Watching little kids play together, often one will grab a toy from another, without any regard for the other's feelings. With really little kids, it doesn't help much to tell them not to do this, because they just don't get it. So we simply intervene, restore the toy to the other kid, and give our kid something else or distract them in some way.

As they get older, they start to obey, perhaps to gain approval or avoid punishment, and then at some point they (most of them) actually internalise the value of not "stealing", even if they won't get caught and the other kid will never even know.

But how many adults do you know who just do things that hurt others, without any regard for the other people's feelings?

That's a trick question, because I'm pretty sure that describes just about everyone.

I was thinking today about how we base our economy on competition.

We expect the farmers growing corn to be competing against one another. If they cooperated, then the price of corn would go up, because no one would be offering corn for a lower price. We expect the wheat farmers to be competing against the corn farmers too, keeping the price of grains low by always trying to make as much money as possible and steal market share from one another.

At the root of this is lack of trust, stemming from the human tendency to cut corners, our desire to retire early on passive income. Our tendency to steal, not just from our neighbors, but from our children and grandchildren.

I'm pretty miserable at the moment. I feel like I'm on a sinking ship, throwing things overboard, but not fast enough, and maybe throwing some of the wrong things overboard.

I wish I could completely start over and not be bound by any past promises or commitments or expectations.

I am really afraid of what people will think about me, and what they will say about me. And I don't like that. I wish I could be courageous and bold and just be myself and not apologise.

I'm back from Africa. It was amazing. Read about my experiences and future plans here http://www.omidyar.net/group/afr ica/news/29/

I just finished publishing another piece of music, a set of variations on the nursery rhyme "Oh Dear What Can The Matter Be". This midi file is the computer playing it. http://www.omidyar.net/group/iss ues-business/file/0.95.116637889 50/get/Oh%20Dear.mid

Here was my first one, Old King Cole: http://www.omidyar.net/group/iss ues-business/file/6.91.115854129 16/get/Old%20King%20Cole.mid

To see what else I'm working on, go here: http://www.omidyar.net/group/foo dchain/news/147/ and here: http://www.omidyar.net/group/tin cup/news/11/

:)

I am an INTP. Before I could talk, I was playing with numbers. I sorted all the books in our house by the number of pages, and at age 3 I learned the order of frequency of initial letters in English from counting encyclopedia and dictionary pages. My favorite toy was these triangles you could make just about any shape out of.

Following in my father's footsteps, I studied electrical engineering (at my father's alma mater, Loyola Marymount, where he met and proposed to my mother) for 4 years and then it hit me I was not my father, so I switched my major to Latin and had the two funnest years of my life, reading old books. I applied to three graduate schools (in German, Classics, and Linguistics) and was offered fellowships to all three. I picked Linguistics at Northwestern University, mainly because it was the farthest away. I drove my 1964 VW bug (nickname "suicidomobile") from Los Angeles, over Vail Pass, to Chicago, towing a tiny trailer with all my worldly possessions. (My adventures in that car, whose every part I had rebuilt or replaced several times, make up a very exciting chapter of my life.)

My first successful company (after window washing, magic shows, and such) was the world's first online Latin-English dictionary, which I sold to university Classics departments and made about $800 after paying my typists and proofreaders. My next successful company was an online CD wholesaler, in the days before amazon.com.

In the early 1990s, I spent a lot of time working out formulas to find inefficiencies in the stock options market, and did a bunch of successful trades in a row. I started pooling money from friends and family, but stopped when I couldn't figure out how to peg the value at any given time (some difficult math is involved, if you want to be fair and take different people's money at different times).

I then turned to real estate and discovered some major inefficiencies in that market. I preferred real estate over other investments because I could see and directly control where my money was ACTUALLY going. I started buying properties and helping others buy properties in Oakland CA. I was doing really well, so well, in fact, that I was able to retire from my computer job. At the same time, the neighborhood I and my partners invested in underwent an amazing transformation that took me by surprise. I realised then that I had way more power than I thought.

