Category Archives: California

05/17/24

Is Everyone In California High Or Stupid?

This is one of those blog posts that writes itself — free government-provided, taxpayer-funded alcohol for homeless alcoholics — but first I had to confirm what I had heard was correct. Let me launch into it.

Homelessness is not a pretty picture, especially in California and San Francisco. San Francisco claims it is now enjoying a 10-year low in homeless sleeping unprotected on the streets.

That statistic is subject to a lot of conjecture and ridicule, but meanwhile the stats for California writ large are an increase of 30,000 homeless. Even the governor admits to that.

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02/28/24

Fast Food Surge Pricing? Price Gouging? WTF?

There are ideas that sweep through the business world that slowly work there way into every aspect of business though at first they seemed a little odd. It’s like going to the beach and coming home with sand in your shoes — it’s everywhere.

I offer two examples:

 1. Creating a club around a set of benefits such as Prime membership with Amazon; and,

 2. Subscription services such as was copied by Restoration Hardware.

Each of these ideas is related and each results in a true economic benefit to the customer whilst creating a solid, secondary cash flow for the sponsor.

Prime members number 230,000,000 and each will pay $179 for their next renewal. It started out at $79 nineteen years ago in 2005.

Do the math, that’s a lot of money. Continue reading →

09/13/20

Killing The Gig Economy

A lot of trends, suspect ideas, cultural quirks, and bad laws start in California and spread across the country.

Case in point is California Assembly Bill 5 which destroys the gig economy by imposing standards on the employer-employee relationship that prevent the gig economy from functioning in a manner as it currently does.

Lyft and Uber have both threatened to pull out of California if the law is not repealed in November.

Joe Biden supports California Assembly Bill 5 which effectively kills the gig economy and wants to pass a Federal law mirroring it. If you are a gig worker, take note.

Cal AB 5 came to life in December 2018 in response to controversy created by the employment of Lyft and Uber drivers, classic gig economy workers. These contract, independent contractor, 1099, gig workers are eliminated under the law that was passed in September 2019 and took effect in January 2020.

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07/18/19

Manhole v Personhole v Maintenance Hole

I have been on a journey of discovery. For a year I have struggled — admittedly unsuccessfully — with how to confront an increasingly more troubling, harsher, complex world.

This week, the Berkeley, California, City Council showed me the light when they renamed MANHOLES as MAINTENANCE HOLES, thereby driving off the offensive stank and horrific gender-biased nomenclature of such things. Hurrah!

Image result for images of manholes

It is with a light heart I now face life, secure in the knowledge that I and millions of others will no longer have to confront the indignity of improperly identified, gender-shamed public facilities.

MANHOLES are dead.

Long live MAINTENANCE HOLES.

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