Commerce – Page 179 – Public Intelligence Blog

How the sharing industry gets insurance

Sharing may sound utopian. But the sharing industry has a dark side and its name is insurance.

“Probably one of the hardest things we had to do in order to start our company was to get the insurance,” says Seth Peterson, co-founder and CEO of AllYouCanArcade.com, an arcade game rental business. Peterson says he had to call more than 100 insurance agents before he found one willing to work with him.

“Eventually what I did was I started to get my insurance license,” he says, “because I thought if no one is going to underwrite this, I’ll underwrite this myself.”

Peterson says the brokers he talked to were okay with the arcade game part of his business: “Then we would say, ‘Well, actually, though, we have these independent contractors who work for us, who fill demand across the entire United States.' And that was the point where they just freaked out.”

Continue reading “Jean Lievens: Sharing Industry Insurance Challenges”

2014/08/272014/08/26

Greg Palast: Indicting Oil Companies for Destroying New Orleans — 9.4 Million Acres of Wetlands Destroyed, Vocal Critics Destroyed Also

03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, 07 Other Atrocities, Commerce, Corruption, Government

Crime Scene – New Orleans

By Greg Palast

Tuesday, 26 August 2014

[Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans] Nine years ago this week, New Orleans drowned. Don’t you dare blame Mother Nature. Miss Katrina killed no one in this town. But it was a homicide, with nearly 2,000 dead victims. If not Katrina, who done it? Read on.

Continue reading “Greg Palast: Indicting Oil Companies for Destroying New Orleans — 9.4 Million Acres of Wetlands Destroyed, Vocal Critics Destroyed Also”

2014/08/262014/08/26

Owl: CDC Whistleblower Reveals Massive US Government – Corporate — Media Complicity in Concealing Vaccine Cause of Autism — 340% Increased Risk Documented Long Ago — Lawsuits Planned Legions of Parents Anguished

06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement, Media, Officers Call

Major CDC Cover-up on Connection of Vaccines and Autism is About to Blow Open Like Mount Vesuvius

This story about a very big cover-up on the link between vaccines and autism committed by the CDC has been making the rounds on alternative media for the last ten days. The implications to be seen in this story so far are like the loud rumblings of a volcano about to blow. But if this volcano of a cover-up does blow open very soon into the mainstream, as is most likely – since alternative media outlets have reported on massive lawsuits being planned – given the connection, in this case to African-American children, this promises to rain down on the public a greater-than-ever-before awareness of corporatist-government collusion and corruption occurring on a massive, never-seen-before scale. Until now, the identity of the CDC whistle-blower was kept a secret, but his name is now out (highlights are mine):

Continue reading “Owl: CDC Whistleblower Reveals Massive US Government – Corporate — Media Complicity in Concealing Vaccine Cause of Autism — 340% Increased Risk Documented Long Ago — Lawsuits Planned Legions of Parents Anguished”

2014/08/25

Eagle: Misery Index 2.0 – Real Unemployment, Real Income, Labor Share, Money Velocity (Charles Hugh Smith)

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government

300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

The New Misery Index

Charles Hugh Smith

The Status Quo is desperate to mask the declining fortunes of those who earn income from work, and the Misery Index 2.0 strips away the phony facade of bogus unemployment and inflation numbers.

The classic Misery Index is the sum of unemployment and inflation, though later variations have added interest rates and the relative shortfall or surplus of GDP growth.

Since the Status Quo figured out how to game unemployment and inflation to the point that these metrics are meaningless except as a meta-measure of centralized perception management, the Misery Index has lost its meaning as well.

I propose a Misery Index 2.0 of four less easily manipulated (and therefore more meaningful) metrics:

Continue reading “Eagle: Misery Index 2.0 – Real Unemployment, Real Income, Labor Share, Money Velocity (Charles Hugh Smith)”

2014/08/24

Jean Lievens: Isabelle Stengers on on user movements and systems of horizontal apprenticeship

03 Economy, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics

Isabelle Stengers on on user movements and systems of horizontal apprenticeship

Andre Ling introduces the importance of the the Belgian philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers:

“She is a truly remarkable philosopher and currently one of my favourites. While she has written some very solid books on the philosophy of science (such as The Power of Invention, Cosmopolitics, and others), her more recent books are shorter, highly accessible and powerful. The titles of her two most recent books that I especially want to share with you are:

* Capitalist Sorcery: Breaking the Spell

* Au temps des catastrophes: Resister a la barbarie qui vient (currently only available in French, but due to be translated, I am told, in open access format in English)

Continue reading “Jean Lievens: Isabelle Stengers on on user movements and systems of horizontal apprenticeship”

2014/08/212014/08/21

Jean Lievens: Factory of the Future – Internet of Things (Not Yet Rooted in Open Source Everything, True Cost Economics, or Holistic Analytics)

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics

The Factory of the Future Will Be Shaped by the Internet of Things

Andrew Dugenske, Alain Louchez

Manufacturing.net, August 2014

Around the globe, intelligent and pervasive industrial automation has been catapulted in recent years to a top national or regional priority. Known by different names, e.g., “Advanced Manufacturing”, “Smart Manufacturing”, “Industry 4.0” or “Factories of the Future” to highlight a few, these initiatives all bear the same characteristics, i.e., transforming the manufacturing process from a patchwork of isolated silos to a nimble and seamless whole fully integrated with the downstream and upstream production environment.

There is, in fact, a close link between modern manufacturing and the advent of the Internet of Things.

Continue reading “Jean Lievens: Factory of the Future – Internet of Things (Not Yet Rooted in Open Source Everything, True Cost Economics, or Holistic Analytics)”

2014/08/192014/08/18

Berto Jongman: World War III — Weapons of Mass Monetization Coming Soon — Are ISIS and BRICS Part of the Shell Game?

Civil Society, Commerce, Earth Intelligence, Government, Peace Intelligence

Order Out Of Chaos: The Doctrine That Runs The World

EXTRACT

The end result of World War I was the creation of the League of Nations and the argument that sovereignty leads to disunion and catastrophe. World War II led to the creation of the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund. I believe that a third world war is nearly upon us, one that may involve weapons of monetary destruction more so than weapons of mass destruction. Each supposed disintegration of global unity has eventually led to greater centralization, and this is something the skeptics seem to forget. The progression of crises suggests that the next war will lead to total globalization under the dominance of a minority of elitists posing as “wise men” who only wish to bring peace and harmony to the masses. In the meantime, the skeptics will continue to mindlessly debate in the face of all reason that the whole thing was a fluke, an act of random mathematical chance, leading coincidentally to the one thing the establishment rulers crave: total global totalitarian micromanagement.

Read full article.