#thousands of dollars of tools. our livelihood.

[bigbighouse]

1 million little threads connecting me to the world and my sense of control over it and God gently snipping at them one by one with a pair of scissors. maybe the bird handled sewing ones

[insurance-professionals-arizona]

Hazard Insurance for Businesses 101 | Insurance Professionals of Arizona

Hazard Insurance for Businesses is a not very well-known insurance option. When you think about insurance for businesses, you probably think about business insurance. The great thing about hazard insurance is it is for businesses. This kind of insurance is perfect for any business owner, especially small business owners.

Here are some of the most common questions we at Insurance Professionals of Arizona (IPA) get about hazard insurance for businesses:

Hazard Insurance for Businesses: What is it?

If you have not heard of hazard insurance, it is a form of insurance for businesses. It is specifically for small businesses. Hazard insurance will help cover the costs of things that get damaged. This can cover the physical building and also the product and equipment that you use.

Depending on your insurance policy, your hazard insurance policy may cover pay and salary for employees. This can happen if you cannot operate your location because it is snowed in or damaged. You can rest easy knowing that both you and your employees are taken care of should something go wrong.

Made for Small Businesses

If there is one thing we cannot stress enough, it is that hazard insurance was made for small businesses. Think of hazard insurance as insurance that covers the physical brick-and-mortar location and any physical company assets.

It is perfect for small businesses because if you run your business out of your house, it will cover your business assets from home. If you store them in a shed or something that is detached, it will also cover those physical buildings. This allows you to feel peace of mind knowing that your business and product are protected should anything happen to them.

Does My Small Business Need Hazard Insurance?

The short answer is yes, you probably need it. Hazard insurance is something that is not required to have in most states. But when you do not have hazard insurance you can end up paying a lot of money if something happens.

At IPA we recommend it because it protects your business and any physical location you have. If you have a physical store or use a storage place for your products, you should seriously consider hazard insurance.

So What Does Hazard Insurance Cover?

Hazard insurance can cover several things. For the physical things, it can cover the building, the outdoor features, and furniture. It can also cover the electronics and office structures found in the building. Products, tools, and equipment also fall under hazard insurance.

Your hazard insurance will also cover damages and costs caused by the elements. This is everything from fire to blizzard storms. Your policy can also cover physical documents that are important to you. For example, your business documents and invoices from your account receivables.

What Are The Benefits of Hazard Insurance?

Your business is your livelihood. It is how you make your income and pay bills. If anything happens to your products or physical location, you are going to pay for it. This can cost thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars when you do not have insurance.

When you do not have hazard insurance, your regular insurance for your house or even business may not cover the costs. Hazard insurance can help you replace and rebuild the damage done. Do not let fate decide what happens to your business, take control with hazard insurance for your business.

Where Can I Go to Purchase Hazard Insurance?

Our office at IPA offers hazard insurance for your small business. Not every insurance company is going to offer hazard insurance. If they only deal with personal insurance policies, they may not offer hazard insurance. Before you choose an insurance broker, make sure they offer hazard insurance.

IPA also has a variety of insurance companies that you can choose from. Every insurance company will have different factors when determining the cost. With multiple companies to choose from, you know you are getting the best price. Give us a call or fill out our quick quote insurance form on our website.

Do I Need a Quote for Hazard Insurance?

Usually your insurance professional will give you a quote. This lets you know an estimate of what you would pay for the policy. You do not need to go out and find an insurance quote by yourself. If you know you want hazard insurance, you can meet with an insurance professional and discuss your options.

The great thing about hazard insurance quotes is it gives you a good idea of what you will need to pay. Your cost might go up or down depending on the insurance company you choose and what policy you want. More coverage will usually equal more money.

Here at IPA, We Care About You

Our business has over 15 years of insurance experience in the State of Arizona. IPA strives to make your insurance experience as smooth as possible. That is why we offer online and in-person options for you. This allows you to choose what is going to be best for you and your situation.

We want you to feel comfortable about getting insurance. Let us answer any questions you have. We let you choose from over 40 insurance providers. This lets you have control over what matters most to you. We provide both personal and professional insurance options.

Hazard insurance for businesses is a great option that any business owner should look into. Different coverage options can fit within any budget. If you have any questions about hazard insurance or what is best for your business, give us a call.

At IPA, we have insurance specialists that are knowledgeable about all things related to business insurance. Even if you have general questions or do not even know where to start, we can help you out. Let us show you how we can help protect your business. Start today by getting a quote for hazard insurance online.

We’re here to help! Call us today. 480-981-6338

[spacenutspod]

5 min read NASA, Pacific Disaster Center Increase Landslide Hazard Awareness Communities worldwide now have access to a powerful tool to increase their awareness of landslide hazards, thanks to NASA and the Pacific Disaster Center. A humanitarian worker from USAID observes the impacts of a landslide. USAID deployed an elite Disaster Assistance Response Team on Nov. 17, 2020, to lead the U.S. response to Hurricanes Eta and Iota.USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance After years of development and testing, NASA’s Landslide Hazard Assessment for Situational Awareness model (LHASA) has been integrated into the Pacific Disaster Center’s (PDC) multi-hazard monitoring, alerting, and decision-support platform, DisasterAWARE. LHASA allows researchers to map rainfall-triggered landslide hazards, giving DisasterAWARE users around the world a robust tool for identifying, tracking, and responding to these threats. The aim is to equip communities with timely and critical risk awareness that bolsters disaster resilience and safeguards lives and livelihoods. Landslides cause thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in damage every year. Developing countries often bear disproportionate losses due to lack of access to hazard early warning systems and other resources for effective risk reduction and recovery. Reports from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction emphasize that early warning systems and early action are among the most effective ways to decrease disaster-related deaths and losses. The distribution of reported fatalities from 10,804 rainfall-triggered landslides in NASA’s Global Landslide Catalog (GLC) from 2007 to 2017. White dots represent incidents with zero reported fatalities and dots in the color scale from pink to red represent incidents in the range of 1-5000 fatalities. The NASA landslides team, based primarily out of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, develops the Global Landslide Catalog and LHASA with support from NASA’s Disasters program. NASA Scientific Visualization Studio “Some local authorities develop their own systems to monitor landslide risk, but there isn’t a global model that works in the same way. That’s what defines LHASA: it works all the time and it covers most regions of the world,” says Robert Emberson, NASA Disasters associate program manager and a key member of the NASA landslides team. “Thanks to our collaboration with the Pacific Disaster Center, this powerful landslide technology is now even more accessible for the communities that need it most.” LHASA uses a machine learning model that combines data on ground slope, soil moisture, snow, geological conditions, distance to faults, and the latest near real-time precipitation data from NASA’s IMERG product (part of the Global Precipitation Measurement mission). The model has been trained on a database of historical landslides and the conditions surrounding them, allowing it to recognize patterns that indicate a landslide is likely. The result is a landslide “nowcast” – a map showing the potential of rainfall-triggered landslides occurring for any given region within the past day. This map of hazard likelihood can help agencies and officials rapidly assess areas where the current landslide risk is high. It can also give disaster response teams critical information on where a landslide may have occurred so they can investigate and deploy life-saving resources.   In 2021, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, triggering a series of landslides across the country. Landslides can destroy infrastructure and impede the movement of people and life-saving aid. United Nations World Food Programme Partnering to Protect the Vulnerable Generating landslide nowcasts is merely the first step. To be truly effective, vulnerable communities must receive the data in a way that is accessible and easy to integrate into existing disaster management plans. That’s where the Pacific Disaster Center comes in. PDC is an applied research center managed by the University of Hawaii, and it shares NASA’s goal to reduce global disaster risk through innovative uses of science and technology.  Its flagship DisasterAWARE software provides early warnings and risk assessment tools for 18 types of natural hazards and supports decision-making by a wide range of disaster management agencies, local governments, and humanitarian organizations. Prominent users include the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), and the World Food Programme (WFP). “The close pairing of our organizations and use of PDC’s DisasterAWARE platform for early warning has been a special recipe for success in getting life-saving information into the hands of decision-makers and communities around the world,” said Chris Chiesa, PDC deputy executive director. The collaboration with PDC brings NASA’s landslide tool to tens of thousands of existing DisasterAWARE users, dramatically increasing LHASA’s reach and effectiveness. Chiesa notes that teams in El Salvador, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic have already begun using these new capabilities to assess landslide hazards during the 2023 rainy season. This screenshot from PDC’s DisasterAWARE Pro software shows LHASA landslide hazard probabilities for Myanmar in Sept. 2023. Red areas indicate the highest risk for landslide occurrence within the past three hours, while orange and yellow indicate lesser risk. Pacific Disaster Center PDC’s software ingests and interprets LHASA model data and generates maps of landslide risk severity. It then uses the data to generate landslide hazard alerts for a chosen region that the DisasterAWARE mobile app pushes to users. These alerts give communities critical information on potential hazards, enabling them to take protective measures. DisasterAWARE also creates comprehensive regional risk reports that estimate the number of people and infrastructure exposed to a disaster – focusing specifically on things like bridges, roads, and hospitals that could complicate relief efforts when damaged. This information is critical for allowing decision-makers to effectively deploy resources to the areas that need them most.  DisasterAWARE landside risk report for Myanmar, showing estimated population, infrastructure and capital exposure to landslide risk, as well as the community’s needs. Pacific Disaster Center This effort between NASA and the PDC builds upon a history of fruitful cooperation between the organizations. In 2022, they deployed a NASA global flood modeling tool to enhance DisasterAWARE’s flood early-warning capabilities. They have also shared data and expertise during multiple disasters, including Hurricane Iota in 2020, the 2021 earthquake in Haiti, and the devastating August 2023 wildfires in Maui, PDC’s base of operations. “The LHASA model is all open-source and leverages publicly available data from NASA and partners,” says Dalia Kirschbaum, lead of the NASA landslides team and director of Earth Sciences at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “This enables other researchers and disaster response communities to adapt the framework to regional or local applications and further awareness at scales relevant to their decision-making needs.” Kirschbaum and her team were recently awarded the prestigious NASA Software of the Year award for their work developing LHASA.  Share Details Last Updated Oct 26, 2023 Related Terms EarthNatural Disasters Explore More 3 min read International Ocean Satellite Monitors How El Niño Is Shaping Up Article 1 week ago 3 min read All Together Now: Drill Joins Other Moon Rover Science Instruments Article 1 week ago 2 min read NASA’s Global Science Hackathon Attracts Thousands of Participants Article 3 weeks ago 5 min read NASA, Pacific Disaster Center Increase Landslide Hazard Awareness

[songbach8-blog]

Transferring Companies Close to San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento

Moving Firms Close to San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento

For this reason, if you're sensible, you will discover a full-service firm that provides it all. The bar also offers a large choice of cocktails. An outdoor link from one other extremely trafficked site other than yours provides you with better page rank in the foremost search engines like google. No have to proceed your search for movers! We at California Movers are properly trained with the best practices and are absolutely outfitted to handle the moving of those massive devices. We offer the perfect services for native strikes in addition to out of state shifting. In case you are planning to take companies from a moving company, then you have to how the company prepares the shifting estimates. Our moving company focuses on native, long-distance, and even commercial moves. As a San Francisco business moving company, we offer a wide range of services to swimsuit the requirements of your enterprise, from office moves to furnishings set up.

Corovan provides commercial transferring, storage, and furnishings companies. A and P Transferring is family owned and operated, that performs high quality providers you can belief. Great price, humorous and hard working crew, and good quality. It was an incredible experience being moved by these guys. Being a novice, you may not have all kinds of wrapping papers and bins, used for packing and storing the objects whereas dispatching. The Sacramento Kings, who flirted with a move to Seattle in recent years, isn’t going anyplace after being bought by Vivek Ranadive. In fact, there are quite a number of issues you can consider with the intention to make your transfer that much simpler and within the paragraphs beneath we'll let you understand extra about them. Even a 10% drop is going to have a significant impact. Have a take a look at San Jose Events, 10 Finest, TripAdvisorand Issues to do and find an event you’ll enjoy.

Patricia G

7 years in the past from Manila

Free Wardrobes

5 years ago from Chandigarh

“This planned improvement will help deliver hundreds of jobs into our city center with easy accessibility to public transit,” mentioned San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo. Jobs added by San Francisco exceeded that of the lowest six counties mixed! For those who dwell and work within San Francisco metropolis limits, it’s entirely doable to rely solely on public transportation and to not own a vehicle. Lately, town Council authorised priorities for a housing bond on the November ballot that will put thousands and thousands of dollars towards housing for homeless and low-revenue individuals. The Bay Area migration additionally causes ripples through different housing markets, Marr stated. With 642,000 jobs and only 414,000 staff, there's a "housing deficit" of 228,000. That may be a shortage twice the scale of Santa Clara's though Santa Clara County has over twice the population. 414,000 Employees & 642,000 jobs. 414,000 Employees & 642,000 jobs. SAN JOSE — After working a number of jobs set in static places, Fabricio Lunardi discovered professional fulfilment with a extra itinerant livelihood. To have all shifting services underneath one place with a bonus like offer of Low-cost Moving in San Jose, clients searching for a moving company shouldn't miss the golden alternative.

moving companies san jose ca

Our skilled group of lengthy distance movers are extremely qualified to have any process and have been in the corporate for years, so that they know what has to be executed when moving your personal personal possessions. Gagne, Knuble, and Richards have them steaming alongside. They will have R&D centers in India however not Indiana? When you’re basing your service suite round open-source projects, you'll be able to then use that funding to realize interoperability, construct out your gross sales pipeline, establish a solid brand id and entice the expertise needed to grab market share from incumbents. Their prices are surprisingly low when you think about the extent of high quality of the service. We try to give you the very best high quality shifting experience in San Jose, CA, however at a worth that usually beats what the ‘value’ competitors charge. If latter is the case then hiring San Jose piano movers is the very best choice. Our experience and expertise insures not solely your belongings, but also a high quality, efficiency, and careful move/relocation for the best value guaranteed.

Questioning what time of the 12 months is best to maneuver? Be assured that if I used to be really uncaring, I would not spend my time attempting to assist by writing articles right here. Many of those transferring corporations will even assist the moved individual to find educational institutions and purchasing malls in the brand new area, so that their liked ones can negotiate in at the primary. Find new professional movers, piano mover, pool desk mover or lengthy distance with recommendations by reading local movers reviews. You'll have the ability to rapidly find that expenses range considerably from one firm to a different. If your the corporate making an attempt or planning on transferring the hawk. Employees can pack all their things into packing containers and our professional movers load and unload all the things, whereas taking additional care of all the expensive tools your company relies upon. Undoubtedly a very good moving company. Good luck with your move. Our dedicated, skilled transfer coordinators will personally help you each step of the best way to maintain you on budget and on time.

