Confessions of a Public Speaker

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While there is a plethora of books such as Public Speaking for Dummies, and many similar titles; Confessions of a Public Speaker is unique in that it takes a holistic approach to the art and science of public speaking. The books doesn't just provide helpful hints, it attempts to make the speaker, and their associated presentation, compelling and necessary. Confessions is Scott Berkun's first-hand account of his many years of public speaking, teaching and television appearances. In the book, he shares his successes, failures, and many frustrating experiences, in the hope that the reader will be a better speaker for it.

An issue with many books on public speaking is that they focus on the mechanics of public speaking. While there is nothing necessarily wrong with that approach, Confessions takes a much deeper and analytical look at public speaking. The book demonstrates that the best public speakers are not simply people with fancy PowerPoint's; rather they are excellent communicators with a strong message.

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

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Bamboo Bikes As A Business

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http://bamboobikestudio.com/

Shoppers at Urban Outfitters can already design their own bikes in a rainbow of colours, but a new venture in Brooklyn takes that notion a step further. At Bamboo Bike Studio, customers actually build their own bamboo bicycles by hand through the company's guided weekend workshops.

Bamboo is "a renewable and performance-positive material growing right in our backyard," as the studio puts it, and it's stronger, lighter and easier to work with than steel. In Bamboo Bike Studio's weekend workshops, expert bicycle builders lead consumers through the process of assembling their own custom-fitted ride. On Saturday they begin by selecting an ideal mix of bamboo for comfort, strength and speed, then choose a geometry that fits their body and riding style.

Next, they learn to use hand tools and the studio's antique drill press to turn seven pieces of bamboo into their bicycle’s frame. After lunch, they choose a fabric to join and lash their frame together. On Sunday they put their component package—pedals, chain, wheels and handlebars—on their frame. After learning a few basic maintenance techniques and a final safety check, they're ready to ride. Tuition for full bike weekend workshops is USD 932; for customers with their own components, a frame-only weekend workshop is priced at USD 632.

All proceeds directly support Bamboo Bike Studio’s collaboration with the Columbia University Earth Institute-based Bamboo Bike Project and the Millennium Cities Initiative to seed the first bamboo bike factories in developing countries.

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

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How to profit from complaints

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http://www.stellaandchewys.com/

(Fortune Small Business) -- Obstinacy can push an entrepreneur to persevere when any sane person would quit. But obstinacy can also kill your business if it keeps you in denial.

Because I am obstinate, I pursued my dream of creating a premium pet-food company that sells what it claims to sell and not some unidentifiable substance in a dressed-up bag. Stella & Chewy's ingredients include organic fruits and vegetables and meats that are free of antibiotics and hormones.

Originally we packaged our foods in transparent bags. In fact, transparency became our guiding philosophy. Today we offer open plant tours, publish our meat sources and test every batch of food for salmonella and E. coli using codes that can match each bag to its lab result online.

To launch the company in 2003, I pounded the pavement, visiting every pet-food store in Manhattan -- where I lived then -- and some outside the city. By 2006 Stella & Chewy's was sold in 250 stores, mostly in New York City. In 2007 I moved the company to Muskego, Wis., where I opened a manufacturing plant. That year our revenues were almost $500,000.

But getting my product into stores was just the beginning: I then had to persuade pet owners to buy it. We were competing against much bigger pet-food companies whose monthly marketing budgets dwarfed our annual sales. So we invested in brochures and a Webs ite and even stood on sidewalks distributing samples. Eventually we developed a loyal following.

With more customers came more feedback -- much of which I dismissed. Your dog doesn't eat lamb? He's allergic to blueberries? You hate the name Stella & Chewy's? You're concerned about where the cows sleep? We responded diplomatically to these concerns. Still, my gut told me that I knew what was best for my company.

I was also fielding complaints about ice crystals on the food. Ice crystals form when the air temperature changes. Practically every frozen food item develops ice crystals by the time it hits the retail store because of slight temperature changes during transport. For this reason, most frozen foods are packaged in opaque bags or boxes. Studies have proved that ice crystals have little, if any, effect on either the quality or the taste of the food. Basically, there's nothing wrong with a little ice.

So I ignored the complaints. After all, I told myself, we were better than competitors that wouldn't even reveal their products. We weren't hiding anything.

In 2007, the popularity of frozen pet food soared after some of the bigger American pet-food manufacturers issued recalls. Some of their products had been contaminated by melamine, a chemical found in an ingredient many of those companies imported from China. Thousands of dogs and cats died from the tainted food, so consumers sought smaller pet-food vendors that they hoped would have better control over their ingredients. Suddenly we had more competition.

Our sales kept growing, but not as fast as those of our rivals. Retailers told me that consumers who were new to the frozen pet-food category -- crucial customers for sales growth -- were choosing products packaged in opaque bags. Hearing this over the phone from a store employee or from the occasional customer was one thing.

However, when I visited the stores and forced myself to consider my product objectively, I had to agree: The ice crystals undercut the look I wanted. The food didn't appear fresh; it looked as if a blizzard had hit the inside of the bag.

We switched to opaque bags and overhauled our in-plant freezers so that the food would freeze faster, resulting in smaller ice crystals. Customers responded: In 2009 Stella & Chewy's was sold in 2,500 stores across the country. Annual revenues should exceed $5 million this year.

Today we can afford to use consumer focus groups. It's tough to sit behind a one-way mirror and listen to people criticize the brand. "Is this a treat or a meal? Why no pictures of cats on the bag? Why does Stella [one of my dogs] look like a Cyclops on the logo?"

But now I take a deep breath and remember that the critics might just be right.

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

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Christmas Decorating As Business

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The following is an excerpt from the book, Tinsel by Hank Stuever.

Tammie, who most of the year is one of those mothers devoted to her children’s success in school, maintains a business on the side: She does people’s Christmas decorating for them, because they no longer want to do it themselves. She charges by the hour. It’s not that she needs the money. It’s that Christmas needs her.

