Scott Adams's Blog, page 369

The Waiting Room is Your Doctor

I wonder if someday the doctor's waiting room will be a giant MRI device, or whatever technology replaces it, that can scan you, diagnose your problems, and write prescriptions without human intervention.

Imagine that someday you have a tiny chip inside you to monitor your blood chemistry on an ongoing basis. When you enter the room, the computer recognizes your face, and matches it to the identity information on your chip just to be sure. The computer reads your blood data from your chip and begins scanning your body. You don't have to be motionless because the computer is fast enough to compensate for your movements.

The computer has your entire medical history, along with the genetic information that was taken from your umbilical cord. It also knows your lifestyle because your bank records and your location data (from GPS) are available by law to the medical establishment. The computer can even scan your Facebook pages and other online sources to see what social situations you've been in lately. By then, privacy will seem like a quaint custom from our primitive past. Children will learn about it in history class.

The computer then compares all of your information with a vast database about other human beings and looks for anomalies. Based on this information, the computer diagnosis you and prescribes treatment. At that point, a human nurse might be involved to remove a splinter or apply a bandage. If you need surgery, a robot does the hard part while a human doctor supervises.

In the next stage of healthcare, the MRI-like device shrinks to the size of an airport screening device that fits in the doorway of your home so you get a full and instant physical every time you pass through. Every problem is diagnosed early.

What part of that future is unlikely in 200 years?

What is the Universe Made of?

Scientists have identified a number of elemental particles that are not known to be made up of smaller particles. But how do you wrap your head around the idea that something is made of nothing but...itself? Is it absurd, illogical, or just hard to understand?

Now suppose we someday determine that these elemental particles are indeed made of something else. It just pushes the question down a level. The moment we discover the new and smaller substance, we wonder what that is made of, and so on forever, or until...what?

Consider the possible answers.

Maybe everything is made of something else in some sort of infinite series that literally has no start, or it forms a loop of some sort. I can put words to that thought, but does it make sense?

Maybe the elemental particles are indeed made of themselves. But how can a component and the whole be the same? What keeps it all stuck together?  It seems irrational.

Maybe there is one undiscovered substance that is the building block of the elemental particles and everything else. This idea has the advantage of simplicity, but it begs the same question: What is that one substance made of?

Or maybe reality is all just one big hologram or illusion that is impossible for the participants to fathom. But who created the hologram? Those guys must be part of a reality that is made of something. The question is inescapable, even if we literally don't exist.

You can even throw God into the mix and it doesn't help because I wonder what he's made of.

There's plenty of scientific evidence that reality is created on the fly by the act of observation, at least in the small world of physics. So perhaps the elemental particles literally did not exist until the first scientists detected them. And so it follows that we can cause the elemental particles to have substructures, or not, by how hard we try to detect that sort of thing. And that process of looking for, and therefore creating, substructures of substructures can be infinite. The problem you might have with this idea is that it implies people are like God, creating reality as we go.

And there's your infinite loop. God is made of people, at least in part, and people are literally creating, through their experiments and observation, the universe. God is creating the universe, while the universe is simultaneously creating God.

Here I remind you not to get your science or religion education from cartoonists. Read the comments to see what parts I got wrong.

Facebook Killer

Suppose a company offered you a billion dollars in exchange for a portion of your privacy. To make this arrangement palatable, imagine that the company promises that your data will only be used anonymously. You don't totally trust them, but it's not as if you rob banks in your spare time. You don't have much to hide.

Now imagine that you can selectively leave out of this deal any future plans that are deeply personal. And you can leave out anything that might get you fired, embarrassed, or injured in any way. Those exclusions would be allowed by contract. And you could leave out any mention of your past, where most of your misdeeds happened anyway. Now do you accept this deal?

Most of you probably said yes, although you might have more questions about this arrangement just to be sure you're not dealing with Satan. Now suppose instead of a billion dollars, the company only offered a million. Some of you would walk away at that price. How about $100,000?

My point is that your privacy has an economic value. Or it could, if such a market was created. Today you give away your privacy for nothing, in dribs and drabs. Your credit card company knows some things about you, your phone company knows others, and FaceBook knows a lot. 

