interesting link nmw pos 25

Myself, Michael Rosenberg, and Daniel Janulaitis are working on an idea on how to switch to electric cars in the near future, hopefully in conjunction with cleaner electricity production. Since electric cars run on batteries that are heavy and need to be charged, which takes several hours, it is more inconvenient in today's world to have an electric car than a gasoline car. If, however, as oil supply stops increasing and starts decreasing, we believe it would be possible for oil companies to switch over to providing electric car batteries in a system of battery trade-ins. We are quite excited about this because we feel that electric cars have the capability to be much more efficient and effective than corn, ethanol, hydrogen, or many other forms of alternative energie sources for cars. Old gas stations, already with power lines connected to them, could be converted to stations stocked with fully charged, standardized car batteries. Any passing motorist whose battery was running low could trade theirs in for a fully charged one while starting to charge theirs for someone else, in a system of one-for-one exchanges that would eliminate the inconvenience of electric cars. The efficiency of electric motors over gas motors is worth mentioning as well. We aren't sure about the specifics of the system, and will have to work out the sustainability aspect, but that's the essence of what we want to try to do.

James Davis said:

This discussion is related to UCSC CMPS 80J Course

We haven't talked about your project proposals yet. We will do so on Monday April 16th. I just posted in the administrative discussion on roughly what we'll do that day.

In this discussion, you should each post one project idea. This can be very short and very rough. Its meant as a brainstorming exercise, so don't worry that you don't have details figured out. It might also help some people find teammates with similar interests. You should probably indicate in your post how strongly you feel about your idea and whether you are recruiting team members.

Who: (example idea by the professor)

Motivation: Equalize world wealth distribution.

One of the biggest issues related to poverty is that people can't work, there are no jobs. I'm going to give an annecdote to illustrate what I want to solve.

I met a woman in Thailand with a MBA. I asked what she did and she said "sell silver bracelets on ebay". What!?!? An MBA and thats the best you can do? She explained that the local market for labor would pay her well as an MBA, but not as well as selling $10 items to USA consumers. I asked why she didn't have competition from other less educated people in Thailand which would erode her high margins. She said ebay requires PayPal which in turn requires a USA bank account.

Now this made it very clear to me that one big problem keeping a whole bunch of merchants in the third world poor is that they don't have access to US markets.

Proposal: I propose an online international money exchange method that works everywhere. PayPal is almost right, except they have concentrated on markets where there is currently commerce since they want to make a profit. They have missed a huge opportunity to do good in the world by connecting every country, including those who don't have a market yet. I predict that opening a channel for money will quickly create the market.

The plan: Either start a new company competing with PayPal or convince someone at PayPal to listen to me. (Anyone on O.net know who I should be having lunch with at PayPal and can provide an introduction? Ironically, when I previously worked in downtown Mountain View they had an office next door and it didn't occur to me to stop in.)

Tech: Clearly we need a computer network to enable this.

Social: Open markets equals third world consumers making more money selling direct to first world consumers.

Money: Take a percentage of transactions, which PayPal has shown can turn into a nice sustainable and scalable business.

Issues: There are zillions of legal/banking issues to resolve. Most large global organizations precisely are trying to prevent this in order to stop international financing of terrorism.

(I care about poverty more than I worry about terrorism, so I just have different priorities. This is a fine example of why I want "business" proposals in my class, not "lobby the government" proposals. When your priorities aren't 100% agreed by everyone it might be easier to "roll your own" and just do it than to "lobby the man".)

Oh.. I forgot to mention. I talked about this in terms of selling goods. Goods have a transportation issue. This is even better for opening markets for services.

If I could figure out how to pay I would hire both a travel agent and a secretary somewhere else in the world right now for say $5/hour. This is below the US rate but far above the rate in most places.

At one point I wanted to make mysecretary.com with the intent of making "help" available to average busy people since currently in the US you need to make about $200,000/yr to be above the threshold to employ a $40,000 secretary to save you time. I make about $100,000 so I need to pay less than about $20,000. The average American makes about $40,000, so it needs to be in the $8,000 range.

I think this service could be provided for about $5,000 making me happy and someone somewhere really well paid compared to local economy.

-james

James Davis said:

Motivation: Equalize world wealth distribution.

James,

something just occured to me.

