Stray Hawkeye

So I’ve been batting this one around in my head for a while, and then I read this article (very, very hyperbolic and one sided,  but still fairly informative none the less), which set me off a bit to finally write this up.  The idea (really sort of 2 ideas together) still definitely has issues, but it’s at least something to think about.  This one’s admittedly equal parts idea and rant, and parts are half joking, though also half not.

Now, in an ideal world, politicians would actually care about representing the views of the people who they are supposed to represent. No US Senator from Minnesota would vote for a bill unless he thought that the people of Minnesota would support it. No Minnesota State Congressman would vote for a piece of legislation unless he thought that the people in his specific district would support it. They would do frequent opinion polls among the people they represent (not national polls) on relevant issues.

However, I think we all know that not how things work. If a drug company promises some money to a campaign in exchange for slightly stricter intellectual property laws, it will probably go through. If the head of the TSA has a side business that has clients that sell body scanners, we’re told we need body scanners in every airport to stay safe. If the steel industry wants higher tariffs to make higher profits to have more money to donate to politicians, the circle of political life goes on.

While there are many, many groups I can give money to as an individual in order to try to elect a given politician, there’s not much I can do to influence him/her after the election until they start making campaign promises the next time around. In short, while companies and interest groups can influence politicians while in office, the average citizen only really comes into discussion around election time.

So, here’s my idea – political bounties (for clarity, so I don’t have the FBI knocking at my door, I’m referring to bounties on laws getting passed/repealed, not on politicians’ heads). Now you may be saying, wait, you want to just buy laws? Well, yes. It basically works that way now for companies, I just want to be more blunt about the government representing the money rather than representing the people. Aside from that, as it stands, companies don’t just have the same rights as individuals, they have more rights.  While an actual person can only donate up to a specific amount of money, corporations basically can spend whatever they want.  I’m just proposing equal rights here.  However, the real key to this idea is that the bounties are only awarded to a politician (or more specifically their reelection fund) AFTER they accomplish what the bounty is for, and that they will be for very, very specific changes.

For instance, I think it’s stupid that I can’t buy beer on Sunday in Minnesota, and I’d like to see that changed. I don’t care which politician introduces the legislation, or what party they’re from. I just want to be able to go grab a bottle of wine for diner on Sunday. So, if this were all set up, I would start a political bounty for legalizing the sale of alcohol on Sunday in Minnesota, and I would contribute a few dollars. And anyone else who thought it was a good idea could also contribute a few bucks. The key here is that the bounty continues to sit and grow until someone introduces a piece of legislation that passes to change the law. No one gets the money until the law is changed.  Basically, we shift the focus for individual campaign contributions from campaign promises to realized results. This would also work for non-incumbents, they could take out loans to campaign on, and pay them back when they got some results and got bounties (or not get elected and go bankrupt I suppose).

Another sort of complimentary idea for this would be that we shut down all direct campaign contributions. Instead, each citizen is allocated $100 (arbitrary number, adjust as you see fit). The $100 comes from tax money, so actually the rich are contributing way more, and the poor way less, but they all get equal say, thus leveling the field some across economic groups that way. Also, I say allocated rather than given because you don’t actually get this money, this money is held by the government and you instruct them (probably via a form on some website) on which campaign to contribute it to and how. This could have a short list of options, such as making the contribution conditional on specific campaign promise being fulfilled. For instance, $50 to Person X unconditionally, and $50 split equally among all politicians who vote to repeal the Patriot Act, if the repeal succeeds. You could also contribute it an interest group, who could then use it to advertise about a specific issue rather than for a specific politician. The key here is that this would be the only money they would be allowed to use. This would help to make it so the government represent (or at least plays to) the people instead of corporations, and it would give all citizen equal say in their government (or again, equal influence over the election).  Politicians would be strictly banned from using any other funds in their campaigns.

The obvious problem with this part, is that you basically have to limit free speech in order to keep companies and rich people from buying their own advertising. And it sort of presupposes that elections are decided by how much advertising you can do, rather than what people actually think, which gets a bit to the heart of the issue that most people know almost nothing about politics, but are still responsible for choosing politicians. In order to make it manageable, you would also have to limit the list of conditions that you could apply to your contribution. Maybe you could make it so the $100 can be payed out at your will throughout the elected politician’s term?

There’s also the elephant in the room that any change like this would have to be put in place by, you guessed it, politician.  And we’ve already covered where they currently get incentives from.