One thing that all of those companies have in common is that the private information they possess involves mostly your past, and not so much your future. When you post pictures on Facebook, it is a record of where you were, not a prediction of where you will be. Likewise, your credit card company and the phone company have records of what you did, as opposed to what you plan to do next.

Privacy about your past is so cheap that you literally give it away. Privacy about your future plans is another matter. That has real value.

Obviously the past has some utility for predicting the future. If you enjoy a certain activity today, you'll probably like it tomorrow. But predictions based on the past do not have the same economic value as, for example, knowing that you plan to buy a truck in the next month. Or perhaps you are planning a trip to Europe, or planning to find a new job. Private knowledge of your future would be worth a lot to advertisers. You wouldn't give away that sort of privacy for nothing.

Here's the Facebook killer part of my post. As I mentioned, Facebook is primarily a record of your past. Imagine a competing service that I will name Futureme for convenience. It's an online system in which you post only your plans, both immediate and future. As with FaceBook, you decide who can see your plans. You might, for example, allow only specific family members to see your medical plans, but all of your friends can see your vacation plans, or your plans to buy a new couch.

The interface for Futureme is essentially a calendar, much like Outlook. But it would include extra layers for hopes and goals that don't have specific dates attached.

For every entry to your Futureme calendar, you specify who can see it, including advertisers. If you allow advertisers a glimpse of a specific plan, it would be strictly anonymous. Advertisers could then feed you ads specific to your plan, while not knowing who they sent it to. The Futureme service would be the intermediary.

Now imagine that you never have to see any of the incoming ads except by choice. If you plan to buy a truck in a month, you would need to click on that entry to see which local truck advertisements have been matched to your plans. This model turns advertising from a nuisance into a tool. You‘d never see an ad on Furureme that wasn't relevant to your specific plans.

The biggest benefit of the system could come from your network of friends and business associates. Suppose you post on the system that you would like to see a Bon Jovi concert sometime in the next year. Now your friends - the ones you specify to see this specific plan - can decide if they want in on it.  Maybe someone you know can get free tickets, and someone has a van and is willing to be the designated driver.  Maybe someone has a contact that can get you backstage passes. By broadcasting your plan, you make it possible for others to improve your plan.

Conversely, if you plan to do something stupid, your contacts have time to talk you out of it or suggest a superior alternative.

Your plans could be very general at first, such as a desire to go out next Saturday. Click on your Futureme entry on Thursday and perhaps you will see that three of your friends have the same general desire, and one of them has an idea of what to do. It's like Evite, but it allows you to move from a general plan to a specific one.

I know what you're thinking. You're worried that this system allows the stalkers and mooches in your network to ruin your future plans. But remember, you are only broadcasting your plans to people you specify.  If you choose to tell a stalker where you'll be, don't blame the application when you get stabbed.

Almost any kind of plan can be improved by your network. If you plan to buy something, it would be handy to automatically receive ideas, opinions, links, and relevant ads. If you plan a vacation to the mountains, your friends and business associates would tell you the best place to stay and the fun things to do. Your biggest vendor might throw in some freebees to keep you happy. Almost everything you plan to do could be improved by advertisers and friends.

Gift-giving would suddenly be easy. Just check what someone is planning to do, then plan a gift around it. Advertisers could automatically provide gift ideas around every planned activity. It would have the same utility as a bridal registry, albeit less filtered.

If you have kids, you're continuously matching their planned activities with that of their friends so you can arrange car pools, play dates, birthday gift-buying and more.  It's a logistical nightmare. It would help a lot if mothers knew what the other mothers were planning.

Facebook succeeds in part because it is addictive. People like to talk about themselves, and people are nosey.  But if you think people are nosey about what you did last weekend, imagine how nosey they would be about what vacation you are planning. It's a whole new level of nosey.

Yes, people already discuss their plans on Facebook. But doing so has a small payback because the system isn't optimized to improve your plans. You might discuss only 10% of your plans on Facebook, but 80% on Futureme, because the payoff would be greater.

