Let the word go out, indeed. “Those are OUR streets, and we will always be there to demonstrate… people learned a lot… we are no longer that post ideological generation, we are no longer that generation that doesn’t care… we are now the generation that will stand with everyone who’s fighting back…” They’re mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore.
15 year old Tells Establishment to Stick-it.
Coalition of Resistence National Conference 27 November 2010 Camden UK
Some things sell for not much more than they cost to make. Things like steel.
Others? They sell for high multiples of cost. Spa services, fancy ties, long haul airplane tickets, coaching, books–these are things that might cost a bunch to set up, but once the factory is rolling, the marginal cost of one more unit is really low. The challenge, then, is to find a way to get new customers without alienating the folks that have paid full price. Even better, to turn those new trial customers into loyal customers.
One of the challenges of selling to new customers cheap is that you might end up with a price shopper, someone who is always cheap, someone who will never convert into the kind of customer your high margin business needs to survive.
Priceline was a pioneer in figuring out how to isolate one customer type from another. The reason the original Priceline was so incredibly difficult to use (with blind reverse auctions, etc.) was that they wanted it that way. Anyone who was willing to through that hassle and anxiety to save $100 bucks for a ticket on Delta was clearly not someone Delta was going to have an easy time selling a regular ticket to. In other words, Jay Walker had figured out how to create a second type of air travel. One for cheapskates. The alternative to Priceline was a bus ticket or no travel at all… And Delta was fine with offloading excess seats to them, because they didn't have to worry about alienating their core customer.
Groupon is a very different thing. Here, it's not a hassle, it's the fun factor. Buying this way is exciting, you never know what's next, you do it with friends, the copy is funny, it's an adventure. As a result, many Groupon customers in fact do convert to becoming long time patrons of the place they tried, because they're not inherently cheap shoppers. When they're on Groupon they're hunting for fun. But if you offer an astonishing product and great service after they try you, they may convert into shopping with you for the long haul, not because you're a Groupon replacement, but because you bring them more than the alternatives.
And the magic basket? Tim Ferriss just finished offering more than $1600 worth of high-margin items in a basket to people who bought 30 copies of his new book. The marketing partners get trial among a group of people who are each paying more than the cost of a single item in the basket, these customers are proving they're not among the ultra-cheap. And the products are quasi-aligned, appealing to the same sort of consumer. Is there a cheaper way for one of these companies to reach this precise person? I'm not sure there is.
Imagine taking this even further and leaving out the book part. A basket of aligned items, all high margin, none from the market dominator, each holding out the possibility of future business… You could do this with an 8 pack of computer games or phone apps, or drink coupons from a dozen bars in the same town, or even clothing for guys size 38. Alex has experimented with this at Swagapalooza. I'm betting that there's quite a lot to be done in becoming this market creator/differentiator/middleman.
What's missing so far is an intelligent way to get permission, to follow up, to further organize those that do a trial and teach them and connect them so that they see a further incentive in sticking with the thing they just tried.
What's also missing is a willingness on the part of high-margin marketers to use their products and these sort of interactions as a replacement for the unmeasurable and largely ineffective lifestyle advertising they use now.
The net, once again, is making it easier to find and organize tribes of people, even for short durations. When you intersect these aligned groups with high-margin products, you can create fascinating commerce opportunities.
On the third Wednesday of every month, the nine members of an elite Wall Street society gather in Midtown Manhattan.
The men share a common goal: to protect the interests of big banks in the vast market for derivatives, one of the most profitable — and controversial — fields in finance. They also share a common secret: The details of their meetings, even their identities, have been strictly confidential.
Drawn from giants like JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the bankers form a powerful committee that helps oversee trading in derivatives, instruments which, like insurance, are used to hedge risk.
In theory, this group exists to safeguard the integrity of the multitrillion-dollar market. In practice, it also defends the dominance of the big banks.
The banks in this group, which is affiliated with a new derivatives clearinghouse, have fought to block other banks from entering the market, and they are also trying to thwart efforts to make full information on prices and fees freely available.
Phi Beta Iota: Derivatives are legalized financial crime, and a major reason why these criminal assets inflated in value seventeen times while asset-based values only went up five times during the same period addressed by William Greider in his latest book, Come Home America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country. Any government that permits derivatives trading is itself complicit in this crime against humanity.
What if the greatest scam ever perpetrated was blatantly exposed, and the US media didn’t cover it? Does that mean the scam could keep going? That’s what we are about to find out.
. . . . . . .
The Fed doled out $12.3 trillion in near-zero interest loans, using the American people as collateral, demanding nothing in return, other than a bunch of toxic assets in some cases. They only gave this money to a select group of insiders, at a time when very few had any money because all these same insiders and speculators crashed the system.Do you get that? The very people most responsible for crashing the system, were then rewarded with trillions of our dollars. This gave that select group of insiders unlimited power to seize control of assets and have unprecedented leverage over almost everything within their economies – crony capitalism on steroids.
01 Do the American people deserve to know the truth regarding the on-going war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen?
02 Could a larger questions be how can an Army private gain access to so much secret information?
03 Why is the hostility mostly directed at Assange the publisher and not our government's failure to protect classified information?
04 Are we getting our money's worth from the $80 billion dollars per year we are spending on intelligence gathering?
05 Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths? Lying us into war, or WikiLeaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?
06 If Assange can be convicted of a crime for information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the First Amendment and the independence of the Internet?
07 Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?
08 Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death, and corruption?
09 Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?
Around 60 countries worldwide are viewed as “systemically corrupt,” and with globalization multiplying the avenues by which corrupt practices cross borders and span the globe, experts are debating the nature of corruption and how to stop it.
By Robert Coalson for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)
ISN ETH Zurich 10 December 2010
EXTRACT: Systemic corruption cuts across key state institutions, runs from the top to the bottom, and is fundamentally political in nature. University of Colorado political scientist Christoph Stefes, who studies corruption in post-Soviet countries, says systemic corruption is qualitatively different from traditional notions of case-by-case malfeasance.
Phi Beta Iota: Excellent story, with $200,641 being the top funded project so far. Imagine the day when the public refuses to pay taxes but contributes to what it really wants, cutting out the carpet-bagging intermediaries. Missile defense and most Pentagon pork would NOT get funded by an informed engaged public. The game has changed.