If you were to suggest that people post their proposals in workspaces (instead of in comments), then people could vote in them with feedback

Here's a start: List of Project Ideas

Who: (example idea by the professor)

Motivation: Better transportation options

Santa Cruz is amazing for a lot of reasons. One of my favorites is that hitch-hiking works. It just makes me happy that everyday I can pick up some kids on their way to campus, learn about their life, do them a favor, and it costs me nothing. I don't know a single other place in the US where you can hitch-hike/pick up without being afraid for your life.

Trust is a big issue in the world. We don't trust the Russians (..oh wait.. who don't we like this year.. I mean we don't trust the Arabs). Anyway, this sort of thing causes wars. On a more local scale we don't trust our neighbors. This makes it no fun to live. We also don't trust people hitchhiking, which makes it hard to get a ride, and forces everyone to use their own car for everything. Don't get me started on the problems caused by everyone using their own car, lets just leave it at that.

Proposal: I propose we market a little "Safe Hitching" electronic thingie (or build it into cel phones, or whatever). You sign up and get certified as safe. We take your thumbprint, iris scan, call the FBI to check you out and whatever. You also get a sticker to put in your car window.

Now when you want to pick up a hitcher you let your two little electronic gizmos (cel phones) first communicate electronically to certify that everyone isn't a serial killer. Of course someone might steal your cel phone so we'll have to use the camera to take pictures of each others face and do an iris check to make sure its the right person. Ok, so we're all certified as "not killers", probably still weird, but at least safe.

Why do hitchers want it? Obvious.

Why do drivers want it? We'll make the hitcher pay for their gas at double the current gas price. You can make a couple bucks while you do people a favor.

Let the hitching begin. I can't wait to never drive to work again.

Tech: Gotta build this little gizmo. Should be less than $100 for the tech, and its directly on current trends so we don't even have to go engineer it ourself, just write a little code for existing PDA/Smartphone platforms.

Social: Trust. This is priceless. Can you imagine a culture where everyone isn't afraid of everyone else all the time? Not to mention fewer cars on the road with all the commute time, transportation, energy, pollution and other benefits.

Money: Hitchers would pay drivers for gas plus a little. We can also take a commission of $0.05 or something everytime. Gotta work the numbers, but I think you could work it to make money from this if say 1% of all current drivers became "SafeHitchers".

Issues: Certifying people is always a problem. I personally hate showing ID at the airport. Not sure I want to push to a world where we all have to be ID'd all the time.

James Davis said:

mysecretary.com

haha -- mysecretary isn't a word.

How about http://secretarial.at/ , http://secretaries.at/ , http://secretarial.in/ , http://secretaries.in/ , http://administrative-assistant.com/ , http://business-administration.us/ , http://typing.at/ , http://typist.at/ , http://typists.at/ , ...

;D nmw

James Davis said:

Proposal: I propose we market a little "Safe Hitching" electronic thingie

see also http://www.carpool.in/ and/or http://www.mitfahrzentrale.de/ -- in Germany ride-sharing has been done by students etc. for decades (and there are many places to post rides wanted/offered [whether one-time or recurring])

Who: (example idea by the professor)

Motivation: Scalable education

Education. We know how to build schools. We don't know how to pay for them. There are millions of kids not in school because they can't pay. This is a problem all the way from rural africa to american grad school.

Everyone also agrees that education raises eventual income for the recipient. Whats that? Raises income. Income=money. I sense a fine opportunity to solve a problem and make money at the same time.

Proposal: In the US we have something called "student loan". The deal is I give you money now, and you educate yourself, make more money later and pay me back plus interest. This is such a good idea that everyone agreed enough that the Fed government offers the loans.

Student loans use future income to finance current education. This principle will work fine for kids in Africa as well.

Basically I want to set up a global student loan program.

I want to protect poor people from the risk of future income. What if they still don't make money but now have a loan? So I think we should do a calculation of expected income with and without education and cap their student loan payments at some percentage of their increase in earnings. So If you went from $1000/yr expected to a real income of $5000/yr we would cap student loan payments at say ($5000-$1000)*20% = $800/year. Or whatever. If instead they still made $1000, then they would have a payment cap of ($1000-$1000)*%20=$0 so they don't pay. We probably need to roll an insurance policy into the student loan package to cover this case.

Risk? Why will people repay? Historically micro-loans have a 95% repayment rate. Poor people repay loans, its rich people who default. I think we can figure a mechanism to get a good repayment rate.

