put you out of business, essentially whenever they feel like it.  The biggest risks to your domain are: a) the registrar doing something dumb or arbitrary to suspend your domain, b) someone else hijacking your domain, and c) the registrar going out of business.  After reading complaints at nodaddy.com and in forums like webmaster world (about how Godaddy canceled a domain in reaction to a mere complaint by Myspace), while also reading lots of praise about Moniker with few complaints and taking into account Moniker’s reasonably large market share as well, I decided to move our important domains to Moniker.  Most registrars appear to do a decent job at domain locking to prevent 3rd party hijacking, but you really have to take a close look at each registrar’s TOS and the stability and size of their overall market share to evaluate the risk to your prized domain, and I do not like the TOS of any of the above registrars except Moniker.

Popularity: 29%

Cheap, Simple, Must-Do Usability Testing

Posted by Scott on 17th November, 2008 | 9 comments

I’ve never done formal usability testing.  You know, hiring a group of testers, giving them coffee and muffins and asking them to perform certain tasks on your website so that you can gain insight on how people actually use your site. Formal testing is expensive and is limited to a small set of test subjects.

Enter  ClickTale.  ClickTale is a javascript snippet that sits on your page and records user sessions anonymously: and by record, I really mean record, as a movie: mouse movements, scrolling, clicks, text entered into form and search boxes, for each of your site’s users.  It stores a video of each user’s session (and strings together multiple visits) which you can play back.

Plus, it’s FREE for personal use (records 400 visits, or a lot more in their pay packages).

The first thing I noticed: wow, people are really using our sites!  It’s one thing to see a bunch of numbers showing that we have 100,000+ uniques/day across our sites, but to actually see a person clicking around, clicking on links that I created, scrolling, it’s really cool.  More importantly though, after watching a lot of these sessions, I was able to determine several problems with one of our sites, where people were trying to click on text that wasn’t hyperlinked, and people were getting confused on a page - both instances were fixed.

Highly recommended.

Popularity: 25%

Amazon’s Kindle: Highly Recommended

Posted by Scott on 8th November, 2008 | 16 comments

I read magazines like Fortune Small Business, Forbes, Money, and although I occasionally read business books, I don’t read them that often. Usually, it’s because I don’t make the time, but more often, it’s because I don’t have a book handy when I feel like reading it.  I sure don’t want to lug around a library, and happen to have just the right book when I have a few hours to kill on the airplane, for instance.

Amazon’s Kindle changes things.  It’s a wireless e-book reader with a paper-like screen.  Most importantly though, you can download entire books and magazines to the device from anywhere via a cellular network and the content is cheaper than the printed versions.  These aren’t just junky out of print books, these are the best, highest rated, most popular books and magazines available.  If you’re sitting on an airplane, you can browse Amazon’s books, view ratings/reviews, buy a book or two, and read on the flight.  It’s really an amazing device whose time has come.

When I first heard about it, I thought it was lame.  Then I was flipping channels one day and heard Oprah raving about it - yeah I know, Oprah.  She was doing an interview with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.  Bezos outlined several cool features and they were demoing the device.  I didn’t know it worked via a wireless cell network, I thought it had to sync-up to a desktop.  I think that’s the biggest factor that makes this thing a winner, plus the huge library of content available.

I’ve owned a Kindle for a few weeks now and I’m already hooked and have made solid progress on 3 books: that’s 3 more books than I’ve read in the past couple of years.   Plus, I use it to keep up with newspaper articles and magazine articles.  The screen is very easy to read: easier than paper or a computer monitor, with great contrast.

It’s a bit pricey at $359, but worth it in my opinion.  It’s the best way I know to “download” great info straight into your brain, whenever you have some free time.

Popularity: 26%

Face Time

Posted by Scott on 7th November, 2008 | 12 comments

As an Internet entrepreneur, I’ve been guilty of overusing email & IM for years, and not creating enough face to face meeting opportunities.  True, I’ve always advocated the importance of conferences and I attend a lot of them, but I often talk to employees and companies with which I have a partnership, via email primarily.  Email is generally efficient, but it falls so very short in a number of key ways.

In the past month, I decided to change my ways and start making an effort to have face to face discussions with some of the companies and people I work with.  I flew to Los Angeles a few weeks ago and met with  an advertiser for the first time, that I had been working with for years.  We had a very productive meeting and discussed many ideas on how we could work together.  The meeting brought together 6 people from different areas of their company, and the progress we made never would have been made by phone.

Recently as well, I decided to have a face to face meeting with a developer-consultant who I’ve worked with for years.  We took a two day trip to Las Vegas, shared some meals, and discussed all the ins and outs of a new project that we were undertaking.  It was a productive meeting, and we both appreciated finally getting to meet face to face.

