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steverubenfaer · 1 month

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Physical Things in Your life

Some tips so that the things you own can have the best possible impact on your life:

Own as few things as possible. Everything you own has a psychic cost; it weighs on you, whether or not you can feel it. It takes your energy; you have to think about it, clean it, rearrange it, move with it, etc. It’s clutter, it’s weight, and we feel better without it in our space. So live your best life with as few physical objects as possible. This means reducing things you have for ‘backup’, and generally questioning everything in your home; every cord in that box, every book, every letter from an old lover. Toss it. I wrote about this here; the reason you have too many things is that the costs of keeping things aren’t readily visible (after all it is just sitting in the closet, it's not costing anything), and the benefits are more out in the open (I might need it one day!), so it’s difficult to see the tradeoff that you are making just by owning something and having it take up space in your house.

The best way to test if something is worth keeping is to try to make the hidden cost visible by putting an imaginary price on it, and asking yourself if you would still keep it if you had to pay that price. Every phone cord, every spoon, every book in your house, ask yourself if you would still keep it if it was costing you $1/month. If the answer is no, toss it. You should look at everything you own, even the things you have long taken for granted that you need like that little screwdriver kit you have never used, every 6 months. If the same things keep coming up as marginal over & over, you will toss them eventually, so just toss them now.

Be careful about backups, only keep things in reserve that you know you will need soon or of things you always use in succession. Don’t just keep a replacement item just because you happen to have it, unless it is expensive, and/or very small. There’s no reason to keep a replacement yoga mat if you never go through them. But an extra car key, that costs a few hundred dollars & doesn’t take up much space (and is easy to lose), would be worth it. Have your own threshold but lean towards tossing, always. Once in a while you will have to repurchase something you tossed, but overall, it is still worth it to live light.

There are different strategies you can use to maintain inventories of products that you continually replace. If you buy the same thing or similar over and over as they wear out, consider the most optimum way for you to keep inventory. Here are some examples:

My outside socks I purchase in 12 packs. They wear out after some time, and when I get down to 8 pairs, I have to buy more (for laundry/traveling reasons I always need to have at least 8 pairs on hand), so I buy another 12 pack. But I also don’t want to have more than 12 pairs, I want to live light, 20 pairs is too many. To remedy this situation, I change the distribution of the wear after buying a new package. There is a certain amount of ‘wear’ you impose on objects like socks, and you can choose to distribute this wear on all of your inventory, or just a select few. So after purchasing the new 12 pack, Instead of mixing in the new with the old & drawing from an inventory of 20 pairs each day, I concentrate the wear on the old socks as much as possible, to rid of them first. In this way I can get the number of pairs down as quickly as possible. The old socks get used first, and if I need more before laundry I will take one from the stash of new ones, and mix it in with the old (otherwise keeping the new ones separate). Eventually the old socks are all used up, we are down to 12 pairs, and I don’t have to worry about how the wear is distributed. When they get down to 8 pairs, I buy another 12 pack and the cycle renews.

For bath towels, the wear distribution is completely different. I don’t keep buying the same towel over & over to replace worn ones. Instead I buy 4 new bath towels at a time, representing the minimum I need and maximum I want. What I buy is random, I don’t have a certain style or brand that I buy every time. This is a different situation, because if any one of the towels gets worn, I have to purchase 4 new ones. The goal is to make sure that they wear equally, so that when one does wear out, the other 3 are nearly gone also. Because of this, I will use the most worn towels lastly if possible to extend their life, and try to circulate only the least worn 2 or 3 if laundry allows.

I usually buy ‘On’ shoes for citywalking/light hiking (you’ve seen them you just don’t know they are called ‘On’). They are well made & last a long time, except for the soles, which are horrible, and wear out much quicker than the rest of the shoe. At some point I can’t wear them outside when it is wet, but the rest of the shoe is still in good shape. The most efficient way to inventory them is to buy a new pair as soon as I am unable to wear them when it is wet out, but only use the new shoe for that situation, and otherwise continue to use (and wear out) the old shoe. At some point you can toss the old ones & transition completely to the new ones.

What you own is a tradeoff between quality and price, but try to choose quality as often as possible. Own few things, all of the highest quality and aesthetics. Your life is better with better things. Functional things that wear out like towels, shoes, etc., instead of viewing them as one-time purchases, view as a continuum; for example, if you buy the same type of shoe over & over, buying new ones as the old ones wear out, figure your cost per length time (or per unit, in this case step). For example, if $30 shoes will last you 3 months, but $100 shoes will last a year, the more expensive ones are actually cheaper and will save you money in the long run. Same thing with a haircut, a $70 haircut that lasts you 8 months is a better deal than a $30 haircut that lasts 2. Anything that you buy in continuous fashion consider in this way, think of price and time as equal determinants of price.

