The gap between rich and poor doesn’t matter
There has been a lot made recently about the gap between rich and poor getting bigger. In the UK, the opposition Conservatives blame Labour who have been in power since May 1997. Labour of course blames the Tories saying this is one of the legacies they inherited. Specifically they blame Margaret Thatcher, that bastion of evil, the wicked witch of the west. Their words not mine. OK I'm paraphrasing here but those may as well be the words they use seeing as Mrs Thatcher is blamed for pretty much everything that has gone wrong in the UK since 1980. Considering that she hasn't been in power since 1990, you'd have to say her powers of destruction would be up there with the Dick Dastardly, Lex Luthor and all other super-villains rolled into one.
Funnily enough plenty of research will support both arguments, but my thinking is that the premise doesn't matter at all! Why should society care about the gap between the rich and poor when in fact we should only concern ourselves with the poor?
I believe that it's the level of poverty in our society that really should be the focus of government and by extension the society itself. If opportunities are made available to the poor (I don't mean benefits and welfare!) and our leaders are able to mobilise society to reach for those opportunities by being aspirational, then I think we will be in a better place.
I know that others also rail against aspiration and say it's overrated. That's correct if by aspiration you mean getting the cars, bling, flat-screen TVs and Armani jeans. No my friends. Wanting to get those things is NOT aspiration. That's just being materialist. Aspiration is when a person wants to make a lasting difference to their WAY of life, which results in material benefits being a by-product of the hard work that's been put in and the success it brings. As one commenter put it in the article linked to above
If the top of society becomes too rich, (which I don't think there is such a thing) then that's not a bad thing. What matters is how poor the rest are and whether or not the rich do not take advantage of them. Should you care that Richard Branson has x billion in the bank when you and your wife have a combined income of 40,000 per yr, your kids go to a decent school and providing they work hard they can make it through university? That would be just stupid right? It's bordering on envy, and that's pretty much where this whole debate on the gap between rich and poor seems to lead to.
Coincidentally university education, which is one of the traditional means for aspiring working class kids to uplift themselves, has been made way more expensive by the self-appointed working class party. Labour. It's ridiculous to blame the Tories for the society gap which supposedly increased more during the 80's because Thatcher brought this country up to date economy-wise. By spoon feeding the poor Labour has stagnated the living conditions of the bottom 10% which I believe is the true crime. I won't go into that debate too much right now, but I believe Labour (and the Tories when they get in) should just concentrate on providing opportunities to the poor and making the conditions that will enable us to help ourselves.
If the rich get richer during that time, I couldn't care less. And that is why I don't begrudge the bankers, footballers and other high earners. Just so long as you all can be a banker, doctor, footballer or MP, had you wanted and been able to.
Blair confirms his status as world’s dumbest smart man
How to win wars and alienate citizens.
“I didn’t want America to feel like they had to do it by themselves“, the words of Tony Blair as part of his testimony to The Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War.
Duh, if someone’s going to do something bad you’re supposed to stop them! Not fall behind a dumb plan, conceived by a dumb President, to convince a great country that he is looking after their interests!
Whilst Mr Blair didn’t really get flustered during what was supposed to be his day of reckoning, much of his reasoning leaves a lot to be desired. The thought processes are lacking substance in a lot of the issues he spoke about. Given he is such an intelligent man. The only good thing I took away from his testimony is that he didn’t apologise and has no regrets. I really dislike people who say sorry after the fact and the un-reversible deed has already been done. If nothing else at least he didn’t stoop that low.
In the meantime George W. Bush can rest easy knowing that he has once again pwn3d Mr Blair! It’d be funny if it wasn’t so serious.
Who needs marketing when you have fans in the media?
If you’ve just come back from Mars, then you may not know that Apple launched a new gadget yesterday. Please have a good look at my browser screenshot of VentureBeat (one of my favourite tech blogs) by clicking the image on the right. It’s ridiculous and illustrates the hype that is constantly bestowed upon Apple products by the media.
It’s one thing people having an interest, but its quiet another when the media feeds our interest in Apple with such an overload of coverage. VentureBeat is by no means the most Apple-eyed blog out there (that’s why I read it). Thus it makes you wonder what the Apple-centric blogs are going through right now.
Tis’ the Cult of Mac indeed.
Jay-Z sues to protect his second-hand name. Ridiculous
Around the mid ’90s when Jay-Z decided to start a label to put his records out on, he came up with a really stupid name. Roc-A-Fella. Geddit? Rock a dude with his music? Rock a fellow?