It is still well before Thanksgiving, but Tammie is already booked to do one or two houses per day, six days a week. Her last job can be squeezed in as late as Dec. 11 or 12. (There would be something seriously wrong with a woman in these suburbs to not, as Tammie puts it, “have her Christmas up” by the 12th.) The jobs in her clients’ homes take anywhere from a few hours—she’ll charge $400 or so to do the living room only—to 14-hour marathon efforts to fully decorate several rooms in one of those 6,000-square-foot Hummer houses, those red brick or limestone-covered mini-castles with Rapunzel-ready turrets in front. On these big jobs, Tammie recruits mercenary elves (her friends, usually), charging the client $1,200.

Tammie recognizes opportunity in another woman’s meltdown moments. Her clients eventually tell me about how overwhelmed and helpless they felt until Tammie arrived in their lives. The sheer size of their dream houses got the best of them. On a first consultation, Tammie has a new client drag out all her cardboard boxes and Rubbermaid tubs of Christmases past from spare closets, extra bedrooms, garages, and walk-in attics. These spaces are usually filled to bursting with the signs of full-blown affluenza: never-ridden bikes and hardly trod treadmills, abandoned lamps, vases, pots, boxes and boxes marked “keepsakes.”

Tammie will take a long look at the Christmas junk, zeroing in first on the key item: What condition is the family’s artificial tree in? (Tammie’s rule on prelit Christmas trees is that anything less than 100 lights per foot isn’t worth assembling.) Next, she wants to know what the client had been doing on her front door, porch area, and foyer. (A wreath? Of greenery or of decorative twigs? Ribbons?) What sort of Nativity scenes does she own? (This is also Tammie’s way to ascertain, if she does not already know, the degree to which the house is, in her words, “Christ-centered.”) What objects should go in the kitchen? How to decorate the dining room table, sideboard, and chairs? What rooms upstairs will need decorating, e.g., auxiliary trees? How does the client feel about a tree in the master bedroom?

I ask Tammie if anybody has a real tree, or if she ever uses real greenery on the mantel. Almost never, she answers bluntly. None of it is real. She tells me to underline this one fact in my notes: Fake is okay here. “Absolutely,” she says. “Fake is okay here. Diamond earrings. Christmas trees. If you want me to prove that fake is okay here, let’s you and I go to the Stonebriar Country Club pool one day and check everyone out. You will see that fake is okay here.”

Many times a client will just shrug when Tammie asks her questions. They tell her to do it all, signing off on a Tammie shopping spree. “Those are the ones who want to go off to work or wherever and come home and have it all done and looking fantastic,” she says, “and they just want to write you the check.” Which is fine with Tammie. It accommodates her idea that she is working magic.

This was an excerpt from the book, Tinsel by Hank Stuever.

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The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

Weekend Entrepreneur: 101 Great Ways to Earn Extra Cash

The Perfect Business

eBay 101: Selling on eBay For Part-time or Full-time Income, Beginner to PowerSeller in 90 Days

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The Little Company That Could

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http://www.woodentrain.com/

Surrounded by shelves stocked with 180 different wooden train cars, Sandy Oliver boxes orders at Whittle Shortline Railroad in New London, Mo. (pop. 1,001). Then she stops and picks up a bright blue replica of The Little Engine That Could.

"This is my favorite. I think it has personality," says Oliver, 48, about the beloved storybook character whose positive attitude and "I think I can" spirit help him conquer a mighty hill.

Owner Mike Whitworth, 61, likewise has a soft spot for The Little Engine That Could. The engine powered his little company into the national toy market in 2007 after more than a million Thomas the Tank Engine trains, made in China, were recalled because they were coated with lead-based paint. When parents began shopping for safe wooden trains made in the United States, they found Whittle Shortline Railroad.

"Our sales tripled in 30 days," says Whitworth, recalling how demand for his wooden trains skyrocketed. "We sold out. We had nothing left."

Since then, Whittle Shortline Railroad has steadily chugged ahead, even after the Mississippi River flooded its manufacturing plant in Louisiana, Mo. (pop. 3,863), in June 2008, prompting the company to relocate 30 miles north to New London. When production was suspended for a month, Whitworth continued to pay his employees.

But nothing about the little toy company is as surprising as its accidental origin. In 1994, Whitworth's wife, Pat, 61, gave him a Sears miter saw for a Christmas gift in hopes that he would make crown molding for their house. When the box sat unopened for two years and she threatened to return the saw, Whitworth set it up in his garage and began building wooden trains.

"The neighborhood kids would come by and I'd give them away," he recalls.

Word soon spread about Whitworth's handmade hardwood trains, and orders began rolling in from merchants and companies, including Amtrak. In 1999, Whitworth bought the 1880 Frisco Hotel in Valley Park, Mo. (pop. 6,518), and opened a retail store and offices for his toy company.

Like The Little Engine That Could, the former U.S. Air Force pilot and designer of mail-sorting machines for the U.S. Postal Service embarked on another challenge earlier this year. He invested more than $1 million in equipment to manufacture wooden puzzles, including a line of multi-layered puzzles.

"Nobody wanted to give me a loan, and I had to go to literally nine different banks to get small loans," Whitworth says.

His American Puzzle Co. now produces its own designs, plus George Luck Puzzles that previously were manufactured in China. "We're actually bringing jobs back here," Whitworth says.

Today, 30 employees craft the wooden puzzles, trains and trucks—cutting, sanding, painting, printing and applying decals to make the American-made toys, which are sold at 500 stores nationwide. The company has licensing agreements with nearly every major railroad, including Burlington Northern and Union Pacific. Employees gather around tables for "buffing parties" to hand sand each vehicle.

"Mike doesn't mind the investment of time," says Eric Brown, 43, who especially enjoys creating the colorful, finely detailed puzzles, which include up to seven layers of pieces.

One multi-dimensional puzzle depicts a toy box with layers of vintage trucks and planes, and another reveals a child's tea party behind a garden gate. The birch wood puzzles are laser cut, polished, sealed and printed in
permanent ink.