At the same time, make sure that your things look good aesthetically. Buy everything with the intention of keeping it until it breaks or wears out, which can be decades. If you need something (like a new coffee mug), look exhaustively before you purchase a new one. Don’t settle for anything less than your permanent replacement, if one seems ok but not made very well or doesn’t look good enough aesthetically, don’t buy it, wait for a good one. Don’t fall into the trap of getting something almost good enuf with the intention of getting a better one later, you will end up using something subpar for years. Try to have few things of high quality & good aesthetics.

Arrange the things in your space as efficiently as possible. Think about where EVERYTHING goes, and constantly challenge it. Have systems in place for all of your objects for efficiency, ease of living and home aesthetics. Objects may belong in the correct spot only for a short period of time – things change often, you need to be open to this and ready to change with them, and your system reacts dynamically. Your system is never the driver, it is always reactive and allows for as much change as possible. This includes containers or ‘bins’, you will continually need to update them; when you get something new or need to change where things go start from scratch, don’t be locked into your current storage. All systems should be very adaptable and assume rapid and unexpected changes. Keep improving things, even in tiny measures. Find the optimal place for every single object and keep improving.

When you are handling or touching physical things (in or out of your home), keep your focus on what your hands are doing or what is transpiring with them. When interacting with physical things, this is where your attention is, not thinking about things in the past or future. It’s easy to forget this & start thinking, but as soon as you notice your mind wandering, just steer it back to focusing on the objects or what you are doing. A good way to start is by always focusing on actions when using a knife (or anything dangerous), handling or paying someone in cash, or taking medicine. Anytime you do any of these 3 things, have absolute focus on what is going on, so that you make no mistakes, and can clearly recall exactly what happened if need be. If it helps focus on your breath when interacting with physical objects.

A good way to see the effects of mindfulness is to focus on physical processes to improve at them. For example, everyone tries to make a basket when they throw something into a garbage container or waste basket. From now on when you do this, take a second to really focus, visualize what you need to do to make the basket, add a little mindfulness. Really try to make it. You will be amazed at how much you will improve, super quickly, as long as you take a second to focus.

If there are physical processes that you are not skilled at, the best way to improve is not to look at it as something you aren’t good at, but think of it as something you can actually do, just not within a reasonable amount of time. This is because if you performed it exaggeratingly slow, you could do it successfully; it is actually a problem of speed, not of skill, which is easy to fix. First find your (realistic, honest) speed, however slow that may be, and improve from there, just trying to do it faster little by bit. Watch yourself improve rapidly.

Try to be cool like Fonzie with everything you touch, toss things while you are moving, do two things at once, etc. Focusing is the key. All the things you break, every mistake you make with a physical object, will be because you weren’t focusing on it.

I’ve noticed that as I get older I am becoming more ‘efficient’ with my things, almost to the point of obsession. It’s not the actual things I care about, it’s their organization & efficiency, I don’t care about the actual stuff. I’m guessing the reason for this, is that my body is steering me towards efficiency to save energy; when you get older you can really notice how being out of your routine costs more & more energy (until someday where taking a vacation is more trouble than it is worth). So to conserve energy, my unconscious is trying to systemize everything and make everything routine. So save that energy, interact with your environment wisely.

#entreprenuership #entrepreneur

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steverubenfaer · 5 months

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Living Vacation

After living in San Francisco for more than 20 years, it was time to leave. And as in all of my previous moves, the principal reason for leaving was because I was done there. I wasn’t sure where to move to, but nowhere in the US sounded appealing (not much does after you live in SF and won’t live anywhere colder). A friend lived in SMA, and suggested I move down there, and it just happened pretty quickly after that. I had always wanted to live in another country & learn their language, and since I had just started a business, the lower cost sounded great. The timing seemed perfect.

The most remarkable part of moving to SMA was how easy it was, it didn’t feel any different than moving within the US. Things are a little different, but it wasn’t difficult to move. I really liked my first year in SMA; I missed hiking around the Bay Area, but I walked all over San Miguel, aesthetically it has few equals. But I always felt that something was ‘too easy’ about living here, something I could never define. When I brought this up to people living in SMA, they immediately recognized what I was referring to, and could answer me with responses I knew had to have come from previous thought on this exact issue. One guy absolutely agreed with me, and said ‘so what? I decided long ago that it was worth it.’ Someone already had this exact dilemma years ago! At first this didn’t bother me, because there was so much to explore. But I really wasn’t sure if after I had seen everything there was to see, would there be anything left under the hood to keep me in SMA.

