After settling down and coming back to reality, I began to mentally wonder about how this newfound “affordability” is going to impact our goods and services… products whose prices were raised to account for massive transportation and manufacturing costs incurred by the exponential energy price increases. Will I see the price of food go down? Will I see the price of our trash service go down which has increased by almost 25% because of “fuel surcharges?” Will I see a direct benefit by the drop in energy costs due to the drop in oil other than cheaper prices at the pump?

Highly unlikely is my guess. I’ve already seen price estimates coming from the food sector which said that food prices will remain “sticky” even with lower oil prices. What that means is that you and I will continue to pay for the increased costs associated with previously high “energy” costs incurred by manufacturing and production. Why is that so? Shouldn’t we see a drop in costs because the sellers can effectively remove all of the recently added surcharges due to oil price increases?

If the American people altered their buying habits, yes, the prices would drop. However, everything is relative. When prices first started increasing, the public was shocked and appalled at paying more money for the many staples of life. But, there was nothing we could do about it. We either pay the price or we do without. So, as a whole, we chose to pay the price. After months of “paying the price,” we have now formed a habit and a baseline of perception as to the “new” cost of products in our lives. Food costs x amount of dollars now to survive and that’s just the way it is.

It doesn’t matter that in that x amount, there is an overcharge now for the energy costs of our recent past. That x amount is not going to change according to the industry reports. Will the American public be just as shocked and appalled at not receiving the new “discounts?” Or, will we continue paying the overly inflated prices and deal with it because we are so “happy” that our fuel costs have declined so greatly? The safe bet is that we will continue to pay the higher prices because we have been trained to do so. The price of gas, for whatever reason, hordes all of the attention when things are out of control and when they return to normal, it still hordes the attention and people have a sense of relief both in their wallet and psychologically.

What we should be clamoring for is a retreat in all goods and services which have increased because of the oil prices. We should not be satisfied with gas alone dropping and thus soothing our overextended budgets temporarily. We should alter our buying habits and buy products that allow us to reclaim our “stolen” wealth and force the manufacturers who are unwilling to lower their prices on their own accord, to lower them by our purchasing habits.

That is the way it “should” be but I know it’s not the way it’s “going” to be. We will pay more or do without while enjoying our “affordable” gasoline. However, I look at it this way (with a bit of conspiracy theory thrown in). The reasons why we will not see a price decrease in most goods and services is because the manufacturers “know” that energy will be going back up in price… either due to OPEC cutting production or by the returning growth and boom of currently sluggish global economies. They “know” that oil will be heading back up the price charts and they are banking on that being soon.

Rather than “lose” some of the profits in the middle while oil has declined in value, they are going to keep their prices frozen and make a little extra and when the oil prices do return to exorbitant amounts, they will raise their “cheap” prices and make even more in the future. If you don’t believe it, you’ll believe it when oil returns to $100+ per barrel and the manufacturers once again start tacking on “energy surcharges” to compensate them for their newly increased costs of operation.

Several pundits and reporters have been giving advice that only advocates fear and will contribute towards an economic downward spiral. Along with this alarmist type reporting, we are also seeing several conspiracy theory ideas sprout up. The psyche of our nation (and world) is primed and susceptible to “game changing” arguments. By that I mean people have been pushed so close to the edge that rather than reacting with a rational response, they are reacting irrationally because they are making decisions based upon speculation and fear of the unknown.

A game changing action is exactly what our governments are trying to accomplish as we are going through these hard times. All of the major economies of the world are continually trying to reestablish confidence in the global financial markets by acting as one. They have all reduced interest rates to try and restart lending. Most governments are providing and injecting vast quantities of money into their financial industries trying to rebuild the consumer confidence in the market. Nations are spending BILLIONS trying to make a game changing event. Their goal is to remove fear from the market and replace it with the confidence we have lost.

But, with alarmist reporting and conspiracy theories running wild, these events are being undermined because of the fearful and currently irrational reactions being made by our citizens of the world. If the average citizen continues to pull money from the banking institutions, sells off their stock purchases and dumps the money into money market accounts and even cash, and even begins to purchase gold and silver and other “real” investments, our economy will pay the price. There of course needs to be a reaction to our situation, nobody will allow their investments to simply go away with blind faith in the market, but an overreaction is just as bad.

Reporting that the end is near or that we are heading for governmental collapse or telling people to horde cash, food, water, etc is alarmist reporting which preys upon the citizens fearful of the situation. While we do need to be prepared at all times for major issues which could face us in our world, we should not overreact to situations without proper knowledge.

Have you ever been in an office where one person walked in grumpy, upset, or just generally angry? How did your office’s atmosphere turn out that day? It’s pretty likely that the office’s demeanor was not happy. The appearance of a single bad mood can affect an entire office’s mood… I’ve been there, I’m sure you’ve been there. Simple example, but what we are seeing here is on a much larger scale. Alarmist reporting is the bad mood entering the office. The bad mood is infecting the collective rationale of our country and rather than going away the next day, it’s perpetuating itself into everything we do, including our decision making.