It would be a pain to enter all of your plans into the system, and keep it updated, but it would save you a huge amount of time in the long run. That would be your payoff for "selling" your privacy.

Imagine how different society would be if most people started sharing their plans. I think it's a world changer, on par of importance with the invention of capitalism, and the rule of law.

Breakfast is Overrated

I have many crackpot theories. Today is no exception. Let's test today's theory, unscientifically.

First, think of someone you know who is unusually creative. It should be someone who almost can't stop creating, whether that involves painting, sculpting, starting new businesses, rebuilding cars, whatever. But don't count knitting or anything that involves following directions. I'm only talking about creating from original ideas.  Pick someone for whom the need to invent something new as often as possible almost defines the person. Okay? Now hold that thought.

Second, think of your best friend who does NOT have a creative streak and is about the same age as the creative person you chose. Okay, do you have both people in mind?

Which one has more body fat?

My prediction is that the creative person is usually thinner than the non-creative person.

My theory is that when your body experiences the early stages of hunger, you become more creative, and more energetic. (Obviously at the later stages of hunger you become sleepy, cranky, distracted, and probably less creative. Let's call that starvation and not hunger.)

This makes sense from an evolutionary view. As soon as you feel hunger coming on, your body is designed to put you into your most creative and energetic mode for the purpose of hunting and gathering.  If you can't outrun your prey, you have to outthink it. And if there are no bananas in your usual tree, you'd better have a creative idea where to look next. It makes sense that the onset of hunger would stimulate your brain to its highest operating level.

I came to this theory after two decades of watching how my own diet influences my energy and personality.  One pattern is remarkably clear: My creativity and energy are highest when I haven't eaten much lately. Is that a coincidence?

The highest period of creativity in my life coincided with the period in which I became a vegetarian and felt hungry all the time no matter how many carrots I ate. I joked about it at the time, but there was a very real sense of clarity that coincided with my change of diet. It was as if a fog lifted. That was the period in which I created Dilbert, along with about five other business ventures. (The other ones suffered from, um, poor timing.)

During those same years, I discovered that my most creative time was in the morning. I assumed it had something to do with alleged circadian rhythms, coffee consumption, the proximity to REM sleep, or the fact that there were fewer distractions. By the afternoon, I was lucky if I had enough brainpower left to operate my car. My new theory is that I have very little food in my stomach during the morning, and the onset of hunger is spiking my creative energy. I'm in hunter/gather mode. Then I eat lunch, and it's nap time.

Often, from about 8 PM until noon the next day, I eat no more than one banana and a protein bar. That's about 356 calories, or around 18% of my daily allocation spread over two-thirds of the day.  I'm almost always a little bit hungry during that 16-hour period, but for reasons of health, energy, and productivity, I usually resist eating more. And when I absolutely have to eat, I eat peanuts. They don't give me the foggy headed need-a-nap feeling that carbs generally do.

There are days when I experience floods of creativity that are almost overwhelming. I noticed recently that those times coincide with periods in which when I'm trying to lose a few pounds to get back to my target weight. 

By now you've probably seen the CNN story about the nutritionist who lost 27 pounds and became generally healthier by eating mostly junk food, but limiting his calories. We don't know if it raised his risk of cancer in the long run, so no expert is recommending his diet. But it calls into question how much we really know about the link between food and health.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html

On a final note, have you ever wondered why famous musicians write their best songs when they are young? Maybe it's because young brains are more creative and less cluttered, or because they are more tapped into the youth culture, or maybe it's because they are doing more drugs. But maybe it's also because young musicians don't eat as much as their bodies require. Musicians tend to look underfed during their most creative years. Maybe it's not a coincidence.

I remind you not to get your health and nutrition advice from cartoonists. But I'm curious if your own creative moments have coincided with low caloric intake.

The Presidential Pitch TV Show

There's a TV show I'd like to see, perhaps on public television, or on the Internet. The premise is that the President of the United States sits in a room with economists and prepares his three-slide PowerPoint presentation to the voters on the topic of raising taxes versus cutting spending to balance the budget.

