The Circle Game: Big Data & the Gutenberg Press

I've read about two pages of Nate Silver's "The Signal and the Noise" and already, my mind is blown.

Often in advertising, we look at everything we do as something that is new and hasn't been done before. Social has replaced mass marketing, T.V. commercials.. and that's a one-to-one relationship we've never seen before. Or maybe we saw that 75-100 years ago before radio ads and television ads - when the "advertising" you were primarily exposed to was the "content" you received from your store sales associate. Your one-to-one relationship was right in front of you and you could shake their hand.

Content strategy is the new, never-before, never-seen, form of digital and social marketing. Or maybe magazines and the brands that have influenced their content have just shifted to distributing their content on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. Our grandparents might remember cookbooks and recipes sponsored by Betty Crocker, but these forms of "content" are completely foreign to the digital generations of 2015.

Advertising isn't the only history that repeats itself. Silver points out in his introduction that the power of data first took hold in the 1400's, when Gutenberg invented the printing press. Suddenly, books that would have cost upwards of $20,000 a copy could now be available to the masses. Information that had literally passed hundreds of hands like a game of telephone could be distributed without error. This one invention created historical upheaval. Powers that thrived on and subsequently abused being the gatekeepers of knowledge, suddenly had formidable foes calling their bluffs. Populations questioned everything they thought they knew- from over a thousand years of teachings.

When the dust settled, Western society entered a renaissance, followed by a period of enlightenment. A way of life built on divine, unquestionable and unverifiable power nearly disappeared around the globe. All but figureheads remain.

The Gutenberg Press is a relic discussed in history classes. But the power of information is apparent to us in everything we do. When we talk about big data, we talk about consumer trends, the ability to better sell products, better know our customers, our audience and maybe our world.

But it's more profound than that. It's no surprise that the genesis story of the Western world is centered around knowledge - the symbol of Eve yanking down that apple of knowledge for Adam. Understanding our generation's Gutenberg Press is understanding the power of knowledge. We are seeing corporations, institutions and even governments fall- as knowledge of their true intentions sweep through our browsers. We are seeing communities find salvation as news of their plight enter our hearts. The rate of change is accelerating at a pace we cannot imagine. While one might turn on the news to see disturbing images of injustice that desperately need to change, I see the truth being revealed- one story at a time. These stories have already created an unprecedented amount of change, one that can't be credited to our president alone, but to an entire country of people, armed with newfound knowledge.

I'm optimistic. What's next?

Flawed Logic

I was going to write about the Garden State Plaza Mall in NJ but instead am ranting about this.So I'm sure we've all been there. You're sitting in the doctor's chair. Most likely somewhat exposed - literally. A boob threatening to peak out under your flimsy hospital gown. Trying to stay warm from the cold examination room. You tell your doctor that something is just not right and they respond with,

"Oh, sure, I'll do a test for that."

"Great," You respond with relief that whatever was ailing you will be discovered and cured.

Days later, you hear nothing from your doctor which means everything was fine. And you feel fine.

But then you get a bill from your insurance. Not covered. $675!!!

WTF ?!%$#@

So you mean if I had just waited TWO days without asking my doctor to perform any tests, I could have saved $675?!?!

You're outraged. In what universe is it okay to give someone a service of some kind only to find out afterwards what you owe? No estimate. No idea that it will even cost you money. Plumbers and contractors guilty of this are kept in check through Yelp reviews. But who keeps medical services in check?

So you call your doctor's office. Five transfers and fifteen minutes later, you get transferred to the billing department of the lab.

You have the bill in your hand that itemizes the procedure costs. Over $3,000. You have no idea what any of this means but are racking your brain trying to figure out how any of this could add up to that.

You bring this up to the billing administrator.

Her response, "It doesn't matter. We charge this to the insurance company and they adjust it. They tell us that it should be $675 because they won't pay that cost."

Your response, "So you charge them as much as you can get away with and then they adjust it to what should make sense?"