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[cheapesttruckinsuranceepua031]

Need Business Auto Insurance Coverage? Learn Where To Start

The business was formed in 1957 with Jack Crawford Taylor as its creator. The operations of the company were initially begun in S. Louis, in the basement of a cars and truck dealership. After five years, that is, in 1962, the daily cars and truck rentals were regularized with only 17 automobiles. Currently, this company is now the biggest cars and truck rental running business in the entire of North America. Enterprise Vehicle Rental offers employment to more than 67000 commands and staff members around 6000 locations. These locations include the local market as well as the airport places, divided in the ratio of 91:9 respectively. A study by a leading newspaper has actually exposed that Enterprise Car Rentals purchases 7 percent of all the new vehicles that are offered in the U. S. every year.

Referrals - Request for a list of recommendations, customers you can call. They need truck insurance rates to be able to provide lots of names and numbers, and some with comparable systems to what you are purchasing. Then. CALL THEM. ask open ended friendly concerns and see what they state. Would they use them again? Listen carefully and do not skip this step.

Correct motorist training will likewise ensure that you get a great rate. Ensure your chauffeurs restore their training and licenses on a routine basis. Extra security training will get you a much Check out this site better insurance rate. More importantly, it keeps everybody safe on the roads. According to state and federal law if they drive long ranges make sure they are just on the roadways a certain number of hours every day.

This might be a great fit for you if you have had any experience in sewing and alterations commercial truck insurance california (customizing). Many clothes and fabric providers outsource their work on a day-to-day basis. Pick up and drop off probably will be required by you. You earn money by assembling clothing and fabric for a set rate.

Do not utilize rest locations in the evening: This suggestions originates from a myriad of skilled female semi truck insurance because this is when you are most vulnerable. Unless it is a rest stop that is open all night with security, you need to remember you are in the middle of no place and you are not going to discover aid quickly enough.

The very best funding choice - Wait and think for a minute. Have you discovered your desired automobile? Initially, you require to pick your commercial truck insurance according to your requirements. Browse your regional market, talk with several different dealerships and salespersons, and compare their rates and offered alternatives. As soon as you have chosen to purchase a particular design, salesmen and dealerships will offer you funding. Nevertheless, you require to be careful if you are using on-site financing alternatives. You may not get the best offers, interest rates and terms. You can most likely get better choices from a cooperative credit union or local bank.

Laws worrying the commercial motorist have gotten extremely strict in the last numerous years, specifically after 911. New chauffeurs are constantly telling me that the company desires a minimum of six months to a year of experience prior to they can employ them. So now, they have spent thousands of dollars for a CDL, but have no driving experience, so they can not get employed. It actually is not the business that will not employ them, but the problem lies with their insurance provider.

Everybody tends to think that it is totally up to the Medical Inspector and/or trucking company to decide if a person is certified to operate the industrial motor car. It is not. Ultimately, the decision will constantly rest with the insurer of the particular motor provider. This is why so lots of brand-new chauffeurs have gone through the process: passed the DOT physical, been worked with on by the carrier, and 2 weeks later receive that call or qualcom message that they will have to go back to the house terminal and be eliminated from the business.

Cargo Coverage: Like primary car liability, particular semi truck insurance that require state and federal filings are needed by law to keep certain quantities of freight (coverage of the product that is being hauled.) Many truckers carry between $100,000 to $250,000 although the limits might be significantly less (ie $15,000).

A number of the owner operators I have actually talked to indicated that they had no idea the number of tools and resources were available at truckpaper. What I discovered was that a lot of diehard truck paper newsprint patriots rarely use the web variation of Truck Paper.

Credit of Candidate. Some trucking business are credit driven. cheap commercial truck insurance candidates with much better credit have better rates. Example: Progressive Insurance.

commercial truck insurance business price the policies according to the amount and the worth of the products brought by the automobile. The costs vary from the type of item carried to the range clocked by the car. The products usually brought by them include coal, gravel, lead pipes, wood, flammable substances, concrete, water etc. These items decide the worth of your insurance. Thinking about the unsafe repercussions that an automobile carrying it may need to face in case of a mishap, flammable liquids are normally the greatest priced.

The state secures you when you buy insurance coverage from a confessed company. Confessed companies are companies that are licensed in the State of California. They contribute cash to the California Insurance Assurance Partner (C.I.G.A.) The State sets aside this cash to pay claims in case an admitted business goes broke. Non-admitted business do not add to the C.I.G.A. fund. There is no guarantee your claim will be paid if a non-admitted business goes broke. However, non-admitted companies are not all bad. The most essential aspect of a business is their A.M. Best ranking, however you should understand that you're asking for trouble if you purchase insurance from a non-admitted business with a bad A.M. Finest ranking.

If someone filed match against you, would you represent yourself in court? Or, would you just call the complainant and state, "You've already got an attorney. Why don't we just utilize yours?" Neither choice secures you, does it?

There are business that are providing on the job trainings to assist you gain more experience. Before you understand it, he has actually flipped a rock in your instructions. Do you need industrial auto insurance?

We promise not to play games with your business to make our living. For size requirements, you should talk to the storage system manager. But your service isn't "anything else" - it is your livelihood.

[spuntinaspun]

Everything You Need To Know: Exactly How To Develop Into A Wellness Trainer

Whether you're considering ending up being a licensed health and wellness as well as health coach, at that point you have an honest passion for all points health-related. The truth is that you may possibly love health much that you're excited by the concept of helping others to produce significant improvements within their lives. Here's all of the info you'll need to find out before getting started on the new and exciting career course.

Detailed: The way To Become Wellness Coach

Discover More about what health and wellness trainers perform

While it might seem like an exciting career selection from the surface, it is a very good concept.

Make sure to know what health coach program online is and that is not. Read critiques and see exactly what coaches are already saying. Do their experiences lineup using what you are searching for in a school? In the event that you prefer the thought to be your own boss and starting your own practicedive right into everything this entails and if the day-to-day adventure of entrepreneurship fits with your nature and needs.

Decide how much training You're Going to Need

Building your own health and wellbeing trainer business may be a opportunity with terrific rewards. Most health coach course online target only on overall wellness topics or training methods, however they make you hanging when it has to do with business skills. Do your own studying to make sure you will receive the most suitable strategies and support coach efficiently to acquire the perfect mixture of experience and wisdom, and develop your organization abilities.

By way of instance, at the IAWP we provide in-depth coach instruction, health education, and business coaching to ensure that you are proficient in all three areas. We couple these 3 key pillars with personal support therefore that you may customise your studying once you grad every step of the way.That way, you can reach the ground running!

Research colleges and coaching opportunities

Every one has goals and different wants. You might be the type of individual which wishes to choose the academic path and find a bachelor's or master's level in primal health coach review. This could be a terrific plan if you desire to just work on a big corporation or teach wellness in an academic configurations. Or you also might be the kind of individual who would like launch your practice and to become their very own boss. In which caseyou would want to be certain you receive your certification from an organization that will allow you to attain your company goals.

Amounts from traditional schools and universities could be handy for those wishing maybe to set with another practice, including being a health care provider or to do the job in an academic area. They are sometimes expensive, costing you thousands and thousands of dollars and many several years of study. This course might be over kill for people that need to establish their company, assisting the others lead healthy lifestyles.

Whichever course could be the perfect choice for you personally, be certain you choose a plan that is backed by certification. It is essential to be sure that this program you select is fully licensed, with an independent organization like the International Coaching Federation, because that means that the curriculum has satisfied a high quality in conditions of the education and support you will get.

Register in your faculty of choice & participate

Once you're in the training school that's the best fit for you, dig which they provide. At the IAWP, we provide our pupils with, aid with school, peer reviewed mentorship classes, along with boundless personalized health training. And that service will not end when you graduate, you also could tap into personal support and our training to the life span of your new livelihood.

Finish your training and become certified!

After about 6 weeks (or more), you will eventually reach begin calling yourself a Certified wellbeing and Wellness mentor. Congrats! It is a very exciting move toward your dream career targets and takes lots of job. Make certain that you take advantage of most the post-graduation tools your school offers to ensure that you simply start your career away to the right foot. We provide complete to you personally health training packages, assignments and a custom website to make sure you are prepared to draw and sign clients effortlessly done to our pupils and graduates.

[just-means]

Everything You Want To Know: Just How To Become A Health Coach

Whether you are actually thinking about ending up being a certified health and wellness as well as health health instructor, at that point you possess an earnest interest for all things health-related. In fact, you might love health you're excited by the thought of assisting the others to produce improvements. Here's all the information you'll need to find out before starting out on this new and exciting career course.

Step-By-Step: The way To Become Wellness Mentor

Learn more about what wellness and health trainers do

It is almost always a good concept, When it might seem in the exterior to be an exciting occupation choice.

Ensure to understand what health coach certification online is and that is not. Read opinions and also determine exactly what additional trainers are all already saying. Can their experiences line up with what you are searching for in a school? If you want the thought to be your own boss and start your own practicedive right into everything this entails of course if the experience of entrepreneurship matches your nature and needs.

Decide just how much instruction You Will Want

Building your health and wellbeing coach business may be a prospect with great rewards. Most health coach course online focus exclusively on overall health topics or training techniques, nevertheless they make you hanging as it has to do with business skills. Do your own studying to make certain you are going to receive the right type of strategies and support trainer efficiently, to acquire the perfect mixture of knowledge and knowledge, and build up your business skills.

For example, in the IAWP we provide wellness education, in-depth coach instruction, and small business instruction to ensure that you are competent in each of three locations. We bunch these three key pillars with continuing help so you may personalize your mastering once you grad, just about every step of the way.That means, you'll be able to hit the ground running!

Research schools and training opportunities

Everyone has unique requirements and objectives that are special. You might be the type of individual which wishes to take the academic route and find yourself a bachelor's or master's level in health coach program online. This might possibly be a good plan in the event that you desire teach health or to just work on a massive corporation. Or you also are the sort of man or woman who wants to become their own boss and launch your practice. In this scenario you would like to ensure you get your certification from a organization that'll allow you to attain your organization goals.

Amounts from colleges and traditional universities might be useful for individuals wanting to set with a different practice, such as being a doctor or to get the job done within a academic area. But they can be costly, costing you tens of thousands of dollars and decades of analysis. This path could be overkill for anyone who need to establish their own business, aiding the others lead healthy lives.

Whichever path may be the most suitable choice for you, be certain that you settle on. It is critical to be sure that the program you pick is completely accredited, by an independent organization like the International Coaching Federation, because means the curriculum has fulfilled a high standard in conditions of the instruction and service you're going to get.

Register in your faculty of selection & engage entirely

Once you are in the coaching school that is the perfect fit for you, dig which they offer. At the IAWP, for example we provide our students with, unlimited wellness training, peer reviewed mentorship groups, and aid with faculty. Along with that support will not end you can tap into our training and support for the life of your livelihood when you graduate.

Finish your training and become qualified!

After about 6 months (or longer ), you may finally arrive at begin calling yourself a Certified Health and Wellness mentor. Congrats! It will take quite a bit of effort and will be an exciting move in your fantasy career targets. Make certain that you make the most of the tools that are post-graduation your school supplies to ensure that you start out your career away on the suitable foot. At the IAWP , we provide complete done to you personally wellness training software programs, assignments and a custom made website to make certain that you are ready to attract and sign clients with ease to our college students and graduates.

[vinayv224]

One of Amazon’s first employees says the company should be broken up

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos at the Wired25 event in 2018 | Matt Winkelmeyer / Getty Images for WIRED25

Jeff Bezos hired Paul Davis to build Amazon’s website. Now Davis wants to break it up.

Paul Davis literally helped build Amazon.com from scratch. Now he says it’s time to tear it apart.

Davis, a computer programmer who was Jeff Bezos’ second hire in 1994 before the shopping site even launched, told Recode on Friday that the company should be forced to separate the Amazon Marketplace, which allows outside merchants to sell goods to Amazon customers, from the company’s core retail business that stocks and sells products itself.

His reasoning? He’s troubled by reports of Amazon squeezing and exploiting the merchants who stock its digital shelves in ways that benefit Amazon, the company, above all else. Davis’ concerns come as Bezos’ company has come under increased scrutiny from politicians, regulators, and its own sellers, in part over the power it wields over small merchants who depend on the tech giant for their livelihoods.

“There’s clearly a public good to have something that functions like the Amazon Marketplace. … If this didn’t exist, you’d want it to be built,” Davis said. “What’s not valuable, and what’s not good, is that the company that operates the marketplace is also a retailer. They have complete access to every single piece of data and can use that to shape their own retail marketplace.”

Davis is referring to how Amazon uses data from its third-party sellers to benefit its core retail business, whether it be by scouring these merchants’ best-sellers and then choosing to sell those brands itself, or to create its own branded products through similar means.

“They’re not breaking any agreements,” he added. “They’re just violating what most people would assume was how this is going to work: ‘I sell stuff though your system [and] you’re not going to steal our sales.’”

Davis’ comments appear to be one of the first times that an early Amazon employee has called for the company to be broken up. Earlier this year, US presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren argued for the same. And both the US House of Representatives and the Federal Trade Commission are scrutinizing Amazon’s business practices to determine if they are anticompetitive, including its dealings with the hundreds of thousands of merchants who are the backbone of Amazon’s unmatched product catalogue.

An Amazon spokesperson sent Recode a statement, which read in part: “Sellers are responsible for nearly 60% of sales in our stores. They are incredibly important to us and our customers, and we’ve invested over $15 billion dollars this year alone—from infrastructure to tools, services, and features—to help them succeed. Amazon only succeeds when sellers succeed and claims to the contrary are wrong. Sellers have full control of their business and make the decisions that are best for them, including the products they choose to sell, pricing, and how they choose to fulfill orders.”

Davis’ comments to Recode came after he posted an online comment alongside a New York Times article earlier this week about the challenges sellers face while doing business on Amazon.

“For nearly 2 decades Amazon has used its control of its marketplace to strengthen its own hand as a retailer,” Davis wrote. “This should not be allowed to continue.”

The Times article highlighted various ways that Amazon allegedly puts pressure on the merchants who are responsible for nearly 60 percent of all Amazon physical product sales, including burying their listings if they are selling the same product for less elsewhere and making it hard for brands that don’t advertise on the site from showing up at the top of search results. (Recode spotlighted similar complaints from sellers in an episode of the Land of the Giants podcast series this summer.)

Davis wrote the backend software for the first iterations of the Amazon.com website from 1994 into 1996. He left the company after a year and a half and following the birth of his first child, in part, he said, because of the culture Bezos was creating that churned through good employees, whom Davis says were worked “into the ground.”

Still today, Davis marvels at what Bezos and his leadership team have built over the past two decades, and he says he shops on Amazon regularly.

“We exist with multiple hats: We’re citizens, [we’re] employees, we’re parents, we’re consumers — and, from my perspective, if you put the consumer hat on, it’s easy to feel incredibly proud of what Amazon is and has become,” Davis said. “But the problem is that that’s not the only hat that we wear — and its fine to celebrate and be optimistic and positive about what the company represents for consumers — but you also have to ask seriously, what does the company represent [to us] as citizens, as employees. And unfortunately, you have to be incredibly naive not to see that the answers to those questions are nowhere near as positive.”