"We call them puzzles, but they're really works of art that come apart," Whitworth says. "They're simply the
best there is."

His little toy company's sales are projected to total $1.5 million this year, and Whitworth hopes to double his work force by spring.

Like The Little Engine That Could, Whitworth remains optimistic about the future and his company's American-made toys.

"I've never lost sight of our customer," he says in explaining his company's success. "It's a little kid who's going to chew on the toy."


If you like unusual business stories, read how I made a fortune picking cool domain names for other people.


The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

Weekend Entrepreneur: 101 Great Ways to Earn Extra Cash

The Perfect Business

eBay 101: Selling on eBay For Part-time or Full-time Income, Beginner to PowerSeller in 90 Days

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

America's Best Young Entrepreneurs - Joanna Van Vleck

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http://www.trunkclub.com/

What It Does: Online clothes shopping service for men
Founder: Joanna Van Vleck, 26
Web Site: www.trunkclub.com/
Based: Bend, Ore.

When Joanna Van Vleck graduated from the University of Oregon in 2005 with degrees in psychology and business, she worked as a style consultant, taking men and women clothes shopping. No surprise here—most men disliked shopping but enjoyed the new duds. So Van Vleck decided the shopping process should be turned on its head. Instead of accompanying men to the shops, she would take the shopping to them. In January 2008, she opened a location she describes as a "swanky man hang-out spot," where hesitant shoppers were sized up and regaled with advice and brand-name picks. Within a month of opening, an angel investor approached her and offered to commit $500,000 to expanding the concept to other locations. But after Bear Stearns failed that March, he changed his mind.

Convinced her idea had potential, Van Vleck searched for another source of funding. During a meeting via Webcam with a new would-be investor, Van Vleck decided to shift gears. Instead of opening physical locations, she would operate the business virtually, using Webcams to meet with clients, assess their needs, and then ship a box of clothing to them. Clients would only pay for items they liked. With zero retail experience, she launched the site in November 2008, buying marked brands wholesale from suppliers and selling them retail. Trunk Club now has six employees, 36 independent contractors who work as fashion consultants remotely, and around 2,000 members. Van Vleck says the company is close to breaking even and is on track for $2.3 million to $2.5 million in revenue in 2009. She expects to close her first venture capital round with a Bay Area firm within a month.

If you like unusual business stories, read how I made a fortune picking cool domain names for other people.


The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

Weekend Entrepreneur: 101 Great Ways to Earn Extra Cash

The Perfect Business

eBay 101: Selling on eBay For Part-time or Full-time Income, Beginner to PowerSeller in 90 Days

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

How To Cash Your Creativity In

http://www.pickydomains.com/

PickyDomains.Com is a perfect example of how to turn one’s talent into a profitable business. With ever expanding Internet and tens of millions existing websites, finding an available domain name that’s not already taken by cybersquatters can be a real nightmare.

But one man’s problem is another man’s solution. Rather than to shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars for a domain name on the aftermarket, an increasing number of web entrepreneurs turn to professional “domain namers”.

While most naming agencies charge a non-refundable fee that can be as high as $1500 for a corporate domain, one service that unites 17 professional domain namers from countries like United States, Russia, Australia and New Zealand, decided to offer a risk-free service that costs only 50 dollars per domain.

After 50 dollars are deposited, clients start getting a list of available domain names via e-mail for a period of 30 days. If they see a domain they like, they register it and notify the service about domain acquired. The individual, who came up with the name, gets $25, the other half going to the service. If no domain is registered, the money is refunded in full.

While the idea is brainlessly simple, it appears that PickyDomains.Com has no competition with its risk-free business model. But that is almost certain to change as more people find out that finding available domain names for other people can be a profitable business.

Domain Names: How to Choose & Protect a Great Name for Your Website

The Domain Game

I've Got a Domain Name--Now What???: A Practical Guide to Building a Website and Web Presence

BuyABeerCompany.Com Story

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http://www.buyabeercompany.com/

BuyABeerCompany.com presents the most ambitious crowdsourcing effort yet: USD 300,000,000 for the Pabst Brewing Co. The 165-year-old firm, third-largest beer company in the US (going by 2008 sales), was originally sent to market by the IRS in 2000 as tax laws would not permit ownership by the non-profit Kalmanovitz Charitable Foundation. Failure to meet the 2005 sales deadline saw it extended to 2010. With this deadline now imminent, two US ad agencies are ringing the bell for last orders from the beer-drinking crowd.

Hollywood-based Forza Migliozzi and New York's The Ad Store are the two firms behind the venture. They're asking (legal-age) fans of Pabst's 25 brands to pledge between USD 5 and 250,000 each towards acquisition of the company. Money will only be accepted if the full purchase amount is reached, at which point all contributors will get "a crowdsourced certificate of ownership as well as enough beer to match their pledge".

While BeerBankRoll promised the crowd control over the business plan for a pub and brewery, no crowdsourcing of decisions is mentioned on the BuyABeerCompany website (in fact, Pabst owns brands and outsources brewing to MillerCoors). Still, if figures on the website can be trusted the idea is going down like a cold beer on a sunny day—over USD 11 million has been raised. It could be that fans of the cheap-but-hip Pabst Blue Ribbon are just the crowd to go for community ownership, though whether 60 million will stump up five dollars each remains to be seen.

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

America's Best Young Entrepreneurs - Sam Lessin, 26

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http://drop.io/

Sam Lessin was working on leveraged buyouts at Bain & Co. when he and co-worker Darshan Somashekar noticed how difficult it was to share media files securely in private with clients or outside companies, even as sites like YouTube and Flickr made public file-sharing a snap. "Why is it so easy to publicly share stuff and so hard to privately share stuff?" says Lessin, a Harvard grad. The pair left in August 2007 to found Drop.io to solve the problem. They had a prototype working in six weeks, and raised $4 million in venture funding in early 2008. (Somashekar, who is 25, left the company shortly after co-founding it.)