Awkward pause. I've caught the billing administrator in trying to explain the flawed logic of hospital and lab costs.

And you continue.. "So without the negotiating power of the insurance company, I'd owe $3,000."

Response, "No - well.. we'd figure something out."

You continue. "If I was getting a haircut and the hairdresser told me that I'd look good in this cut - and I said go ahead. Then his salon charged me an outrageous amount for that - beyond what he knew would happen. They wouldn't be in business anymore. In fact, it would be considered bad business. Except I'm not in a hairdresser's chair and this is my health. Potentially my life, and you're viewing me as a source of profit. How does any of this make sense? How is any of this even moral?"

At which point - you've reached a standstill because the administrator has no response. In fact, they probably even know that you're right and the system is FUBARED. And anything she says will probably incriminate her in some way.

Finally, the administrator responds with "The next time you're at the doctor, call your insurance company first and see what's covered before getting any procedure done."

You think about this. This makes sense. Okay. Then you think about it some more. To which you response, "I'm not a doctor. How would I know which tests to ask about? How would I be able to make the decision over whether or not it's worth it to get a test done or wait? How would I know if I'm making the decision between paying an extra $50 or $500? How does any of this make sense?"

You hang up the phone completely defeated - wondering why in this day in age - where the most detailed information about cost is available through a simple Google search - this still happens. And then you log on to your bank account - visualizing that $675 no longer in your account. Money that could have been used for a vacation. A month's worth of food including eating out. A payment to a school loan. But instead, it's mainly going to cover the costs of our screwed up medical system - money to maintain absurd overhead - equipment instead of doctor's intuition / patient time. High medical malpractice insurance. High administrative costs negotiating with insurance company. You are understandably distraught.

And then you contemplate moving to Canada or Europe and wondering how - with a country that has gotten so much right - they could have gotten something so wrong.

The Politics Of Taxes

As the deadline for our taxes quickly approaches, countless articles have recently been written about our archaic tax code and the politics that shape our economy. The latest issue of Business Week somehow managed to make taxes an engaging subject. Joel Stein, in an attempt to figure out the best tax preparation method, points out the ridiculousness in having to prepare our taxes ourselves.

"I don’t resent taxes for the usual reason—that government wastes my hard-earned money. No, I resent paying taxes because if the government wants my money, it should have to do the work of figuring out how much it wants. I don’t click on a book on Amazon.com and then fill out 20 pages of forms to figure out how much it will cost me, and then keep every receipt and form in case Amazon wants to make sure I got the number right five years from now. If I had to do all of that for Amazon, I’d have an even lower chance of reading Finnegans Wake."

In fact, the tax system is so complicated that when the IRS studied 46,000 audits of taxpayers in 2006, they found that 67% of the problems were unintentional errors. Even the IRS computers have trouble navigating the system; 27% of those errors were computational errors by the IRS or tax preparer. To deal with all these errors, Congress created a Taxpayer Advocate Service, overseen nationally by Nina Olson who has tirelessly fought to help foster a more trusting relationship between taxpayers and the IRS. She points out that the wait time for half of the people who have written to the IRS is more than six weeks. Not surprisingly, the 1% get special treatment even by the IRS - they're some of the only people who actually get face-to face time with the IRS if audited. Nina is looking into the psychology behind those who do not pay taxes, using data to learn what regions, jobs, income levels, etc. are more likely to pay or not pay taxes. She strongly believes the government needs to focus on innovation within the IRS.

"The IRS budget, currently $11.8 billion, has been cut each year for the past two years, resulting in a hiring freeze. “No one is willing to fund the IRS to do imaginative thinking,” she says. “The military gets funding to develop the next new weapons system. But the IRS does not get funding to sit down and say, how could we harness the iPad? How could we harness video technology to talk to the taxpayer in their home? I mean, we don’t even e-mail or text the taxpayers. We’re so far behind.”

