Sadaam Hussein

As Josh rattled off several business-as-war metaphors, I thought of the work of Lloyd deMause at The Institute for Psychohistory. In particular, I reflected on the powerful metaphor of the Killer Woman who appears in popular culture prior to cultures launching into war. These metaphors are gels filtering the light of truth. You may be aware that something’s not quite right, but the mood is certainly colored.

In business, it feels natural to slip into aggressive language towards our competitors and our clients. Some of us slip easily into the role of crusader, sacking the infidels at all costs. If we’re lucky, someone hasn’t paid attention from the beginning. They stumble into the bad movie unfolding and ask everyone, “why are you watching this terrible shit?”

I recall a year where the company I worked for was on a wonderful run for a client flush with cash. We were expanding into new departments and ready to please. Christmas approached and managers were eager to dispose of budgets. A request came to build something like a hit piece on the client’s competitor. The idea rolled along for a while. Usually, the engineering team was the last to hear of projects, sometimes not until creative was finished. My team was were the latecomers wandering into a bad movie. To the credit of the entire team, we regretfully refused to sacrifice our integrity.

Josh says our habit of discussing business as war obscures the truth, makes us complete the mission without regard for the greater value. The new social metaphor aligns with human needs. People need relationships. They need to cooperate. We need to trust each other. We need to know our authentic selves. Without an aggressive metaphor to get in the way, we gravitate towards this type of interaction.

"Making the world more open and connected"

I heard Mark Zuckerberg say the purpose of Facebook is to encourage greater connectedness and openness between everyone. This isn’t a strategy for ending war metaphors. It’s a strategy for ending war. I heard Stefan Molyneux say that the way we end violence is through multi-generational improvement of parenting. This is the corollary to deMause’s theory that war is a symptom of child abuse.

I knew I had to write this piece when an unsolicited ad for Guy Kawasaki‘s new book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions, dropped into my inbox. He says his book “explains how to create delightful, voluntary, and mutually-beneficial relationships with people.” Ten years ago, Guy released a book called Rules For Revolutionaries.

Metaphors matter. The leading edge of our culture is using more life-affirming metaphors. I won’t ask you to execute the old metaphors. Release them. Free them to help us in other ways. Embrace the new metaphors. This is how we change the world.

• doing project management on tragically underfunded projects,
• participating in marathon executive meetings, and
• digging around a decade-old PHP/Oracle/ActionScript/Perl codebase that preferred to speak XML/XSLT to itself.

What was I doing? What should I be doing? How could I do it?

The following questions nagged at me. What was I doing? What should I be doing? And most importantly, how could I do it?

I also asked several of my close friends if they had work for me. Actually, I put it this way: find me a couple of months of work and I’ll quit my job. Two of the responded simultaneously; I suddenly had two full time gigs starting immediately. Oh boy, was I busy in Q4 2010. And one of those gigs kept going for the first two months of this year. It’s been thrilling.

Meanwhile, I took the advice of another friend to form a corporation (18INT) and build a real business. Why not? I’ve been doing the Internet consulting thing since 1997. Five years ago, I’d made it my aim to understand the operational part of the business. Having earned something like an MBA of hard knocks, I was ready to start something new.

The past five months have been relatively easy if I don’t think too hard about the intense weeks in November when I was working 10 hour days seven days a week. Now that the Facebook game I’ve been helping with is close to launch, I face perhaps my greatest challenge: signing the next big project.

This is a big challenge in a personal sense only. I’ve worked with plenty of people with a talent for selling. My personal style was to overachieve relentlessly and wait for people to ask me to work on something. I’ve learned that proactively asking how I can help works well, too. I just need to find the right part of me that delivers this request in a genuine and non-self-conscious way.

With less work in March than I prefer, I’m poised to ramp up my new business development skills. I hung out at GDC for half a day last week. I’ll be at Web 2.0 in a few weeks and at ad:tech after that. And I’ll continue to reconnect with my favorite colleagues of the past. Lastly, I hope to find the time to be more diligent in talking about what’s going on with me.

My goal is to sign enough work in 2011 that I must hire one or two full time employees. I know there’s more than enough work out there. So, how can I help you?

Since October, I’ve been working two full time gigs while also making preparations for the launch of my new company, Eighteen Intelligence Corporation. For tax reasons, the paperwork won’t be filed until January. California makes all corporations pay a minimum of $800/year in taxes, so it makes sense to start a company early in the year. I’ve been trying to work about 10-12 hours/day 7 days/week for more than a month. I’ve had to take a day off here and there to prove to my family and myself that I still exist. I see light at the end of the tunnel now, as one of the two projects is going into the bug-checking phase and should launch in a couple of weeks.

I hope the other project wraps up mid-December and leaves me a couple of weeks to enjoy the holidays. I expect to available to you help you with projects in January. How can I help you? Thanks for asking! If you’ve worked with me, you know what I’m capable of. (Horrible, isn’t it?) I’m concentrating on building Internet applications, particularly those integrated with Facebook. I’d enjoy helping you start from a requirements specification and see the project all the way through launch. I can help in a CTO-ish way to set up best practices for your team, or I can be a really fast coder who helps you make an insane deadline.