Now add Judge Judy, or someone with a similar skill set, to run the meeting and cut off the participants when they don't offer brief answers to clear questions. Also include several economist/researchers who are there to verify the accuracy of any assertions made during the meeting.

During the course of the show, as Judge Judy (for example) nails down certain facts, the facts are put on the PowerPoint slide for viewers to keep track of what is settled. When enough facts are assembled for a verdict, Judge Judy and the President discuss what they have learned until the President arrives at a conclusion that is consistent with the facts. And if the data doesn't point in a conclusive direction, the President would be free to make his decision on some sort of principle, such as fairness, or practicality. At least the decision process would be transparent.

I thought of this idea after reading the comments to my recent blog about the national debt. It's clear that no citizen has enough information to justify an opinion on raising taxes versus cutting spending. Everyone, including me, seems to have a handful of questionable factoids and some dogma. That's it.

It's not entirely our fault. The other day I read in Newsweek that our debt as a percentage of GDP is lower than it was in the eighties. The next day I saw a graph on CNBC showing the percentage of GDP at about triple the level that Newsweek mentioned. Had I seen one of those sources and not the other, I might think I knew something.  I expect that most people who think they have enough information on the topic of the budget are having the same problem. The readily available data is always out of context, inconsistent, or filtered through liars.

The budget issue is somewhat unique as national debates go. In the case of global warming, for example, or teaching evolution in schools, there is a clear consensus of the experts to guide those who care about data. But when it comes to issues of taxation and deficits, the experts are more divided, and in many cases intentionally misleading.

You might say the President wouldn't, and shouldn't, subject himself to the sort of circus TV show I'm describing. You're probably right. The way this sort of concept is tested is by throwing someone of lesser office into the mix and seeing if it produces useful results or mockery.

This is the same method used during Presidential campaigns. The candidate for vice president tries out any edgy sound bites first. If the media mocks him, the President can say his running partner was just speaking off the cuff. If the media loves the sound bite, it starts coming out of the presidential candidate's mouth the next day.

Unlike most of my ideas, this one is entirely practical. And if citizens didn't watch the show itself, they might be willing to read the twelve bullet points on the slides that came out of it.

The Night I Learned to Follow Directions

The other day, my friend Steve and I had a "Husbands Cook for Their Wives" night in which we hoped to accomplish several things. First, we thought it would be a good way to add to the Husband Bank of good deeds. Second, it was an excuse to drink beer on a Tuesday afternoon. And third, Steve would transfer his vast knowledge of cooking methods to my ignorant self. It was this third objective that went terribly wrong.

Among my duties that night was chopping the jalapeño peppers. I had never prepared a meal with jalapeño peppers, and I didn't know much about them. The conversation went something like this.

Steve: You should wear rubber gloves to cut the jalapeño peppers.

Me: Really? Is that necessary?

Steve: Yes. Do you have any rubber gloves?

I knew we had some rubber gloves somewhere in the house, but finding them would require the help of my wife, Shelly, and I didn't want to bother her on Husbands Cook for Their Wives Night. So I pressed the point.

Me: I could just wash my hands after I cut the jalapeño peppers.

Steve: You really should wear gloves. And don't touch your eyes, or any mucous membranes. And whatever you do, don't take a piss until sometime next week.

Me: I'll just wash my hands when I'm done cutting the peppers. That should be fine.

At this point, an obscure statute in the Guy Code came into play and Steve realized that nagging me wasn't the way to play this. Instead, he decided to let me take a run at the jalapeño peppers bareback. If he was laughing on the inside, he did a good job of not showing it.

I sliced up the jalapeño peppers, and removed the seeds. Then I washed my hands thoroughly, successfully avoiding contact with my eyes, mucous membranes, and genitalia. It was no problem at all. Apparently this whole jalapeño peppers scare was overblown, I thought.

A few minutes passed, and I felt a tingle in my left hand - the one that directly handled the peppers. The tingle turned into a warm sensation, and the warmth turned into...well, this will take some explaining.