Finally, in today's New York Times article, A Tax Code of Politics, Not Reason, Eduardo Porter points out how the complications of our tax system can attributed to compromises between the Democratic and Republican parties. Parts of the tax code that seem to charge a lot to taxpayers are actually littered with loopholes for certain groups.

"Among the 34 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, only Mexico and Chile collect less in taxes. The average across the O.E.C.D. is 9 percentage points higher."

Eduardo suggests simplifying the tax code and implementing higher consumption taxes, a suggestion supported by the vast majority of economists and a strategy that has worked in prosperous countries like Denmark and Sweden.

As usual, after reading a few articles about our archaic tax system and our economic policy shaped by people with special interests, I feel informed but helpless and also furious. Why is so much of our economic policy shaped by politicians when bi-partisan economists have quantifiable data to support their policy recommendations? Would I want an insurance company standing in for my doctor to determine my care? Both parties have managed to stand together to defeat the enemies of our country because we believe we will be stronger as a nation. Why should our economic policy be any different? What good is it to protect us from outside enemies if within our own country, we're nurturing a select few through partisan economic policies?

The Nature of Greed

We all strive for the American dream. In America, it is understood that one of our basic rights is to freely achieve success and reap the rewards of our labor. We often focus on the actual labor, education, and drive that led to, for instance, a banker's success. But along the way, this banker received government assistance or was directly effected by those who did. Perhaps the grandparent that inspired him and challenged him was on medicare. Or maybe the teachers of his public grade school were all happy members of the middle class, actually able to live a decent lifestyle that enabled them to be great teachers.At what point did we, as Americans decide that it's every man for themselves? Let's be honest, there is no proof that the trickle down theory actually works. Actually, it's fairly evident that it doesn't work given the current state of our economy. Lately I've felt so helpless and angry about the current state of our government that I contacted a friend who works in politics, asking him what to do. But unfortunately, even he was at a loss as to what the average American citizen could do. He told me that

The biggest issues of our time are the wealth gaps in the U.S. (the distance in wealth between the top 1% and the bottom, or even the middle 50% of income earners) and the explosive costs of health care, college, retirement and child care. While all of these things have gone up exponentially, middle class incomes have essentially been stagnant since 1978. The only way to deal with this is through taxation and re-distribution of some of the wealthiest American's money to provide services for the middle class, let alone the poor. Unfortunately, our elected leaders of both Parties appear unwilling to come together to work on these issues.

American corporations right now are collectively sitting on $1 trillion in liquid cash but aren't willing to spend it on hiring because of two factors: [lack of consumer demand and technology taking away jobs from humans]

In other words, the wealthy are sitting on a disproportionate, huge pile of wealth, that they are not necessarily spending in America, in ways that are NOT trickling down - while the middle class and poor are left to uncomfortably hang. Our attempts to reprimand this guy ---> and tell him to lose some weight failed. So now we need a very strong figure to swoop in and push down on the seesaw from the other end, putting the selfish bully in their place. If not, who knows what will happen? Will the guy hanging suddenly fight back with more anger and violence than the bully could have ever dreamed of? My friend pointed out that throughout history,

when wealth has stratified to the top the way it is now and unemployment has been as widespread as it currently is, there have usually been conflicts of historic proportions that have resolved it. World War II, Nazis, the fall of the Roman Empire, etc. come to mind.

So countless articles have been written about how history may repeat itself. Are we going to sit by and watch it happen? Is it already happening with the London riots? Will we head into yet another war? Or will we show that we've learned from our mistakes and have evolved beyond greed and bipartisan politics to actually care about the health of our entire nation, recognizing that we're all connected?