Drop.io lets users create an online "drop" where they can place media files like audio, video, or documents. They control how it can be accessed (with a password or a paywall, for example), published through an RSS feed, or even made available to other users in real time. Users can even call a number assigned to the drop and leave a message that will appear online as an MP3 file. Individual users can sign up for a free version, but the premium Drop.io service ranges from $10 a year and $100 a month, or higher for more involved custom applications. Last month, Yahoo Mail started using Drop.io to let users send large files of up to 100 megabytes. The company now has 12 employees. Lessin says Drop.io has millions of users each month, with 1% to 5% using paid services. Revenue in 2009 is up 500% so far from the same period last year, he says.

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

Smart Medical Consumer - Don't Mess With Banu Ozden

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http://www.smartmedicalconsumer.com/

Some people you just shouldn't mess with. When Turkish-born Banu Ozden couldn't get a straight answer from her health insurance company about treatment costs after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, she got mad. And she got madder still as she went through treatment and received myriad bills filled with unintelligible codes and statements that didn't accurately reflect what she owed. When she finally sorted through the mess, she discovered that she had overpaid by about $4,000.

Instead of simply complaining, Ozden, 44, decided to get even. Formerly a computer science professor at the University of Southern California and director of computing systems research at Bell Labs, Ozden built a medical-billing management service designed for fellow patients. Her Web biz, Smart Medical Consumer, launched in January 2007, with $380,000 from angels. The New York-based company has spent no money on marketing but already has 1,000-some registered users who upload their confidential claims and invoices.

Smart Medical Consumer plans to make money by selling ads to medical and pharmaceutical companies. Though Banu continues to undergo cancer treatment, she says she feels healthy and plays tennis when she can and would like to get back into windsurfing.


For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

Unusual Business Ideas That Work

http://www.pickydomains.com/

PickyDomains.Com is a perfect example of how to turn one’s talent into a profitable business. With ever expanding Internet and tens of millions existing websites, finding an available domain name that’s not already taken by cybersquatters can be a real nightmare.

But one man’s problem is another man’s solution. Rather than to shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars for a domain name on the aftermarket, an increasing number of web entrepreneurs turn to professional “domain namers”.

While most naming agencies charge a non-refundable fee that can be as high as $1500 for a corporate domain, one service that unites 17 professional domain namers from countries like United States, Russia, Australia and New Zealand, decided to offer a risk-free service that costs only 50 dollars per domain.

After 50 dollars are deposited, clients start getting a list of available domain names via e-mail for a period of 30 days. If they see a domain they like, they register it and notify the service about domain acquired. The individual, who came up with the name, gets $25, the other half going to the service. If no domain is registered, the money is refunded in full.

While the idea is brainlessly simple, it appears that PickyDomains.Com has no competition with its risk-free business model. But that is almost certain to change as more people find out that finding available domain names for other people can be a profitable business.

Domain Names: How to Choose & Protect a Great Name for Your Website

The Domain Game

I've Got a Domain Name--Now What???: A Practical Guide to Building a Website and Web Presence

Profiting From Locavores

Link of the day - I will pay you $25, if you come up with a cool domain name for me.

http://www.localdirt.com/

Few would dispute the benefits of eating locally grown food, both for the environment and for human health. Access is the challenge, which is why we've seen such goods sold in vending machines, delivered by bicycle and packed in five-dollar bags for commuters. The latest spotting? Local Dirt, a Wisconsin-based site that connects buyers and sellers of locally grown food nationwide.

Farmers and other vendors begin by creating a profile page to promote their produce, as well as listing the quantities and prices of the products they have to sell. Individual and organizational buyers can then search for local food sellers and products in their area—searching by address, ZIP code or via map—and browsing the listings of those near them. Once they've found something they like, buyers can order food for pick-up at farmers' markets or farms. A purchase order is automatically generated and mailed to them for use in picking up the food and paying the seller. Listing, ordering and bidding on items in Local Dirt is free; yearly memberships for more sophisticated features—such as wholesale capabilities—begin at USD 360.

Whether it's by bringing the food to the consumers or the consumers to the food, there's no doubt the resulting boost for local food consumption is a win-win for everyone—and the planet. One to emulate in your neck of the food-producing woods...?

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Gutterball 2 Review

Doc Regenerator Review

Cryptainer Review

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Drive-By Money

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http://www.shotspotter.com/

Police surveillance cameras can make civil libertarians queasy. But what if cops could listen for dangerous crime instead of watching?

Enter ShotSpotter, a Mountain View, Calif., company that has installed microphones on telephone poles in 45 cities and counties across the U.S. with few complaints from local citizens.

ShotSpotter monitors only one thing: gunshots. Its microphones can detect a gunshot from a mile or more away. The system determines the exact location of each shot using triangulation and wirelessly transmits a recording of the sound to police dispatchers. Today ShotSpotter monitors about 125 square miles with 900,000 inhabitants and charges $25,000 per square mile of coverage. The company is expanding, with 50 employees and counting.

The system was installed in San Francisco late last year as part of a crime-fighting initiative. Since the beginning of the year, the city's homicide rate has dropped 50%.

According to the San Francisco Police Department, the microphones have already had a deterrent effect. "There's an understanding within the criminal element of the technology, and I think that's causing incidents to decrease," says Lt. Mikail Ali, who oversees monitoring of the two-square-mile area covered.

CEO James Beldock, 34, who took over the company from scientist founder Robert Showen in 2004, was struggling with anemic growth until he acquired a small wireless company in 2005. That let ShotSpotter lose the cumbersome telephone wiring required by earlier versions of the technology.

ShotSpotter's clients include the U.S. Army, which has been testing the system in Iraq. As a result, the Commerce Department classified the microphones as military munitions, which meant that they couldn't be exported. But Beldock fought back, spending roughly $500,000 on lawyers and consultants. "Night-vision goggles went through the same thing 15 years ago," he shrugs.

It paid off: ShotSpotter won the right to pitch its product to police chiefs around the world. Its first target: Brazil, another country with a history of major gun violence.