“It is an amazing story,” he added, referring to the company’s innovation and success, “but as time goes forward my gut feeling is that it will not only not be the whole story, but really the smallest part of the story.” In addition to finding issue with Amazon operating simultaneously as retailer and marketplace, Davis also wonders why such a powerful — and, now, profitable — company can’t pay the frontline workers in its warehouses and delivery network better.

Today, Davis lives in a small New Mexico town and writes open source software for recording and editing audio. He said he knows it’s “absurd” to feel any sort of responsibility for the power that Amazon holds today.

“I doubt there’s a single line of code or concept that dates back to when I was there.”

He also stressed that most of the company’s early success should be attributed to Bezos’ intellect, ambition, and drive.

But at times, doubts do creep in for Davis. They emerge when he allows himself to consider what might have been if he, and Amazon’s first employee — fellow programmer and Amazon’s first Chief Technology Officer Shel Kaphan — hadn’t been the type of technical talents that understood the internet in its earliest days.

“Emotionally,” Davis said, “I do feel some kind of culpability.”

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/2rb6vrk from Blogger https://ift.tt/2PGJru1 via IFTTT

[theloniuswomb-blog]

Spiderman: Homecoming Can Suck My Fucking Dick.

Holy Shit. Where do I even start with this film? I wanted to like it a lot. I was intrigued by the casting of Tom Holland as Spider Man. He came off well in the Marvel Civil War movie, I remember thinking to myself; “Hey! His part was funny! Just the right amount of awkward, slash, comical that I instantly recognize as Spider Man. Awesome!” Now, I usually have doubts about any superhero adaption since the hit to miss ratio is all over the place, but this I thought could work quite nicely.  I saw the trailer, and like the little whore that I am, it got me wet. Wet hot with sexual anticipation. The CGI looked impressive. The action sequences looked crisp and innovative, the tone of the shots were dark and brooding. I expected drama, emotion and a plot-line that, although may not be the most original, could perhaps come through with some good acting and a tight script; with some inspired direction thrown in for good measure. This was the package I was creating for myself in my brain. My golden goose's egg.  And, much like Verruca Salt, I made a big song and dance about it to everyone, throwing glitter and sheets of colored plastic all over the room. But also like Verruca Salt, I also got hit with the trap door. A trap door that golden eggs get shat down, and so do we, right along with em; to burn for all eternity while Gene Wilder laughs at our scorched bodies.  First off, let's start with the tone of the movie. It doesn't have one. It has no idea what kind of movie it wants to be. It's got this light hearted vibe when Spidey is around that feels completely alien to the murky goings on of the Vulture. You get scenes where Peter Parker is walking through the school, drooling over hot girls in the most forced and gormless way. (SPOILER: Most of the film is of Tom Holland looking gormless at everyone around him.) Juxtaposed with Michael Keaton straight up killing people in the most nonchalant way possible. It's kind of infuriating, it was like there were two movies going on in tandem and neither of them had any particular relevance to the other. I must say, Michael Keaton gave a fairly decent performance, but he could have been used so much better. I saw Birdman recently (something I couldn't ignore as a massive, quite probably intended irony of Keaton's career) and I was impressed. I had problems with that film too (But I'll leave that for another review) but overall the acting was really fucking solid. Like I say, I was impressed. But obviously, good acting doesn't matter anymore for films like this. I honestly thought the newer incarnations of Batman would have taught a lesson to the makers of these kinds of movies. But obviously not.  Let's get to Peter. Peter is the most insufferable character ever. He's meant to be very smart, yet doesn't use his brain once. Not only does he not use his brain to problem solve, but he doesn't use it for introspection at all. The amount of times he puts other people's lives at risk in this movie is astounding. If this feature of the plot was used as a tool to move Peter's character forward as he matures into a new and exciting world, I can forgive this whole problem. In fact, that's kind of what I wanted to see. Progression. But it never comes. Spider Man sees bad guys robbing the bank. He attacks, not even stopping when he realizes they have incredibly powerful weapons. He carries on and ends up blowing up a deli over the street of a man that earlier in the movie is established, that he knows. Not once does he show any remorse for this horrible incident. He ruined a man's career, livelihood, and potentially could have killed him if he happened to live above the shop.

In another instance, Parker sees bad guys driving; he attacks them on the highway where loads of other people could die from all the high tech weapons going off at high speeds. He knew the types of weapons they had but did it anyway. He could have followed them to their destination, found out where the base was, who was involved in the organization and work out a plan. He could even find out the buyers if he cased them for a few weeks. But this thought never crosses Peters mind. It's just attack all problems in the face until they die. I mean fuck, this is a whiz kid of physics and science, some of the most logical shit ever. Yet he can't even think up a simple fucking plan to take on his enemies? Honestly, it's so hard to relate to Peter in this movie. You'd have to be some kind of autistic sociopath in order to find him tolerable. After a while Tony Stark comes along. Fuck me, Robert Downey Jr. couldn't give one flying fuck about this movie. And it showed like hell. His whole character in the film was just him playing himself not caring in various tropical places. I honestly believe Tony Stark represented how little of a fuck the writers and director cared about this film. He was a direct mouthpiece for the writers of the movie to say “fuck you” to the audience. Honestly, every time Parker fucked up, Tony would say “Oi, Parker, stop fuckin around!” but never explains why. He never says “Hey, you could have killed people back there! Are you insane?” instead he half asses his reasons and when Parker questions him on it he just says “because I said so.” Like fuck, you'd think after the first time Spidey fucks up, that's the time to sit down and talk. Jesus Christ should you even wait for a first-time-fuck-up in this scenario? Tony Stark, one of the smartest men alive, waits for Spidey to fuck up three times, THREE TIMES, with the third seeing spider man nearly sinking a whole ship of people due to his negligence. Hundreds would have died. It's incredible.

So, Iron Man finally gives some punishment after this. He takes away Parkers new shiny Stark Spidey Suit, to which Parker says “I'm nothing without that suit!” to which Stark replies; “if you're nothing without this suit, you don't deserve it.” or something to that effect. Instead of Peter having a moment of clarity and saying “fuck, people nearly died, I nearly died. Maybe I need to switch up my game and show Iron Man I'm more mature than this. Show I can use some strategy and grow into this role I'm destined to have and finally use my genius brain to devise a plan.” Nope. That's wishful thinking partner and you can get shot around here for that kinda talk.  Instead what we get is Parker learning nothing, and him creating some kind of device that allows him to go out and fuck up even faster and directly than before. They use some kind of tracker map to find the Vulture, who is breaking into an airplane full of Stark weapons. An Iron Suit included. Now, what the actual fuck? I don't know if the Vulture knows this, but Iron Man can remotely control his suits. If one were stolen, you can bet your bottom dollar he'd activate it and cane your operation into next week. But the Vulture MUST have known that, since he remotely controlled his own mechanical wings to try and kill Parker earlier in the movie. So what in the actual fuck is this man doing? He's inviting Iron Man into his lair. Willingly. It's the most stupid thing ever. It also gives so little motivation for Parker to do anything about the situation. Once he realizes it's Stark tech, he should have left. Because Parker also knows Iron Man remotely controls his suits, there's a whole scene that points this out near the beginning of the film for fuck's sake. The Vulture would have been a goner immediately upon the knowledge of the hijacking. It's easily the most retarded part of the film.   So Spidey decides to go all-in despite knowing Iron Man could easily kill this guy remotely and nearly ends up causing this plane to crash all over the city, no doubt killing thousands of people. In fact, an engine falls out while they're fighting on the plane's wings. Parker shows no regard for that at all. No remorse for the people that no doubt were killed by the falling debris. Fortunately, Spidey manages to use his webs to bend the out-of-control plane wing and steer them to safety. (Well, he crashes the plane into a sandbank.) He takes down the Vulture and leaves him tangled at the scene old school Spidey style, with a note to boot. Wow. How amazing. And he did it all without his shiny suit! He overcame so many obstacles and shortcomings, we really went on a journey there with old Petey boy there. Oh wait, that was the film I was daydreaming about while I was being shat on by this movie. Upon Stark learning of this situation, he instantly has Spider Man brought to the new headquarters of the Avengers, where he was about to announce Spider Man as a new, key member, along with an even better shiny suit. Like, what? Seriously? This kid needs a dressing down, not a new three piece. But it doesn't come. All we get is Parker declining the offer, you get a mild sense that he realizes that he's in over his head, and maybe this is all a bit much for him. But it's not really expressed very well. It all feels so odd and disjointed. I mean here we have Iron Man, the guy who cared about people dying from collateral damage in Civil War; who hunted down the Winter Soldier because he was a danger to the public, (who also for some reason killed Tony's parents,) caused a rift with the current most powerful heroes and his teammates, as he also wanted them to register their identities to an official data base to help reign them in and hold them accountable. Yet for some reason Tony couldn't give the time of day to say “Hey kid, tone it down you're getting crazy out there.”  I'll stop ragging on the film soon, but before I do, I want to mention the love interest. This was one of the most wooden romances I've ever seen. No chemistry. She was called Lizzy. It turns out Mary Jane is the other sarcastic girl who makes the closest things to jokes in the movie. Which I liked, but they didn't do nearly enough with. Again, there was an opportunity for him to grow with this character, have his attention turned to MJ, have him realize this Lizzy girl was a bit vacuous and boring, while this other girl was interesting and fun. But again it didn't happen. Instead, Lizzy moves away because of plot reasons that I won't give away, and MJ is merely hinted at as the new romance for the next film. Which is fucking boring. Honestly, it's so dull. I hated all the romance scenes. I wanted to like them, I mean shit, the girl was so hot. They even get an ass shot of her in her bikini. I was like “wow these are meant to be 15-year-old kids, what are they thinking? Isn’t this inappropriate for a kids movie?” (They are not 15-year-old kids, just to clarify. But for the plot, they were). They could have used this screen time to have Peter reflecting on his Uncle Ben, or bonding with his Aunty. Who, in my opinion, should have been told about the Spider Man thing. I think her knowing earlier in the film would have been a good dynamic to use. He should have told her right away after his first fuck up. I know it might deviate from traditional Spider Man lore, but as a film, it would've been a much more interesting watch. Aunt May is such a central figure to the Spider Man universe, as is the Uncle Ben storyline, but neither are given any sort of focus. Overall this film is garbage. In true Warski style, it was Garbage. Full on trash. I hated Guardians of the Galaxy less, and that's saying something. That is really saying something. Because that movie was awful. For Spider Man I have to say: the overall plot was good, but there were so many missed opportunities that it became more like a midlife crisis by the end. The choices to make for this story seemed so obvious, it was almost like they were purposefully not taking the logical steps in the narrative in order to make this movie as painful as possible. (Because the razor wire they'd jammed way up in your ass, to the tune of £13.50 for 3D, just wasn't quite painful enough.) Fuck this movie, nobody should see it, I hope it fucking bombs in the box office. Which it won't because, like the little whores that we are, we're all just gonna fan-boy for Spidey like we always do. I honestly regret spending money on this. Don't even buy the DVD, it's not worth it.

Before I go I need to mention something else; humor. Peter was not funny. He had moments of fun, sure. But he was not funny. Peter Parker is witty. He is known for wit, not fun. Again, this could have been used as a plot device to show his coping mechanism for dealing with such raw shit all the time. He exudes wit and comedy in the face of danger, then behind closed doors doubts himself. Like fuck, is a 15-16 year old really meant to be doing this shit? Getting involved in weapon trafficking and the criminal world after his Uncle Ben being shot and killed? As an aside, thank god they didn't make us re-live Uncle Ben's death. I was glad they kept that as a past event that we didn't need to see. One of the few good touches of the film. You could say it was like wiping just a bit of shit off your arse with your finger. There's not quite as much shit there anymore, but now it's on your finger, so. There you go.  So, what's my ultra biased and not subjective at all, star rating for this film? 1.5 out of 5. Some action was good, the 3D sucked, the acting sucked, the writing sucked, the CGI was good, Michael Keaton was good, everyone else didn't give a shit and ultimately it showed. Don't see this film. Boycott it harder than Isreal.

[webuyofficial]

Liberating eCommerce for Consumers and SMEs

So, you want to start a business? Want to earn your livelihood offering some much-needed goods or services, you say? Why don’t you just grab some wood there and we’ll knock you together a stall before you can — oh, you meant an electronic store! Why didn’t you say so before?

Of course, commerce has moved beyond shouting over each other’s head to try and gain the attention of customers. Most customers would rather not be shouted at, or even go to the store when they can just shop from their devices. eCommerce is now the most preferred medium for the exchange of goods and services, not only allowing consumers to shop from the comfort of their homes, but also from anywhere in the world.

No wonder the appeal

The ease which buyers and sellers can easily transact is the impetus behind a trillion dollar industry tethering our daily activities. However, this industry stands on a very shaky foundation — one fraught with insecurity, privacy invasion, trust, product suitability, high technological costs, and legal murkiness.

Trust issues and privacy concerns are two of the biggest problems facing the industry. Unlike brick and mortar stores where cash is king, eCommerce platforms require users to provide their personal data including their address, phone and account number, and credit card details. Not all platforms have the right infrastructures to properly secure users’ information from protecting this information from hackers, while some have been known to sell users’ information to third-parties. It’s one thing worrying if that shoe is going to really fit without trying it on, it’s another thing worrying whose hands your personal information is fitting into.

Because the customers have no way of physically examining whatever they are buying online, they are more likely to put their faith in an established brand — hoping they’ve gotten too big to fail — rather than some up-and-coming. This had placed many a start-up on the back foot, constantly swimming against a current of consumer bias, high labor and technological costs, market monopoly and penetration. Consumers, on the other hand, have had control over their privacy wrenched from their hands and are continually being herded towards choices, not of their making.

Developing business for eCommerce platform is a difficult and grueling task where every infrastructure and feature must be up to the task from website maintenance to service delivery, customer service, and security response. Democratizing the exchange of values and services eliminates these barriers to eCommerce, providing powerful growth incentives for both parties to directly transact without needing to establish trust or compromise their privacy and security. At the heart of this democratization is a decentralized platform with in-built viral protocols, trustless exchange of values, users’ incentivization mechanisms, better customer targeting tools, and intuitive interface.

This platform is WeBuy

WeBuy — First Blockchain Era Commerce Platform

Bringing such a large number of businesses online without requiring the thousand of intermediaries required, WeBuy leverages blockchain technology to enable Buyers and Sellers to locate each other, communicate, and transact in real-time without friction. Consumers can freely build their own marketplaces based on stores whose products or service delivery appeals to them. Similarly, Buyers can band together to create virtual marketplaces for consumers, catering to a wide range of products and services they couldn’t possibly have serviced alone.

The mission behind WeBuy is the evolution of the eCommerce industry, decentralizing how we buy, sell, and trade while incentivizing every commercial activity on the platform. That means consumers can now earn on every ad sellers push to them or for referring other users to their marketplace. Hundreds of billions of dollars are paid to attract buyers annually, with WeBuy the buyers receive most of that money.

Easily accessible through mobile applications that use geolocation to enable sellers and buyers locate and communicate with each other, WeBuy is removing the barriers preventing millions of businesses around the world from maximizing their online sales, enabling them to their online presence instantly at zero cost and tap into the boundless potentials of online transaction.