Web Wandering Wednesdays

Remember these? Yeah, I can't believe it's only Wednesday either. Lately I've been reading Daryl Lang's well written personal blog that touches on everything from politics and religion to personal matters. Hmm.. sounds like topics I'd be likely to bring up on a first date. He works downtown and has been closely following the controversy surrounding the "Ground Zero Mosque." Recently, he cleverly photographed establishments that are the same distance from the World Trade Center as the proposed Mosque site - a post that got picked up on Gawker, Gothamist, and the Village Voice among others. Reactions were mixed but he started a huge conversation and got us all thinking.The photos featured New Yorkers, perhaps Muslims, Christians, Jews, etc. working together and going about their daily business. But it also featured a strip club, an Irish pub, an off beating track and other establishments that Sarah Palin would no doubt deem as immoral. And that's just the beginning. The fast food joints and pizza deemed as "healthy" cohabit the space without opposition. See Daryl's original post here. And reactions to his post here.

Leave The Country?

My sister sent me a link to this article. It's fairly long but worth the read. Oh, and kind of depressing but interesting and potentially motivational. I wonder how much of it is accurate. Any thoughts? It reminded me of a posting that Jordan wrote a few weeks ago about having to figure out which hospital took her husband's insurance as he was bleeding profusely. That's completely insane and our health care system shouldn't be that way. Not to mention you already know my thoughts on balancing work and play. Personally, I don't see the point in living life and working crazy hours all in the hopes that you'll have enough money to retire and travel. What about having enough time and money to travel now? Traveling both enriches our lives with experiences and perspectives that we wouldn't have had otherwise - possibly even helping us in our jobs. And of course, taking vacations help us perform better at our jobs because we're well rested and not burnt out. That's only the beginning. Don't even get my started on the lack of availability of fresh, whole foods in this country, our factory farms, fast food joints, etc.

America – The Grim Truth 
By Lance Freeman / Jun 10  

Americans, I have some bad news for you: 

You have the worst quality of life in the developed world – by a wide margin.If you had any idea of how people really lived in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many parts of Asia, you’d be rioting in the streets calling for a better life. In fact, the average Australian or Singaporean taxi driver has a much better standard of living than the typical American white-collar worker.

I know this because I am an American, and I escaped from the prison you call home.
I have lived all around the world, in wealthy countries and poor ones, and there is only one country I would never consider living in again: The United States of America. The mere thought of it fills me with dread.

Consider this, you are the only people in the developed world without a single-payer health system. Everyone in Western Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, Singapore and New Zealand has a single-payer system. If they get sick, they can devote all their energies to getting well. If you get sick, you have to battle two things at once, your illness and the fear of financial ruin. Millions of Americans go bankrupt every year due to medical bills, and tens of thousands die each year because they have no insurance or insufficient insurance. And don’t believe for a second that rot about America having the world’s best medical care or the shortest waiting lists: I’ve been to hospitals in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Singapore, and Thailand, and every one was better than the “good” hospital I used to go to back home. The waits were shorter, the facilities more comfortable, and the doctors just as good.
This is ironic, because you need a good health system more than anyone else in the world. Why? Because your lifestyle is almost designed to make you sick.

Let’s start with your diet: Much of the beef you eat has been exposed to fecal matter in processing. Your chicken is contaminated with salmonella. Your stock animals and poultry are pumped full of growth hormones and antibiotics. In most other countries, the government would act to protect consumers from this sort of thing; in the United States, the government is bought off by industry to prevent any effective regulations or inspections. In a few years, the majority of all the produce for sale in the United States will be from genetically modified crops, thanks to the cozy relationship between Monsanto Corporation and the United States government. Worse still, due to the vast quantities of high-fructose corn syrup Americans consume, fully one-third of children born in the United States today will be diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes at some point in their lives.
Of course, it’s not just the food that’s killing you, it’s the drugs. If you show any sign of life when you’re young, they’ll put you on Ritalin. Then, when you get old enough to take a good look around, you’ll get depressed, so they’ll give you Prozac. If you’re a man, this will render you chemically impotent, so you’ll need Viagra to get it up. Meanwhile, your steady diet of trans-fat-laden food is guaranteed to give you high cholesterol, so you’ll get a prescription for Lipitor. Finally, at the end of the day, you’ll lay awake at night worrying about losing your health plan, so you’ll need Lunesta to go to sleep.