One of the unexpected awesome things about SMA is all the places to travel nearby; for gringos almost any Mexican town with a square & church are lovely. Guanajato, Salvatierra, Pozos, there are tons of cute towns less than 2 hours away, gorgeous places that Americans have never heard of. After a year in SMA my partner wanted to move out of town because of the cuahetes. I would have stayed in SMA longer, but felt like living somewhere else could be fun – and for the first time, I started thinking about the concept of moving before I felt like I was done with a place, just to try someplace new.

My partner & I wanted to travel, but we had full-time jobs, and were a bit poor. So we had an idea – why not move around Mexico, changing home base every six months or so. We could experience living in new cities; but also travel on the weekends and explore many new places, place that would each take days of travel & much cost from SMA but were easy from the new base. Since winter was coming, we decided to try the Yucatan for our first such endeavor, and we took an exploratory trip to Merida to check it out. We weren’t super impressed with Merida, it seemed a little like Queretero, a huge modern city wrapped around a small Centro Historico. We were looking for a prettier city, something more colonial, and checked out Valladolid a couple hours away, really the only other major city in the Yucatan. We loved it immediately, it is small but gorgeous, and decided to move there for 5 months, leaving for somewhere else yet undecided before the summer. Our leases ended March 31, and for the first time in my life, I moved somewhere with an expiration date.

If moving to SMA was not that different than moving somewhere in the US, moving to Valladolid was definitely different, way different. It wasn’t so easy like SMA, it had more of a third world feel, doing things was more difficult. Paying the water bill meant going to headquarters, where there might be a long line, or the cashier might have just left for an hour, with everyone still waiting. There is no laundry machine in the entire city hooked up to hot water. Little things took much more time than they should have. No one spoke English. Nothing major, no real issues mostly just things of convenience, but just a lot of little things that made life a little ‘harder’ there.

It made me realize what it was about SMA that was so easy – SMA just completely caters to gringos. It is the world’s largest retirement home basically, designed for easy living for gringos who don’t want to learn Spanish, who basically want the same experience as America, except with better weather & lower prices. Not that everyone in SMA is on that program, but if that’s what you want out of your life, there is no place I have seen that caters to you like SMA; you can pretty much live your life the same way you did back in the States. If you are one of those people, SMA is not that different than living in the US. If you are one of those people, Yucatan might be a difficult experience for you, at first.

There were a lot of expats, but surprisingly, there were almost no gringos; the expats and visitors were almost all from Northern Europe, and you always heard French, German, and strange Scando languages around town; going out to dinner felt like being in a Bergman movie. The city itself has a very Euro feel to it, at night it seems like you are in Rome the way everything is lit.

Valladolid isn’t a place I would consider moving to forever (too small, weather), but for 5 months it was a lovely experience. Because I knew I was moving out soon, it made me feel like my entire life was a vacation, even though I was working the entire time. It was a very different feeling than a more permanent move, where you are trying to ‘spread roots’ or ‘build up your network’. But we were there to travel around the peninsula, and that we did, and it was spectacular.

In 5 months, we were able to travel almost every place we wanted. Everything is close by in the small peninsula, we definitely felt like it was enough time to see everything. And travelling in this part of the world is super cheap, much cheaper than Guanajato. Busses are cheap, rental cars are reasonable, nice Airbnb’s or hotels easily under 1000. Breakfast for 2 for 100 pesos or so; Valladolid is pretty inexpensive, but the surrounding villages/towns are much cheaper.

Basically, the plan to travel while being poor & having full time jobs worked; by moving to a new place, and traveling on weekends, We were able to work full time, travel to many new places, and life seemed like a vacation. I know I wasn’t the first to think of this idea, but I’ve never heard it quite expressed in this way.

I’m back in SMA, but there’s nowhere here for me to explore anymore, and it’s time to move on. What would be perfect would be to string together 6-mont stints in various cities around Mexico, centers that have concentric circles to explore. Oaxaca, Puebla, San Cristobal, SLP, Monterrey, are just some of the cities that seem like they would be great to live in for 6 months, to explore the town & surroundings. At some point maybe I’ll want to land somewhere & ‘spread roots’, but for now, the allure of exploring these Mexican towns is more seducing.

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steverubenfaer · 1 year

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Businesses Can’t Cause Inflation (no matter how much they would like to)

Inflation is caused by the relationship between the money supply and goods available for purchase. When more money is added to the system without a corresponding increase in goods & services, prices rise; and even if the money can be accommodated by an increase in goods & services, the people are still robbed of the deflation that would have occurred.