If there is concrete information supporting the claims of the alarmist reporters, then yes, we need to know it. However, if it is just opinion, then it must be tempered accordingly and we should treat it as just a potential outcome and not THE outcome. We have become a nation and world of reactionary individuals waiting with bated breath as to what next “disaster” we will be subjected to. This state of living provides the alarmist reporters a fertile ground of minds to affect and thus, can effectively create significant outcomes based upon their statements.

Do we have privacy? It’s really just a simple yes or no question. There is no gray area because either it’s true or false. You cannot have partial privacy that makes entirely no sense. Either you have total and complete privacy or none at all. So, back to the question, do we have ANY privacy? I believe we still have some minor amounts of privacy in our lives. However, even the most private place as your bedroom can be invaded without a physical intruder. The only true privacy exists in your mind. Thoughts are the only truly private function of our lives. Our world and society has ventured down the path that everything in our world is available for public consumption. Let’s go through a few examples.

Celebrities are an extreme example of the lack of privacy. Everywhere they go a few carloads of photographers are following their every move trying to find that one great photo for their career. The paparazzi have super telephoto lenses that allow them to sit on “public” property and capture the PRIVATE lives of their targets. Sure, some celebrities threaten to sue for the content of the photos because they were taken “illegally,” but how many of them come to fruition? Not many and even fewer are stricken down as illegal activities. Even if it gets that far, the damage has been done and the information has been released. You cannot put the air back in the popped balloon. Lives have been damaged and who pays the price? The targets of course pay the ultimate price with their privacy being destroyed. Do the celebrities follow the paparazzi around and take photos of their family and intimate relationships? Why do we accept this behavior just because it’s being done to celebrities? Money maybe or maybe it’s the need to see people with money in pain, or maybe it’s just a plain old voyeuristic tendency being fulfilled.

In our own lives, our privacy has diminished to a point where we cannot fully trust that we have any privacy at all. Are our phone calls recorded and tracked? Are our habits watching television being used against us? Are our purchases at the grocery store being tracked? Are our internet searches really anonymous? What exactly are those cameras doing on the stop lights? What about the cameras tracking people on the sidewalks? What about the latest technology which has cameras on billboards to track people and their habits? Some of these are within our own home, some outside. However, are any of them right or ethical? Do we really have any privacy? Have you really thought about it? I’m not trying to create a phobia of distrust towards society but privacy has almost been removed from our lives. If you speak it, someone could be listening. If you are anywhere (even inside your own home), someone could be recording you. Even if you decide to become a hermit, you are still without privacy in the way we believe it to be.

Privacy of course has been replaced with my new word, publivacy. We live in a mixture. We go about our lives knowing that we don’t truly have privacy but as long as we are not abused personally by the information gathered, we view that as acceptable. Do you care if someone knows what you bought at the grocery store? Do you care if the stop light camera has a photo of your face? Do you care if someone listens in to your phone conversation? Do you care if the broadcasting networks know your viewing habits? Do you care if someone takes pictures of you inside your house? Do you or we care? Not enough it appears or we wouldn’t have this issue to talk about. Do we care because we believe that all of this information is not directly harmful to our personal well being? How do you know that for a fact?

What this boils down to is information. Information is one of the keys to money in the current system and the future. The more information governments and corporations have, the more money they can extort from society. Let’s look at how some of this can lead to pulling more money from your wallet. All of the information they are gleaning from our lives are sent to a central database. Researches can then analyze the statistics and provide relevant information to those in power. Track where we go, what we buy, what we watch, who we talk to and then formulate a plan of control. Why do you think stores love debit and credit cards? Why do you think almost every major purchase (and a growing amount of minor purchases) you partake in requires a credit card on file or driver’s license on file, etc? Information is the key. Sure, there are still a lot of cash transactions in our world, but video surveillance is still available. What established business have you been in that doesn’t have a security camera? At least the majority of these are not tied to some centralized database, but yet, the information is there available to be retrieved. In the future, these cameras will be digital only and connected to some central storage facility. The time will come.

So what do we get out of this article other than a sickening and saddening feeling? I don’t want everyone who reads this to think that everyone is out to get them. But, I want people to understand that privacy does not exist as we previously thought. It only truly exists within our minds. The government and corporations have allowed the destruction of our privacy for the gains made possible through advanced information gathering. As we go forward, remember to keep an eye out for technologies that advance the methods of recording what we do. Watch for facial recognition cameras, microchips implanted for “medical” reasons, and digital technology of any kind that can be used for “marketing” research. The future is coming with all of the above and some are in existence already in an early stage. That cell phone you carry with a location device in it, that car with the computer chip in it, that debit card that you use, and even your Tivo at home are culprits of the destruction of our privacy. Live your life, but remember your only true privacy exists within your mind’s eye.