The WBY token will fuel the rapidly increasing volumes of online-to-offline commerce.

Join Production-Oriented Token Sale (POTS)

Cost Per Token: $0.25

Stage 1 Starts 25th March 2019

Accepted Currencies: FIAT + Cryptocurrencies

Don’t miss the revolution. Join now.

[stoweboyd]

The tension in the progressive community about on demand work as a positive, neutral, or negative force in labor economics is tightening, and attention must be paid because the labor laws and tax laws are shaping the lives of millions, even if no apparent plan is in place.

Heller’s piece is a preposterous length and is difficult to summarize, but here goes. New start-ups are operating at the edges and fringes of our economy, tapping into the economic leverage of freelance workers willing -- in the downdraft of the great recession -- to work for peanuts and to rent their possessions (mostly living space) for pocket money, This is the ‘on demand’ economy, which allows some -- mostly  millennials -- to paperclip a livelihood out of Uber, Airbnb, and Hello Alfred. Heller discusses government policies about the precarious lifestyle with political and government leaders, but like the lives of the individuals he talks with, we wind up with no resolution and more answers than we started with. Which might mean Heller’s on the right path, or that our society is falling behind and leaving social policy to be decided by Uber and Airbnb, and not by governments, unions, or other traditional institutions.

The American workplace is both a seat of national identity and a site of chronic upheaval and shame. The industry that drove America’s rise in the nineteenth century was often inhumane. The twentieth-century corrective—a corporate workplace of rules, hierarchies, collective bargaining, triplicate forms—brought its own unfairnesses. Gigging reflects the endlessly personalizable values of our own era, but its social effects, untried by time, remain uncertain.

Support for the new work model has come together swiftly, though, in surprising quarters. On the second day of the most recent Democratic National Convention, in July, members of a four-person panel suggested that gigging life was not only sustainable but the embodiment of today’s progressive values. “It’s all about democratizing capitalism,” Chris Lehane, a strategist in the Clinton Administration and now Airbnb’s head of global policy and public affairs, said during the proceedings, in Philadelphia. David Plouffe, who had managed Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign before he joined Uber, explained, “Politically, you’re seeing a large contingent of the Obama coalition demanding the sharing economy.” Instead of being pawns in the games of industry, the panelists thought, working Americans could thrive by hiring out skills as they wanted, and putting money in the pockets of peers who had done the same. The power to control one’s working life would return, grassroots style, to the people.

The basis for such confidence was largely demographic. Though statistics about gigging work are few, and general at best, a Pew study last year found that seventy-two per cent of American adults had used one of eleven sharing or on-demand services, and that a third of people under forty-five had used four or more. “To ‘speak millennial,’ you ought to be talking about the sharing economy, because it is core and central to their economic future,” Lehane declared, and many of his political kin have agreed. No other commercial field has lately drawn as deeply from the Democratic brain trust. Yet what does democratized capitalism actually promise a politically unsettled generation? Who are its beneficiaries? At a moment when the nation’s electoral future seems tied to the fate of its jobs, much more than next month’s paycheck depends on the answers.

[...]

In 1970, Charles A. Reich, a law professor who’d experienced a countercultural conversion after hanging with young people out West, published “The Greening of America,” a cotton-candy cone that wound together wispy revelations from the sixties. Casting an eye across modern history, he traced a turn from a world view that he called Consciousness I (the outlook of local farmers, self-directed workers, and small-business people, reaching a crisis in the exploitations of the Gilded Age) to what he called Consciousness II (the outlook of a society of systems, hierarchies, corporations, and gray flannel suits). He thought that Consciousness II was giving way to Consciousness III, the outlook of a rising generation whose virtues included direct action, community power, and self-definition. “For most Americans, work is mindless, exhausting, boring, servile, and hateful, something to be endured while ‘life’ is confined to ‘time off,’ ” Reich wrote. “Consciousness III people simply do not imagine a career along the old vertical lines.” His accessible theory of the baffling sixties carried the imprimatur of William Shawn’s New Yorker, which published an excerpt of the book that stretched over nearly seventy pages. “The Greening of America” spent months on the Times best-seller list.

Exponents of the futuristic tech economy frequently adopt this fifty-year-old perspective. Like Reich, they eschew the hedgehog grind of the forty-hour week; they seek a freer way to work. This productivity-minded spirit of defiance holds appeal for many children of the Consciousness III generation: the so-called millennials.

“People are now, more than ever before, aware of the careers that they’re not pursuing,” says Kathryn Minshew, the C.E.O. of the Muse, a job-search and career-advice site, and a co-author of “The New Rules of Work.” Minshew co-founded the Muse in her mid-twenties, after working at the consulting firm McKinsey and yearning for a job that felt more distinctive. She didn’t know what that was, and her peers seemed similarly stuck. Jennifer Fonstad, a venture capitalist whose firm, Aspect Ventures, backed Minshew’s company, told me that “the future of work” is now a promising investment field.

[...]

In promotional material, Airbnb refers to itself as “an economic lifeline for the middle class.”A company-sponsored analysis released in December overlaid maps of Airbnb listings and traditional hotels on maps of neighborhoods where a majority of residents were ethnic minorities. In seven cities, including New York, the percentage of Airbnb listings that fall in minority neighborhoods exceeds the percentage of hotel rooms that do. (Another study, of user photos in seventy-two majority-black neighborhoods, suggested that most Airbnb hosts there were white, complicating the picture.) Seniors were found to earn, on average, nearly six thousand dollars a year from Airbnb listings. “Ultimately, what we’re doing is driving wealth down to the people,” Chris Lehane, the strategist at Airbnb, says.

It is, of course, driving wealth down unevenly. A study conducted by the New York attorney general in 2014 found that nearly half of all money made by Airbnb hosts in the state was coming from three Manhattan neighborhoods: the Village-SoHo corridor, the Lower East Side, and Chelsea. It is undeniably good to be earning fifty-five hundred dollars a year by Airbnb-ing your home in deep Queens—so good, it may not bother you to learn that your banker cousin earns ten times that from his swank West Village pad, or that he hires Happy Host to make his lucrative Airbnb property even more lucrative. But now imagine that the guy who lives two doors down from you gets ideas. His finances aren’t as tight as yours, and he decides to reinvest part of his Airbnb income in new furniture and a greeting service. His ratings go up. Perhaps he nudges up his prices in response, or maybe he keeps them low, to get a high volume of patronage. Now your listing is no longer competitive in your neighborhood. How long before the market leaves you behind?

[...]

A century ago, liberalism was a systems-building philosophy. Its revelation was that society, left alone, tended toward entropy and extremes, not because people were inherently awful but because they thought locally. You wanted a decent life for your family and the families that you knew. You did not—could not—make every personal choice with an eye to the fates of people in some unknown factory. But, even if individuals couldn’t deal with the big picture, early-twentieth-century liberals saw, a larger entity such as government could. This way of thinking brought us the New Deal and “Ask not what your country can do for you.” Its ultimate rejection brought us customized life paths, heroic entrepreneurship, and maybe even Instagram performance. We are now back to the politics of the particular.

For gigging companies, that shift means a constant struggle against a legacy of systemic control, with legal squabbles like the one in New York. Regulation is government’s usual tool for blunting adverse consequences, but most sharing platforms gain their competitive edge by skirting its requirements. Uber and Lyft avoid taxi rules that fix rates and cap the supply on the road. Handy saves on overtime and benefits by categorizing workers as contractors. Some gigging advocates suggest that this less regulated environment is fair, because traditional industry gets advantages elsewhere. (President Trump, it has been pointed out, could not have built his company without hundreds of millions of dollars in tax subsidies.)

Still, since their inception, and increasingly during the past year, gigging companies have become the targets of a journalistic genre that used to be called muckraking: admirable and assiduous investigative work that digs up hypocrisies, deceptions, and malpractices in an effort to cast doubt on a broader project. Some companies, such as Uber, seem to invite this kind of attention with layered wrongdoing and years of secrecy. But they also invite it by their high-minded positioning. Like traditional companies, gigging companies maintain regiments of highly paid lawyers and lobbyists. What sets them apart is a second lobbying effort, turned toward the public.

[...]

Questions have emerged lately about the future of institutional liberalism. A Washington Post /ABC News poll last month found that two-thirds of Americans believe the Democratic Party is “out of touch,” more than think the same of the Republican Party or the current President. The gig economy has helped show how a shared political methodology—and a shared language of virtue—can stand in for a unified program; contemporary liberalism sometimes seems a backpack of tools distributed among people who, beyond their current stance of opposition, lack an agreed-upon blueprint. Unsurprisingly, the commonweal projects that used to be the pride of progressivism are unravelling. Leaders have quietly let them go. At one point, I asked Chris Lehane why he had thrown his support behind the sharing model instead of working on traditional policy solutions. He told me that, during the recession, he had suffered a crisis of faith. “The social safety net wasn’t providing the support that it had been,” he said. “I do think we’re in a time period when liberal democracy is sick.”

In “The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream” (2006), Jacob Hacker, a political-science professor at Yale, described a decades-long off-loading of risk from insurance-type structures—governments, corporations—to individuals. Economic insecurity has risen in the course of the past generation, even as American wealth climbed. Hacker attributed this shift to what he called “the personal-responsibility crusade,” which grew out of a post-sixties fixation on moral hazard: the idea that you do riskier things if you’re insulated from the consequences. The conservative version of the crusade is a commonplace: the poor should try harder next time. But, although Hacker doesn’t note it explicitly, there’s a liberal version, too, having to do with doffing corporate structures, eschewing inhibiting social norms, and refusing a career in plastics. Reich called it Consciousness III.

The slow passage from love beads to Lyft through the performative assertion of self may be the least claimed legacy of the baby-boomer revolution—certainly, it’s the least celebrated. Yet the place we find ourselves today is not unique. In “Drift and Mastery,” a young Walter Lippmann, one of the founders of modern progressivism, described the strange circumstances of public discussion in 1914, a similar time. “The little business men cried: We’re the natural men, so let us alone,” he wrote. “And the public cried: We’re the most natural of all, so please do stop interfering with us. Muckraking gave an utterance to the small business men and to the larger public, who dominated reform politics. What did they do? They tried by all the machinery and power they could muster to restore a business world in which each man could again be left to his own will—a world that needed no coöperative intelligence.” Coming off a period of liberalization and free enterprise, Lippmann’s America struggled with growing inequality, a frantic news cycle, a rising awareness of structural injustice, and a cacophonous global society—in other words, with an intensifying sense of fragmentation. His idea, the big idea of progressivism, was that national self-government was a coöperative project of putting the pieces together. “The battle for us, in short, does not lie against crusted prejudice,” he wrote, “but against the chaos of a new freedom.”

Revolution or disruption is easy. Spreading long-term social benefit is hard. If one accepts Lehane’s premise that the safety net is tattered and that gigging platforms are necessary to keep people in cash, the model’s social erosions have to be curbed. How can the gig economy be made sustainable at last?

[...]

Other assessments suggest that employees, too, should get their houses in order. “To succeed in the Gig Economy, we need to create a financially flexible life of lower fixed costs, higher savings, and much less debt,” Diane Mulcahy, a senior analyst at the Kauffman Foundation and a lecturer at Babson College, writes in her book “The Gig Economy,” which is part economic argument and part how-to guide. Ideally, gig workers should plan not to retire. (Beyond Airbnb hosting, Mulcahy sees prospects for aging millennials in app-based dog-sitting.) If they must retire, they should prepare. Mulcahy suggests bingeing on benefits when they come. Fill your dance card with doctors while you’re on employee insurance. Go wild with 401(k) matching—it will come in handy.

This ketchup-packet-hoarding approach sounds sensible, given the current lack of systemic support. Yet, as Mulcahy acknowledges, it’s a survival mechanism, not a solution. Turning to deeper reform, she argues for eliminating the current distinction between employees (people who receive a W-2 tax form and benefits such as insurance and sick days) and contract workers (who get a 1099-MISC and no benefits). It’s a “kink” in the labor market, she says, and it invites abuse by efficiency-seeking companies.

Calls for structural change have grown loud lately, in part because the problem goes far beyond gigging apps. The precariat is everywhere. Companies such as Nissan have begun manning factories with temps; even the U.S. Postal Service has turned to them. Academic jobs are increasingly filled with relatively cheap, short-term teaching appointments. Historically, there is usually an uptick in 1099 work during tough economic times, and then W-2s resurge as jobs are added in recovery. But W-2 jobs did not resurge as usual during our recovery from the last recession; instead, the growth has happened in the 1099 column. That shift raises problems because the United States’ benefits structure has traditionally been attached to the corporation rather than to the state: the expectation was that every employed person would have a W-2 job.

“We should design the labor-market regulations around a more flexible model,” Jacob Hacker told me. He favors some form of worker participation, and, like Mulcahy, advocates creating a single category of employment. “I think if you work for someone else, you’re an employee,” he said. “Employees get certain protections. Benefits must be separate from work.”

In a much cited article in Democracy, from 2015, Nick Hanauer, a venture capitalist, and David Rolf, a union president, proposed that workplace benefits be prorated (someone who works a twenty-hour week gets half of the full-time benefits) and portable (insurance or unused vacation days would carry from one job to the next, because employers would pay into a worker’s lifelong benefits account). Other people regard the gig economy as a case for universal basic income: a plan to give every citizen a modest flat annuity from the government, as a replacement for all current welfare and unemployment programs. Alternatively, there’s the proposal made by the economists Seth D. Harris and Alan B. Krueger: the creation of an “independent worker” status that awards some of the structural benefits of W-2 employment (including collective bargaining, discrimination protection, tax withholding, insurance pools) but not others (overtime and the minimum wage).

I put these possibilities to Tom Perez. He told me that he didn’t like the idea of eliminating work categories, or of adding a new one, as Harris and Krueger suggest: you’d lose many of the hard-won benefits included with W-2 employment, he said, either in the compromise to a single category or because current W-2 companies would find ways to slide into the new classification. He wanted to move slowly, to take time. “The heart and soul of the twentieth-century social compact that emerged after the Great Depression was forty years in the making,” he said. “How do we build the twenty-first-century social compact?”

Perez’s new perch, at the D.N.C., has given him a broader platform, and a couple of hours after the House passed the American Health Care Act last week, he championed the old safety net in forceful language. “Scapegoating worker protections is often a lazy cop-out for some who want to change the rules to benefit themselves at the expense of working people,” he told me. “We shouldn’t have to choose between innovation and the most basic employee protections; it’s a false dichotomy.” The entanglement of the sharing economy and Democratic politics has continued—Perez’s press secretary at the Department of Labor now works for Airbnb—but his approach had circumspection. “Any changes you make to policies or regulations have to be very careful and take all potential ripple effects into account and keep the best interest of the worker in mind.”

[riverofhistory]

Episode 1: Dissecting the Past

The following is the transcript for the first episode of On the River of History.

For a link to the original podcast, go here.

The podcast will now be hosted here. This episode has now been split into 4 parts for easier listening.