Many false reasons for inflation circulate, and one regime narrative that is false but people believe because they want to is that inflation is caused by ‘greedy businesses’. The obvious mistake with this approach, is why is there inflation now, but there wasn’t over the last 15 years? You would have to believe that over the last 15 years businesses weren’t greedy, but suddenly over the last year ALL businesses became greedy. During periods of deflation, are businesses being altruistic? Have TV, computer, and semi-conductor manufacturers been super nice to us continually dropping their prices all these years? The reality is that businesses cannot cause inflation, they have no control over their sales, and cannot force overall higher prices. Prices are set by consumers, not businesses, via the demand curve. Businesses can only decide where on the curve they want to be.

Businesses are all greedy, and have always been greedy, since there have been businesses. Businesses always want to raise their prices, but they can’t, because they are constrained by their customer’s demand curves; if they raise prices, the amount they sell will fall. But currently, they are able to raise prices, and sell the same amount of goods, with no drop in sales. So ‘greedy businesses raising prices’ aren’t a cause of inflation, it is a symptom of inflation, the inflation happens first, and then the businesses can raise their prices and not lose sales. Which they do, because they are greedy (and it is also necessary for their survival, as their costs are increasing too).

Here is the proof that business cannot cause inflation. During periods of inflation, all prices rise at once, not just one or a few industries. This would not be possible without an injection of money (or lowering of the amount of goods available, which is rarely the cause), because if people had the same amount of money, and all businesses raised prices, there would necessarily be winners and losers. The most ‘underpriced’ businesses would withstand the price raises, but a priori others would have to lower their prices, because consumers would have less money after making their most important purchases. So without an increase in the money supply, If all prices are rising, as they are now, mathematically it cannot be from businesses raising prices; some would have to fall, as people would have less money from their other purchases.

Every business has the decision where on the demand curve they want to be, if they want to lower prices and sell more, or raise prices and sell less (and have a smaller operation with lower costs). Businesses don’t price their products based on what it costs them to make; consumers don’t factor ‘cost’ into their purchasing decisions, customers don’t care what it cost businesses to produce something, they have their own idea of value, based on other potential purchases they can make. Prices and thus sales are determined by customers’ subjective valuations, which make up the demand curve. When businesses raise prices, people will purchase less of their products and purchase something else that is a substitute which they feel is a better value to them. This is why businesses can’t just increase their price indefinitely; when prices are raised there is a marginal buyer out there who now values something that they consider a substitute a better use of their funds, and will purchase that instead. You lose those marginal people with every price increase.

But at this moment, businesses are raising prices, and not losing the marginal customers, their sales are staying the same; this is because there is more money in the system, the entire demand curve is shifting; they can raise their prices, because the substitutes are also raising prices. This is the only way ALL prices can rise at once.

#entreprenuership #business #inflation

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steverubenfaer · 1 year

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BettorTakes CEO Steve Rubenfaer

Steve Rubenfaer serves as the CEO of BettorTakes, a company that offers services to sports bettors. Following a recent Supreme Court decision, sports betting has become legal in the United States and has seen exponential growth in popularity. However, most sports bettors tend to lose money, with some estimates suggesting that over 97% of them are unsuccessful in their endeavors. Despite this, many individuals still find sports betting to be an appealing form of entertainment, as it adds value to watching and enjoying sports.

BettorTakes seeks to help bettors improve their performance by identifying their strengths and weaknesses. The company's software uses data exclusively from customers' own betting history, with no outside variables about the game, matchup, teams, or players. Many bettors have patterns or biases of which they are unaware, as these tend to be influenced by their unconscious mind. BettorTakes helps to bring these biases to light by showing bettors numerical representations of how their patterns may negatively impact their bankroll.

When bettors are made aware of areas where they have a low proficiency and are likely to lose money, they tend to self-correct. Seeing the numerical representation of their expertise can make bettors more mindful of their bets, leading them to choose not to place as many bets that would be detrimental to their bankroll. Ultimately, BettorTakes' goal is to help sports bettors make more informed decisions and improve their performance.

#startup

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steverubenfaer · 2 years

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Steve Rubenfaer Art Biz ArtMecca

Steve Rubenfaer worked for an events company that produced art festivals in San Francisco. He was the operations manager, running operations on site, with a staff of over 100 for each event. The events were the largest in San Francsico and some of the largest on the west coast, drawing more than 100,000 people over a weekend.

Steve was also in charge of sponsorships, and was approached by a vendor called ArtMecca, which exhibited artists’ work on the Internet. This was in the early days of the Internet, the year 2000, when there was a lot of excitement and a tremendous amount of activity in certain industries that were moving online, even though there might not have been a lot of business yet.

Art was one of those industries, and it seemed like a great fit, as searching for art online could make art purchasing much easier. Traditionally art is sold in galleries, and to find a painting or sculpture that you would like to purchase, you would have to physically travel to many galleries to see not that many pieces of art, in the hope that you would find something suitable. The Internet makes the search process much more efficient, as you can enter parameters such as size, style, color, etc, and find art that meets your certain criteria.