You can read more blah-blah-blah marketing stuff at the 18int.com Web site. Please contact me about any opportunities for us to work together. Thanks! And since it is the season, I should also thank a few people who’ve helped me out recently. Thanks to the BTS folks for employing me. Thanks to John Szeder for sending leads and projects my way. Thanks to everyone who’s already asked about my availability. Thanks to Kathy Marshall for accounting advice. Thanks to Jenny and Mark for the projects that enabled me to launch this adventure. And of course, thanks to Vicky and Tre and Henry for putting up with me toiling in the basement office.

Proproportions shown for illustration purposes only. Actual sizes may vary.

One of my favorite things is solving technology problems. Fortunately, I get paid for that. Unfortunately, I’d rather do more of it. Therefore, I’m putting out a call to anyone interested: if you need a fractional CTO, ask me.

My friends introduce me to other entrepreneurs and describe me as a genius. They usually skip the “evil” prefix. It’s true, I’ve been hacking around in the Web space for a long time now, and I have a few tricks to share. I tend to underestimate what I can do, so I defer to their judgment.  What I do know is how much I enjoy helping someone else figure out a tough technical problem. Lately, I’ve been thinking I’m not getting enough of that. I’ve been asking people one-by-one, and now I’m putting the question out to a wider audience. How can I help you?

One recent example is a social games company that needs help profiling their PHP scripts. That’s something I’ve had to do many times over the years. Actually, it was really important when we were coding apps in PHP3. I’ve also been offering advice to a several startups who are trying to get to an alpha version. And I’ve been helping my friend John Villarreal juice up his media business.

So I’ve landed on this concept of the fractional CTO. If you could use the services of a CTO for a day or two a month, please let me know. I’m happy to help.

“The truth hits everyone like a million atom bombs, and I can’t understand how everybody can be so calm. Time is running out and we all just sit around. So leave your message at the beep, ’cause I am leaving town.” –Leave a Message, Get Dead

Yesterday was Tax Freedom Day, although here in California it’s April 14th if you consider our higher-than-average income taxes. Divide up the days you work: the first hundred days are for the government. The balance are for you to spend on yourself, if you ignore all the other extortion you pay as sales tax or other fees.

It’s impossible to “get by” in the US now. The average family is left with $100/month after mortgage, food and health insurance, a scenario assuming no vacations and one car! So many people are out of work and leaning on government to take care of them, that 33 states are out of money to fund jobless benefits. California is at the top of the list. When income can be variable, a rational approach is to save during times of plenty to cover the lean times. Government does not work this way. Government moves by political pull and the expedient solution of the moment.

As all odds mount against any rational, moral person being able to make his way through life here, the Galt Meter tilts into the red zone. Can you imagine a meter that shows how close we are to the nightmare world described at the end of Atlas Shrugged, a doomsday clock that shows how close we are to destruction by weapons of immorality? It seems we’re now at a 53/47 split. Nearly half of us work so the other half can loaf and tell us what to do. Furthermore, the top 10% of producers pay 73% of taxes.

Mark Steyn calls tax-payers suckers, the rubes filling PT Barnum’s pockets. In fact, we are livestock. Within the system, we have little choice but to pay. You can choose self-destruction in the form of unbending resistance, or you can choose self-destruction by exchanging your soul for a whip in your hand. Disobey or obey. This dichotomy is false. The alternative is to stop participating.

The way forward is out. An incredible opportunity approaches. Statism is dead!  What was a theoretical conclusion will soon be demonstrated empirically. Because of its imminent failure, statism’s captains will lose sanction, and no longer be recognized as authority. That inspires fear and excitement, similar to jumping off a high cliff into deep water. Are you ready to swim?

References

• http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxfreedomday/
• http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=529854
• http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/08/news/economy/state_funds_jobless_benefits/index.htm
• http://www.gainspainscapital.com/index.php?view=article&id=80
• http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2010/04/galt-meter-hits-red-zone-as-half-of-all.html
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGIgOIFdnMQ&fmt=18
• http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452011876?tag=leonatkinson-20
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b6YbkG5-W4

I would like to respectfully take issue with one word in that conclusion: only. Certainly, a rollback of entitlements would slow the inevitable decline of the state, but it’s not the only way, nor the most likely. Imagine the federal government coming to a consensus such as, “we just can’t afford it right now, so we’re halting subsidies for agriculture.” That’s an unlikely fantasy. What seems more plausible is a sudden disappearance of multiple programs, and the ones who’s beneficiaries have the least pull. Realistically, you can already see this. Big corporations get giant bailouts but schools want for funding.

It seems more likely that we will find decisions to cutback left unmade but made for us thanks to the hard facts of reality. These government programs will meet their just ends, and there will certainly be strong emotional reactions, tantrums even. I’m speaking euphemistically–I won’t be surprised when there are riots.

Some of these basic services our parents and grandparents handed over to the government are necessary and desired. (Being able to drive around on pavement is nice!) When the government fails to provide them, an opportunity might be seized. Without the a gun-powered monopoly chasing entrepreneurs away, what kind of wonderful solutions can we expect? I’m not sure, but I have been considering how I might help. Is anyone else thinking about how a collapse will provide an unprecedented chance to be productive?