Personally, I have a problem with all of these books coming to fruition. Number one, they do not solve anything. Well, maybe they do solve something. They make lots of money for both the publisher and the writer. It must be great to be on the New York Times Best Seller List. Number two, the majority of these books all make it look like the writer was the one true honest person amongst the wolves and they were forced to keep their opinions secret for fear of what, being fired? People in these positions are not mindless fools, they are there for a reason and their opinions and thoughts should be readily available to those in power. Why are they there in the first place? Are they nothing more than glad handers living on the coat tails of those who hired them? I should hope not. Number three, these books all seem to come out at “important” times during the political process. They know their window of opportunity is small for such a book and they feed upon the current issues and market their book accordingly. They produce “harmful” information at key moments and hope to utilize the public’s outrage as a marketing tool for both their book and their political stances.

If you noticed above, I said the books “possibly” contained the truth. Yes, it does have the writer’s real name on it. Other than that, the truth of the matter is actually just a matter of opinion or recollection. Is it true just because you think it is? How can it be verified? Do you have recorded conversations, a document trail, or a hard drive of valuable information supporting your “tell all” accounts of what went on inside the administration? So here we are, hearing about book after book coming out through the years with a few basic purposes. The purposes of these books revolve around money first and foremost. If you don’t believe it, believe the price tag on the back of that hardcover. Another purpose of these books involves discrediting people and organizations that are in power. They utilize the current political climate to ignite their sales. They are “using” the public and they are trying to alter your thinking by releasing these books at opportune times. Political orchestrators believe they can alter a vote by media and they are right.

So we end up with this, these books are published for money, power, and political greed. Did you think they were anything different? Were they books that were written to actually try and help the political process? Were they books written to help the country heal from a tragedy? Were they books written to support their so-called friends in the tough decisions that had to be made without 20-20 hindsight? No, they were not and will never be as long as the public and media views these “memoirs” as political gold. The media feeds us the damaging information in hopes of attracting viewers. Cutting edge journalism at its finest isn’t it? The media cannot survive without polarizing issues. They have to have a catalyst to focus upon. We, the public, are not completely innocent. By allowing the media to influence our decisions, we are actually helping them move forward with their agenda.

Did you catch that word agenda? It’s a very big word. These books and the media spotlight on them are the results of a political agenda. The people writing these books are politicians by nature, that’s their job. The contacts they have accrued through the years and the strings they have acquired allow them to create their product and add to the appropriate political agenda. Here’s a simplistic view of how the idea process goes. Member X becomes part of the political administration through both his relationship and his deeds, he’s a trusted confidant. Member X does his job but one day, has something happen that creates an issue in his life. Maybe someone stepped on his toes or didn’t recognize his authority or just flat out made him mad. Now, Member X has begun an internal scoreboard, keeping a personal list of potentially damaging issues for when the time is right. Over time, as Member X sours, his time as a trusted confidant wanes. Member X is either fired or “voluntarily” resigns. Then, a few short months later, the process of a “tell-all” book comes to fruition.

Motives and the agendas they support are at the root. Member X quite possibly started his job with the concepts of helping the country, but in the end, he is helping someone, himself. He is helping his own finances by providing his version of the truth which can NEVER be proven. I have no problem with books being written to provoke new thinking or new action to be taken to make things better. But you cannot just simply write books that have no substantial evidence supporting your claims. The most recent book that came out has claims from the author that even his most trusted friends have never heard. I’m pretty sure that the people closest to me know everything of substantial importance about me and that is similar with other people’s relationships. If there is something of great importance, people tend to talk about it amongst their closest friendships. Anyone can look back in time and make claims about anything. Doing this with a political book is wrong and is the most basic way of serving the needs of an agenda and providing the media a propaganda outlet.

Motives, as stated before are money, power, and political greed. The political orchestrators are actively looking for potential authors to help satisfy their agendas. When there is money to be made, there will always be willing authors. And so the merry go round turns. We will continue to see these books published and we will continue to see the media push them down our throats. Until we focus on the real issues we are faced with, we will continue down this path. The political machines know this and they feed us with information to continually distract us. If we are worrying about the past and “he said, she said” issues, we are not worrying about where our country is going. Focus on the now and the future. Let the past be the past, there are 100 different stories about what was true anyway. Well, maybe 100 plus 1.

Notice that this decision has come from a federal appeals court. This is not the first time this action has been “thought” through. Originally, the suit was entered in 2002. It has taken 6+ FULL years to determine this case. Oh, and it was deemed unlawful by a vote of 2 to 1. Not really a resounding win. You might be wondering where I’m taking this article and what my problem with it is. Well, let me put it to you this way. I have nothing against people with physical limitations, but why did it take until the year 2002 for someone to make a case against our country’s currency stating that it was a hindrance to blind people or people who can’t see well? What prompted such action in the first place? Originally, the currency should have been created with distinguishing markings that can be felt and the problem would have been solved. Since it was not, the currency can be altered moving forward by adding a stamp to it revealing its worth. It’s not that hard of a decision to be made.