Roc-A-Fella y'all!
That was the clever part but the name was a double entendre, the second part being from the Rockefellers. One of New York’s most entrepreneurial and wealthiest families. Something of a dynasty. I get that part too. I mean these are all things he and his business partners aspired to. What better way to pay them homage?
Except, I believe it was dumb simply because the family still exists. Maybe not with the great patriarch of old but an actual family and corporation that still operates and uses the name Rockefeller.
I guess Jay and Co would have said something like “Well it’s spelt different! We’ve spelt it hood so there’s no conflict there. They’re corporate and we’re hood. That’s what we’re about.”
Anyway Jay, Dame and Biggs brushed all this aside; did their thing; put out great music and actually made a name for Roc-A-Fella in very admirable ways. Some of them corporate, but that’s by-the-by. I can imagine them saying something like “We’re hustling, so anyway we can get it, we get it!”
Fast forward to 2010 and Jay-Z now thinks that no one should do business with any name sounding like Rock A Fella. Case in point a restaurant called Rockafella, located in Newcastle, England. The guy who owns it was recently sued for using that name. Not by David Rockefeller Sr, but Roc-A-Fella as in records. It’s one thing appropriating someone else’s name, but suing others who use a similar name as if it was your own? Ridiculous.
Rockafella restaurant. Part of the Roc-A-Fella Records Group
I know there are issues in all the music genres to do with naming, and that’s understandable. There are only so many names to go round. Freeway and Rick Ross had to take names from the same person due to the shortage. In Reggae Dancehall, which of course has a symbiotic relationship with Hip-Hop, we’re starting to hear names like Busy Signal and Voicemail. Make no mistake people, the name shortage is real. The Killers named themselves after a fake band depicted in the music video of another band. You couldn’t make it up!
The shortage is leading some to speculate that Roc-A-Fella are launching a trading market for band names. Sort of like buying and selling domain names. The premise is that if it’s good and catchy, its worth more. So you register someone else’s name as your own and 20 years down the line or more likely when your band flops, you can just trade it in. Brilliant.
However all this still doesn’t excuse Jay-Z suing that poor restaurant. Does he not realise the name is spelt different? It’s Rockafella with a K. Plus there are no Dashes. Geddit?
Starting a business without an idea. Dumb.
So I’m reading Venturebeat, which is one of my favorite blogs, and they have a Q & A with a guy called Adam D’Angelo. D’Angelo used to be the Chief Technology Officer of Facebook, their first in fact. He left some time ago and has now started a new venture called Quora. A cross between Wikipedia and Yahoo Answers. It’s a question-and-answer site with very refined incentives to get people to share specialist knowledge.
Reading the interview what stood out for me is his answer to the question “Is this what you knew you wanted to do when you left Facebook?”
D’Angelo says “I knew I wanted to start a company and I spent a lot of time thinking about it. And after several ideas, I thought that this one was the one with the most potential.”
What struck me from that statement is that it sounds like D’Angelo wanted to start a business…., didn’t have a specific thing in mind…., came up with several ideas…. and settled on this one. I don’t know, but this really doesn’t sound like the way great concepts are born.
I mean, say you’re in that looking-for-an-idea zone, and it’s been a few weeks and nothing has really come up. What do you do? Do you go back to something you thought about some time ago and add a twist to it? Do you scratch your head harder so that as that bit of dandruff falls it may just dislodge a couple of brain cells that were in the way of a great idea? Then Eureka!
"I'm taking this to the Dragon's Den. Reggae Reggae sauce has nothing on this!"
Call me old fasioned, but I believe great businesses offer services that solve a particular problem. I believe good companies are built from one of the following, though this is not an exhaustive list;
- an idea that came about because someone encountered a problem.
- a copy of a great idea that came about because someone had a problem. AKA a copy cat business. Even the most visionary people have at some point thought about doing something that been done a million times before. That tech company called Apple comes to mind.
- an opportunity to exploit a market’s lack of knowledge. For example, buying cheap electronics in one city and selling them in another.
- an opportunity to go into an under-served market. Your typical bricks and mortar businesses do this most of the time.
In any case, I don’t think most of the above come about because someone some sat down and wondered what to do! It’s like the lotto winner who sits down to think how they are going to multiply their earnings by going into business. I can’t think any significant money will be made that way, if any.
Still good luck to Quora. It seems that, without a solid problem to tackle, they need it.