Paulson is quoted as saying, “There was only one way that we could reassure the markets and deal with a very significant and broad-based freezing of the credit market. There was no political calculus. It was overwhelmingly obvious.” To call the solution obvious is to insult your intelligence and bully you into not responding. It’s a great tactic if you’re selling used cars.

George Will has a brilliant piece today, in which he states “The essence of this crisis is lack of knowledge, including the inability to know who owes what to whom, and where risk resides. In such a moment, government’s speed should not vary inversely with its information.” He goes on to argue that handing over such a gigantic sum to Paulson for spending as he wishes, answering to no one, essentially creates a fourth branch of government.

This is exactly what what I was warning of in my last post, Don’t let this “crisis” be another excuse to give away your rights.

Congress has been handing over responsibility to special appointees of the executive branch for many years, which is arguably unconstitutional. Congress passed the laws that created this crisi. Congress approves the appointments of Bernanke and Paulson. Congress has failed and should be replaced unless they somehow get the guts to stop this insanity right now.

Bush has failed, too. His team has been meddling with the market and created this immediate crisis. Recall that they argued that they needed to bail out Bear Sterns in March 2008 in order to avoid what we’re going through now. Given that it hasn’t worked, why are we even considering more of the same?

I sincerely hope that our elected officials do not hand over the power and responsibility we’ve given them to these unelected, anti-thinking hucksters. I hope they wake up and realize most of us do not want a bailout for failures. What we need now is careful, thoughtful deliberation in public.  If congress chooses to fail, there should be no bailout for them either. We should sweep them all out of office.

Update: Is this crisis even a crisis at all? It’s possible that banks are simply measuring their worth according to misguided regulation. Read Maybe the Banks Are Just Counting Wrong from Saturday’s WSJ. That makes me hope there’s deadlock on this bailout plan for long enough for everyone to figure out we don’t need it.

I’m sure all the announcements have been well-covered. I haven’t gone into Google Reader yet today, but I wanted to note a few things.

• Wireless was horrible.
• That there was constant music was OK, but it was usually too loud.
• I saw Marc Canter, Robert Scoble and Mike Arrington walking around (separately), and intellectually I wanted to say hello to them…but I chickened out.
• Arrington was wearing flip flops. There’s probably a bad pun in there somewhere, but I won’t go there.
• As Mike Arrington walked by me, I suddenly reconceptualized him as human being, not a sometimes-aggravating participant of the Gillmor Gang. It made me appreciate him more.
• I am not an Arrington fanboy. I am a Steve Gillmor fanboy. I didn’t spot Steve at f8.
• There were a couple viable consultancies who help traditional agencies develop Facebook strategies. I’m going to push hard to get Clear Ink to offer those services.
• Zuckerberg’s keynote made me thirsty for (virtual) kook-aid. The goal of increasing social connections appeals to me. I’m not sure I’ve heard a tech company pitch their vision on being part of a real social movement as compared to offering me something that would be fun to have.
• Coolest company name: Shanghype.
• I’m still enjoying the idea that people in Liverpool started a fan group for me on Facebook.

What’s up with that? Isn’t it more likely that the philosophy professor would say something condescending and illogical, such as “Despite what your feeble mind might tell you, time travel must be real because we can imagine it.” The Investment banker should be saying, “In recognizing investments, timing is everything. With Custom Time, I can send that email to that Zuckerberg kid and tell him I will be helping him fund his silly dating site for college kids.”

All I’m saying is, it isn’t nice of Google to add yet another smear on businesspeople, perpetuating a false stereotype. It’s especially true since Google would not have been successful at all without the help of investment bankers. Epistemology Professors likely have had little or no impact on Google.

I’ve found that this approach applies equally well to optimizing money. For example, when you’re running a business, you have a range of expenses. Some of them are for tangible goods, some of them are for outside services and some of them are for salaries. Imagine an office with a fancy coffee maker. Everyone might think it’s a waste of money and a luxury, but the cost of that expense is likely minuscule compared to salaries. You’re usually better off figuring out how to improve efficiencies in your work process than going with cheapo amenities.

Of course, once you know how this work, you can use it deceptively. Politicians do it all the time. Watch how they talk about earmarks, or the apocryphal $100 hammer. You might agree that it’s not a good idea for a congressman to request a $1mil earmark for his wife’s employer, but even $1mil is nothing compared to the most significant costs to the U.S. budget: Social Security and Medicare. If you check the measurements, you’ll find that all the earmarks together total about 1% of the budget, which Social Security and Medicare are about a third. (Total federal spending is about $2.9tril, and Social Security plus Medicare is about $900mil).

I’m a relatively young person in my late 30s. I wonder if I’m not alone in counting on getting absolutely nothing from Social Security by the time I might need it. I’m not taking that chance. I’m saving money in a 401K plus whatever else I can beyond the annual limit of a 401K. I really wouldn’t mind if my taxes were 30% lower and I had to take responsibility for my own retirement.