Financing? Where does the money come from? The world financial markets. We can charge a high enough interest rate to give a say 12% return to investors. This is high enough that people will rush to dump money in. If its not then we twiddle the numbers until its 20% return to investors which I promise will get more capital than people who want loans.

Will people want loans with high interest? Yes. Remember we set it up so there is no downside. They only pay if their income really goes up.

We need a network of "distributors" who get a cut in return for marketing this to poor people and telling them, "damnit, get your kids in school".

Tech: Gotta keep track of all the information and loans which probably requires computers/internet, but basically this is an economics play, not a tech play. Hmm.. I violate my own ground rules, but its a good idea anyway, so I'm allowing myself. =)

Social: Education available worldwide in a scalable way.

Money: Clearly designed to make a profit.

Issues: Biggest complaint I've gotten is "You are making a profit from poor people, how evil!". I basically just disagree. I'm doing poor people a favor, I also happen to be making a profit, but the bottom line is I'm helping them. I wish schools were free and every kid went to school. Go lobby UNICEF to get on it! So far no one is getting the job done! In the meantime I want to solve the problem, and I don't care if I have to take a little back to do it.

There are also issues that occur to economists. This is basically a tax, so how does that affect incentive to work? etc etc

For a bigger issue, its worth noting that my original plan came after reading an article about child slaves in India being sold for $50. My first thought was "Why make rugs with slaves? How profitable can that be? I can buy them all, educate them, and take half of their income. Better life for the slaves since they have a comfy office job and a house, and I get rich. Lets start." Needless to say I got a lot of "owning slaves is evil" complaints, so I kept the plan, but revised the description into the more sanitized student loan description above. Its exactly identical, but somehow even when I explain it, people think they are totally different.

I'd like the class to keep using the discussion thread (you can also use the workspace if desired). The course staff will try to understand the workspace and how that allows voting and this may be coming soon for your actual proposals. Since we're just brainstorming now, I think its less important. I would be thrilled to eventually be organized enough that both ourselves and others could vote on the projects.

-james

nmw said:

James,

something just occured to me.

If you were to suggest that people post their proposals in workspaces (instead of in comments), then people could vote in them with feedback

Here's a start: List of Project Ideas

Thanks for the links.

Carpooling does not equal hitching. To carpool I have to have a fixed schedule and go to the same place everyday. In short it requires prior planning. I have wanted to hitch. I have never wanted to carpool.

-james

nmw said:

James Davis said:

Proposal: I propose we market a little "Safe Hitching" electronic thingie

see also http://www.carpool.in/ and/or http://www.mitfahrzentrale.de/ -- in Germany ride-sharing has been done by students etc. for decades (and there are many places to post rides wanted/offered [whether one-time or recurring])

Oh.. for my students. My proposals are a bit longer than I expect you to have right now. I've been collecting ideas since most of you were in junior high, so naturally I have a lot to say about them already. I don't expect you to have lots of details after 1 week. I will of course expect your ideas to be better than mine by the end of the quarter.

-j

Yes, there seems to be no term that refers to a one-time ride-share.

This is the closest I've found: http://www.rideboards.com/ (same site as http://www.rideboard.biz/)

So I don't have any specific ideas yet but I did want to throw out some bits I've been mulling over.

For any plan to be sucessful it needs to reach deep enough into the collective psyche to change attitudes. For the plan to be sustainable economically, it needs to be marketable and sexy.

To implement social change I think no matter how you look at it is rather ambitious. It goes out with the intention to change people's minds where subtlety seems key. Most people react negatively towards any perceived command.

I think people are happy to follow so long as they are being led, not told.

I also think that given the circumstances of this project, this should tackle and issue that can be do-able. So I've crossed anything with world off my list, i.e. world peace.

Here are a range of issues that I would be interested in working on if anyone else would like to take a look:

-Obesity/Food industry A mostly undulating social issue in this country that will have massive impacts on health care and medicine for our generation. Not to mention the direct health issues invovled.

-Culture clash/Xenophobia Misunderstanding between nations and people cause enormous problems in comunication and policy. Take a look at post 9/11 sentiment towards anyone who looked remotely Muslim. Also Israle/Palistine conflict, not to mention many more. Racism, sexism, immigrant issues etc.