In all the years of our country, why now? Why did this story end up on the front page of CNN’s website? The suit was promoted by an agency labeled “American Council of the Blind” on behalf of two individuals. This reminds me of the vultures we have amongst us parading about as so-called lawyers. Agencies created to “protect” individual rights are usually in the game for one reason, money. Fame and power are on the heels of this goal. Are these groups trying to protect those who need it or are they using them? I believe that for every legitimate group, we have multiples of groups that are actually exploiting those in need. This issue did not warrant a lawsuit to create change. Why does everyone immediately think that to change something, we need to get our lawyers on the line and immediately start throwing around legal mumbo jumbo to create change? It’s a scare tactic. It works. It makes people back away, eventually choosing to agree because they are afraid of the monetary consequences.

One of the options for making our US Treasury lawful would be to change the sizes of our currency. How costly would that be? Why put forward an option that would basically revamp our entire paper currency that we have utilized for how many years? The simple solution is to put a stamp on the currency to differentiate the values. This would add one more process to the printing of money before it enters society rather than recreating the entire currency development. Other than that, how much time have we wasted in the courts to determine an answer to this particular suit. How many hours of the judges’ time have we wasted in finding out about this “horrendously” unlawful act. Aren’t there more worthy causes for our judges to apply their time to? I would hope so. This suit is one of the “duh” varieties. Yes, of course there needs to be a marking on paper currency so the visually impaired can understand what they have. No, it does not need a lawsuit.

How come some nice congress person didn’t come up with a simple bill requiring distinguishing markings on the currency? I’m sure it would be passed in less than a session. Of course that is if the bill wasn’t weighted down with “pork.” That’s a whole other story though. Such a simple solution could have been achieved and enacted 6 years ago at the first sign of this potential lawsuit. Not only would we have the currency already changed and in use, but we would not have wasted the time of our federal judges and spent money on lawyers researching and pushing the issue. Why does it seem that even the most simplistic idea to help someone takes such drastic measures to change something? Why do we even hear or read these kinds of headlines? It’s one thing to help people. It’s another thing to use the people in need of help.

I believe we have agencies in our society trying to nitpick at certain issues that they view as harmful. They do their research, find a potential issue, search for a few “harmed” individuals and begin their trek for notoriety. They are not trying to protect those they find. They are using them for their own purposes. There are multiple ways to create change within our society and the last resort should be the courts and lawyers. If we cannot determine rational behavior without lawyers and courts, then where are we as a society? Why do we feel the need to have a law or rule on every single little thing we do? Our country was created with freedom at its core, but yet we continue to create laws to manipulate just what freedom we have. We are rational beings and we can make proper decisions without having a lawyer present. I’m astonished that this suit reached the levels that it did. What a complete waste of our judiciary system’s time and energy.

Every time I see our federal courts wasting time, I think of how our tax dollars could have been spent more wisely. Every time I hear of agencies “protecting” groups of people in need, I think of how the group could actually be harming the very people they are trying to protect. What is the true motive behind these suits? Some are actually necessary because the” little man” can be taken advantage of by larger corporations and organizations, but the ones that involve nothing more than a rational thought should not enter the court system. Blind people of course have a hard time distinguishing the value of paper currency without any distinguishing marks. Fix it. It doesn’t take a lawsuit or 6 years to pass through our court system. If that is what it takes, then we have more broken than just our current state of the economy or oil prices. That means we have lost all rational behavior to decide things on our own without a lawyer backing us up. Can I fly my United States of America flag on July 4^th or will I offend my neighbor who refuses to salute our flag? Maybe I should contact a lawyer or civil rights agency and begin a lawsuit “protecting” my right to show my patriotism. Sounds extreme, but is it?

Citation: http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/20/news/money_blind/index.htm?cnn=yes

Since the Industrial Revolution, our world’s society has focused on being more efficient. Produce more products to serve larger quantities of people at a lower cost per part. We need to lower the cost of manufacturing to increase the profit margin per item. We need to create high volumes of goods to compensate for the skyrocketing global population. How do we achieve this? Let’s take a look at farming. Everyone needs to eat right? So theoretically, we would need lots and lots of farmers to compensate for the increased growth of people in our world. Wrong. Since the revolution, our farming community has been steadily declining to a point where they are only a small fraction of our total workforce. How can this be, don’t we need more farmers to produce our food supplies?