With a diet guaranteed to make you sick and a health system designed to make sure you stay that way, what you really need is a long vacation somewhere. Unfortunately, you probably can’t take one. I’ll let you in on little secret: if you go to the beaches of Thailand, the mountains of Nepal, or the coral reefs of Australia, you’ll probably be the only American in sight. And you’ll be surrounded crowds of happy Germans, French, Italians, Israelis, Scandinavians and wealthy Asians. Why? Because they’re paid well enough to afford to visit these places AND they can take vacations long enough to do so. Even if you could scrape together enough money to go to one of these incredible places, by the time you recovered from your jetlag, it would time to get on a plane and rush back to your job.
If you think I’m making this up, check the stats on average annual vacation days by country:
Finland: 44
Italy: 42
France: 39
Germany: 35
UK: 25
Japan: 18
USA: 12
The fact is, they work you like dogs in the United States. This should come as no surprise: the United States never got away from the plantation/sweat shop labor model and any real labor movement was brutally suppressed. Unless you happen to be a member of the ownership class, your options are pretty much limited to barely surviving on service-sector wages or playing musical chairs for a spot in a cubicle (a spot that will be outsourced to India next week anyway). The very best you can hope for is to get a professional degree and then milk the system for a slice of the middle-class pie. And even those who claw their way into the middle class are but one illness or job loss away from poverty. Your jobs aren’t secure. Your company has no loyalty to you. They’ll play you off against your coworkers for as long as it suits them, then they’ll get rid of you.

Of course, you don’t have any choice in the matter: the system is designed this way. In most countries in the developed world, higher education is either free or heavily subsidized; in the United States, a university degree can set you back over US$100,000. Thus, you enter the working world with a crushing debt. Forget about taking a year off to travel the world and find yourself – you’ve got to start working or watch your credit rating plummet.

If you’re “lucky,” you might even land a job good enough to qualify you for a home loan. And then you’ll spend half your working life just paying the interest on the loan – welcome to the world of American debt slavery. America has the illusion of great wealth because there’s a lot of “stuff” around, but who really owns it? In real terms, the average American is poorer than the poorest ghetto dweller in Manila, because at least they have no debts. If they want to pack up and leave, they can; if you want to leave, you can’t, because you’ve got debts to pay.

All this begs the question: Why would anyone put up with this? Ask any American and you’ll get the same answer: because America is the freest country on earth. If you believe this, I’ve got some more bad news for you: America is actually among the least free countries on earth. Your piss is tested, your emails and phone calls are monitored, your medical records are gathered, and you are never more than one stray comment away from writhing on the ground with two Taser prongs in your ass.

And that’s just physical freedom. Mentally, you are truly imprisoned. You don’t even know the degree to which you are tormented by fears of medical bankruptcy, job loss, homelessness and violent crime because you’ve never lived in a country where there is no need to worry about such things.

But it goes much deeper than mere surveillance and anxiety. The fact is, you are not free because your country has been taken over and occupied by another government. Fully 70% of your tax dollars go to the Pentagon, and the Pentagon is the real government of the United States. You are required under pain of death to pay taxes to this occupying government. If you’re from the less fortunate classes, you are also required to serve and die in their endless wars, or send your sons and daughters to do so. You have no choice in the matter: there is a socio-economic draft system in the United States that provides a steady stream of cannon fodder for the military.

If you call a life of surveillance, anxiety and ceaseless toil in the service of a government you didn’t elect “freedom,” then you and I have a very different idea of what that word means.

If there was some chance that the country could be changed, there might be reason for hope. But can you honestly look around and conclude that anything is going to change? Where would the change come from? The people? Take a good look at your compatriots: the working class in the United States has been brutally propagandized by jackals like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Members of the working class have been taught to lick the boots of their masters and then bend over for another kick in the ass. They’ve got these people so well trained that they’ll take up arms against the other half of the working class as soon as their masters give the word.