Most of the art sites on the Internet were just online galleries that emulated the same model that they did in the brick-and-mortar world; highly curated, only showing a few pieces from select artists. ArtMecca had a more democratic approach, allowing any artist to show their work online. Steve Rubenfaer was fascinated with this, after seeing firsthand how random the physical artworld was. ArtMecca made Steve a job offer as CMO, and he accepted, becoming a 4th partner in the enterprise.

ArtMecca was very successful with emerging artists, and partnered with art festivals and other organizations to add artists to its database. It had thousands of artists featuring tens of thousands of works of art in many different categories, as opposed to the other sites which only had a few hundred pieces created by a couple dozen artists at most. ArtMecca also offered value added services to artists, such as digital postcards and discounts on supplies, as a secondary business model to selling art online.

ArtMecca pioneered ‘taste-based’ technology, which could identify the buyer’s taste and predict art they would enjoy across all disciplines that matched their tastes. It worked very well and with just a few inputs could show the user art that resonated with them.

ArtMecca did not survive, but neither did any of the 15 or so sites ended up staying in business. However ArtMecca achieved more than any of the other sites did, with less than $2 million in funding, and the other sites had each raised in excess of $10 million, in some cases much more.

#entrepreneur #startup

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steverubenfaer · 2 years

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Steve Rubenfaer’s HalloweenTown

Steve Rubenfaer has decades of experience in staring businesses from scratch. He has run several businesses in his life, all of which had a lot of physical components that he had to run. His first business was a children’s entertainment business based in Las Vegas Nevada called Vegas Kids. Vegas Kids produced two Halloween carnivals, two huge events with extensive on-site operations.

The carnivals were large outdoor events, with many different facets. There was a huge carnival, from one of the largest carnival providers in the country. Augmenting this, the events had many other features for children. The most significant was a full-scale haunted house, produced by pros. The haunted house was one of the largest in Las Vegas, and had a separate entrance from the carnival itself, so it attracted its own demographic. It had a staff of 15 people on its own, including actors hired to scare guests.

The carnival also had ‘Trick or Treat Town’, an area for kids safe trick-or-treating, which was a big issue in Las Vegas at the time. Companies paid Vegas Kids for a booth, and they gave out treats to kids, along with info etc. promoting their business.

Steve Rubenfaer also had other attractions for families at the festival, including a petting zoo, a main stage where Alvin and the Chipmunks performed, a magician, a display containing a ‘liger’ (cross between lion and tiger), ‘imagination gallery’, and many other family attractions.

Blockbuster was one of the event sponsors, and contributed to the ‘Blockbuster Toon Tent’, an area that continually projected cartoons on a large screen for the duration of the carnival. It was very popular and a nice break from the desert heat. Sponsors also provided other fun attractions that also promoted their businesses.

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steverubenfaer · 2 years

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Steve Rubenfaer Marketing, Marketing

Steve Rubenfaer has started up and run several companies since the early 1980s, and has been heavily involved in the marketing efforts of all of them. He started Steve Rubenfaer Stamps in 1980 at the age of 12, selling stamps at trade shows around the Detroit area. These shows were highly competitive, and allowed steve to refine marketing techniques, to differentiate his offerings from the rest. Because many stamp products are commoditized and thus equivalent, marketing skill can be make or break for people in the stamp industry. Steve designed his booth to maximize sales, and learned about marketing.

Steve left the stamp industry, and in the mid 90s moved to Las Vegas to start a company called Vegas Kids. Vegas Kids produced two huge events, Halloween carnivals. The marketing of this event was very complicated, and to save money, Steve relied on partnerships and other relationships to gain customers. Without any previous experience, Steve signed on huge corporations such as Pepsi, Wendy’s, Blockbuster, and dozens of others. He did this by creating sponsorship opportunities; by creating a potential sponsorship, he received marketing in exchange from huge companies that were serving the demographics Steve Rubenfaer was interested in attracting to the event.

During the month of October, Pepsi ran a promotion with Albertson’s, the leading grocery chain in Las Vegas, with huge in-store displays featuring the Halloween event. These displays sold Pepsi which was accompanied by a $5 coupon for entry to the event, incentivizing people to purchase their product. The coupon didn’t cost them anything, they were provided by Steve; so in exchange for offering its customers a discount, Pepsi offered the event an incredible amount of exposure. In addition to the in-store displays, Pepsi also tagged more than $100,000 of radio ads in the month of October with a message advertising the event at the end.