But my main goal was to be a composer of music, so I wandered around Mexico and Europe for a few years looking for people to collaborate with on operas and chamber music. I was content to live on about $10,000/year, which meant I would never have to work again.

Then I met my wife and I'm not sure she said this explicitly but somehow I felt like I should make a little more money for her, maybe $30,000/year. I could have gotten a cool computer linguistics job in Switzerland but thought, well I know how to do this real estate thing and I could just do it again and then retire again.

So I went back to the USA and picked another neighborhood (I analyse gigabytes of data on thousands of cities in order to do this). This time I was smarter, because I had seen how things worked in Oakland. I and my partners bought 22 properties in a neighborhood in Long Beach CA, and repeated the same process.

One of my other goals in life is to get a massage every day, but I didn't want to pay $50/day, so I put an ad on craigslist for a massage therapist that would give massages in exchange for rent (I had lots of places available). One of the massage therapists that took me up on this deal invited me to an introduction to the Landmark Forum -- she told me about it while I was getting a massage. My experiences with Landmark are another amazing chapter of my life; I discovered so much about myself and about how relationships work that I don't even know what to compare it to.

Perhaps to the Britannica Great Books (another goal of mine was to read them all in the original languages, which is why I taught myself Latin, Greek, German, Italian, and Spanish, and have nibbled at the edges of Russian, French, Japanese, Turkish, Sanskrit, and Mandarin).

Or I could compare Landmark to Classical Music, which also had that sort of impact on my life, which is why I taught myself piano, harpsichord, organ, recorder (SATB), trombone, voice, and guitar. I also dabbled in violin, cello, hammer dulcimer, and clarinet. I have written about 100 songs, mostly variations on nursery rhyme tunes for piano or small ensemble. Biologist and author Lewis Thomas and I share our predilection for Bach above all other composers.

Two of my real estate partners took the Landmark Forum too and we all got really excited about the potential and created a company, pooled $1.6 million from friends and family, and bought, renovated, rented, and sold 35 homes in and around Compton CA (the investors got 27% annualised returns, over 2 years).

We were doing such cool stuff in distressed neighborhoods that the Los Angeles Times plastered us all over the front page of the Sunday real estate section. Then we started getting calls from all over the place. We raised another $2 million and bought dozens more houses. We were on CNN, we were in Fortune, they did a documentary on us on HD.net.

Then we were approached by a number of venture capitalists and potential business partners who wanted to help us get to the next level, something like a $50 million fund. We put together lots of fancy brochures and presentations and we talked to lots of investors for about a year but didn't manage to actually raise any money. This was financially devastating because we spent tons of money (on salaries, office space, equipment, etc) in order to be ready to manage all the money we were supposed to be raising.

I feel really silly because if I had invested all that money in real estate instead of trying to convince big investors to play with us, I would be quite well off now and would be able to fund the project myself. I wanted to jump quickly to the next level rather than grow gradually, so now I am back to square one.

I am committed to causing a drastic reduction in global violence, poverty, and pollution, and a correspondingly drastic increase in the healthy options available to all people on the planet. We can make happiness and joy available to people who do not currently experience them. And we can provide a healthy environment for our children.

my blog is http://www.enlightenedcapitalism .blogspot.com

Jean is one of the most generous people I know. She just listened to me complain about my life for an hour, and she coached me to let go of a belief that wasn't serving me.

Ok, I'll tell you what the belief was, if you promise not to judge. I was believing (without really questioning the reasonableness of it) that I screw everything up. No wonder I wasn't super motivated!

Anyway, after the phone call I'm a new man. I'm back in action and feeling like I'm headed toward excitement and adventure again.

Yea!