If the people cannot make a change, how about the media? Not a chance. From Fox News to the New York Times, the mass media in the United States is nothing but the public relations wing of the corporatocracy, primarily the military industrial complex. At least the citizens of the former Soviet Union knew that their news was bullshit. In America, you grow up thinking you’ve got a free media, which makes the propaganda doubly effective. If you don’t think American media is mere corporate propaganda, ask yourself the following question: have you ever heard a major American news outlet suggest that the country could fund a single-payer health system by cutting military spending?
If change can’t come from the people or the media, the only other potential source of change would be the politicians. Unfortunately, the American political process is among the most corrupt in the world. In every country on earth, one expects politicians to take bribes from the rich. But this generally happens in secret, behind the closed doors of their elite clubs. In the United States, this sort of political corruption is done in broad daylight, as part of legal, accepted, standard operating procedure. In the United States, they merely call these bribes campaign donations, political action committees and lobbyists. One can no more expect the politicians to change this system than one can expect a man to take an axe and chop his own legs out from underneath him.

No, the United States of America is not going to change for the better. The only change will be for the worse. And when I say worse, I mean much worse. As we speak, the economic system that sustained the country during the post-war years is collapsing. The United States maxed out its “credit card” sometime in 2008 and now its lenders, starting with China, are in the process of laying the foundations for a new monetary system to replace the Anglo-American “petro-dollar” system. As soon as there is a viable alternative to the US dollar, the greenback will sink like a stone.

While the United States was running up crushing levels of debt, it was also busy shipping its manufacturing jobs and white-collar jobs overseas, and letting its infrastructure fall to pieces. Meanwhile, Asian and European countries were investing in education, infrastructure and raw materials. Even if the United States tried to rebuild a real economy (as opposed to a service/financial economy) do think American workers would ever be able to compete with the workers of China or Europe? Have you ever seen a Japanese or German factory? Have you ever met a Singaporean or Chinese worker?
There are only two possible futures facing the United States, and neither one is pretty. The best case is a slow but orderly decline – essentially a continuation of what’s been happening for the last two decades. Wages will drop, unemployment will rise, Medicare and Social Security benefits will be slashed, the currency will decline in value, and the disparity of wealth will spiral out of control until the United States starts to resemble Mexico or the Philippines – tiny islands of wealth surrounded by great poverty (the country is already halfway there).

Equally likely is a sudden collapse, perhaps brought about by a rapid flight from the US dollar by creditor nations like China, Japan, Korea and the OPEC nations. A related possibility would be a default by the United States government on its vast debt. One look at the financial balance sheet of the US government should convince you how likely this is: governmental spending is skyrocketing and tax receipts are plummeting – something has to give. If either of these scenarios plays out, the resulting depression will make the present recession look like a walk in the park.

Whether the collapse is gradual or gut-wrenchingly sudden, the results will be chaos, civil strife and fascism. Let’s face it: the United States is like the former Yugoslavia – a collection of mutually antagonistic cultures united in name only. You’ve got your own version of the Taliban: right-wing Christian fundamentalists who actively loathe the idea of secular Constitutional government. You’ve got a vast intellectual underclass that has spent the last few decades soaking up Fox News and talk radio propaganda, eager to blame the collapse on Democrats, gays and immigrants. You’ve got a ruthless ownership class that will use all the means at its disposal to protect its wealth from the starving masses.