Wendy’s was another company that Steve Rubenfaer procured for the events, most of which were in-kind media swaps, so the exposure the event received through the partnerships were equivalent to hundreds of thousands of dollars. For example Wendy’s printed 1,000,000 tray liners and take out bags that were inundated with information about the event, for a city of less than 1,000,000 people. They also tagged radio ads and created in-store displays advertising the Halloween event.

Blockbuster, which was a significant force in the late 90’s, was an example of how Steve Rubenfaer used his creativity to capture another huge sponsor. Blockbuster had a tiny budget for events, under $10,000 combined for California and Nevada. That would be tough to get them to spend any money, but Steve figured out a customized sponsorship that they could not turn down, and in addition to marketing help Blockbuster spent almost all of their yearly budget on one event. The idea Steve had was the ‘Blockbuster Toon Tent’, a tent at the event showing nothing but cartoons available at Blockbuster. The head of marketing told Steve that it was the most personal, direct sponsorship that he had ever been offered, he had never been presented with a sponsorship opportunity that put his product directly in the hands of prospective customers.

#entrepreneur

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steverubenfaer · 2 years

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Stamps!

Steve Rubenfaer has been an entrepreneur for more than 40 years, beginning in 1980 when he started a stamp business at the age of 12. Steve was a well known stamp dealer in his home town of Detroit Michigan, where he frequently rented tables at stamp exhibitions and sold stamps to collectors. He was often mentioned in the local news. Because the stamp business in Detroit was small, Steve soon had to explore other cities to sell stamps. In 1982 at the age of 14, Steve travelled to Milwaukee to sell stamps at the largest stamp show of the year. By 1983 Steve was travelling all over the country, by himself, selling stamps to collectors.

Steve Rubenfaer sold stamps throughout high school and college at UCLA, and moved to New York after school to continue selling stamps. Even though New York is the center of stamps in America, Steve moved back to California because he liked Los Angeles better than New York. Steve had a retail and wholesale stamp business, mostly focusing on United States stamps, selling both to collectors and stamp dealers. He travelled extensively for business.

Steve Rubenfaer exited the stamp business and got into other enterprises, always running his own companies. In the early 2000’s, he became interested in the stamp business again, because of the Internet. The Internet is the perfect medium to sell stamps; before the Internet, a stamp dealer had to carry a massive inventory, hoping someone would happen to need something that they had. This not only tied up valuable capital, but also was difficult physically, as dealers need to travel often with their inventories.

With the Internet, a dealer with a stamp can be connected immediately with a customer looking for that exact item, anywhere in the world. Steve saw that this would revolutionize the stamp business, and started RubyStamps with a partner in San Francisco. RubyStamps became the largest seller of stamps on Ebay, and the largest seller of stamps online in the entire world. RubyStamps had 20 employees, and shipped thousands of items each month, all over the world, with average sales of $600,000 per month.

Steve Rubenfaer left RubyStamps after several years to pursue other business interests, handing it off to his partner, who continued running the largest online stamp company the world has ever seen.

#entreprenuership

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steverubenfaer · 2 years

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Surplusss Profits

Some workers feel that because a business earns a profit on top of what they are paid for their labor, they are getting cheated out of their cut of the profits, or ‘surplus value’ that they are creating. This view does not consider a couple of things, specifically the role of capital (money) in the business, and the role of the entrepreneur.

Part of the profits of a business can be classified as interest on capital invested. If the business is capitalized at $10 million, and the prevailing interest rate is 5%, then $500,000 of the ‘profit’ is really interest on capital and should not be counted as profit that the business is generating (the $10 million could generate $500,000 in interest anywhere). Obviously workers have no claim to this portion of the business profit, it is not their capital being invested in the businesses, and it could make this money passively without the involvement of the worker. Another point here is that workers get paid immediately for their work. But the vast majority of the time, the products they work on aren’t sold and paid for until much later. The entrepreneur advances workers the money well before she collects any revenue from their labor.

Another monetary factor is the risk that entrepreneurs or investors take with the firm. The worker bears none of this risk, they are paid whether the entrepreneur succeeds or fails. If the worker feels they are entitled to surplus profits, do they feel responsible for the business losses? Especially in the first few years of existence when almost all businesses lose money. If the worker wishes to be a ‘partner’ by sharing in the profits, they must also share in the losses. Part of the business profits are compensation for the entrepreneurs and investors for taking the risks involved, risks which the workers are insulated from.

If the entrepreneur also works as a manager of the businesses, another part of business profit that has nothing to do with the worker is the portion of the profit that would go her salary. The amount she would get paid at a similar job should also be subtracted from the profit of the company; if the entrepreneur’s labor saved the company $100,000 by not hiring someone, that part of the profit should not be attributed to other workers in the company, it was savings due only to the labor exerted by the owner.