Part 1

Greetings everyone and welcome to the very first episode of On the River of History. I’m your host, Joan Turmelle, historian in residence.

In this series, I will be taking up the task of explaining the history of the world. As any historian may tell you, it is never an easy job and it is certainly never one that will be truly complete. Put basically, there is just so much to tell and so many ways to tell it. While I am devoted to my goal of keeping this series holistic in scope, it may be inevitable that some parts of the story will be left out.

In preparation of this series, I had gone through several different options for how I wanted to tell this story. One way was an old-fashioned route: going through a complete nation’s history from past to present and then onto the next nation and starting the same process over, much like Will and Ariel Durant or Henry Cabot Lodge. Another way was to focus on geography: staying on one continent, going through the history of all the societies that were birthed there and moving on, a method similar to the work of Ralph Linton or Glenn King. In the end, I settled on a compromise.

Our journey on the River of History begins with the formation of the Earth and the subsequent origin and evolution of living things. Afterward the focus will shift to just one organism, that being (of course) our own species Homo sapiens. Following humanity’s spread across the world and the various ways in which different peoples adapted to the ice ages and their aftermath, the series becomes slightly episodic. While always moving forwards in time, I will be jumping from various geographic locations, tracing different societies as they develop and change. For example, in the story of China’s history, I will discuss the rise of states and the Shang Dynasty, before leaving to focus on another region, but in time I will return to China to discuss what happens next. And this will continue further and further forwards towards modern times.

As far as what will be discussed itself, I do not intend to just simply talk about the basics of a nation’s rise and fall or single out major events like key battles. When relevant interest arises, I will take the time to discuss the different aspects of a historic society: breaking down the intricacies of its art, language, belief systems, architecture, and science, as well as notable individuals.

Indeed, the river is vast, and we will sail it together.  

For all intents and purposes this episode acts a sort of prologue. Before we jump into the main narrative, I’d like to spend some time talking to you all today about historiography. This is the study of how historians look at and record history, be it that of their home nation or of the globe. In doing so, I hope to share with you all just how complicated it can be to write a history of, anything really. There are many ways to do it, and they all have their pros and cons.

But now comes the million-dollar question: what is history? In analyzing the various aspects of historiography, I hope to be able to provide an adequate answer.

We often divide our past into two parts: history and prehistory. Prehistory, as the etymology suggests, is the time before history. So then, where is that cut off point? The most common definition is that history begins when people started writing down records of events in their lives. As such, many historians tend to focus on documents, records, and journals: anything that can be traced to an individual or many at some point in the past who can be named and perhaps traced to a living lineage. These can be found among families who have held onto these documents, or they can be found in places of worship, banks, libraries, and museums. So, in a sense, history would be tied to the practice of writing.

With this in mind, we recognize that history would have begun at different times for different societies. The people of Egypt created hieroglyphics around 5,300 years ago. Sumerian cuneiform developed from earlier pictorial systems around a hundred years later. In present-day Pakistan, the people who settled along the Indus River Valley created a script (still undeciphered) 4,600 years ago, and the Minoans of Crete made an equally undeciphered script 3,900 years ago – though these latter two may have arisen from contact with the peoples of Sumeria and Egypt. The written word did not see the light of day in the Americas until 2,400 years ago, probably among the Olmec. China gave us the last independently created writing system roughly 4,500 years ago. Over time, as peoples and ideas moved across the world, so too did their writing systems, slowly changing and developing into new forms. Thus, the histories of those different societies could officially begin.

In keeping with this concept, we must also recognize that many peoples around the world would not have had their own histories because they never developed writing. For the indigenous peoples of Australia, New Guinea, much of the other Pacific Islands, most of the Americas, and in vast regions of Africa and Asia, their histories came when outsiders (primarily Europeans) introduced writing to them. In keeping with a good definition for history that we want to work with, should this be so? I say, no.

As many indigenous peoples will tell you, there are other ways of recording the events of the past. Oral traditions are words and stories transferred by speech. These have often been dismissed by historians and others, on the assumption that a) they are unreliable because of the nature of human communication, essentially working like one long game of telephone and b) they can only go back a few generations. But continuing work with first nations peoples are shattering those assumptions.

Take aboriginal Australians, for instance. Linguist Dr. Nick Reid and colleague Patrick Nunn have worked with various nations throughout the island continent and were able to analyze 18 oral histories and stories. They tell of times when the continent looked different from the present day: The Great Barrier Reef was originally connected to the mainland of Queensland and the Wellesley Islands near Carpentaria formed a sharp peninsula. What fascinating the researchers was not so much the stories themselves, but these tidbits of information preserved within them. It is nothing new to historical geologists that Australia’s coastlines looked very different once upon a time: with the growth and decline of the great glaciers of the northern hemisphere during the ice ages, the sea level rose and fell in tow. Parts of the coastline originally extended for hundreds of miles and New Guinea and Tasmania belonged to the same landmass. For living aboriginal Australians to keep memories of these environmental changes in their stories means that their oral histories extend not for centuries, but for thousands of years. Dr. Nick Reid has estimated that the oldest of these histories could be at least 10 to 12,000 years old.

The situation is similar for indigenous Americans too. The Klamath, who live in present day Oregon and California have an oral history of a large volcano that once erupted, later collapsing and becoming what they call giiwas, but we you may know as Crater Lake. Geologists, again, are very familiar with the formation of Crater Lake: like many such phenomena, after the caldera cools rain falls and slowly fills the crater until it turns into a lake. This particular event has been dated to 7,700 years ago and that means that the Klamath have retained this cultural memory in their stories for that long.

It is clear that oral traditions can be just as accurate and just as informative as written records. I have just spoken of the memories of geologic events. But that is just a small fraction of the knowledge preserved in this manner. There are tens of thousands of myths, medicines, recipes, natural histories, agricultural techniques, chronologies, and other aspects of society that have lasted millennia.  

I think the point has been made. Whether written or spoken, history should not be so clear cut as this. Besides, though both methods are valuable in their own ways, they can be prone to issues. It cannot be denied that biases have always be present in many historical records. Sometimes, people lie or do not recall things clearly. Sometimes there are contradictions between different texts that report on the same events. Sometimes not enough information on a particular battle or ceremony of holiday was not collected, and the author was forced to make up details. Places names are recorded but never their locations. Documents may lack signatures or dates. Perhaps most frustrating of all, the livelihoods of one nation’s people can be observed and recorded by representatives of another neighboring nation. Should these nations be in conflict with each other, those records may be biased and even derogatory. And the historian is left to figure out fact from farce. What then?

Part 2

There are other tools that a historian can use to unravel the past and indeed the following three methods have provided some of the richest (and in many cases the most accurate) details.

Archaeology is the study of past peoples and their societies from a purely material perspective. Despite what you may think or have heard, archaeologists are not concerned with prehistoric animals, like the popular Mesozoic dinosaurs: that is the domain of the paleontologists (though the two fields share many methods). The historical evidence an archaeologist is looking for is in the earth and soil, where time and environment have overtaken the hands of workers and warriors and buried them away. What an archaeologist may find is nothing more than scraps (indeed, there is a technical term for a garbage dump – they’re referred to as middens), but on many occasions are the rewards breathtaking. Entire cities buried in sand, horse-drawn chariots with horse and chariot still attached, beautiful frescos, and even long lost written documents. If I’m making things sound romantic, you’ll have to forgive me, much of archaeology’s early history was treated this way, often by people who sought recognition or a source of personal riches. Interspersed among these individuals were dedicated researchers who truly wanted to know the past like the back of their hands.

In the deepest ways, archaeologists face a tougher time reconstructing the past than traditional historians. The impression is given that a researcher working with scraps or pottery shards or fragments of wood has little to imagine or even work with. Thankfully, archaeology nowadays is blessed with a rich back catalog of past sites and societies. One fantastic resource, for example, are the Human Relations Area Files which include a database of archaeological traditions that can be used by students and researchers (and I will put a link in the show notes). Many archaeologists have become specialists of a particular time period and locality, so what may look like useless pebbles to the layperson can be like diamonds. And if any artifacts happen to me in poor shape, they’re kept anyway for future students. They may yet be diamonds themselves.

Though the technology has changed dramatically, the methods of archaeologists have more-or-less remained constant. First and foremost, appropriate permission must be given by government officials or anyone else involved – sometimes sites are found by accident on a person’s property, sometimes a construction project has to be delayed for fear of destroying a historic site. Because their targets are underground, the next step in an archaeological project is to do a survey of the area. Sometimes an old map or document must be consulted for clues on what to expect. Often a site is much too large to be seen from the ground and drones or helicopters need to be used to fully observe a site. In the air, the team can conduct photographic or geophysical surveys: mapping out the land from above and looking for anything that might aid the eye. During a survey, it helps to plot out the desired excavation site onto a grid. This can be done with simple tools like string and posts of wood or nails. This ensures that any artifacts found are identified with their locations in the place they were originally buried. If you want to reconstruct a historic site accurately, or even understand the circumstances that led to a site’s demise, it helps to know where you found everything exactly.

Archaeologists nowadays rarely excavate entire sites unless absolutely necessary. The process is long, costly, and inherently destructive. Rather than simply pick up a shovel and start digging, all possible excavation sites need to be carefully planned out and singled to the most appropriate spots as determined by the previous survey work. Then the work begins, digging vertically through parts of the soil and dirt to reveal any layers present. These layers correspond to specific points in time. The farther down you dig, the older the remains or, alternatively, the youngest layers are the newest: this is the law of superposition. At all times there are workers cataloguing recovered specimens, creating drawings and taking photos of the excavation process, and generally recording any information recovered. Often there are conservators on site as well, developing strategies to best collect fragile objects like pottery shards or thin human bones. Timing is key: some archaeological sites are lifelong projects with researchers returning every few years or so, while others come and go depending on what restrictions on time are present. The site of Little Egypt in Georgia (preserving Native American burial mounds from the Pre-Columbian period), was only excavated twice before the construction of a local dam resulted in the site being flooded in and destroyed.

Archaeology offers a materialistic look into the human past that is often missing from traditional historical practices, and when brought together sometimes the two can corroborate and expand our understanding. More often than not, the two can also cancel each other out: usually it is the work of archaeologists that run historical records afoul. The anonymity of the subjects is prevalent as well. When you’re dealing with periods of time that extend far beyond written records it’s impossible to know the names of any individuals found. Their careers and stories of demise, sure, but never their names. Not to mention the names of societies as well. Archaeologists have had to provide technical names to now lost cultures, because they’ve been gone for so long that no one survives to inform us about what those people called themselves. In this series, when I use names like Solutrean, Mississippian, or Afanasievo, I’m referring to archaeological terms, not the actual names of the societies themselves.

Linguistics is the study of languages and historical linguistics concerns the evolution of languages and how much (or how little) they have changed. Nowadays, learning a language is easy and most countries today provide education for students wishing to learn any number of world languages. Back in the past, however, languages were often tied to specific societies. Whenever a people had to move, they brought their language with them. Sometimes they came across new aspects in the places they traveled to or ended up inventing a new tool that had to be named. This was the way that new words were created, and these would have been taught to the younger generations, eventually becoming a basic part of the lexicon. In other cases, when peoples spread to new lands they conquered and subsumed the local populations. If these people were to be integrated into the dominant culture, it made sense to teach them the dominant language too. If the process is forced enough, the local languages may become extinct, but there were occasions when subjugated or enslaved peoples were able to incorporate the dominant language among their own: thus keeping their original tongue alive in a modified form. These creole languages eventually developed into full languages in their own right. In the era of European colonization, several creole languages formed, with the most familiar being those among enslaved Africans in the Americas. Languages can also have cognates: these are words that share a common ancestor. Sometimes cognates stem from related languages, but they can also derive from completely unrelated languages too. The word for ‘hurricane’ in English was created from the Spanish ‘huracán’, which itself stems from the Taino name for the god of hurricanes ‘Juracán’. The Amerindian language of the Taino peoples, called Arawak, is as distantly related to Spanish as Spanish is from Mandarin Chinese. Cognates can be found everywhere. But there can also be false cognates as well: two words that seem to be related in a common origin but are actually completely different.

So, what does this all have to do with history? Simply put, when you study a language, or two, or three, you are reading the work of hundreds or thousands of years. The presence of certain words can reveal what sorts of items were used or what animals and plants past peoples encountered. Historical linguists are also faced with the task of analyzing and classifying languages, trying to find the familial relationships between them. They have recognized that Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese share enough features that they belong to the same language family, called Romance. Similarly, Romance languages are similar to Osco-Umbrian languages. This is a family that includes historic languages spoken in Italy that are now mostly extinct, but we have records of them from documents. So, the two families are grouped together in an even larger family called Italic. And you can take it even further. By grouping languages in this way, researchers can reconstruct the evolutionary history of languages, and because in these pre-modern times societies and their words were often closely knit, the past movements of peoples can be deduced as well. It’s not the most exact method and many studies trying to tie languages to the movement of peoples have since been debunked, but it offers an accompanying body of information that, save for written documents, would otherwise be lost.

The last method, and perhaps the newest (relatively speaking) is the use of DNA or Deoxyribonucleic Acid to study the past. All humans, indeed, all living organisms on Earth, use DNA to house the genetic material needed to grow and reproduce. The field of biology has advanced tenfold in recent years, and the process of collecting and sequencing an organism’s DNA is pretty mundane stuff. What fascinates scientists is the information that is available in DNA, and what it can tell us about the past.

Nearly all DNA sequences contain differences between each other, the result of copying errors during the process of DNA replication. These mutations remain in the genetic code, and when an organism reproduces, those mutations can be transferred from parent to offspring. Often a mutation does nothing in particular; sometimes it alters the way a gene is displayed; other times it can prevent a gene from functioning. When a mutation changes how a gene is expressed, it can have consequences on the organism that houses that genetic code. If the mutation provides a benefit for the organism, like it helps the animal or plant survive in its environment, then there is a likely chance that the mutation will be transferred again once that organisms reproduces. And so on, until that change is present in the entire population. I’ll be discussing the ramifications of this process in a later episode, but for now I want to illustrate why this process is important for the historian.

In an individual’s genome (that is, their complete genetic code) there are a multitude of different mutations that have accumulated over time through that person’s family history. Compare two people’s genomes and you can see how much of their DNA are similar or different to each other. Biologists have been able to work out the average rate of mutations in human beings, and so they can examine two people’s genomes and see how long it has been since those family lines diverged from one another. This is a bit of an oversimplification, but the basic idea is there. Human geneticists have now studied the DNA of millions of people (from the past and present) and have been able to build enormous data sets that analyze the population histories of human beings. People are notoriously messy, however, and populations have often interbred with one another. This the traditional historian, as well as the layperson, knows too well: we live in a vastly interconnected global ecosystem, and it is nothing for two people separated originally by vast expanses of land and water to meet up and start a family. And the opposite end of the relationship spectrum is unfortunately present as well: years of study of historic societies have demonstrated a sickening trend of warring nations raiding a settlement, killing the men, and sexually assaulting the women. In time, the subjugated women give birth to children, and those children will eventually grow up and start their own families. All of this complex history of genetic mixing can be found in human genomes, and researchers have been able to reconstruct the past movements and intermixings of populations. They have even been able to discover demographics of people who no longer exist in an uncontacted form. Again, I will be elaborating on these discoveries in later episodes.