That in itself is the basic argument for today’s article. Our past generations were in more physically intense jobs because there was no other way to produce a product. If you were a farmer, you worked hard to grow your crop or handle your herd. If you were a laborer, you worked hard because there were no power tools to make things easier. People worked HARD in past generations. They were using physical power to accomplish their tasks. Also, what they were physically creating was used in their communities or local areas. They were serving the needs of their neighbors, their families, and their friends. People depended upon one another to complete their tasks to keep the community alive and prospering. Everyone was inherently tied together for the common good of survival.

Then, the Industrial Revolution came. A transition began which helped people accomplish their tasks easier. But with this arrival, what has it cost us? Our farming community has dropped to about 2 million workers as of this year (only a little over half earn hourly wages). Think about that, our country has surpassed 300 million people and we have 2 million farmers. Past data shows that as late as 1930’s about 25 percent of America’s population worked in agriculture. We are a far cry from that. How can we possibly feed our country let alone export food to the 6 billion plus other people in the world? As stated before, don’t we need more farmers to farm the land to feed more people? No. The onslaught of technology and advancements in machinery has greatly increased the productivity of our farming community. One farmer can now serve many more people than he could without the advancements. But, that’s not the only thing that came along to “help” the farmer.

Technology in farming, what exactly can we do to help farming with technology? Go online yourself and do a bit of research about how the chemical companies are involved in farming. Find out how the genetic research firms are interested in food. Many companies are deeply involved in agriculture by the way of producing genetically altered food sources, hormone therapy for animals, and lab created food sources for our animals and our society to eat. Well, that’s all fine and good since the FDA has approved all the sources of food that enter our stores right? I disagree. Human existence has been around for thousands of years and only until the latest 100 years or so have we seen such an influx of “man-created” food sources. Due to our needs of higher production and more mouths to feed, we have relied upon the use of technology to increase our food sources. We need more milk, let’s find a way to make a cow produce what 3 cows could do. We need more meat, let’s design a food source that packs on the weight on each cow. We need more crops, let’s design a hybrid crop that produces more products per square foot than normal. You get the idea. We alter the equation to produce more at the source.

This answers the question why we don’t need more farmers to support our growing population. We are changing the equation of production. We don’t need to farm more land, we don’t need more people to run the machinery, and we don’t need more grazing ground to support more animals. Scientists have gone the other direction. We need less land to produce more products. We need less people to run machinery. We need less grazing ground because the food is altered to be more powerful. We have used our technology to completely alter the farming community and basically made the farmer an extinct ideal. Isn’t that a good thing? Now we have more people in the workforce doing other valuable things with their skills. I’m sure farmers like having better tools and products available to them to make their lives easier. Sure, both answers are true. But again, what is this costing us?

Data shows that our life expectancy has increased greatly over the last few generations. People don’t have to beat their bodies up doing physical work and sometimes very dangerous work. We have medicine available that helps stop major illnesses and helps limit the affects of many sicknesses. We have an abundance of food so malnutrition in our country is very low. I would say the Industrial Revolution then of course helped our society even if the farming community has been decimated right? Not completely. I’m a bit skeptical, it’s my nature. Yes, people are living longer than previous generations, but has quality of life increased? Your version of quality may be different than mine. Quality is not about living longer in terms of years or having more money or having more stuff to call your own. Quality to me is living a life of value, doing what serves your purpose, loving your family, supporting your community, and living your years on earth in good health. Living longer with 20 years of deteriorated health is not quality living.

What are the affects of this scientifically altered food sources? Do we know? No. A scientist or study cannot do a study with 100% accuracy, it’s impossible. Our world’s people survived for thousands of years on unaltered sources of food. We have less than 100 years of data for our “new” food sources. Step back, take a look around you. What percentage of people that you know is in great physical shape? How often are those around you sick? How many people do you know who have either battled cancer or are battling cancer? How do you feel every day? Do you FEEL physically healthy? I’m not writing an article stating that our altered food is the source for causing cancer, but I do think there are multiple issues that tie together that increase your odds of getting sick. We are the first generations of humans living off genetically altered food. We are the first generations that are living off lab created products within our food. We are the study group for future generations. Think about that and when you are at the store buying food, think of all the man-made preservatives and genetically altered sources that are in the food you buy and eat. Is the food we eat part of our health problem?

Citation:  http://www.csrees.usda.gov/ProgViewOverview.cfm?prnum=8826

In my experience, I have found that the Internet is most valuable in two areas. The first is learning about things outside of visiting your library or looking through books at a bookstore. And the second is doing valuable product research. Yes, there are many, many other things the Internet allows us to do as individuals, but the power in these two areas cannot be defined. You have the power of millions at your fingertips. All you have to do is spend time searching, reading, and learning. What I am getting around to is a new product becoming available as we speak. It has already hit some store shelves and is soon to be in a variety of stores. This product type may not be known to some people out there depending on how technically advanced you care to be. It’s a new, cheaper blu-ray player. It is made to be an entry level player to help people begin migrating to a new format for movies. Remember DVD as it came out and everyone had their VHS players? Same thing here, blu-ray is trying to replace DVD as the standard for home movies.