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

5 Totally Weird Business Stories From A Few Years Ago

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1. How Sigmund Freud Helped A Man Sell Couches Worth Thousands Of Dollars

Psychoanalysis, the treatment originated by Sigmund Freud more than a century ago that requires patients to lie on a couch and say whatever comes to mind, has been battered in recent years by everything from antidepressants to skepticism to managed care that doesn't pay for such long-term therapy. So who in his right mind would want to launch a company that makes psychoanalytic couches?

2. How To Make $4 Million A Year In Sales With An Ugly Website.

Joel Boblit parlayed nostalgia for his childhood toys into big-time business when he discovered how much Transformers--robot action figures whose popularity has continued since the 1980s--were being sold for online. He launched BigBadToyStore.com in 1999 shortly after graduating college, while he was reliving fond memories of trading his favorite childhood toys--GI Joe, Masters of the Universe and Transformers. The biggest challenge in those early days? Boblit admits: "Being teased by my friends."

3. How Knitted Thongs Helped A Couple To Launch Fashion Business

With so much competition nowadays, a small business needs to create buzz and excitement to survive. That’s exactly what Vicky Prazdnik and Lori Mozzone did in their startup fashion business Curliegirl. The duo designs and creates crocheted and knitted hats, bags and scarves, but it was their sexy crocheted cotton thong underwear products that got them lots of attention at the start!

4. Bad Fishing Trip Makes A Florida Man Rich

Great business ideas often come from strange places, but no one expects to find one at the bottom of a river. Yet that's what happened to George Goodwin. When he went fishing in shallow Florida riverbeds during the early 1970s, Goodwin often caught more logs than bass. "I used to snag my lures on them," he remembers. Most fishermen would have cursed their luck; Goodwin, now 59, reeled in a multi-million-dollar business instead.

5. How Any 13 Year Old Kid Can Become A Millionaire

At the age of just 13, Dominic McVey exploded into the public’s consciousness when he started importing collapsible scooters from the USA, making him a reported £5 million. Now 19, McVey has sought to find other lucrative niches in the market, with varying success. Here the outspoken entrepreneur talks about his astonishing rise, his views on UK business and his plans for the future.

Oh and don't forget the PickyDomains story.

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Make Your Ideas Mean Business

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Rent The Runway

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http://www.renttherunway.com/

From fine automobiles to designer handbags, we've covered various companies that let consumers rent expensive objects instead of buying them. The latest to join the herd is New York-based Rent the Runway, which allows women to rent designer dresses.

Dress-seeking fashionistas browse RTR's collection and schedule a delivery date (next-day delivery is available, as well as same-day in New York City). RTR then sends them the dress, including a second, back-up size to make sure the fit is as good as the design. Rental costs are around 10% of a garment's retail price, and range from USD 50–200. Customers can rent for four or eight days, after which they return the dress in the USPS return envelope that RTR provides. The extra size—which RTR provides at no extra cost—must be returned unworn.

Further proof that its founders have thought through the concept from a consumer's point of view, RTR also lets members rent a second style for just USD 25. Which gives them a back-up option for last-minute decisions, or a second dress to wear at an elaborate wedding or a multi-day event. Brands currently on offer include Just Cavalli, Helmut Lang, Proenza Schouler and Hervé Leger.

Appealing both to consumers who are cutting back for economic reasons, and to those who value experiences over ownership (dubbed transumers by our sister-site trendwatching.com), there's plenty of room for concepts like Rent the Runway to grow, especially if they provide their clients with heightened convenience as well as heightened style.

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

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Crime Does Pay

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http://www.chicsc.com/

Dan Reynolds didn't set out to become an entrepreneur. Instead, the full-time firefighter and former commercial truck salesman from suburban Chicago wanted to hire on with a big crime-scene cleanup company. But when he was treated rudely during his interview in early 2007, he vowed to found his own company as payback. His Chicago Crime Scene Cleanup got its first job—a messy suicide in a home in Minooka, Ill.—three months later. He's been busy ever since. Today, in fact, the startup is up to nine part-time employees, drawn mostly from haz-mat teams at nearby fire departments, who scrub down everything, including foreclosed homes that have been soiled by vagrants and/or wild animals and meth labs. Says Reynolds: "If another contractor comes in and says, 'Ew,' that's where we go to work."

Reynolds, 35, and his 50/50 business partner, Michael Frakes, 36, who's also a full-time firefighter, began with $20,000 of their own for training in removal of biohazardous materials and equipment and $6,000 for marketing. They also went without pay for a spell. Reynolds projects $400,000 in revenue in 2009 and at least $700,000 in 2010. Chicago Crime Scene Cleanup's contract with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and northern Illinois accounts for about a third of revenue. The expected bump in 2010 income stems from getting licensed to dispose of prescription medicines.

If you like unusual business stories, read how I made a fortune picking cool domain names for other people.

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Jump Into Janitorial: How to build a cleaning business netting over six figures a year.

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

Jingle Punks Success Story

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http://www.jinglepunks.com/

Back in 2005, indie rocker Jared Gutstadt landed a sweet job between tours: lead editor and composer on Chappelle's Show on cable TV's Comedy Central. Before long, his ability to quickly crank out tunes earned him the nickname "Jingle Punk Jared." The nickname stuck. So, too, did his feeling that there wasn't enough culturally relevant music available for producers trying to make their TV shows or commercials feel current. In October 2008, Gutstadt opened a stock music company out of his New York City apartment as a way for struggling bands, unsung composers, and unpublished writers to get their work on top shows on network and cable TV.

Today, Jingle Punks licenses music from a swath of musicians ranging from Chip Taylor (he wrote the 1960s hit Wild Thing) to Gutstadt himself. Gutstadt, 31, whose "musical and entrepreneurial hero" is P. Diddy, says TV network clients pay between $10,000 and $20,000 for four months of access to Jingle Punks' searchable database of 10,000 songs, but the real money is in the royalties after a show airs. He says Jingle Punks has pulled in about $220,000 since its launch, from networks such as Bravo, MTV, VH1, and A&E, and brands such as Coca-Cola , Kimberly-Clark's Huggies, and Geico. After landing a deal in late May to license music to a roster of Viacom properties, Gutstadt embarked on his first vacation since starting the company.