I often shun traditional business and instead embrace all that the Internet has to offer in terms of automation, user generated content, automated-advertising programs such as Adsense which don’t require aggressive sales efforts, etc, but it’s taken me almost 13 years of working in this business to really see the benefits of meeting people face to face - of course, people who work in traditional offices take that for granted and might say “duh!”, but working via email and phone for so many years has its advantages too, but not as an all or nothing approach.

-When you visit with a company or an employee/consultant face to face, you make an impression.  You stick in their mind.  You are more likely to occur to them when they are thinking about projects and when they determine who they should work with.

-Brainstorming is so much more effective in person because body language and energy can only be utilized when you’re in the same room as the other person.  So much of communication is non-verbal and email/IM/telephone loses all of that.

-People are busy, and when you agree to meet with them and go out of your way to travel to them, they appreciate it.  They feel special, that you took time out of your busy schedule to visit with them.  This raises your value in their eyes.

Take a look at your top 5 biggest revenue sources and/or top 5 most important people who contribute to your company.  Then, send an email or pick up the phone and propose a meeting to touch base.  Offer to travel to them, if they aren’t local.  Come prepared to the meeting with a few top level questions or specific questions if they occur to you.  Make the meeting about them!  Tell them that you wanted to meet the person that you’ve been working with for so long.  Tell them that you want to make sure that their needs are being met, and hear any suggestions they have to improve your relationship.  In doing so, you will benefit.  I virtually guarantee you that if you haven’t met face to face with them in the past, this initial meeting could very well propel your relationship to the next level, flood you with new ideas and opportunities, and your business will thank you.

Popularity: 23%

Profits Gone Wild: Government’s Role in Business

Posted by Scott on 5th November, 2008 | 4 comments

Greed is good.  Greed in its many forms, be it striving to compete to be the best at what you do, striving to grow your business etc, drives us.  Fear and greed, hand in hand, run our economy.  Trouble is, people get carried away, and start doing nasty things to get ahead to earn the almighty dollar, in ways that rob people (or other of Earth’s inhabitants) of rights, and in ways that will eventually come crashing down.  Here’s what I mean:

Whaling and Tuna Industry

I love sushi, and so do the Japanese.  But despite weak attempts at regulation by the government, the Japanese tuna industry is undeterred, and is threatening to turn the Mediterranean into an empty pond.  They’ve turned fishing in that region into a massive commercial operation with planes, helicopters, huge freighters and nets, where thousands of massive blue-fin tuna are caught at once.  Everyone (but the fishing companies) know how this story ends: no more fish.  Due to lack of oversight and enforcement, a moratorium on bluefin fishing looks necessary, as a knee-jerk last-ditch effort to avert a crisis.

Japan also loves to hunt whales by the thousands in Antarctica.  On November 18th, a fleet of vessels plans to harpoon 50 humpback whales in the Antarctic Ocean, under a loophole in the 1986 ban against commercial whaling, where whales can be killed for “scientific research”. Somebody is very asleep at the wheel here.  If the law is junky, redo it!  It has been 22 years!  Otherwise, bye bye whales, all so the Japanese whaling industry can profit.

Health Insurance Industry

Currently, health insurance companies deny coverage to sick and dying patients for a variety of ”read the fine print” reasons.  Every human being has the right to basic health care.  Other countries provide this, but we do not (even people who have private health care here are having claims denied routinely). Health insurance companies are in the business of denying claims: the more claims they deny, the more money they make.

Government’s role, then, must be to define instances where it is immoral and unethical to deny coverage, within the boundaries of which companies can still operate profitably while operating ethically.  If an insured person missed a deadline for filing a paper by 24 hours, and thus their coverage was denied, should they die because they can’t afford a life saving procedure?  No - that’s an example where regulation must step in and force insurance companies to protect life.  Alternatively, health care could be provided by the government, whose job it is to provide excellent care, not to turn a profit.  Personally, I’d rather see health care stay private, but with government funding and a guarantee that care will be provided to everyone for any reason.

Pharmaceutical Industry

Drug companies make billions in profits and spend relatively little on R&D. Drug companies do not profit from curing disease, they profit from treating diseases.  If a cure is found, it is administered, and the drug company goes out of business.  Drug companies charge exorbitantly for brand name drugs, supposedly to cover the cost of drug development (which is in part to blame on the FDA drug approval procedures and its vast inefficiencies), and which is made apparent by the cost of the same drugs in generic form.

If drug companies have no financial incentive to cure illness, then another massive, publicly funded, industry, must step in to do it (such as a much larger National Institutes of Health).  Research must be turned into cures for the public good, and ”natural” drug treatments (like Resveratrol from grapes for anti-aging, from red wine, or fish oil) should be explored, even if they aren’t profitable to anyone.