Ugh.  Politics makes my head hurt, and make me nauseous. This is why I haven’t had much on here about it for a while, and will probably continue that way for a while.

I heard a while back (about a year ago, because, yes, I am about that far behind on some of the things I’ve been meaning to blog about) that Intermedia Arts, a local arts group/space/organization, was closing it’s gallery and laying off all of it’s full time staff because they, and the arts in general, were being hit particularly hard by the recession, and it was the only way to stay afloat.  From their website, it looks like they’re back in their space and hosting things again (admittedly I haven’t followed it all that closely), but I would tend to imagine selling art and managing galleries still isn’t exactly a booming enterprise as the moment, and that both artists and galleries are probably still squeezed pretty tightly.

Another fairly visible symptom of the recession that I’ve noticed is that there are lots more empty store fronts than usual.  Businesses close, and they leave their spaces empty, and it takes a bit longer for property owners to find someone else to rent the space.

So, putting two and two together, there are empty store fronts that look vacant and depressing, seem to be magnets for graffiti, and which are drawing no rent, and you have galleries closing and artists with no places (or less visible places at least) to sell their work or get it in front of people.  So, the free idea for this week is to set up some sort of organization / program to connect property owners and artist to display works in the front windows of empty store fronts until the space gets rented again.

Here’s a few reasons why I think this particular match up would work well for everyone.  First from the artists’ perspective:

• Your work is put in a place people are used to looking at to buy things and it gets it in front of people who may not generally go to galleries.  It’s not only a sales outlet, it’s advertising.
• In this idea, there wouldn’t be any active curator working at the store, just a locked store front with art in the windows and number to call if you wanted to buy something, or an email address, so the fees/commissions would be notably less than you would usually pay to galleries.  Also with the cheaper space and more of, there would be potential for many more artists to get exposure than usual.

From the property owner’s perspective:

• Though the rent may be notably less than if you had an actual tenant / business, it’s some income.  If the group that organizes this is set up as a charitable organization, you may be able to write off some of the difference for reduced rent (not sure about that part, but I would imagine).
• It keeps people looking at your space, noticing it, and thinking of it as a place where people sell stuff.  Again, basically free advertising.
• Reduced graffiti.  This one takes slightly more explaining.  From what I’ve seen, totally empty / basically abandoned store fronts get tagged pretty quickly.  Ones with “For Rent” signs get it slightly more slowly, but not much.  Murals almost never get tagged.  My guess is that this is because most people who tag and do graffiti on other people’s property think of themselves as artists (I think of them as jackasses, but that’s a topic for another day), and/or they have some resentment against corporations and/or they see it as much more justifiable to tag something that’s just a blank space than something that’s already decorated in some artful way.  So, my guess is that while abandoned looking store fronts get tagged in a hurry (making the property look worse, incurring costs for clean up, and making it harder to find a new tenant, because who wants to rent a place that looks like it gets tagged all the time / is in a rough neighborhood), ones that have art in the front of them, especially art from local, community artists, would get tagged much, much less.

Additional benefits / reasons these groups should love each other:

• Artist looking for a place to show their work will probably be much more flexible in lease dates.  If the property finds a tenant while there’s art in the windows, the art can be moved out and the new tenant in on basically no notice at all, especially if one art organization manages this for lots of artists and lots of spaces.  In effect the property owners don’t have to worry about losing any potential tenants.
• Without anyone being at the storefront on a regular basis, you might think theft would be a problem. However, I would have a hard time imagining it being too big of a problem, because unlike commodities such as TVs or cell phones or whatever, art’s pretty unique, and it would be hard to get any money out of reselling it without being detected.  Which means theft isn’t very profitable.  A good chunk of the worth of art is identifying who made it, and doing so is basically turning yourself in. And again, you have the fact that I would think most thieves would think it’s more justifiable to steal from a large corporation / store / chain than from a local artist who may well be just as financially hard up as they are.  Plus, if you rotate things through fairly often (once a week maybe, which would still be practically no labor cost), the space will still seem active.  Plus, if people get used to looking at it to see what’s new, people will look more, and probably report a broken window or other damage pretty quickly (another bonus for the property owner – casual strangers watching out for your store).  You could also have a very simple / cheap (maybe even fake for the deterrent factor) security camera pointed at the front window.
• The other obvious use along these lines would be advertising, but there’s lots of reasons this is better.  Basically this part ties back to the graffiti argument.  The only things that get vandalized faster than abandoned store fronts are Bebe ads.  Put some ads in an empty store front and it will look like a 3 year old playing with MS Paint in about 5 minutes.  The property owner might make a couple of bucks off the ads, but they’ll have a much higher liability for having to clean up graffiti later.  Beyond that, who wants to advertise their product in an empty store front?  Doesn’t really give the impression that most advertisers  want to get across about their product.  And, again, people tend to (at least consciously) tune out ads and/or purposely ignore them, where as art that’s new on a weekly basis would draw attention (I think).

