Ben Facts

Our kids have generally been good at staying in their beds after we tuck them in.

Recently, we have been challenged. Joseph is three and a half and is just potty trained. For the last month or so, he has been getting out of bed 4-8 times a night to visit the bathroom. All parties are aware that he doesn’t have to pee that many times, but as parents, we’re basically extorted into cheering for him after he claims to have peed. So he comes to wherever we are and squeals “I peeeeeeeeeeeeed!” and then there are hugs and kisses, and a cheerful re-tucking in.

Basically, he was getting rewarded for getting out of his bed.

Emily, her body full of hormones being a week and a half away from kiddo #3, started to get stressed out about it.

So, it was time for some boundaries. Literally. The door sill of the hallway to the bedrooms and bathrooms became the border that he was not to cross. The punishment was to be that we would lock him in his room. “Locking” is to bungee the door shut so he could struggle to open it and it would make lots of noise so we could get there before he could squeeze his way out.

To rehearse punishment scenario, I had him step across the line, and I’d tell him that he crossed the line so now he was getting locked in his room, and I’d tell him that this is what happens when he steps across the line. Then, I’d put him in his room and hold the door shut until he started to make some light panic noises. I’d open the door, hold him and tell him that once he gets tucked in, he can’t cross the line, and have him tell me what happened if he crossed the line. Then, we went and had him show me where the line. Then, we brushed teeth and I had him tell me where the line was, and what would happen if he crossed the line.  

There was no doubting that he understood the situation.

Two nights in, he has not crossed that threshold. So for two nights, we’ve avoided roughly sixteen stress inducing trips to the bathroom and tucking in series. Pretty good returns on about five minutes of firm parenting.

Facebook and Twitter are excellent at giving large numbers of people forums to generate content. The next big thing will filter that content and make it more relevant and interesting to those who are looking at the conent. 

The buzz around these Social Networking applications is around the scope and size of the user base and not on what is revolutionary about what they are doing.

For a long time, when I had leisure moments to do discretionary web browsing, it would be traditional news sites. Now, I find myself drawn to Facebook to see what my contacts are up to. It is because they are essentially generating news about what they are doing and thinking about.

However, most of the content that they post is not interesting to me. There are a couple solutions that will help maintain interest in this new news source.

First, people should realize that they are creating news and think about what is news worthy and interesting. It is unlikely this will improve significantly.

The more effective solution is for filters to be created to determine what is interesting to the viewer. For this to happen, there will essentially be cross references between what the consumer is interested in and what the content generator has posted.

Without that filter, or engine finding things in common, it ends up being clutter that lowers my satisfaction with Facebook. Twitter is even worse.

But if they started tracking what I clicked on, and looking for trends there, or matching key words in their posts vs. my posts and highlighting things in common, that would be a big deal.

When this happens, it will be the next big thing. Think of it as millions of people panning for gold, but where intelligent machines start filtering out the silt from gold, but where every person panning is interested in different valuables, and where the filter knows what is valuable to each person and only giving them the results they want. That would drastically improve the value of these services.

The American economy needs to have its priorities reset. For that to happen, the economy must reset to something sustainable.

First, there must be a positive savings rate. From 2005-2008, the savings rate for the country was negative. I think this was largely due to people tapping into home equity so they could feel as rich as their six-figure house value increase made them feel. 

There seemed to be a standard of living inflation where people treated themselves to a standard of living that they could not afford.

Spending was no longer restrained by income.

For things to become stable, spending needs to return to less than income.

However, large industries have become dependent on excessive spending. They will have to fall to what a sustainable economy can support.

I’m concerned that the bailout is merely designed to slow the fall so inventories don’t create a huge fallout.

For the last year, car companies have been selling significantly less cars, but they didn’t stop making them. All those made cars are now sitting around waiting. It may be a nine month supply of cars. This means that no cars could be built for the next nine months before they started running out of supply. So, if only enough cars were made to sell what was needed, production would need to be reduced by 15% for 60 months (5 years) to make up for a nine month extra supply. However, you can’t hold 2009 model cars for five years, so the reduction in production will need to be far greater than 15%. 

This doesn’t even account for a current overestimation of demand. Say production has been 15% more than a sustainable market would demand. That would lead to more like a 40% reduction for 3 years to cover for the current access inventory, before ramping up around 2012 to what would still be 15% less than the auto production that we use now.

And that is just one industry. Housing is likely more dramatic than cars. By my estimation, the median house in the US should fall to a sustainable level of around 60% of their current values.

Industries that will likely be impacted even more are the unncessary luxuries. Like Starbucks, Ugg boots, Burberry, and overpriced boutiques everywhere. The definition of overpriced is when a product is 10X+ as expensive as a functionally identical alternative. Examples: automatic watches, women’s fashion shoes.

Those are goods that people could completely stop buying and lose no noticable utility.

When large swaths of the economy go from “What can I spend money on this week?” to “Can I avoid making this purchase?” to “What is the cheapest way I can get by with covering this need?”, there is a major adjustment in the works.

And we could see sustained losses accross the entire economy of 30% for the next four years.

But people are resourceful. There will be innovations for how to help people do more with what they currently have.

Car prices will likely drop to historic discounts as surplusses can’t be held back any longer. This will likely hit severly around May or June, when nearly a year’s supply is backed up and the new models are set to hit the showrooms. It will be an epic purge.