DISQUS

It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to build something like Truemors with separate (or loosely joined) sites for lots of different cities/towns/neighbourhoods. There are all the usual concerns about accuracy and the need for real reporting, but this could cover a different niche - things that are going on around you right now and background information about them (added to the story by any user who knows of course).

This gets into an area where even now it can be almost impossible to find information online because the topic is too small for a major media organization to devote a lot of resources to - but there's still a lot of people who know about it and could share small bits of information.

I'm estimating there's a 70% probability this exists somewhere already and I just don't know about it :)

If you pay people for how long something takes it will be very hard to know how long it actually should take. Of course, paying based on a fixed result has the same problem - with knowledge workers it can be hard to know how long something will take or should take with any precision.

In general there may be a lot of people who don't care much about the results they produce, but that might be as much about the job they're doing as it is about them. My goal is to hire people who actually have an interest in doing their specific job well and then help them improve, while avoiding the "perform or die" pressure of freelance work.

If you hypothetically bought an imaginary stock in a fictitious country for $1500 when it was really worth $900-$1000, getting a 10% return would be much, much less likely than if you bought that same imaginary stock for $800. If that stock somehow went down to $700 as you waited (because the stock was being held by martians who were prone to throwing out reason and logic and selling based on emotion alone) and you bought it then, your future returns would look much better. In the very unlikely event that something like this were to happen, you might enjoy the reduction in the price because it made possible returns that you had thought weren't possible due to the (previously) high price. But that's just a story with no basis in reality :)

If you're not comfortable with investing, it's ok to just buy bonds.

Looking at single stocks? The drop in the indexes may be bigger than anything that's happened in a long time, but every year countless individual stocks perform the exact same maneuver as they run into their own problems.

It may seem wrong that it could take 11 years to get back to the same level as last year, but the long-term average 6.5% real return of stocks happened through times worse than these. When I was learning about investing last year I kept thinking "if only you could avoid all those bad days in the market you could do a lot better".

I finally got the point that if you see things that way the market will hurt you again and again, but if you accept it as part of the process you can make money. Above all, the stock market is not a smooth progression no matter where you look.

There's two important things to remember that no one wants to talk about:

- A "recovery" to last year's prices means absolutely nothing if those prices weren't based on meaningful long-term economic advantages

- The last few months may be the best thing that's happened to future returns in the last 20 years

Rationalizing a job loss as a good thing may seem extreme, but everyone has things they cling to a bit too much - maybe for some people it really is what they need. I've taken advantage of things that were forced on me to go for something better several times.

It's never been anything like being laid off... although the last time I applied for a job (2.5 years ago) I didn't hear anything back - and now I'm competing with that company to hire people.

When you're selling to other busineses the opportunities seem to be limited outside of blogging (always a good one of course) and possibly linkedin. Are there any other big ones?

It might be interesting if someone launched a social network for small service businesses - so if I've worked with John and trust him I can see who he recommends for related services.

Kiyosaki changed the way I think too but this type of idea is often taken way too far by people who have no experience (or want to sell something to those who have no experience). He makes a lot of things sound easy - and they probably are if you have years of experience in that area. If not you'll have to make a lot of mistakes first but that's the only way to get experience. Even though you have to do a lot more work than advertised and take risks somewhere, most of the things he mentions aren't too bad if you're interested in them.

The only thing I consider real passive income is investing - not trading - in something entirely controlled by other people (stocks and bonds). But there's different degrees of "earning" money.

For example, after earning money the hard way for a couple of years (and missing out on about a 1-1.5 years of entry-level salary) I'm now starting to make profits. I still have to do ongoing work to get the profit, but I'm being paid for my time and someone else's time. I'm not flipping commercial properties and buying luxury cars for "business" purposes yet but I know this is a step closer. Now that I've started down this path I can gradually offload more work while increasing my earnings and only focus on the parts that really need my attention.

A lot of people think they're above any income that's tied to ongoing work but if your "hourly rate" is doubling or better every year you really can live with it. And you can invest the profits for real passive income. Kiyosaki definitely skips over the hard but essential parts where most people give up but if you start thinking this way and you really want a different type of income you can get there, step by step.

Working until you die sounds a lot more negative then it really is. To put this another way, do you really want to save your "best" days (assuming you hate your job that much) for when your health starts to deteriorate? I haven't quite figured out how it should work, but a growing number of people are talking about "mini-retirements" when they're young(er). If you don't put off the fun for 40 years, why not extend your working years with regular breaks?

Not only that, but people who are actually in retirement keep talking about needing something to do with their lives; not everyone is made for 24-7 entertainment. Taking those two ideas together, it doesn't seem so bad to be doing something productive as long as you're capable.

Sure there's some people who buy into a high paying job with the expectation that they'll hate their life for a few years or decades, but once you've done what you need to do why not move on to something that's actually interesting? In fact if it gives you a small income after you "retire" you don't even need to stay at the hated job as long.

On the main topic: A lot of this type of material goes way overboard, but I wouldn't find it hard to believe that more people underestimate themselves than overestimate themselves so the overall message may not be that bad. On the other hand a lot of people "want" something as long as they don't have to do anything to get it - probably because it wouldn't mean that much to them if they did get it.

Jim brings up the obvious - a corporation that's losing money doesn't have to compound the problem by paying taxes, and (fortunately) there's not too many instances where the people who end up getting the money are taxed twice on the way. While the system could be more or less "fair" based on these fundamental rules, it seems like a fair compensation for the risk taken.

In fact, this is available to anyone - if someone loses their manufacturing job they can become self-employed and claim business expenses to reduce their net income. If they're losing money they won't have to pay any taxes either. Of course if you net income for the year is actually negative a little tax break will be a small comfort, but the same can be said of any corporation.

There should be a simple basis for the decisions - people want to find what they're looking for when they do a search. In the same way that internet marketers (some) try to create more useful content to attract lasting search traffic while improving the quality of the results in their niche, Google should be adjusting the results (if they do) based on helping the user. They won't implode the minute they forget this but so far they've been doing it pretty well and it has pushed them higher - that can easily be reversed.

I'm not sure how to see a threat here. Yes Google is taking on an increasing number of competitors, but Hotmail could have told you that long ago (I'm now a gmail user so I don't think that went too badly).

One potential danger is if the Knol pages get better treatment in the search rankings, but Google may have started that way because they believe the can influence the content enough to keep it clean. If the first page of google results starts to fill up with spam they'll have a hard time competing with anyone on anything for long.

As an aside, I wonder what completes the sequence "forgotten", "spam-filled", "flawed-but-fascinating"...