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

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What If Us Collapses? Soviet Collapse Lessons Every American Needs To Know

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Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am not an expert or a scholar or an activist. I am more of an eye-witness. I watched the Soviet Union collapse, and I have tried to put my observations into a concise message. I will leave it up to you to decide just how urgent a message it is.

My talk tonight is about the lack of collapse-preparedness here in the United States. I will compare it with the situation in the Soviet Union, prior to its collapse. The rhetorical device I am going to use is the "Collapse Gap" – to go along with the Nuclear Gap, and the Space Gap, and various other superpower gaps that were fashionable during the Cold War.



Slide [2] The subject of economic collapse is generally a sad one. But I am an optimistic, cheerful sort of person, and I believe that, with a bit of preparation, such events can be taken in stride. As you can probably surmise, I am actually rather keen on observing economic collapses. Perhaps when I am really old, all collapses will start looking the same to me, but I am not at that point yet.

And this next one certainly has me intrigued. From what I've seen and read, it seems that there is a fair chance that the U.S. economy will collapse sometime within the foreseeable future. It also would seem that we won't be particularly well-prepared for it. As things stand, the U.S. economy is poised to perform something like a disappearing act. And so I am eager to put my observations of the Soviet collapse to good use.



Slide [3] I anticipate that some people will react rather badly to having their country compared to the USSR. I would like to assure you that the Soviet people would have reacted similarly, had the United States collapsed first. Feelings aside, here are two 20th century superpowers, who wanted more or less the same things – things like technological progress, economic growth, full employment, and world domination – but they disagreed about the methods. And they obtained similar results – each had a good run, intimidated the whole planet, and kept the other scared. Each eventually went bankrupt.



Slide [4] The USA and the USSR were evenly matched in many categories, but let me just mention four.

The Soviet manned space program is alive and well under Russian management, and now offers first-ever space charters. The Americans have been hitching rides on the Soyuz while their remaining spaceships sit in the shop.

The arms race has not produced a clear winner, and that is excellent news, because Mutual Assured Destruction remains in effect. Russia still has more nuclear warheads than the US, and has supersonic cruise missile technology that can penetrate any missile shield, especially a nonexistent one.

The Jails Race once showed the Soviets with a decisive lead, thanks to their innovative GULAG program. But they gradually fell behind, and in the end the Jails Race has been won by the Americans, with the highest percentage of people in jail ever.

The Hated Evil Empire Race is also finally being won by the Americans. It's easy now that they don't have anyone to compete against.



Slide [5] Continuing with our list of superpower similarities, many of the problems that sunk the Soviet Union are now endangering the United States as well. Such as a huge, well-equipped, very expensive military, with no clear mission, bogged down in fighting Muslim insurgents. Such as energy shortfalls linked to peaking oil production. Such as a persistently unfavorable trade balance, resulting in runaway foreign debt. Add to that a delusional self-image, an inflexible ideology, and an unresponsive political system.



Slide [6] An economic collapse is amazing to observe, and very interesting if described accurately and in detail. A general description tends to fall short of the mark, but let me try. An economic arrangement can continue for quite some time after it becomes untenable, through sheer inertia. But at some point a tide of broken promises and invalidated assumptions sweeps it all out to sea. One such untenable arrangement rests on the notion that it is possible to perpetually borrow more and more money from abroad, to pay for more and more energy imports, while the price of these imports continues to double every few years. Free money with which to buy energy equals free energy, and free energy does not occur in nature. This must therefore be a transient condition. When the flow of energy snaps back toward equilibrium, much of the US economy will be forced to shut down.



Slide [7] I've described what happened to Russia in some detail in one of my articles, which is available on SurvivingPeakOil.com. I don't see why what happens to the United States should be entirely dissimilar, at least in general terms. The specifics will be different, and we will get to them in a moment. We should certainly expect shortages of fuel, food, medicine, and countless consumer items, outages of electricity, gas, and water, breakdowns in transportation systems and other infrastructure, hyperinflation, widespread shutdowns and mass layoffs, along with a lot of despair, confusion, violence, and lawlessness. We definitely should not expect any grand rescue plans, innovative technology programs, or miracles of social cohesion.



Slide [8] When faced with such developments, some people are quick to realize what it is they have to do to survive, and start doing these things, generally without anyone's permission. A sort of economy emerges, completely informal, and often semi-criminal. It revolves around liquidating, and recycling, the remains of the old economy. It is based on direct access to resources, and the threat of force, rather than ownership or legal authority. People who have a problem with this way of doing things, quickly find themselves out of the game.

These are the generalities. Now let's look at some specifics.



Slide [9] One important element of collapse-preparedness is making sure that you don't need a functioning economy to keep a roof over your head. In the Soviet Union, all housing belonged to the government, which made it available directly to the people. Since all housing was also built by the government, it was only built in places that the government could service using public transportation. After the collapse, almost everyone managed to keep their place.

In the United States, very few people own their place of residence free and clear, and even they need an income to pay real estate taxes. People without an income face homelessness. When the economy collapses, very few people will continue to have an income, so homelessness will become rampant. Add to that the car-dependent nature of most suburbs, and what you will get is mass migrations of homeless people toward city centers.



Slide [10] Soviet public transportation was more or less all there was, but there was plenty of it. There were also a few private cars, but so few that gasoline rationing and shortages were mostly inconsequential. All of this public infrastructure was designed to be almost infinitely maintainable, and continued to run even as the rest of the economy collapsed.

The population of the United States is almost entirely car-dependent, and relies on markets that control oil import, refining, and distribution. They also rely on continuous public investment in road construction and repair. The cars themselves require a steady stream of imported parts, and are not designed to last very long. When these intricately interconnected systems stop functioning, much of the population will find itself stranded.