There is nothing at all wrong with that. Blu-ray is a better technology as it offers more space for additional features, higher quality sound, and high-definition movie playback. It also includes the ability to connect to the Internet for content in the future (several current blu-ray players lack this function as does this current product). This leads me to the crux of this article. Funai is a Japanese company that has manufacturing plants in China. They currently build over half of the DVD players in our country. Needless to say, they know how to manufacture this product. Great, they have the capacity and know how to do it, guess we won’t have to worry about inventory being a problem. That’s not the issue either. The issue is that this company builds the product for many different brands. Brand x has the product with their label on it. Brand y has the exact same product with their label on it. They may be different colors are arranged a little nicer or have fancy boxing and maybe some other little differentiating tricks. However, the product inside is the EXACT same thing, just a different skin on it.

Still, there is nothing to worry about here. That is until you see what the stores are doing with the product. Store x has the product from brand x available for $298. Store y has the product from brand y available for $350. Store z has it available for yet another price at $325 for brand z. Why the discrepancy for the exact same product with just a different name on it? No, you aren’t buying brand name here, you are paying profit margin here. These stores know that the consumers aren’t informed and will purchase the product because it’s the cheapest blu-ray player available (cheapest other is $399). Consumers are starting to hear about blu-ray and high definition movies and now that there are a lot of high definition televisions in the households of Americans, there is a new push for blu-ray to enter the audio/video equation. Customer x walks into electronic store y, sees the new “cheaper” blu-ray player and knows its entry level and the brand is ok. Sales person pushes the product or tries to upsell the customer. Sounds normal and is. However, the customer doesn’t know they can immediately save $50 by going elsewhere.

What the stores and retailers are banking on is that the customer will not know the products are the same because they have different brand names on them. They of course rely on the fact that their store name carries with it a certain quality and thus they will pay a little more than another store because of this. The customer has not been informed adequately and the information is readily available on the Internet (it took me maybe 5 minutes to find out the information). You may say that’s fine, the customer is at fault for not doing the research. I agree to an extent but there is a point where it’s blatantly ripping people off because they basically have insider information. Your average customer is going to depend on outside information to help determine purchase decisions outside of price.

Of course this is not the only product in our stores that are like this. There are many products we buy that we can find a better deal elsewhere. But, we don’t do the research and find out. Why don’t we? Because most of us either don’t know how or don’t want to waste the time it takes to research something. The retailers know this so they continue to set pricing the way they do and continue to make higher profit margins on the same items packaged differently. We are being taken advantage of because we are allowing it. If we decided to become more educated on our product choices, we would not buy the higher priced products of course and the retailers would be forced to lower their prices or stop stocking that particular brand. The power is in our hands and the information is free and readily available.

Next time you are on the Internet, rather than just surfing around, research a product and just see what it is exactly you are spending your money on. At the very least, for any new product you buy, research about it on the Internet first. You will be greatly surprised what you find and you will be nicely surprised by how much money you can keep in your wallet. Don’t allow the retailers to take advantage of you because they lump you together with the other uneducated consumers. Take back the power and educate yourself.

Citation: http://myblurayplanet.com/

That’s all well and good and the product IW created has made them a very profitable development studio. However, CoD4 was not their first release and they were a profitable company before this particular title hit the streets. They have been profitable for quite a few years and have future game development projects already locked in. Their financial standing and outlook is great. So what’s the product rant? As I mentioned, they recently released new downloadable content for CoD4. The content was a map pack that augments their online portion of the game. It contains an additional 4 maps to go along with the included 16 maps available for online play. This gives the people who purchase the DLC the ability to play 20 different maps with other players via the internet. What’s the problem with that, what’s the big deal? Well, considering that the initial purchase price was $60, the DLC was priced at $10. That’s a fairly high percentage of cost for such a small addition of content.

You may think, so what, it’s only $10. Yeah, that’s what they depend on for you to think and agree with. So what, pick up the maps, be happy right? The initial game was purely focused on online play, the single player portion is great, but it is very short and their emphasis was for multiplayer gaming. They KNEW people would get tired of the initial online maps and be thirsty for new content. IW knew a major portion of their user base would be willing to part with an additional $10 for content to extend the game’s life. When IW released the map pack on Xbox Live, they achieved over 1 million downloads in 9 days. For an additional 4 maps, at minimum, they have gained another $10 million in revenue. This doesn’t account for the sales on the Playstation Network.

Ok, so it’s a business, they deserve to make money off their work and if people want to buy stuff, that’s ok. Sure, I’ll agree with that. However, as the consumer, you need to watch out for the simple ploy of buying something only to have to keep buying additional product to support your initial purchase. There are lots of companies out there that depend on the fact that people will continue to spend money to support a product after their initial outlay of cash. These companies are willing to sell the initial product as a lower than expected cost because they intend to reap their rewards after the sale by making it up with huge profit margin items to support the current product. Or better yet, they sell you extended warranties, upgrade kits, and all kinds of neat little accessories to extend their product.