Another important reason that the worker is not entitled to the profits of the company, is because of the entrepreneur’s role as owner of the firm, starting with discovering an inefficiency in the market, and their ongoing work in that role.

Before the business is even running, the following is a partial list of what the entrepreneur does (and what the worker demanding business profits feels should not be compensated for):

· Think of an idea, find an inefficiency in the market that can be solved

· Research the idea, talk to people in the industry

· Build a financial model

· Write a business plan & deck

· Find funding

· Scout out location

· Come up with marketing plan, find designer, create branding, logo, etc.

· Hire managers and have employee plan

· Building customer support systems

· Business permits, licensing, incorporation/LLC, sales tax, insurance, potentially much more depending on if there is a physical location, food served, etc.

· Create financial, operational, HR systems, etc.

When the business is running, the entrepreneur as owner:

· Makes sure the managers are doing their jobs correctly, overseeing every aspect of the firm

· Keeps pace of the industry & market, making sure the business stays relevant or competitive

· Makes decisions about adding new products, or removing those that are underperforming

· Serves as the customer service agent of last resort, handling major customer issues

· Cultivates large clients, maintaining important relationships

· Sets the corporate culture, making sure the employees are happy

These are the reasons that employees are not entitled to the profits or ‘surplus value’ that they create. As an employer, I think that part of the profits should be given to employees as bonuses, to incentivize them to care for the company, this should be in the compensation for every employee, no matter their position with the firm. But they are not entitled to any compensation above what is in their contract, just as they are not required to work above and beyond what is required of them.

The argument that the worker is entitled to business profits can be extended to anything that the business uses in production – if the business uses steel in their process, why wouldn’t the company that produces the steel also be entitled to the profits they were making on the steel? What about the electricity the company uses, or even the landlord providing a space? It is the entrepreneur that has come up with the idea, put the pieces in place (of which the employee is just one), taken the risk, and continues to stay innovative and ahead of an incredibly competitive marketplace.

Steve Rubenfaer

#entrepreneur

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steverubenfaer · 2 years

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Minimum Wage Laws

Printing money (the real definition of inflation) makes the bottom 99% poorer, it is the reason that one jobholder in the 50s & 60s could feed a family and own a house even with an admin career. Now, that same household needs two earners, possibly with side jobs, just to afford rent. This is due to inflation, subject of another post. But for now, we will consider the problem of a worker working full time, but not being able to provide a decent living for them and their family.

A popular solution to this problem is the minimum wage, which guarantees a level of payment to a worker enough to afford basic necessities. This sounds good, ensuring that people who work don’t have to worry about food, shelter, etc. But the minimum wage intensifies the problem, creating more job insecurity, and making society poorer in general.

The minimum wage law does one thing only; it makes consensual jobs illegal. A minimum wage law will say something like ‘All jobs that pay less than $15 are illegal and must be destroyed.’ That is literally all the law will say, followed by the penalties, including jail time, for offering or holding such a consensual job.

There are a few people who will be better off due to this law, those that currently earn less than $15/hour, and whose employees decide to raise their wage to this level so they can keep them employed (many or most of them will see their hours reduced, negating the benefits). But literally everybody else in society will be worse off due to minimum wage legislation.

The hardest hit are those whose labor doesn’t add enough value to make them worth the minimum wage floor. These are the most vulnerable in society; immigrants who don’t speak English well, college students without anything on their resumes, people without specific skills or training, etc. Minimum wage laws force these people to be wards of the state, forever. They will never get the skills they need to produce on their own and work towards their goals. One axiom or truth of a minimum wage is that it adds to structural unemployment; it creates a class of people who are priced out of earning a living on their own.

It also hurts entrepreneurs, who have identified a way to grow their business. The minimum wage law prevents them from doing this, which also hurts any consumers who would be positively affected by the new, higher quality, or cheaper products or services that would be offered had the job been allowed.

Aside from the negative effects it has on the prosperity of society, the minimum wage is also immoral. It makes consensual jobs illegal; if an entrepreneur wants to hire someone for $14/hour, and someone is willing to accept that job, that is consensual, with no negative side effects, nobody is hurt. It is immoral to tell the entrepreneur that they must destroy the job, and the worker that they must remain unemployed. Consensual jobs always make society more prosperous; the economy is not zero-sum.

Destroying a consensual job via minimum wage legislation is the opposite of ‘my body my choice.’