Slide [11] Economic collapse affects public sector employment almost as much as private sector employment, eventually. Because government bureaucracies tend to be slow to act, they collapse more slowly. Also, because state-owned enterprises tend to be inefficient, and stockpile inventory, there is plenty of it left over, for the employees to take home, and use in barter. Most Soviet employment was in the public sector, and this gave people some time to think of what to do next.

Private enterprises tend to be much more efficient at many things. Such laying off their people, shutting their doors, and liquidating their assets. Since most employment in the United States is in the private sector, we should expect the transition to permanent unemployment to be quite abrupt for most people.



Slide [12] When confronting hardship, people usually fall back on their families for support. The Soviet Union experienced chronic housing shortages, which often resulted in three generations living together under one roof. This didn't make them happy, but at least they were used to each other. The usual expectation was that they would stick it out together, come what may.

In the United States, families tend to be atomized, spread out over several states. They sometimes have trouble tolerating each other when they come together for Thanksgiving, or Christmas, even during the best of times. They might find it difficult to get along, in bad times. There is already too much loneliness in this country, and I doubt that economic collapse will cure it.



Slide [13] To keep evil at bay, Americans require money. In an economic collapse, there is usually hyperinflation, which wipes out savings. There is also rampant unemployment, which wipes out incomes. The result is a population that is largely penniless.

In the Soviet Union, very little could be obtained for money. It was treated as tokens rather than as wealth, and was shared among friends. Many things – housing and transportation among them – were either free or almost free.



Slide [14] Soviet consumer products were always an object of derision – refrigerators that kept the house warm – and the food, and so on. You'd be lucky if you got one at all, and it would be up to you to make it work once you got it home. But once you got it to work, it would become a priceless family heirloom, handed down from generation to generation, sturdy, and almost infinitely maintainable.

In the United States, you often hear that something "is not worth fixing." This is enough to make a Russian see red. I once heard of an elderly Russian who became irate when a hardware store in Boston wouldn't sell him replacement bedsprings: "People are throwing away perfectly good mattresses, how am I supposed to fix them?"

Economic collapse tends to shut down both local production and imports, and so it is vitally important that anything you own wears out slowly, and that you can fix it yourself if it breaks. Soviet-made stuff generally wore incredibly hard. The Chinese-made stuff you can get around here – much less so.



Slide [15] The Soviet agricultural sector was notoriously inefficient. Many people grew and gathered their own food even in relatively prosperous times. There were food warehouses in every city, stocked according to a government allocation scheme. There were very few restaurants, and most families cooked and ate at home. Shopping was rather labor-intensive, and involved carrying heavy loads. Sometimes it resembled hunting – stalking that elusive piece of meat lurking behind some store counter. So the people were well-prepared for what came next.

In the United States, most people get their food from a supermarket, which is supplied from far away using refrigerated diesel trucks. Many people don't even bother to shop and just eat fast food. When people do cook, they rarely cook from scratch. This is all very unhealthy, and the effect on the nation's girth, is visible, clear across the parking lot. A lot of the people, who just waddle to and from their cars, seem unprepared for what comes next. If they suddenly had to start living like the Russians, they would blow out their knees.



Slide [16] The Soviet government threw resources at immunization programs, infectious disease control, and basic care. It directly operated a system of state-owned clinics, hospitals, and sanatoriums. People with fatal ailments or chronic conditions often had reason to complain, and had to pay for private care – if they had the money.

In the United States, medicine is for profit. People seems to think nothing of this fact. There are really very few fields of endeavor to which Americans would deny the profit motive. The problem is, once the economy is removed, so is the profit, along with the services it once helped to motivate.



Slide [17] The Soviet education system was generally quite excellent. It produced an overwhelmingly literate population and many great specialists. The education was free at all levels, but higher education sometimes paid a stipend, and often provided room and board. The educational system held together quite well after the economy collapsed. The problem was that the graduates had no jobs to look forward to upon graduation. Many of them lost their way.

The higher education system in the United States is good at many things – government and industrial research, team sports, vocational training... Primary and secondary education fails to achieve in 12 years what Soviet schools generally achieved in 8. The massive scale and expense of maintaining these institutions is likely to prove too much for the post-collapse environment. Illiteracy is already a problem in the United States, and we should expect it to get a lot worse.



Slide [18] The Soviet Union did not need to import energy. The production and distribution system faltered, but never collapsed. Price controls kept the lights on even as hyperinflation raged.

The term "market failure" seems to fit the energy situation in the United States. Free markets develop some pernicious characteristics when there are shortages of key commodities. During World War II, the United States government understood this, and successfully rationed many things, from gasoline to bicycle parts. But that was a long time ago. Since then, the inviolability of free markets has become an article of faith.



Slide [19] My conclusion is that the Soviet Union was much better-prepared for economic collapse than the United States is.

I have left out two important superpower asymmetries, because they don't have anything to do with collapse-preparedness. Some countries are simply luckier than others. But I will mention them, for the sake of completeness.

In terms of racial and ethnic composition, the United States resembles Yugoslavia more than it resembles Russia, so we shouldn't expect it to be as peaceful as Russia was, following the collapse. Ethnically mixed societies are fragile and have a tendency to explode.

In terms of religion, the Soviet Union was relatively free of apocalyptic doomsday cults. Very few people there wished for a planet-sized atomic fireball to herald the second coming of their savior. This was indeed a blessing.



Slide [20] One area in which I cannot discern any Collapse Gap is national politics. The ideologies may be different, but the blind adherence to them couldn't be more similar.

It is certainly more fun to watch two Capitalist parties go at each other than just having the one Communist party to vote for. The things they fight over in public are generally symbolic little tokens of social policy, chosen for ease of public posturing. The Communist party offered just one bitter pill. The two Capitalist parties offer a choice of two placebos. The latest innovation is the photo finish election, where each party buys 50% of the vote, and the result is pulled out of statistical noise, like a rabbit out of a hat.