Historic documents and records, archaeology, historical linguistics, and human genetics. The story of the human past, and the methods used to uncover it, has never been as rich and as fascinating as it is right now.

Part 3

It’s easy to think about the past hour, or the past day, or the past week. Extend your reach and the month will be familiar too. Continue on to a year and then gaps will appear in your memory. The further you go back in time, the difficult it is to remember what occurred. Such is the issue of the historian who wishes to understand the events of the past. Many individuals from several different societies have developed calendars that help us make sense of everything, but even then, there is room for disagreement.

The most commonly used calendar in the world is the Gregorian Calendar. Named for Pope Gregory the 13th. In 1582 AD, he established the calendar as a replacement and an update to the older Julian Calendar, which itself was the creation of Julius Caesar in 46 BC. Both calendars had the same purpose: the year was divided into 12 months, with the months at their current lengths. However, the Julian Calendar originally reduced the actual solar year by 10 minutes. Trivial? Perhaps. But from its inception, the Julian Calendar gradually began to slow down the passage of time. Every three years, a leap day had to be added as an attempt to correct this. However, the years continued to shorten, until the time of Pope Gregory, when Christmas Day was now 10 days behind schedule. As Christmas was seen as an important day, the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, it was urgent that something be done. Thus, Pope Gregory sought to reform the calendar and institute his own. The difference? Those 10 unnecessary days were removed, and the leap day was added every four years, on February 29. Our last leap year was in 2016 and the next will be in 2020. This reform greatly improved the accuracy of counting the years and was widely accepted among the Catholic Church. It took two centuries before the Protestants made the switch, and now most of the world uses the Gregorian system, save for some of the Orthodox churches.

What makes the Gregorian and Julian Calendars unique are the way they divide the past. Both calendars officially start in 1 AD, that is, Anno Domini (a Latin phrase meaning in the year of our Lord). Thus, we are currently in the year of our Lord 2019. All times prior to 1 AD are labeled with BC, which means in basic English “before Christ”. The decision to start the date in 1 AD stems from the work of Dionysius Exiguus, a monk of the Eastern Roman Empire, who developed the system in 525 AD. It is currently unclear as to why Dionysius argued that Jesus of Nazareth was born on 1 AD, but no matter how he came to that conclusion, we now recognize that he was mistaken. The work of biblical scholars and other historians have argued that the most accurate date for the birth of Jesus was sometime in the year 4 BC (and no, it would not have been on Christmas). That is the current consensus, so both calendars are technically flawed in this respect. Despite this, the Gregorian Calendar is the most accurate method for calculating time as it closely matches the actual solar year and there are no signs that it will be replaced any time soon.

But others have tried. In 1993, geologist Cesare Emiliani created his Holocene Calendar. He recognized the accuracy of the Gregorian Calendar and its system of leap years, but he was concerned that the recognition of a ‘year of the Lord’ posed a philosophical problem for historians. While the life of Jesus and the advent of Christianity were (and are) important events in their own right, in the grand scheme of human history highlighting this date of birth is, to put it as polite as possible, arbitrary. Many regions around the world did not have any means to recognize this era, nor would they have known of Jesus himself: in the Pre-Columbian Americas, for example, it can be argued that the effects of Christianity wouldn’t take part until Christopher Columbus and his men forcibly placed them upon the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean after 1492 AD. Then there’s the inconsistently of the lack of a year 0. There is no 0 BC nor 0 AD: it goes from 1 BC straight into 1 AD. It’s a strange mathematical situation.

As a better and more holistic solution, Cesare Emiliani’s calendar begins roughly at the start of the Holocene Epoch, the time in the geologic history of the Earth to which we currently live. The International Commission on Stratigraphy recognizes the beginning of the Holocene at 11,700 years ago, but Cesare’s calendar extends to 12,000 years ago (it is based on an earlier calculation). Within this period of time, all of human civilization developed, from the earliest agricultural projects and community structures to the modern age. Thus, Cesare argues, the beginning of the Holocene is a more noteworthy start to a calendar. In essence, 10,000 years are added to AD dates, and BC dates are to be subtracted from 10,001. That makes our current year 12,019 of the Human Era (this is the calendar’s Anno Domini), and also gives us a year 0.  

It’s a nice system, in this historian’s opinion, and others have made attempts to gain the calendar more acceptance. But for now, it’s a niche calendar.

Moving on to the other concerns in understanding time, we recognize that our calendars only work to a limit. When a historian finds a document that was written before the advent of the Gregorian or Julian Calendar – that is, another calendrical system is used or just none at all – they have to find a means to place the true age of the document in its place. Archaeologists face this issue too. Nearly all of their finds lack signatures or dates, so they have to find other ways to calculate their true age.

In the study of time, there is relative dating, and there is absolute dating. Relative dating is elementary: as I have previously described in my discussion of archaeological methods, artifacts and settlements buried in the uppermost layers of the ground are younger than those buried below them. Archaeologists can excavate many items from several layers and then place these in a row and trace their development over time. Flinders Petrie, an Egyptologist working at the beginning of the 1900s, famously cataloged hundreds of preserved Egyptian pots and placed them in an intricate system from oldest to newest. In doing so, he was able to identify any pot that came his way just from its shape and form alone.

Absolute dating is more precise, and its methods varied but always based upon the rate of decay of atoms.

In radiocarbon dating, samples are recovered from organic materials like wood, bone, coal, and hair. Chemists recognize that carbon-14 is taken in by plants during photosynthesis, where it is converted into oxygen. These plants can be ingested by animals that will eventually die, or the plants will die on their own, or the wood from trees is cut and re-purposed into furniture or housing, which will eventually be destroyed by rotting or by fire or whatever. In any case, the exchange of carbon for oxygen ceases, and the carbon-14 undergoes decay at a known rate. The half-life of carbon-14 – the time when half of all the carbon has decayed – is 5,730 years. The older a sample is, the less carbon-14 it has. And this can be taken back 50-40,000 years, when nearly all of the carbon has broken down. By taking organic samples, archaeologists can measure the rate of decay and determine how old the samples are and these can be checked against our own calendar for precision.

The other method is potassium-argon dating. Here the situation is similar: potassium atoms decay at a known rate, only this time they develop into a new atom, argon. Samples have to be uncovered in volcanic rocks in order for potassium-argon dating to work, but the method is great for remains as old as 4.5 billion years. As you might guess, this is one of the preferred methods of archaeologists concerned with the earliest humans and their ancestors.

There are other methods as well, but I’ll leave you all with these for now. It is important to recognize that historical records do not have to end with writings or even oral traditions; they can be extended as far as the beginnings of the Earth. Historians today have access to a larger set-piece than they previously had.

Part 4

I’ve spent a while talking about how historians find out about the past, but now I must discuss what we do with this information. While it is one thing to study human history in order to know when events occurred, many people have made attempts to find meaning in it all. The questions beg: why does our history matter? What can our history tell us about ourselves today? What was the causation or chain of events that led to event x happening? Is there a natural progression to history, like some underlying process of growth or progress? Can a study of historic happenings help us predict future events? These are deep and loaded questions, but that has not stopped historians.

One of the most familiar attempts to reveal hidden truths to history was by historian Arnold J. Toynbee in his 12 volume work A Study of History. This was a major book series, with the first volume published in 1934 and the last not seeing the light of day until 1961. Through an exhaustive comparison of world civilizations, Toynbee attempted to find a set lifestyle for society. He imagined civilizations like living organisms: being born, reaching adolescence, experiencing a peak age, and eventually declining into unrecognizability. Toynbee argued that the key to a civilization’s success was in the efforts of what he called “creative minorities”, who were essentially rulers that sought solutions to any issues facing the societies they oversaw. If the issues threatening a civilization were at the right caliber (just shy of insignificant, but far below apocalyptic), then they can be overcome, and the society grows. If the opposite occurs, and a civilization’s leader ceases to come up with good solutions, then that nation simply faces desolation. Toynbee’s study of history relied on a supposed notion that all civilizations share a form of destiny. Ideas like destiny are ambiguous matters: there is no hint that the future is written in stone and no way to test that idea scientifically. Many critics have pointed this out among their reviews, and so Toynbee’s view of history has faded into obscurity.

The writer H. G. Wells, familiar to many through his science fiction work, completed The Outline of History in 1920, right at the end of the first World War. His outline was just that: a rundown of the events of the past. One of the larger overarching themes in Wells’ book was that the history of humankind was marked by a near ubiquitous goal of creating the most beneficial and most educated societies. Over time, different nations slowly drew themselves together through alliances, and there was be a steady path that culminated towards a single nationality, humanity. War, famine, poverty, nationalism, and prejudice would have to be fervently abandoned, while reason, science, and compassion be embraced wholeheartedly. One world religion, one education system, a democratic political system, and a single economic system that benefited all. This vision of utopia was common among many twentieth century authors, as the horrors of World War 1 provoked many into wishing for a better future for humanity. Indeed, some even argued that this Great War would be the last major war and that their vision of a perfect world was on the horizon. While there can be no doubt that a brighter future for the human species is a noble goal, the failure of H. G. Wells and of the other utopian authors laid on the circumstances of the world history that happened following WW1. Instead of the “Modern World State”, they saw the Great Depression and the ten-fold devastation of WW2. The vision of world history as a road to utopia was quickly expunged, and by the time of the final revised edition of H. G. Wells Outline of History in 1971, the final chapter became sharply agnostic and worrisome.

Nikolai Berdyaev, a philosopher, released The Meaning of History in 1923. His analysis was, in the end, rather pessimistic. He saw history as an endless series of human failures and that any attempts at achievement were doomed to fail as well. Likewise, the historian Oswald Spengler saw that the outcome of all world civilizations was decline and death; like Toynbee, he suggested that societies had natural lifecycles and elaborated on that idea in his 1918 book The Decline of the West. In an honest and thorough examination of world history, it is truly difficult to find any indication that societies truly die at all. While many distinct cultures have certainly seen their day, aspects of those cultures have survived to the present day. Take the Phoenicians, for instance, who no longer dominate the Mediterranean and its trading routes but have provided the world with the modern alphabet.

Most of these attempts to find an overarching theme to world history have not succeeded, but there was at least as many attempts to uncover the lessons of history. I, like many historians, would agree that there are valuable things to learn from an understanding of the past. One of the most famous and continuously repeated quotations regarding this matter comes from a Spanish philosopher, George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” These words derive from a volume of Santayana’s book The Life of Reason from 1905-1906. Admittedly, the quote has been reproduced many times into different forms, but the meaning is generally the same. What Santayana was arguing was that human beings should look to events of the past to see what has worked and what has not, so that they do not make the same mistakes twice. The usefulness of this philosophy can only work so far, because in principle it relies on the suggestion that human affairs are predictable. If something is done one way and had this outcome, then if repeated the outcome will be the same. Many philosophers have debated the truth of this matter: how exactly can we be sure that things really play out in this way? What about “third times the charm”? These are questions that historians have debated fervently, especially when political parties and their followers suggest solutions that have been attempted in earlier times to little avail.  

What about the notion of progress? Progress is defined as the improvement of some aspect of life. Many have argued that history has an inherent progress, and that human societies naturally follow a path from primitive to advanced. Things have steadily improved and the world of the 21st Century is a better place than any other period in history. On the surface this seems to be true: human life expectancy has risen over the years; the birth rate is higher than the death rate (so children are actually surviving through childhood); literacy rates have increased; education is now available for more youth; and so on. However, there are cracks in the façade. Certain aspects of human existence are improving, but our global environment is failing rapidly. The world’s natural resources are in decline; wild populations of plants and animals and their habitats are being wiped out with no replenishment; not to forget the rise in carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels that is warming our atmosphere at such an alarming rate that vast populations in Africa, India, and the Pacific Islands are dying due to their effects. The oceans are swamped with microplastics and are gaining acidity and many parts of the land are no longer viable for agriculture. Human beings have created a healthier and well-educated population, but they’ve also disregarded the natural environment that this same population depends on. What measure then is this supposed progress, if all that we’ve gained can so easily be taken away in the coming decades? Human beings have bit the hand that fed them, and that hand is their own.

Some historians have more or less abandoned any suggestion that progress is something that can be measured, or even something that matters. Historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto has provided a strong counterargument to the idea that there is a progression from primitive to advanced: he writes “Strictly speaking, ‘primitives’ do not exist: all of us are the products of equally long evolution.” Groups of uncontacted peoples in the Amazon, subsisting on foraged meals, are on equal ground with the citizens of São Paulo, the most populated city on Earth. These Amerindian peoples have lasted as long as their Latinx neighbors: when you travel back in time far enough, you find a common ancestral population that started with the same circumstances. Similarly, one could argue that periods of time in the past were better than modern times: see the various arguments by archaeologists about the apparently better health of pre-agricultural groups than their farmer descendants. A foraging lifestyle is difficult, and starvation was often at your doorstep, but at least you didn’t have to worry about arthritis, cavities, or monocultural diets. Progress is at best illusionary: as a concept it is useless to the historian and it is not a view that I will be subscribing to in this series.

I’ve discussed the various ways in which historians can know the past, and I’ve followed with a rough and patchy look at how those same historians have attempted to make sense of this knowledge. But what about you, the listener? If my presumption is correct, you’re listening to this series in the hopes that you will gain some insight into the history of the world, or at least you’re here because you genuinely like history as a topic. I enjoy history because of the doors that it opens. The worlds of the past offer a far more enriching experience than any imaginary world, in my opinion. In a fictional setting, any and all of its laws and causations are already set in stone. Everyone has a name, every place has a known location and system of rules, and every event has an explanation. Historic times do not have this luxury. The farther you go back in time, the more difficult our understanding becomes. There is always a sense of mystery here. There are details that are still unknown, details that may never be known. The past is enticing and exciting.

That’s why it saddens me to see world history treated with such carelessness by both young and old. In many polls, history classes are among the least popular subjects among students. Some schools have even removed history as a compulsory subject, relegating it to an elective. National histories are often given precedence over world history, and while it is certainly valuable to know the history of the nation to which the students belong, most of the time those classes are swamped with nationalism and falsehoods. Key facts about historic individuals and events are inaccurately told and these errors are repeated through textbook after textbook. The complexities and nuances of battles or political debates are downgraded into “good vs. evil” stories as if they were fairy tales. Lists of dates and names are required to be memorized, but teachers often fail to give explanations as to why these records are important in the first place. Then comes the issue of so-called “great-man” history: the idea that all the events of the past were the result of singular men (and it is usually always men) and the actions they took to change their world. Any historian can tell you how difficult this view is to hold in light of a proper understanding of the past. It’s not so simple. There is rarely (if ever) any role of Socratic discussion in these classes – textbooks treat the historical narrative as a series of facts that are to be regurgitated. Concerned and responsible individuals are working to change this, and there are some beautifully rich resources out there for students of history, but there is still much work to be done.