The best way to help workers earn a decent living of course is to stop the giant government budget deficits and money printing, the source of the problem. But there are other things a government can do to improve the lives of marginal workers. First and foremost, is eliminate licensing and permitting required to start a business or just sell things. Our grandparents immigrating to this country made a living by peddling or starting other businesses on their own; nowadays that is impossible, because of all the regulations involved. They must file for permits which require an extensive knowledge of English, and they must possess some capital to give the state just for the privilege of providing services to people. These permits & licenses are in place supposedly to protect people, but that is not the case, paperwork doesn’t protect anyone, just having a license or permit doesn’t weed out bad actors, there are other more efficient mechanisms to protect people that don’t involve barriers to entry. The real reason permits & licensing exist is because of legacy businesses, who don’t want competition. They persuade politicians to enact laws limiting new entrants, which get sold to the public as for their own good. Removing these obstacles to starting a business would help marginal workers earn a living and build for the future, more than anything the government can do proactively.

Another way governments can help in a more direct way, is by providing resources for workers to earn more. Having resources available to people (maybe only to those who earn below a certain amount), to help them create resumes, appear presentable to employers, connect them with employers who have jobs available matching their skills, and having an idea of what is needed in the marketplace to connect workers with learning new relevant skills, would help the most marginalized earn a living on their own, by increasing the value they add to production.

Prosperity can never be legislated. For people to make a decent living, they have to create value, which is done through skills and experience, not laws.

#enterpreneur

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steverubenfaer · 2 years

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Steve Rubenfaer BettorTakes

Steve Rubenfaer is CEO of Betflair, LLC, a new entrant in the online gambling industry. Betflair’s first product, BettorTakes, has developed an algorithm which combs through the history of sports bettors to find their strengths & weaknesses. It uses proprietary intelligence to search for various criteria, and establish the user’s proficiency in leagues, categories, etc. Bettors can see their patterns and make a more informed betting decision.

There are many bet trackers on the market, but there are no analytical tools that can show bettors how they are doing individually, so they can work on improving their own performace. If someone does poorly in certain categories, they can think it over and see if there is a reason they might be handicapped in that area. Up until now, the psychology of sports betting is left out of bets, but of course psychology is present in all of our actions. For example Steve Rubenfaer, founder, has been an entrepreneur his entire life, starting businesses from scratch. It is not surprising to find that Rubenfaer predominantly bets on underdogs, as he can identify with them. When the bettor becomes aware of their biases, they can be worked upon.

BettorTakes is currently in beta testing, and has an aggressive timeline, with many tools in development. These tools are designed to help bettors make more informed decisions before placing bets.

#entrepreneur

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steverubenfaer · 2 years

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Profits!

Profit is at the heart of all existence. Life exists because of profits; when you generate more energy from food than it took to eat/digest, the difference is your profit, which keeps you alive.

Human society profits by using its natural resources to satisfy the wants of its members. The more efficient this process is, the higher the profit. How prosperous a society is, is determined by how well it translates its natural resources into what people want; prosperity is a direct result of profits.

Profit can be divided into two parts; the accounting profits earned by the entrepreneur, and the psychic profits that the buyer receives, because they value the good or service higher than the purchase price. Every transaction happens because each party values the good/service the other has for more than what they are trading. All values are subjective, and transactions only happen when both parties feel they are getting more value than they are giving up, otherwise the transaction would not happen. Thus every mutual transaction results in profit for both parties.

When someone purchases an item for $20, it must be worth more than $20 to them, otherwise they wouldn’t purchase it. If the item is worth $25 to them, they made a psychic profit of $5. If the item cost $15 to produce, then the sale generated $10 of profit, $5 in money profits for the entrepreneur, and $5 of psychic profit for the purchaser. The higher the profit of the exchange, both entrepreneurial & psychic, the richer society has become.

Unlike psychic profits, entrepreneurial profits enrich other members of society. Those profits turn into savings, and savings become investments in capital goods, which make natural resources (land and labor) more productive. Profits drive investment in capital goods, which make everybody involved in production more productive, and able to earn more. The most important step in reducing poverty is raising the productivity of workers, and this is done through generating profits, which raise productivity.

Profits are often looked at in a negative light, as if they are earned unfairly. The only way profits are unfair is if granted rights by the government that others don’t have access to. Higher profits signify that less resources were used up in production, freeing up land & labor to satisfy even more wants. An entrepreneur in a competitive market who makes higher profits isn’t price gouging, they are using few resources to fill wants.

If a bottle of water usually sells for $1, but there is a drought, is it morally acceptable to sell it for $10? If people are paying $10 for water, that means that they value it higher than $10. Maybe they value the water for $50, because they are worried about running out. When the entrepreneur sells the normally $1 bottle for $10, he is making an extra $9 due to the situation of limited supply. But the purchaser is making even a higher psychic profit, $40; even though they are paying 10x the usual price, the benefit to their life is even greater at that moment. Is selling the bottle for $10 price gouging?

#entreprenuership

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