Bush Cronies and Abuse of Government Positions

This could be a novel.  I’ll focus on Haliburton and Saudi Arabia.  Dick Cheney worked at Haliburton before he was VP and continues to receive payments from that company.  Who benefited from the war in Iraq? Haliburton  benefited, to the tune of more than $20B in contracts in Iraq.  What was the only airplane flying after the FAA grounded all planes on September 11, 2001?  A private plane full of Bush’s Saudi oil buddies, on its way back to the middle east. We can’t simply trust government blindly.  There must be checks and balances as the system intends.  In the past, we trusted that presidents would not abuse their power.  Bush broke that trust.  Bush has shown how much leeway the executive branch has, and he pushed it to its limits.  

Mortgage Industry

In the absence of adequate government regulation, the mortgage industry ran wild, conning consumers into agreeing to ridiculous and dangerous mortgage contracts.  ”Here’s a $500k house, pay me $1/month now and in 5 years, you’ll owe me $1M, okay?”  Reverse amortization loans, adjustable mortgages, sub-prime loans to people with bad credit. None of this should been allowed by the government because it was a hugely bad idea and so very risky for our whole economy as we have now seen.  

Government must impose wide boundaries on what’s reasonable. Profit is a good thing and everyone has a right to it, but the government’s role must be to step in and define limits on where we can’t go, what we can’t exploit, to protect ourselves from ourselves.  We’re all seeing the hazards of a “free for all” market lacking in any kind of good leadership and governance.  In this regard and for all of the above examples, our government has failed us miserably.  Government has to know when to get out of the way, and when to not stifle small business, capitalism, and growth, but there is a balance, and it must impose certain boundaries and define what’s reasonable, within which there should be more than ample room for all of us to reap massive profits in most industries.It’s much better to manage issues along the way and avert crisis, rather than impose massive knee-jerk regulations after industries collapse.

We shouldn’t fear government regulation as long as its reasonable and is subject to much oversight.  So, what do you think government’s role should be in business?

Popularity: 23%

10 Reasons to VOTE (for Obama!) On Tuesday

Posted by Scott on 3rd November, 2008 | 18 comments

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10. Starbucks will give you a free tall coffee for voting!

 9. Nearly 35,000 men and women have died or have been wounded in Iraq defending our freedoms. No more families should lose their sons and daughters, husbands, wives, fathers and mothers to this war.  Obama will end it, McCain will not.  Palin even revealed that McCain would like to attack Iran during his first 100 days in office.  Can we really afford another warmonger?

 8. Biotech companies are closer than ever to curing forms of blindness and healing totally severed spinal cords, even in the face of massive political pressure, but these companies need funding and public support.  Even cellular aging could be a thing of the past with the right technologies and research, enabling healthy lifespans of 150+ years.  These biotech companies are making discoveries, but there is a lack of resources out there to develop the technologies.  Only one candidate will truly give this field what it needs to succeed.

7.  If you work for the man, by law, your employer must give you time off of work.  With long lines, that could mean hours off of work just to vote.

6. Our planet is becoming an inhospitable place to live, and our children will pay the price of living in a very different world: one devoid of many of the species that exist today, and one whose climate is unfriendly, with existing large population centers under water.  We must stand up to big business and do what is right, while creating jobs and keeping energy costs low.  We must learn to use the energy that is abundant: solar, wind, geothermal.  We are resourceful and we can do it.  Obama plans to create 25% of our electricity from clean energy by 2025.

5. If you earn less than $250,000, your taxes will decrease.

4. The world supports Obama.  A BBC poll from September found that Obama was preferred 4 to 1 over McCain on average across the 22 foreign countries surveyed.  We need a president who will reach out and communicate with our neighbors, not shun them.

3. We simply cannot afford a president Palin. She is grossly ill-equipped to lead our nation.  If I was on the fence, adding Palin to the ticket would ensure that I’d never vote for the candidate who chose her.  57% of registered voters polled by CNN this week agreed that Palin “does not have the personal qualities a president should have.”  Yet, at age 70, there is a real chance that McCain will not survive 4 to 8 years in office.

2. McCain voted with Bush 95% of the time.  95%!  McCain is not Bush, but as far as his positions are concerned, he’s within 5% of being a Bush clone.  This, according to FactCheck.org.  You will not get change from a candidate who voted the same as the incumbant 95% of the time.

1. I grew up in Texas.  I was a conservative until I moved to California.  I was raised one way, and thought that’s how I was supposed to be, until I heard other views and began to see that not only did I not want to support conservatives, I wanted to be 100% democrat  across the board - people change, and it’s important to expose yourself to alternative views because you might just like them.

If you’re a republican undecided voter, consider this: you’re undecided for a reason, the guy you might normally vote for is giving you serious pause.  Go with your gut.  You don’t have to love and marry the candidate.  You don’t have to tell anyone who you voted for, and you don’t have to vote republican now simply because you always have before.  Choose the candidate you think will move our country forward and begin to correct the missteps of the past 8 years with the environment, energy, free passes and handouts to big business, the mortgage mess, the economy and national debt, healthcare, the war.

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