-Pop culture Mostly seen seperately from the serious and grave social ills we've been addressing, but I think is a major avenue through which to impliment change. Look at the ancient example of the printing press making knowledge more evenly distributed and that the computer/internet has advanced. Mostly pop culture has affected society in ways not totally constructive to societal issues but maybe more of an attempt needs to be made.

These are pretty broad topics where more specific issues could fall under. I hope to have it narrowed down to some actual business proposals later on.

Any takers?

We havent really discussed the project in detail, so I dont exactly know what I want to do or how I want to do it, but I know that the way the general public disposes of batteries is extremely harmful to the environment and I might want my project centered around doing something about it.

Every time I think of poverty I go back to the basic value that every person has built in them, the ability to work. The ability to learn. How to build a project from that? I have scratched my head until smoke comes out of my ears and it turns to the problem, not the solution. And the beauty of this course to me is to make the solutions economically sustainable! I am willing to work with anyone on any project involving solving poverty. Which reminds me, during the class discussion I heard a couple of you say that "poverty is getting better and so the environment is more pressing." I happen to have learned in a class called "Globalization and its Dscontents" that by every measure used by scientists to measure poverty, it is increasing at an alarming rate as a result of neoliberal policies. Here and in the world at large. Yes, even in the United States the crowd watching the limousine cruise through the ghetto is increasing. Also increasing is the violence. But that is just getting back to the problems. Solutions is what this course is about, self-sustaining solutions at that. And so, back to the head scratching. Something will come up, but until it does, I am willing to work with any group that addresses this issue.

I had an idea for a kind of indentured servitude for solar panels. I've heard of people generating more energy than they use and selling the remainder back to a power company. Basically the plan goes that a manufacturer would provide free or cheap solar panels to homeowners, businesses, anybody. These people would set up the panels and begin generating energy, the excess of which would be owned by the manufacturer and sold to other people until the debt was paid. Is anyone else interested in this idea?

I really did not plan on creating an idea. I was planning on "shopping" around for ideas to see what I liked. But I do have a general idea of what I would be looking for. If someone had anything that involved poverty, or even something thats out of the ordinary.

Perhaps something that involved open information for the public or the taxation of certain products.

John Edwards said:

We havent really discussed the project in detail, so I dont exactly know what I want to do or how I want to do it, but I know that the way the general public disposes of batteries is extremely harmful to the environment and I might want my project centered around doing something about it.

I have found that "deposit" systems generally work very well. Here in Germany, you can also use luggage carts at airports and train stations (or also shopping carts at stores) for a coin entered into a "deposit slot" right inside the cart. This is usually 1 Euro, which people are willing to get back. Somtimes people don't seem to care enough about getting 5 cents back for a plastic bottle, and will leave it lying around for "poor people". This may be a health hazard if this were done with batteries (?). But if there were a $5 deposit on every battery, I think this problem would go away.

Christina Wang said:

I also think that given the circumstances of this project, this should tackle and issue that can be do-able. So I've crossed anything with world off my list, i.e. world peace.

At the moment I'm also still brainstorming ideas (it is most likely that this post will be edited/added to). So far the main issue that comes in mind is addressing the overpackaging of materials and how that effects the environment. We could look into technologies to develop new ways to change how we package items (e.g. ways of reducing plastic bags, substitutes, incentives / reward cards for people to scan when they bring their own canvas bags, etc.).

I'm currently still continuing to think about other issues as well, but I seem to drawn more towards environmental issues and possibly how we can use environmental improvement to also address the issue of poverty.

Packaging and Packaged Goods Marketing

my proposal is to make something designed especially for realtors. i work in a real estate office and sometime i have to copy thousands of pages of documents for disclosure packets on properties as well as many different copies of communications between clients and realtors. i want to develop something to sell to realtors that saves all the documents onto a computer type thing that the clients can also sign right on the screen that it is saved onto. and then when it comes time to give different people copies like the clients and the title company the files can be saved on some sort of mini disk. im still developing my ideas but this is the basics

First thing that springs to mind for me is "electronic documents" >> archiving and legal restrictions. Back in the 90s there was alot of interest in "optical digitization" (making photocopies) -- maybe you could also look into the Google Book project (I think they're also making photocopies). Of course if you don't need to print out any paper, then alot of the paper wastage could be reduced -- would it be possible to minimize the amount of printed paper to that amount that actually "needs" to be printed due to whatever is required of legal contracts?