Tuesday, April 30, 2013

3 Great Things about BitCoin


  1. No transaction fees, so you can actually charge someone $.05 for something.
  2. You can accept payments from places that don't speak paypal (Bangladesh, Pakistan).
  3. Transaction is final, no chargebacks, freezing of paypal accounts, etc.
  4. Ok, one more. No government manipulation!

I went to Atlanta Startup's Village to hear 5 tech / web startups describe themselves, and one of them was bitpay. They let you accept bitcoins at your ecommerce store and automatically convert it to cash for you, and it costs 1%. 

BitPay presenting at Atlanta Startup Village 4/30/13





Saturday, April 27, 2013

In the Future, When Robots do All Our Work, What of Capitalism?


There's been a lot of concern lately about our current economic system and its wealth inequality, lack of jobs, and environmental impact. And many (12345... ) think that new robots and advanced software (AI) will soon exacerbate job availability and wealth inequality. Futurists are envisioning some drastic changes to our capitalistic system as the only solution: much greater wealth re-distribution, possibly including a basic living wage for all,  living in a world without economic growth, or even efforts to slow down technology advancements. As someone for whom Ayn Rand resonates deeply, my default belief is that laissez faire capitalism, individual ownership, and the hopefully rapid growth associated with those systems is our best bet long term, even for the poorest among us. But I don't have very compelling answers for many of the troubling questions that the future will soon raise--namely, who will pay us when robots take all our jobs? Are we destined to social chaos if we don't change our system in the future? To a more ... socialist one?

From "The End of Labor: How to Protect Workers from the Rise of Robots", credit Reuters

Income Inequality Trends

One statistic many site as cause for concern is growing income inequality, which can be seen by a stagnent household median income* even as GDP continues to rise. The middle income earners in this country are making the same or less than they did in 1987 in inflation adjusted dollars. The growth in GDP is only due to the highest earners. The top quintile makes over 50% of income (H2).