Really, all you would need to get this going would be one or two people with a phone and the numbers of some local artists (or galleries that have artists they’re turning down) and some local property owners (and those number are already in lots of the store fronts).  The artists get exposure and potential sales, the landlords get at least some rent they wouldn’t have otherwise gotten and get it on a very flexible basis.  I would think there could be very low overhead / middleman costs, especially if a group like Intermedia Arts, or the Walker, or MIA (would seem to fit perfectly with their “Foot in the Door 4” exhibit), or MNartists.org, or Artspace were the ones to set it up, with a relatively low commission being charged on each work sold.

There could definitely be things I’m missing here as I’m neither a property owner nor involved in the business of selling art, but it seems like a win-win for everyone involved to me.  And really, it could be done any time, it just seems like there’s a lot more opportunity and need on both sides of the deal when the economy’s down.

Not to be confused with previous Free Idea Friday Cold Beer, this would be a website that lists bars, and their beer prices, only.  No pictures, no reviews or editorials.  No descriptions of the crowd that gathers there and how cool/trendy/hipster/tattooed/townie/gay bar/dance club/meat market/dive/etc it is.  Just a list of what beers the bar serves.  It would also need to note which are on tap, in bottles, and in cans, and the price of each.  It should also list if the bar ever charges a cover charge.

I’m a little up in the air still on if specials should be noted, or if it should just be the maximum price you will ever pay for a given beer at a given bar.  I’m also a little up in the air on if it should include other types of drinks they have (cider, wine, cocktails, shots), and if so, do you limit it to what’s on the menu, or whatever they’ll make.  I would lean towards including all alcohol that’s listed on the menu (if there is one), and noting specials but not real prominently.

The website should also allow you to search by distance from a given location, by which bars have a particular beer (for instance, Guinness on tap, PBR in a 20 oz can, Fat Tire in a bottle, etc), price for a given beer, and any combination of the above (for instance, find a bar within a mile that has Guinness on tap for $5 or less, doesn’t serve 20oz’s of PBR, and has some kind of hard cider).

I think this would be interesting not only as a great way to find a cheap place to drink with your friends and a handy way to find place that serve any obscure beers you may like, but also for how much you could tell about a place by what beers they have there and the price of each.

The New York Times has a really interesting interactive chart showing the jobless rate over time, broken out by age, gender, race, and education level, where you can mix and match the different demographic categories.  Sort of draws out how much the usual reports saying that the unemployment rate is x% really gloss over a lot of detail.  The jobless rate (as of Sept 2009) ranges from 3.6% to 48.5% depending on your demographic.  Really interesting to see how much each factor affects it, and how they interplay.

Via Get Rich Slowly.

Another joke I got through email a while ago:

Beautiful girl looking for Richman

THIS APPEARED ON CRAIG’S LIST

What am I doing wrong?

Okay, I’m tired of beating around the bush. I’m a beautiful (spectacularly beautiful) 25 year old girl. I’m articulate and classy. I’m not from New York. I’m looking to get married to a guy who makes at least half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but keep in mind that a million a year is middle class in New York City, so I don’t think I’m overreaching at all.

Are there any guys who make 500K or more on this board? Any wives? Could you send me some tips? I dated a business man who makes average around 200 – 250. But that’s where I seem to hit a roadblock. 250,000 won’t get me to central park west. I know a woman in my yoga class who was married to an investment banker and lives in Tribeca, and she’s not as pretty as I am, nor is she a great genius. So what is she doing right? How do I get to her level?