It’s one big ploy from the outset to get people in the process and then take advantage of them after their purchase. You usually can’t take most of these products back or there are huge hurdles to jump over if you can which then deters you from doing so. Some of these products are even crippled in a minor way to promote the need to pay more for the upgrade or accessory item. What feature can we disable on a less expensive version which in the future “makes” the consumer feel the “need” to purchase an upgrade or more expensive version of the product? This is a very easy way to generate future revenue from a product line.

So what I’m ranting about is the devious natures of companies that are out to push products that they KNOW are not going to satisfy their consumer with the initial product. It’s done on purpose for the simple fact that they can almost guarantee extra revenue at a later date by limiting the feature set of the initial product. It means a company can release a non-finished product and then charge people later for the “finished” product via upgrade charges, service fees, etc. IW’s DLC is a similar charge for consumers. They knew people would be prime targets to pay a fee for additional content because they limited the single player portion to almost a tenth of what normal single player games contain. This “forced” their consumer base to pay for the additional content of the game via an upgrade. Yes, we all have choices and sometimes we even use our principles when making our choices. We should all take a look at how we are spending our money on products going forward. Determine just what you are buying. Are you buying a complete product? Are you going to be asked to pay for things that should have been included day one? Are you ok with buying a partially complete product without all of the bells and whistles of the super duper “complete” product?

Go into purchase decisions with your eyes open and don’t just assume that these companies are playing fair. They are purposely releasing unfinished products with the knowledge that the average purchaser of their product will continue to spend money down the road to satisfy their supposed needs. I’m sure there are many of you out there with examples of products and companies that fit the bill. Most likely ones you’ve bought.

Going along those lines, have you seen the price of a toothbrush skyrocket in the last 3-5 years? Have you noticed how many fake plastic credit cards enter your house through junk mail in your mailbox? Have you noticed how much plastic is being thrown away via our water bottles and other use-once products? Why aren’t the prices of all of these products forcing the market to change and charge more for them? Are they not affected by the outrageous increases in oil? I mean, the oil is in the same barrel that the gas is coming from so it’s not like they are getting some phantom discount oil. People might say well, demand for these things isn’t as high so the price is and should be lower. Let’s take that another step. If there is lower demand, then there should be lower supply to meet demand and thus less need to refine oil into plastic making ingredients. This newly available crude oil that is being utilized to generate all of these use once products could instead be turned into gasoline to help alleviate the “shortage” we have inside our borders.

Everyone knows we can’t stop driving. We also can’t all convert to hybrid vehicles or smart cars. People have jobs to drive to, people have bad weather to worry about, and people have safety concerns. Hybrid cars are few and far between and are in very limited supply. Smaller vehicles scare people away because they do not perform well in accidents on interstates. Bad weather basically disables any small vehicle in any type of inclement weather. Where does that leave us? Do we just have to succumb to the prices of oil and wither away? No, we need to start changing things we can change. We can stop buying all of the plastic one-use products and force the manufacturers to design a new product that makes more sense. We can pressure our government to initiate plans to force refineries to use more than 50% of a barrel of oil for gas and create more supply to help alleviate the demand pressures which would in turn lower the price per gallon. I’m not saying disrupt the other industries and create a fiasco in their world. What I am saying is that if you can generate some small savings, 5-10% of the barrel (about 4 gallons per barrel), you can greatly affect what is going on within our country.

I read somewhere that the US uses about 21 million barrels of oil per day, about a quarter of the entire world’s usage. That is completely insane to wrap your mind around. Are we that dependent on this product and why are we in need of it (whole other story)? So let’s work out my 5-10% savings per barrel. At 21 million barrels, that would give us roughly 84 million more gallons of gas per day of oil. At 5% it would be 42 million. Do you think 40+ million gallons of gas added to our supply, per day, would have an effect on the price at the pump? I would surely think so! So, other than taking some oil away from plastic producing, where else could we save? Jet fuel accounts for about 12% of the barrel of oil. How many flights per day do we need to go back and forth to Chicago? Seriously, do we need 20 flights a day from St. Louis to Chicago? Why can’t we make that 10? How much jet fuel would that save? Why do we have a few major airlines and 100’s of small commuter companies, all supposedly losing money? Why can’t we consolidate some of the jet fuel expenditures and save even more oil to create gasoline?