The famous musician Sting offers a curious recount of his time in history class: he said “I once asked my history teacher how we were expected to learn anything useful from his subject, when it seemed to me to be nothing but a monotonous and sordid succession of robber baron scumbags devoid of any admirable human qualities. I failed history.”

History is important because it is our shared heritage. It is the accumulation of millennia of individuals with now unknown names who were able to adapt themselves to their environments and then create their own habitats. Despite the distances, peoples around the world fostered beautiful and rich cultural traditions that have slowly changed over time and influenced each other. There were times of dread and death, but these were punctuated by periods of hope, hope that always kept people inventing and exploring and creating. That you are here right now is the result of an endless chain of individuals who survived despite the odds. A proper history of the world can do more than recount the stories of the past, it is a chance to answer questions about the present, and the future. The issues of our times, the circumstances that led to the development of all our conditions, the reasons that peoples and nations act the way they do, all those quandaries are available to you when you explore world history. That is what history is.

With all this being said, what makes me qualified to talk to you about the history of the world? I’m a United States citizen of Puerto Rican and French-Canadian heritage. I’m a transwoman and a secular humanist. I have never left the United States or its territories. My experiences are not universal to all people, not even members of my own family. Why should I speak for Earth?

This is the same problem that faces all historians around the world. Some solved the problem by collecting their peers together to tell the story – so that no single voice takes prominence. Most world history books or television productions are the result of work by multiple people from various backgrounds and historic fields. Singular authors of world history do exist, of course, but to complete their task they have often found themselves having to move beyond their sphere of life in an adventure of “thinking outside the box” and often the results fail due to personal prejudices slipping in anyway. With an appropriate use of cultural relativism, a historian can understand other past societies. Not to the level of the people who actually lived there and experienced the world in their own ways, but just enough to give an honest voice. Physicist Nigel Calder offered the analogy of looking at world history “like a Martian”. That is, separating yourself from all your personal opinions and identities and looking around the world as if you had never been born on this planet. Each new society and culture is a learning experience, like being in kindergarten again. In this light, everything – from politics to science to the arts – are given a new perspective and a new light. From there, you can gain new understanding, not just of others, but of yourself, and tell the story of humanity in an enlightened way. That is easier said than done, but it can be done.

We may look different, believe in different things, live in different places, but we all belong to the same species, Homo sapiens. With this recognition in mind, I will use the humanity I share with all of us to tell the greatest story of all time, the history of the world.    

And with that, we must lay anchor to our river journey. On the next episode: we will begin at a time long before humans. Before life on Earth. In order for there to be a world history, there had to be a world, and I will share the long-lost secrets that geologists and cosmologists have revealed about the formation of the Earth and its land and oceans, which laid the foundations for all that we know.  

That’s the end of this episode of On the River of History. If you enjoyed listening in and are interested in hearing more, you can visit my website at www.mixcloud.com/RiverOfHistory. A transcript of today’s episode is available for the hearing-impaired or for those who just want to read along: the link is in the description. And, if you like what I do, you’re welcome to stop by my Twitter @KilldeerCheer. You can also support this podcast by becoming a patron, at www.patreon.com/JTurmelle: any and all donations are greatly appreciated and will help continue this podcast. Thank you all for listening and never forget: the story of the world is your story too.

[csrgood]

Going Beyond 'Fair Trade' With Hershey's Sustainable Cocoa Strategy

Originally published by Hershey

More than eight years ago, Hershey made an ambitious, important commitment to reaching 100 percent certified and sustainable cocoa by 2020. As we shared in a recent blog, we fully met that commitment by the start of 2020 – and are excited to keep our sustainability momentum going over the decade ahead.

It's a great feeling to achieve a big goal, especially in these globally challenging times. All of us at Hershey are proud to reach this major milestone, and I take personal pride in the role I have played in pushing this work forward during the past few years. At the same time, we know this global challenge can only be addressed with strategies that go beyond any single approach.

That’s why our commitment to sustainable sourcing goes much further than our focus on certification. Hershey’s $500 million Cocoa For Good program raises our ethical and social responsibility to our cocoa-producing communities by addressing issues like child labor, poverty, lack of education, and climate change. And I’ve seen firsthand the positive impact our programs have on farmers, families and their communities.

Creating sustainable solutions

Our Cocoa For Good strategy uses 100 percent certification as the base for a broader set of investments and changes addressing poverty, malnourishment, environmental health, and income opportunity in rural farming communities in Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana.

We source exclusively from cocoa suppliers certified by organizations such as Fairtrade USA, and Rainforest Alliance. It ensures we’re only working with farmer groups empowered with the resources, administrative systems, and local infrastructures necessary to meet the high standards of certification.

We get to work directly with more professionalized farmer groups that allow farmers to voice their needs and speak up about their challenges from a more powerful, collective negotiating position. This creates more avenues for them to gain access to credit or inputs like fertilizers and crop protections through suppliers and their certifying organizations.

From there, our collaborations with NGOs and others building relationships on the ground in West Africa ensures cocoa farmers receive the tools they need to succeed. Our social investments are driving efforts such as:

Enhanced protection, detection and remediation of child labor. We are scaling our Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation Systems (CLMRS), the leading way to detect, remediate and eliminate child labor, across our entire West African cocoa sourcing supply chain by 2025. This includes engaging trusted members of farmers’ own communities in auditing farmers’ work practices and following up with them to find ways to help them lessen their reliance on the work of children (and keep children in school).

Education and skills training for adult workers to help address the shortages of skilled cocoa-field laborers that contribute to child labor issues.

Specialized guidance on environment- and productivity-related actions to boost farmer income. This includes consultation on things like how to produce more yield on the same plot of farm land, climate–smart farming techniques, agroforestry and crop diversification, as well as training farmers and their families on additional income-generating activities unrelated to farming (with a focus on empowering women to improve their livelihoods).

Improvements in West African children’s nutrition, well-being and educational opportunities through investments in school and classroom development, many interrelated initiatives designed to further address the root causes of child labor.

Infrastructure improvements in villages and better pathways for farmers to voice their concerns to local community members who can help them access necessary resources or request new systems or tools that can better their circumstances.

I have seen these efforts uplift the incomes of thousands of cocoa farmers in our supplier base as well as their well-being.

Far from finished

Hershey is in a unique position to combine our business focus with our social heart to make a major difference in the lives of rural farmers. And I am proud to be able to lead many of these initiatives happening on the ground in West Africa.

We went all-in with our commitment to sourcing certified and sustainable cocoa because we fully believe that the high standards of certification lead to better, safer farming conditions and environments for rural cocoa workers and their families.

But I also know that high standards are not enough to lift poor farmers out of poverty and sustainability depends on more substantive, systemic changes. We’re happy to be making a major contribution by staying on track with the ambitious sustainability goals of our half-billion-dollar Cocoa For Good initiative.

source: https://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/45302-Going-Beyond-Fair-Trade-With-Hershey-s-Sustainable-Cocoa-Strategy?tracking_source=rss

[studentworldchange]

Economic Inequality

By Zoe Olvera

Water, food, and shelter are three main things needed for human survival, but what happens when one, two or all three of those aren't met? There is no surprise that more than half on the list of poorest countries in the world are in Africa.The poorest of them all being Central Africa Republic, with a total population around five million, and the per capita income of only $750 US dollars per year. These are the people without access to food, housing and in rural areas clean water is not usually available. Countries with low economical value, come with extreme health concerns and undeveloped education systems. In Central Africa Republic, the average adult has had less than three and a half years of schooling and thousands of children will never attend school or have any kind of education.

Unlike America where it is mandatory we attend school and in Finland they actually pay their students to attend school. Along with having little to no clean water, they're prone to diseases like AIDS/HIV and a life expectancy of only 52 years. In America, the bottom 50% makes about 250 billion dollars collectively while the top three men, Bill Gates ($97 billion) Jeff Bezos ($160 billion) and Warren Buffet ($88.32 billion) make up a little under 350 billion! Im not trying to make the argument that they shouldn't be rich because they all created highly wanted products and investments but the problem is, 3 billion people live on less than $2.50 a day. Meanwhile, in Qatar the GNI per capita is at a whopping $128,060, Singapore is $90,570, and Brunei Darussalam, $83,760. The negative effects of economic inequality are plentiful, from limited access to any kind of medical attention to no healthcare, higher crime rates, lower literacy rates, and increased political inequality.

Economical inequality is a huge domino effect. From Central African Republic, it starts with limited basic resources, putting a damaging strain on the health of their citizens. Infant mortality is also high in poorer countries, high depression along with increased risk of schizophrenia. Limited education, causing a nationwide epidemic. Children are the future of a nation, if they are not supported with all the tools necessary the future of that nation will come to a halt or diminish completely.

Benefits of economical equality nationwide would be beneficially for literally everyone. Having to put aside radicalism, racism, and honestly our huge egos; but not creating just a better nation, but a better world. Working together worldwide, for the future of the Earth.

Just to even reduce economic inequality would boost all country affairs, lower tensions in opposing nations. Working together as a whole system, we should be pushing towards the ‘American dream’ in every country. By not being limited on the class you were born, but being able to move up and become anything you want. But we have to be able to give them that chance for them to do this. Economic equality would make us smarter, happier and very much fulfilled with our lives, and from that it would be a chain reaction from there.

Ideas on how to reduce economic inequality would be to, create a global tax system. Other things aside like the different currencies and other languages, with this global tax system, all countries-rich and poor would put a percentage into funding basic needs. To clean water, food, and education to children through out the whole world.

This isn't something that would be possible during our lifetime but it is something to start action on. One person can not be responsible for creating the global tax system but an individual take away to the average person would be, starting on the basics, start locally. We can't make a huge change before we start by helping each other around us. Donate your old clothes, gentle used house items. We must start by helping the people around us before we can branch out and help everyone else .

In my conclusion, there are way too many human beings living in poverty for how much money is being circulated. There is not enough money being spent on the livelihood of living, breathing humans. If we were to create a global tax system that supported and funded the well being of millions of people, it would be revolutionary.

Cited Sources

“SOS Children's Villages in the Central African Republic.” SOS, www.soschildrensvillages. org/where-we-help/africa/central-african-republic. “Mortality Rate in Central African Republic Reaches an Emergency Level.” Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) International, www.msf.org/mortality-ratecentral- african-republic-reaches-emergency-level. “Income Inequality.” Inequality.org, inequality.org/facts/income-inequality/. “Social Mobility and Education.” The Equality Trust, www.equalitytrust.org.uk/social-mobility-and-education. Pettinger, Tejvan. “Pros and Cons of Inequality.” Economics Help, www.economicshelp.org/blog/3586/economics/pros-and-cons-of-inequality/.

[goodra-king]

Transcript of How to Turn Your Product Idea Into a Business

Transcript of How to Turn Your Product Idea Into a Business written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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Transcript

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John Jantsch: This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by SEMrush. It is our go-to SEO tool for doing audits, for tracking position and ranking, for really getting ideas on how to get more organic traffic for our clients competitive intelligence, back links and things like that. All the important SEO tools that you need for paid traffic, social media, PR, and of course SEO. Check it out at semrush.com/partner/ducttapemarketing, and we’ll have that in the show notes.

John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Jules Pieri. She is the co-founder and CEO of the Grommet and author of How We Make Stuff Now. So Jules, thanks for joining me.

Jules Pieri: Thanks for having me, John.

John Jantsch: So maybe not everybody’s heard of the Grommet. Let’s start there. Explain what the Grommet is, and maybe more importantly, why you thought the world needed it.

Jules Pieri: Sure, so every day at 10 a.m Eastern we launch and reveal the story of one innovative manufactured product from a small business. Along the way, we’ve come across some products that definitely have become household names like FitBit, and Soda Stream, Otterbox, S’well water bottles. And the reason we founded the company was that as retail got bigger and bigger it was becoming increasingly difficult for small companies to break in. At the same time, technology, even the internet alone, were making it possible for better products than ever to get created from small companies. So there was a misfit in the market and a big opportunity.

John Jantsch: So tell me this, are these companies already in business kind of trying to find their way, and you find them and give them a lift? Or, do you actually somehow partner a little deeper than that?

Jules Pieri: It’s all over the map. We look at three hundred products a week. Some are inbound, most are about to be in production, are in production, or just out of crowdfunding.

John Jantsch: With a name like Duct Tape Marketing, I get asked this question all the time, is there a name story? Why the Grommet?

Jules Pieri: Yes, [inaudible] the silly one is I love grommets, I love hardware. I would say that the more business-y reason, because that’s important too, is first of all, I’m pretty good at building brands and I think we can get definition to this word. It was a word that was easy to say that a lot of people didn’t know what it meant and I kind of like that.

Jules Pieri: For the second reason was that if people did know what it means, that it’s a piece of hardware like a tent and a tarp, the round silver thing. It would be like a wink to them because that would be people who might understand products and creating products.

Jules Pieri: And that third reason is that specific hardware is like a humble hardworking entity and that’s how I kind of saw our company. That we would be kind of surrounding these embryonic companies and protecting and helping them.

John Jantsch: Yeah I fall into the wink camp because I’m doing the skull at about nine thousand feet in the Colorado Rockies, and camping and tarps and all those kinds of things are really important to our livelihood.

Jules Pieri: Oh for sure. I’m very happy to have the wink person on the other end of the line.

John Jantsch: You know the term maker now kind of seems like it’s carved out its own space in business lexicon. How in your opinion is somebody who claims to be a maker different than somebody who claims to be an entrepreneur or a business owner?

Jules Pieri: Well first of all, a hundred and thirty-five million Americans claim to be a maker, and they’re not all entrepreneurs. So clearly it’s a broad spectrum from people who are just doing hobby projects in their garage to people who are going all the way through to becoming what we call a Grommet. Honestly it’s interesting you point out that it enters the lexicon because when we started business ten years ago I was struggling to find a word to describe these companies because brand didn’t cover it, manufacture didn’t cover it, inventor didn’t cover it, entrepreneur didn’t cover it, sure as heck wasn’t going to call people vendors. So we were sort of dancing around a word. We called them partners, but that’s kind of vague. And then this word started emerging and I watched it and waited to make sure it stuck and also that it was broader than craft or hobby. It’s even broad in that it be descriptive of software entrepreneurs, like people who make things, but for the most part it works for us.

Jules Pieri: I will say there are some Grommet makers who wouldn’t identify with the word because it sounds too crafty to them if they produce a tech product. But I can tell you I’ve been pruning in the soups for ten years, I haven’t seen a better word. I do like the word.

John Jantsch: Yeah and I think like you said it’s like a lot of things, you know. There are a lot of makerspaces I belong to. I do it because I’m trying to make some stuff I want. But a lot of people have businesses that they’re running out of those spaces. I think it’s just become more acceptable. It’s kind of like fifteen years ago self-publishing was still seen as a not-so legit way to get a book out there, and of course now it very much is.

Jules Pieri: Right, exactly. Right like people are doing it for themselves and whatever rooted us into creating.