The American way of dealing with dissent and with protest is certainly more advanced: why imprison dissidents when you can just let them shout into the wind to their heart's content?

The American approach to bookkeeping is more subtle and nuanced than the Soviet. Why make a state secret of some statistic, when you can just distort it, in obscure ways? Here's a simple example: inflation is "controlled" by substituting hamburger for steak, in order to minimize increases to Social Security payments.



Slide [21] Many people expend a lot of energy protesting against their irresponsible, unresponsive government. It seems like a terrible waste of time, considering how ineffectual their protests are. Is it enough of a consolation for them to be able to read about their efforts in the foreign press? I think that they would feel better if they tuned out the politicians, the way the politicians tune them out. It's as easy as turning off the television set. If they try it, they will probably observe that nothing about their lives has changed, nothing at all, except maybe their mood has improved. They might also find that they have more time and energy to devote to more important things.



Slide [22] I will now sketch out some approaches, realistic and otherwise, to closing the Collapse Gap. My little list of approaches might seem a bit glib, but keep in mind that this is a very difficult problem. In fact, it's important to keep in mind that not all problems have solutions. I can promise you that we will not solve this problem tonight. What I will try to do is to shed some light on it from several angles.



Slide [23] Many people rail against the unresponsiveness and irresponsibility of the government. They often say things like "What is needed is..." plus the name of some big, successful government project from the glorious past – the Marshall Plan, the Manhattan Project, the Apollo program. But there is nothing in the history books about a government preparing for collapse. Gorbachev's "Perestroika" is an example of a government trying to avert or delay collapse. It probably helped speed it along.



Slide [24] There are some things that I would like the government to take care of in preparation for collapse. I am particularly concerned about all the radioactive and toxic installations, stockpiles, and dumps. Future generations are unlikely to able to control them, especially if global warming puts them underwater. There is enough of this muck sitting around to kill off most of us. I am also worried about soldiers getting stranded overseas – abandoning one's soldiers is among the most shameful things a country can do. Overseas military bases should be dismantled, and the troops repatriated. I'd like to see the huge prison population whittled away in a controlled manner, ahead of time, instead of in a chaotic general amnesty. Lastly, I think that this farce with debts that will never be repaid, has gone on long enough. Wiping the slate clean will give society time to readjust. So, you see, I am not asking for any miracles. Although, if any of these things do get done, I would consider it a miracle.



Slide [25] A private sector solution is not impossible; just very, very unlikely. Certain Soviet state enterprises were basically states within states. They controlled what amounted to an entire economic system, and could go on even without the larger economy. They kept to this arrangement even after they were privatized. They drove Western management consultants mad, with their endless kindergartens, retirement homes, laundries, and free clinics. These weren't part of their core competency, you see. They needed to divest and to streamline their operations. The Western management gurus overlooked the most important thing: the core competency of these enterprises lay in their ability to survive economic collapse. Maybe the young geniuses at Google can wrap their heads around this one, but I doubt that their stockholders will.



Slide [26] It's important to understand that the Soviet Union achieved collapse-preparedness inadvertently, and not because of the success of some crash program. Economic collapse has a way of turning economic negatives into positives. The last thing we want is a perfectly functioning, growing, prosperous economy that suddenly collapses one day, and leaves everybody in the lurch. It is not necessary for us to embrace the tenets of command economy and central planning to match the Soviet lackluster performance in this area. We have our own methods, that are working almost as well. I call them "boondoggles." They are solutions to problems that cause more problems than they solve.

Just look around you, and you will see boondoggles sprouting up everywhere, in every field of endeavor: we have military boondoggles like Iraq, financial boondoggles like the doomed retirement system, medical boondoggles like private health insurance, legal boondoggles like the intellectual property system. The combined weight of all these boondoggles is slowly but surely pushing us all down. If it pushes us down far enough, then economic collapse, when it arrives, will be like falling out of a ground floor window. We just have to help this process along, or at least not interfere with it. So if somebody comes to you and says "I want to make a boondoggle that runs on hydrogen" – by all means encourage him! It's not as good as a boondoggle that burns money directly, but it's a step in the right direction.



Slide [27] Certain types of mainstream economic behavior are not prudent on a personal level, and are also counterproductive to bridging the Collapse Gap. Any behavior that might result in continued economic growth and prosperity is counterproductive: the higher you jump, the harder you land. It is traumatic to go from having a big retirement fund to having no retirement fund because of a market crash. It is also traumatic to go from a high income to little or no income. If, on top of that, you have kept yourself incredibly busy, and suddenly have nothing to do, then you will really be in rough shape.

Economic collapse is about the worst possible time for someone to suffer a nervous breakdown, yet this is what often happens. The people who are most at risk psychologically are successful middle-aged men. When their career is suddenly over, their savings are gone, and their property worthless, much of their sense of self-worth is gone as well. They tend to drink themselves to death and commit suicide in disproportionate numbers. Since they tend to be the most experienced and capable people, this is a staggering loss to society.

If the economy, and your place within it, is really important to you, you will be really hurt when it goes away. You can cultivate an attitude of studied indifference, but it has to be more than just a conceit. You have to develop the lifestyle and the habits and the physical stamina to back it up. It takes a lot of creativity and effort to put together a fulfilling existence on the margins of society. After the collapse, these margins may turn out to be some of the best places to live.



Slide [28] I hope that I didn't make it sound as if the Soviet collapse was a walk in the park, because it was really quite awful in many ways. The point that I do want to stress is that when this economy collapses, it is bound to be much worse. Another point I would like to stress is that collapse here is likely to be permanent. The factors that allowed Russia and the other former Soviet republics to recover are not present here.

In spite of all this, I believe that in every age and circumstance, people can sometimes find not just a means and a reason to survive, but enlightenment, fulfillment, and freedom. If we can find them even after the economy collapses, then why not start looking for them now?

Thank you.

If you want Dmitry's analysis in detail, get his lates book Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects

[Via - Dmitry Orlov]

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