On top of all that you’ve got vast factory farms, sprawling suburbs and a truck-based shipping system, all of it entirely dependent on oil that is about to become completely unaffordable. And you’ve got guns. Lots of guns. In short: the United States is about to become a very unwholesome place to be.
Right now, the government is building fences and walls along its northern and southern borders. Right now, the government is working on a national ID system (soon to be fitted with biometric features). Right now, the government is building a surveillance state so extensive that they will be able to follow your every move, online, in the street and across borders. If you think this is just to protect you from “terrorists,” then you’re sadly mistaken. Once the shit really hits the fan, do you really think you’ll just be able to jump into the old station wagon, drive across the Canadian border and spend the rest of your days fishing and drinking Molson? No, the government is going to lock the place down. They don’t want their tax base escaping. They don’t want their “recruits” escaping. They don’t want YOU escaping.

I am not writing this to scare you. I write this to you as a friend. If you are able to read and understand what I’ve written here, then you are a member of a small minority in the United States. You are a minority in a country that has no place for you.

So what should you do?

You should leave the United States of America.

If you’re young, you’ve got plenty of choices. You can teach English in the Middle East, Asia or Europe. Or you can go to university or graduate school abroad and start building skills that will qualify you for a work visa. If you’ve already got some real work skills, you can apply to emigrate to any number of countries as a skilled immigrant. If you are older and you’ve got some savings, you can retire to a place like Costa Rica or the Philippines. If you can’t qualify for a work, student or retirement visa, don’t let that stop you – travel on a tourist visa to a country that appeals to you and talk to the expats you meet there. Whatever you do, go speak to an immigration lawyer as soon as you can. Find out exactly how to get on a path that will lead to permanent residence and eventually citizenship in the country of your choice.

You will not be alone. There are millions of Americans just like me living outside the United States. Living lives much more fulfilling, peaceful, free and abundant than we ever could have attained back home. Some of us happened upon these lives by accident – we tried a year abroad and found that we liked it – others made a conscious decision to pack up and leave for good. You’ll find us in Canada, all over Europe, in many parts of Asia, in Australia and New Zealand, and in most other countries of the globe. Do we miss our friends and family? Yes. Do we occasionally miss aspects of our former country? Yes. Do we plan on ever living again in the United States? Never. And those of us with permanent residence or citizenship can sponsor family members from back home for long-term visas in our adopted countries.

In closing, I want to remind you of something – unless you are an American Indian or a descendant of slaves, at some point your ancestors chose to leave their homeland in search of a better life. They weren’t traitors and they weren’t bad people, they just wanted a better life for themselves and their families. Isn’t it time that you continue their journey?
This article first appeared on Information Clearing House and has been reporoduced with their kind permission

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What Motivates Us

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Just watched this informative and interesting TEDTalk from TED Global 2009 by Daniel Pink, a career analyst. He discusses psychological experiments that show how participant's creativity is stifled when presented with a task that holds a high reward for achievement. Participants have tunnel vision- focusing on the reward itself versus tapping the lateral thinking needed to complete the task. On the flip side, Google or companies like Best Buy, have learned how to break away from older organizational structures and have made gains in productivity. Employees at Google can spend 20% of their "work" time doing anything they want, a time that has resulted in such blockbuster products as gmail. Best Buy doesn't have official 9-5 hours, recognizing that people have a life beyond work but are also dedicated to their jobs. And a better example, good ole Wikipedia, continues to get updated without a single paycheck to its writers.

How can we harness this information to health care reform? Reducing energy and saving the environment? Am I more likely to lose weight and maintain my health if I know doing so will have a direct, positive effect on my fellow health care pool? More so than a decrease in my insurance premium? Am I more likely to motivate others? Am I more likely to turn off the lights because it will save me a whole $3 on my next electricity bill? Or because I know that in the long run, I am contributing to the greater, environmental good.

TED itself (specifically the TED Prize) exemplifies that idea of motivation for the greater good. Thousands of people pay thousands of dollars to not only learn and network, but figure out how they can harness what they've learned for the greater good. These are people that have, for the most part, already found extreme success and wealth but want to give back.

Maybe I'm making too many connections to the study, but it's something to think about. Or maybe, it's those steep bonuses that got us into this financial mess in the first place. Would we be in this place if they thought about the bigger picture, rather than blinded by the greens?