John Jantsch: Do you run across dreamers in this business? In other words, Kickstarters out there, I’m just going to put my thing out there and I’m going to get fifteen million dollars because I saw somebody else do it, and it’s not that hard.

Jules Pieri: Well, a dreamer who stays at the dreamer level won’t succeed. I mean there’s nothing wrong with starting with a dream, but the tenacity and stick-to-itiveness and just the sheer organization it takes to run a Kickstarter campaign would quickly weed those folks out. They wouldn’t see things through to the end of a successful campaign.

Jules Pieri: And yeah we do see people who maybe don’t understand what we do, which is really the spotlight and amplification, and they’ll send us a concept and think we will build the business around it. And you know, it’s just a misunderstanding, but not everyone wants to do the work and it’s a heck of a lot of work. That’s a core reason why I wrote the book to help people do the work.

John Jantsch: Yeah and actually I should backtrack. You have to start as a dreamer or nothing’s going to become of it, but obviously like you said it’s the implementation that is really what differentiates.

Jules Pieri: That 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration is absolutely true.

John Jantsch: So we sort of weighted into this already, what are some of the common mistakes that you see this group of makers falling for?

Jules Pieri: Somebody asked me that because, whether or not someone reads a book, I want to hit off the biggest mistakes. The first one would be not accepting the market opportunity right up front. Really doing everything you can to shape and quantify the potential customers for your product and getting beyond talking to your friends and family who will all tell you your product’s a great idea. You want to find strangers in the hard, cold light of day who will be able to embrace your idea or data that shows the market for your idea. So I would start there because it’s heartbreaking to me if they want a full-time endeavor they’re not looking for a moonlight side gig, they really want to build a business, I like them to go after a big target so that they can have lots of shots and goals. Name the company after your vision, not your first product.

John Jantsch: No, I was just going to say even working with established companies on their marketing the first thing I’m going to know is what problem do they solve and I think sometimes that’s a really good place to start for a product, isn’t it?

Jules Pieri: Yeah, and keep yourself really honest there. Sometimes it’s hard to find the kind of data so you can’t always satisfy that itch and it’s one you should try. There is obviously a kind of data out there about just about any population or market, but sometimes if you’re on something super new it’s hard to find that data. But then you do your best to substitute that with your own labor to satisfy yourself, it’s worth pursuing.

John Jantsch: Yeah, some of the biggest hits have been people that created something that solved a problem people didn’t know they had until it was there.

Jules Pieri: Right, I would say this is a pretty good example. Now, it was hard to quantify the number of people who would want that data on their wrist or in their pocket. Exactly, the prior product would have been a kind of clunky speedometer that had no connectivity to a community or to a manufacturer to your phone. So it’s not a great comp, but it was pretty easy to assume that people were interested in fitness and that steps if they were captured in a convenient sort of waterproof, well-priced, good form factor way, that’s not a hard leap to assume that could be interesting. But some products are a harder leap.

John Jantsch: And the many duplicates are probably a testament to the popularity of that.

Jules Pieri: Yes, the second area though, you asked me for things to avoid. Name your company after your vision, not your first product because retailers like a full line of products and you don’t want to limit your own opportunities with your name. So an example outside of the product area would be TaskRabbit, which was originally called RunMyErrand. Now people think of TaskRabbit for just about anything, whether it’s a handy personal project or assembling IKEA furniture or picking up dog food, which was the original inspiration. And RunMyErrand is way too narrow and it’s expensive and hard to change the name when it needed to be changed.

John Jantsch: Yeah, good point. So one of the challenges I suppose is somebody creates a good product, maybe they raise the money in a Kickstarter kind of way, but distribution is really going to make the difference. I know that distribution, you know if you created say a board game and then you couldn’t crack the New York board game buyer, you weren’t going to get in the market. What’s the best path for that kind of maker to circumvent the traditional distribution channels?

Jules Pieri: Well, frankly that’s at the heart of why we started the business because there wasn’t a really good path in that. The traditional channels, by the way, are still powerful. Going to trade shows is still a very credible thing to do, I wouldn’t discard that. People still do engage reps who will present your product to retailers when they have the relationship. People still do some traditional trade advertising, but the downside of all that is it does kind of feel kind of 1970s in terms of we live in a digital world and everything I just described and looked at, it is not virtual, it’s showing up. So we try to crack that in terms of creating that community who give products the audience and visibility, and that just simply didn’t exist, we start the Grommet.

Jules Pieri: I will say social media was super important to me in starting a business. At first, it was Facebook, primarily a vehicle to climb that audience, and today I think the closest thing or the best route other than some of these I just mentioned would be Instagram. Instagram is pretty brilliant for if you can make the investment, it’s a serious investment, in great content and consistency. It’s the only thing I’ve seen that, kind of gist in the Grommet, this sort of universe of doing it for yourselves and finding the community directly. It’s a sophisticated platform so the imagery must be beautiful, the copy, the video, has to be on par with everything else there. But there are breakouts that happen there and certainly for anyone with a big budget you can master Instagram and all the social platforms. But assuming without a big budget it’s going to be more about sweat equity and putting in the time to create great content.

John Jantsch: But I’m glad you mention that though because I think a lot of people with all these digital channels, the promises there to reach all these millions of people, but I really think some of the most effective marketing is figuring out how to integrate some old school with some new school, and not necessarily depend on one or the other.

Jules Pieri: I would agree with that. It’s still true that, for instance, going to trade shows, there’s a million reasons why it’s helpful. It’s not just for finding buyers, they have showcases of innovative products and competitions, and Shark Tank like environments where you can get a lot of great advice and make great connections. You can walk the booths and not only see competition, but talk to people who maybe aren’t competitive but have cracked some manufacturing issues or packaging issues that you have ahead of you so you can get really smart really fast. It’s like this mini university under a horrible convention center roof.

John Jantsch: That cement floor is no fun either.

John Jantsch: So you already hinted at this idea that if you’re going to play on Instagram you’ve got to have beautiful images and content and whatnot. How often do people underestimate the role of design in the whole picture?

Jules Pieri: That’s like I’m a hammer and you’re a nail asking me that question because I’m a designer. Here’s the deal, whether you’re creating a package or creating a product or some piece of marketing communication, it generally costs the same amount of money to produce something bad as something good. The shortcut you take is the front of skipping the pro, it’s keeping the advice you can get from somebody who has done some of this work before, it’s a costly skip is basically what I’d say. There are very few products that can’t benefit from the designer, which they’re available at the other side of a few keystrokes on the internet in many cases. Certainly, good networking can lead to good designers, so I think it’s a super important investment and certainly consumers don’t overlook it. This is a key differentiator in products so I’m not sure why people would skip that step.

Jules Pieri: Here’s an example where it often gets skipped. Quite often when you’re offshoring and producing in another country there will be a proposal from the factory. You know, here’s your cost all in, they may offer to design product, they may offer to design the packaging, and quite often the results show that this effort was done by people who don’t understand the market you’re serving or don’t have the commitment that you have to quality or don’t even use the language the way you would use it, the materials you would use. So it feels like you’re saving money, right? Have this thing delivered all the way from wherever, but it’s an expensive ten dollars sometimes.

John Jantsch: I always say this to people, listeners have heard this from me before, but I frequently hear my kids when they’re looking, and they’re in their upper 20s-30s, and they’ll pass a company by, oh their website was terrible. The experience was not good. The design was so old school, not even looking into that company. So I think people, especially when that three-four seconds is all you’re getting, it makes a difference.

Jules Pieri: That’s a good point because that’s where what you just described exactly what your kids say is where this phenomenon of the direct consumer businesses like Warby Parker or Harry’s or Cas-Ker are winning because those companies understand that from the very first contact, whether it’s an Instagram post or website or return policy or ability to chat, these are companies that definitely get you in serving what you consider to be a modern experience, a customer-friendly experience. And I suit your aesthetic or your vibe or your values.

John Jantsch: Yeah and that’s why stories are such a big deal too. It’s not just the nice looking website, it’s the story too. So speaking of stories, do you have a favorite one you want to share from your thousands I guess now from the Grommet?

Jules Pieri: One that I think sums up the crazy extremes happening in the world that I’m living in with makers is we have a maker who created a product that is called the Negg and it is a way to at home, little tiny device, about the size of a cup, that peels a hard-boiled egg with a couple shakes. So it’s genius, it really works, and the entrepreneur who created it was a web designer, an entrepreneur who has a web designer consulting firm, and basically she saw a void in the market and went after it.

Jules Pieri: And so Bonnie, who needed to prototype the product, she had figured out how to do this essentially, she miniaturized what commercial egg peelers do for the home in a non-power device. And she signed up for a 3D printing course at her local library. So Bonnie shows up for this class. Now Bonnie, you’re probably going to be surprised to hear, is 76 years old. And she shows up for the class and the instructor walks into the makers space in the library, and the instructor is 11 years old, and therein is born the Negg. It’s made in Connecticut and a very, very successful product thanks to the meeting of those two generations.

John Jantsch: That is a great story and I have to tell you my own little story then. There was a little deli, just a one-two person place that was right around the corner from my office. I love egg salad sandwiches, they make great egg salad sandwiches, and one day she didn’t have anymore and she said, I just got tired of peeling the eggs. So I need to tell her about it.

Jules Pieri: Yes! Oh my gosh, yes. Exactly.

John Jantsch: That’s funny.

John Jantsch: Jules, where can people find more about the Grommet, more about you, but then also, How We Make Stuff Now?

Jules Pieri: Actually it’ll be a website with exactly that title, How We Make Stuff Now, and it talks about what’s in the book, I made a video about the book there, but also it is a great place for additional resources. I list out chapter by chapter the references in the book, but I’ve been adding them every week as I learn things after the publishing of the book. I’m going to keep that as a living document to help me personally.

John Jantsch: Awesome. Well Jules, it was really great to hear your story, great to hear about the book and the work that you’re doing. It must be really gratifying to see some of these folks that are struggling that you’ve really lifted up.

Jules Pieri: It feels like my life’s work and I’m really proud of it.

John Jantsch: Thanks for joining us. Hopefully we’ll see you out there on the road.

Jules Pieri: Yes, thanks John.

from http://bit.ly/2XCzQWg

[vinayv224]

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos at the Wired25 event in 2018 | Matt Winkelmeyer / Getty Images for WIRED25

Jeff Bezos hired Paul Davis to build Amazon’s website. Now Davis wants to break it up.

Paul Davis literally helped build Amazon.com from scratch. Now he says it’s time to tear it apart.

Davis, a computer programmer who was Jeff Bezos’ second hire in 1994 before the shopping site even launched, told Recode on Friday that the company should be forced to separate the Amazon Marketplace, which allows outside merchants to sell goods to Amazon customers, from the company’s core retail business that stocks and sells products itself.

His reasoning? He’s troubled by reports of Amazon squeezing and exploiting the merchants who stock its digital shelves in ways that benefit Amazon, the company, above all else. Davis’ concerns come as Bezos’ company has come under increased scrutiny from politicians, regulators, and its own sellers, in part over the power it wields over small merchants who depend on the tech giant for their livelihoods.

“There’s clearly a public good to have something that functions like the Amazon Marketplace. … If this didn’t exist, you’d want it to be built,” Davis said. “What’s not valuable, and what’s not good, is that the company that operates the marketplace is also a retailer. They have complete access to every single piece of data and can use that to shape their own retail marketplace.”

Davis is referring to how Amazon uses data from its third-party sellers to benefit its core retail business, whether it be by scouring these merchants’ best-sellers and then choosing to sell those brands itself, or to create its own branded products through similar means.

“They’re not breaking any agreements,” he added. “They’re just violating what most people would assume was how this is going to work: ‘I sell stuff though your system [and] you’re not going to steal our sales.’”

Davis’ comments appear to be one of the first times that an early Amazon employee has called for the company to be broken up. Earlier this year, US presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren argued for the same. And both the US House of Representatives and the Federal Trade Commission are scrutinizing Amazon’s business practices to determine if they are anticompetitive, including its dealings with the hundreds of thousands of merchants who are the backbone of Amazon’s unmatched product catalogue.

An Amazon spokesperson sent Recode a statement, which read in part: “Sellers are responsible for nearly 60% of sales in our stores. They are incredibly important to us and our customers, and we’ve invested over $15 billion dollars this year alone—from infrastructure to tools, services, and features—to help them succeed. Amazon only succeeds when sellers succeed and claims to the contrary are wrong. Sellers have full control of their business and make the decisions that are best for them, including the products they choose to sell, pricing, and how they choose to fulfill orders.”

Davis’ comments to Recode came after he posted an online comment alongside a New York Times article earlier this week about the challenges sellers face while doing business on Amazon.

“For nearly 2 decades Amazon has used its control of its marketplace to strengthen its own hand as a retailer,” Davis wrote. “This should not be allowed to continue.”

The Times article highlighted various ways that Amazon allegedly puts pressure on the merchants who are responsible for nearly 60 percent of all Amazon physical product sales, including burying their listings if they are selling the same product for less elsewhere and making it hard for brands that don’t advertise on the site from showing up at the top of search results. (Recode spotlighted similar complaints from sellers in an episode of the Land of the Giants podcast series this summer.)

Davis wrote the backend software for the first iterations of the Amazon.com website from 1994 into 1996. He left the company after a year and a half and following the birth of his first child, in part, he said, because of the culture Bezos was creating that churned through good employees, whom Davis says were worked “into the ground.”

Still today, Davis marvels at what Bezos and his leadership team have built over the past two decades, and he says he shops on Amazon regularly.

“We exist with multiple hats: We’re citizens, [we’re] employees, we’re parents, we’re consumers — and, from my perspective, if you put the consumer hat on, it’s easy to feel incredibly proud of what Amazon is and has become,” Davis said. “But the problem is that that’s not the only hat that we wear — and its fine to celebrate and be optimistic and positive about what the company represents for consumers — but you also have to ask seriously, what does the company represent [to us] as citizens, as employees. And unfortunately, you have to be incredibly naive not to see that the answers to those questions are nowhere near as positive.”

“It is an amazing story,” he added, referring to the company’s innovation and success, “but as time goes forward my gut feeling is that it will not only not be the whole story, but really the smallest part of the story.” In addition to finding issue with Amazon operating simultaneously as retailer and marketplace, Davis also wonders why such a powerful — and, now, profitable — company can’t pay the frontline workers in its warehouses and delivery network better.

Today, Davis lives in a small New Mexico town and writes open source software for recording and editing audio. He said he knows it’s “absurd” to feel any sort of responsibility for the power that Amazon holds today.

“I doubt there’s a single line of code or concept that dates back to when I was there.”

He also stressed that most of the company’s early success should be attributed to Bezos’ intellect, ambition, and drive.

But at times, doubts do creep in for Davis. They emerge when he allows himself to consider what might have been if he, and Amazon’s first employee — fellow programmer and Amazon’s first Chief Technology Officer Shel Kaphan — hadn’t been the type of technical talents that understood the internet in its earliest days.

“Emotionally,” Davis said, “I do feel some kind of culpability.”

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