Here are my questions specifically:

-Where do you single rich men hang out? Give me specifics- bars, restaurants, gyms
-What are you looking for in a mate? Be honest guys, you won’t hurt my feelings
-Is there an age range I should be targeting (I’m 25)?
-Why are some of the women living lavish lifestyles on the upper east side so plain? I’ve seen really ‘plain jane’ boring types who have nothing to offer married to incredibly wealthy guys. I’ve seen drop dead gorgeous girls in singles bars in the east village. What’s the story there?
- Jobs I should look out for? Everyone knows – lawyer, investment banker, doctor. How much do those guys really make? And where do they hang out? Where do the hedge fund guys hang out?
- How you decide marriage vs. just a girlfriend? I am looking for MARRIAGE ONLY

Please hold your insults – I’m putting myself out there in an honest way. Most beautiful women are superficial; at least I’m being up front about it. I wouldn’t be searching for these kind of guys if I wasn’t able to match them – in looks, culture, sophistication, and keeping a nice home and hearth.

it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
PostingID: 432279810

THE ANSWER
Dear Pers-431649184:

I read your posting with great interest and have thought meaningfully about your dilemma. I offer the following analysis of your predicament. Firstly, I’m not wasting your time, I qualify as a guy who fits your bill; that is I make more than $500K per year. That said here’s how I see it.

Your offer, from the prospective of a guy like me, is plain and simple a crappy business deal. Here’s why. Cutting through all the B.S., what you suggest is a simple trade: you bring your looks to the party and I bring my money. Fine, simple. But here’s the rub, your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity…in fact, it is very likely that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won’t be getting any more beautiful!

So, in economic terms you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset. Not only are you a depreciating asset, your depreciation accelerates! Let me explain, you’re 25 now and will likely stay pretty hot for the next 5 years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in earnest. By 35 stick a fork in you!

So in Wall Street terms, we would call you a trading position, not a buy and hold…hence the rub…marriage. It doesn’t make good business sense to “buy you” (which is what you’re asking) so I’d rather lease. In case you think I’m being cruel, I would say the following. If my money were to go away, so would you, so when your beauty fades I need an out. It’s as simple as that. So a deal that makes sense is dating, not marriage.

Separately, I was taught early in my career about efficient markets. So, I wonder why a girl as “articulate, classy and spectacularly beautiful” as you has been unable to find your sugar daddy. I find it hard to believe that if you are as gorgeous as you say you are that the $500K hasn’t found you, if not only for a tryout.

By the way, you could always find a way to make your own money and then we wouldn’t need to have this difficult conversation.

With all that said, I must say you’re going about it the right way. Classic “pump and dump.” I hope this is helpful, and if you want to enter into some sort of lease, let me know.

Economist Kevin Nguyen explains the country’s economic woes to his younger sister, using Pokémon as an analogy.  It’s actually a pretty good comparison.

A pretty good story looking at how Americans are infatuated with enormous houses, how ingrained this is in our culture, and how that affects our finances, in the form of a story of someone who rented a house (mansion) that was way above his means.  Though the house in the article definitely falls well into the category of real mansion, I would point out how many people lust after the more common McMansion (and how that may be one of my favorite wikipedia articles).

I must say, I’m quite happy in my 550 square foot apartment.  If anything, I’d say it’s a little bigger than I need, even with storing my kayak and sousaphone in the kitchen/dining room area.

A few entertaining links to help lighten the mood as we slip and slide towards total government control of the economy everything:

• Hank Paulson’s bailout package, presented in a much more fitting manner- as Nigerian banking spam email.
• One of the clearest explanations of the Sub-Prime issues I’ve seen, plus, it has stick figures and explicatives to ease the pain.
• Want a Bailout of your own?  Log on to Buy MY Shit Pile and give the government your best offer.

All this can be yours for the low, low price of $3,000 for every man, woman, child, infant, new born, and senior citizen in America.

Don’t worry though, come November, you’ll get to pick between McCain, who will support whatever bailout plan they all agree on at the White House tomorrow, and Obama, who will support whatever bailout plan they all agree on at the White House tomorrow, but I’m sure they’ll disagree on minor points, and you can pick between those!  Ain’t democracy great?  And people laugh when I say I’m voting 3rd party.

As a bit of an “I told you so”, Ron Paul predicted absolutely exactly this – the failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the bursting of a housing bubble that The Fed has propped up, and an ensuing tax payer bail out of the industry – 5 years ago.  Here is a speech he gave on Sept 10, 2003.  He’s had many other speeches in the same vein.  It’s the same kind of thing he’s been talking about since his 1st term in Congress in 1978, all the way through his campaign this Spring, and now his Campaign for Liberty.

It seems like he’s been interviewed by nearly every media outlet over this last week, and even had an op-ed piece on the front page of CNN’s website yesterday.  It’s been interesting to watch all of this and see both how much exposure he’s getting these last couple weeks (especially compared to the total lack of attention the media gave his Presidential run), and how much everyone just nods their heads, and then keeps doing exactly what they were doing before.