It all comes down to us. Are we willing to endure whatever gas costs because we don’t feel that we have a say in the deal? Are we willing to sit and allow companies like Exxon make record profits year after year after year (The last 3 years combined, Exxon has made in PROFIT, over $115 BILLION!!). Sure it’s an expensive venture, but seriously, after taxes and all charges, clearing $115 Billion in 3 years is flat out robbery of the public. Credit crunch this, foreclosures that, rebate checks, we keep hearing about all of the issues we are facing and yet we seem to forget where a major component of our paycheck is going. It’s going to companies like Exxon. No other company has EVER in the history of our country come even close to those profits. It’s inexcusable that we as a country have allowed a major component of our infrastructure to drive us so close to a breaking point. We are on the verge of sliding into a very long recession no matter what the Fed does with interest rates. If people don’t have money, you just can’t invent ways to make people spend something they don’t have no matter what the rates for borrowing are.

I say we need to focus on things we can change at hand. Make less trips to the store, do a lot of multitasking. Ride with family, do things together as a group. Buy less plastic or polyester items. Focus on things you can change, spread the word, and start voicing your opinion about things that could be changed to your local government officials. Everything has to start somewhere no matter how small the voice is. We cannot just sit idly by and let the oil barons rake in our hard earned dollars while we sit in nearly foreclosed houses with no health insurance and a car that barely runs. All the while, they are sitting in their penthouse with a gold mine that 20 generations of their family could live on. There is competition and then there is fair competition, somewhere along the lines, fair has left the building.

Citation: http://www.energy.ca.gov/gasoline/whats_in_barrel_oil.html

Citation: http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/01/news/companies/exxon/index.htm

So what exactly is the hubbub about then if your same antenna will work (for the most part)? Here’s the rub, older television sets without a digital tuner built into them, will not be able to translate the digital signal into video. You will have a television that equates to a very heavy living room ornament. Well that’s not a very good thing you may be thinking. The latest figures show that the government believes there are 40 million households with analog televisions. Every single analog set in those houses will stop working without a digital converter box or digital service provider signal (cable or satellite usually). That’s definitely not good! What are we going to do right? Well, the government has conveniently thought of a program to help you through this “crisis.” You are able to apply for up to 2 coupons per household worth $40 each to be used to purchase a digital converter box to convert the new digital signal into an analog one that your television can then display.

That sounds great then, not too big a deal. Well, the government expects to shell out about $1.5 billion in these coupons to satisfy the public’s need. That’s a pretty hefty sum of money, what is the government going to gain by going through all this trouble? As the title of the article includes the word spectrums, let’s talk about that. This particular spectrum is a limited resource given our state of technology. Currently, almost all of the usable frequencies are used or reserved. This leads to very limited technology growth for new types of wireless services, products, etc. Cell phones, they use this spectrum, television, they use this spectrum, radio, also uses this spectrum. I’m sure you get the idea. With all the growth over the last 50 years in what we can do wirelessly, there is a great need for more space within this spectrum. Enter the FCC and the analog television broadcasts. Analog television takes up a large amount of space in the spectrum. Migrating to digital greatly diminishes the amount of spectrum necessary to send an even much higher quality signal. Even more channels can be transmitted when digital than for a given analog signal. It is a VERY good trade-off. More channels, higher quality, less spectrum use.

Well, so let’s get this straight. Your television really won’t stop working due to the converter boxes and the antenna you have will more than likely still work so you don’t have to worry about it, and the cost of the converter box will be mostly covered by the government provided certificate. All you get in return are more channels and higher quality broadcasts. Sounds like a win for the public right? Yes, it is. We will also be treated with new services in the near future that will be using the newly found “empty” spectrum that used to contain the analog signals. What’s the real reason behind all of this? It’s not to make the consumer happy is it? Nope, that is a by-product of the true reasoning behind the migration. The government, owners of the spectrum by our laws, has auctioned off this new resource. Latest released information shows the government will receive almost $20 Billion for the purchase of the new spectrum slots. Billion! Not million.

Sad to say, but that was far less than what they expected due to some very stringent rules and regulations on some of the frequencies available. However, it’s still a pretty nice windfall for the US government. A net of about $18.5 Billion will be directly deposited into the US Treasury. The government wants new technology to enter our lives and this was the easiest and most profitable way to do it. In the end, the new services generated by the introduction of this “new” spectrum space will generate many times the $20 Billion in auction money. How? Taxes, corporate earnings, stock gains, etc. Money will be spent, development will happen, and the public will buy the new services being offered that will only exist because of the availability of this newly freed space.

So there you go…. the real reason behind the change. Money. Did you really think it would be anything different? The more you read from the adventures of my mind, the more you will see that money is almost ALWAYS the root behind any decision being made. You might say power. I say power equates to money or wealth. You might say time, yes, that’s why I said “almost.” In the rare event that someone does something out the kindness of their heart, I say take a chance to thank them, because that is a RARE occurrence and in today’s world, it is a very welcome sight. However, sometimes you can mistake kindness from someone who is actually just a wolf doing things for monetary gains. Keep your eyes open and always look for the true motive, it’s usually right there, behind the veil of deception. Be wary of anything that involves the dollar bill.

Citation: http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/digitaltv.html