Thanks, Jean :)

An old friend of mine wrote me this for my recent birthday. In some ways, our friends know us better than we know ourselves, and plus, this is super complimentary so I'll share it here... :)

Dear Dav, I know how you’ve disliked birthdays in the past, but this year for your birthday, I am giving you a small present of describing you to you. At first I was going to just make a big list of adjectives to describe you…but then I thought, oh, when you see a big list of adjectives, the sincerity of each adjective gets lost. It become like a page out of a thesaurus or something. So instead I made a list of adjectives that come to mind when I think of “David Frayne” and I added an explanation to each one to show you why I picked it. This is my present for you:

SMART – You come up with such clever solutions to puzzles. One obvious puzzle being real estate analysis…you are always spot on with your predictions and it’s because you’re so gosh darn smart!

FUNNY – I always laugh so much with you. You have such a funny view of the world and can easily see the absurd and share it in a lighthearted funny way.

CREATIVE – You come up with such unique ideas and all the time! Your creative button seems stuck in the “ON” position. You don’t follow the path everyone else does…you find a new one, a better one, a bizarre one!

GENEROUS – You have donated so much of your time, energy and money to neighborhood improvement – lowering the crime rates and getting people to see new possibilities. You are always quick to loan money to those in need, to help people make their dreams come true. You pay for landmark for anyone who asks.

UNSTOPPABLE – You don’t give up. You may think about it, you may daydream about it, but you don’t give up. You find ways around your issues. You find new solutions. You find a better way.

INSPIRING – You have inspired more people than you realize. You inspire them to take on problems bigger than their own. You inspire people to give their all. You inspire me to be my best and to live at my edge of comfort. You inspire me to give up my act and be, like you, generous and unstoppable.

HEROIC – The crime rate dropped in Oakland and in Long Beach and in Compton. You were a big part of that. Crime isn’t an abstract idea… it’s a mugging, a break-in, a murder. You saved someone from those crimes. You are a hero.

A TRUE RENAISSANCE MAN – You are a musician, a songwriter, a poet, you speak Latin, Spanish, Italian, German, you know all about investments, you know about computers, you know about psychology, politics and many more things I don’t even know you know! You can build houses, you can tile floors. You can play with babies and make children laugh. You are the most well-rounded man I’ve ever met. And you’re still growing and expanding!

Happy birthday my dear friend. Celebrate with a whole heart the day you were born, for it is truly a day worth celebrating! (Oh and btw- now that I’ve become a mom, I realize that birthdays are really something quite special for the mom… you should call your mom and thank her for going through the pain of delivering you… tee hee) Have a great day!

I don't understand why we keep creating new threads and leaving the old ones. It isn't like we've really finished any of these discussions. I can understand starting a new thread after 30 pages, because there's no "go to page X" function. But I wish we had less threads and more participation per thread.

My Goals for the next 30 days

• Difficult Unfinished Goals
• Have Dental Checkup
• Have Physical Exam and/or Bloodwork
• Write one new piece of music
• Compile compositions and publish or distribute at least 1
• Edit, publish and/or distribute the essay The Vaccine For Poverty
• Collect old writings from one source (e.g. previous computer)
• List 820 Temple Ave back units for rent
• Finish deck at 3830 E Yale St
• Establish payment plan for 1 debt
• Visit one new city
• Place all books in shelves or neatly packed boxes
• Create efficient filing system for handling all mail
• Design crime study and schedule baseline data gathering
• Install at least 1 solar panel
• Easy Unifinished Goals
• Give and Receive 360 degree feedback (More/Less/Continue) at least 2 times
• Contact at least 3 investors or make one deal
• Complete LLC transfer of Affinity Neighborhoods
• Finish front walkway at 3830 E Yale St
• Install garage door at 3830 E Yale St
• Personally invest $5000 in real estate
• Plant 50 trees, including 20 fruit trees
• Ongoing Goals (Currently Successful)
• 210 minutes/week Cardiovascular Exercise in minimum 10 out of 12 weeks (missed 2 weeks so far)
• Eat 14 Servings of Vegetables/week in minimum 10 out of 12 weeks (missed 0 weeks so far)