Imagine turning a broom upside down, so the pointy bristles are facing up. You take your hand, palm facing down, and bounce it on the pointy bristles. Can you imagine how uncomfortable that feels on your hand? Okay, good.

Now imagine that a giant troll sees you playing with the broom. He snatches it out of your hand, chews the handle into a point and shoves it so far up your ass that you can taste it. Then he uses you like a huge flyswatter to kill a nest of porcupines that are living in his salt mine. My hand hurt like that.

It felt as if my hand was literally on fire. It was one of the most intense pains of my life. With my good hand, I groped for the iPad and searched for home remedies. For every report of a treatment that worked, three people reported that it didn't. I tried ice. I tried milk. I tried alcohol (internal and external). I tried sour cream. I tried ketchup. Each of those things worked for as long as it kept my hand cold, but as soon as my hand reached room temperature, the burn returned.  And according to my fellow idiots on the Internet who had made the same mistake, the burn could last most of the night.

I made it through dinner with my hand submerged in a bowl of milk.  By now, two hours had passed and the level of pain hadn't subsided one iota.  Our dinner conversation turned to new potential remedies. Steve suggested an emery board to file down the top layer of skin and remove the irritant. I tried, but no luck. Shelly hypothesized that the remedies themselves might be slowing the recovery, and I should just "man up" and live with the pain to make it subside sooner. This advice felt suspiciously like revenge for every mistake I have ever made in the entire course of our marriage.

Steve explained how products like Ben Gay can make you feel better by creating a sensation that distracts your mind from the original pain. What I needed, he theorized, was a competing sort of pain to take my mind off of my hand. I suddenly realized that all of Steve's medical suggestions sounded suspiciously like cruel practical jokes. The Guy Code allows for that sort of behavior because I didn't follow his original advice to wear gloves.  But Steve has a PhD, and he's a retired college professor of biology, so he knows things. It was a totally ambiguous situation, and I wasn't thinking clearly because of my pain.

While I weighed my options, I needed to get some beer out of my system, and this posed another problem. Although I had washed my throbbing hand a dozen times since handling the peppers, I worried that the jalapeño juice had become integrated with my skin. I couldn't rule out the possibility that using the restroom would make things much, much worse. I would have to do the deed with my opposite hand.

For the benefit of my female readers, allow me to explain something. We men are creatures of habit. After a lifetime of using my left hand for, let's say, handling the fire hose, switching to my right hand made it feel as if a total stranger was helping out. It was creepy. To get past the awkwardness, I named my right hand Sergio and pretended I was in prison. That's called making the best of a bad situation.

Anyway, back to the dining room, Steve's wife, Sandy, was nice enough to get some Lanacane from their house. After I applied the Lanacane, the pain stopped.  I can't say for sure that the Lanacane was the reason the pain stopped. Shelly's theory is that it was time for the pain to stop on its own, because I had "manned up" long enough.  This is not a good precedent for the next time I am injured at home.

The Least You Should Know

If you live in the United States, you probably have an opinion on the best way to reduce the deficit. And you probably know almost nothing about the topic. I certainly fall into that category. 

If you listen to pundits and politicians, you're getting your information from professional liars. If you're reading books, you're getting your information from professional liars who also write well. If you read newspapers and magazines, you're getting only the information that someone has decided will be good for sales.  If you say you "do your own research," you're probably a liar, possibly an idiot, and maybe some sort of analytical genius. And frankly, I can't tell you guys apart.

Prior to the last presidential election, as a public service, I commissioned my own survey of economists to see what they thought of the big issues.  I learned that the experts are all over the map on most questions. Can you feel comfortable holding an opinion in which 40% of the experts disagree?

This made me wonder what is the least a citizen needs to know in order to have an informed opinion on the national budget debate. Here's my starter list. I invite you to add to it.

My Budget Questions...

By what percentage would you need to cut the entire national budget to achieve fiscal health in the long run, assuming tax rates stay where they are?

How much would we need to increase taxes, as a percentage of all Federal taxes, to achieve fiscal health in the long run, assuming government costs rise only with inflation?

By what percentage would we need to raise taxes on rich people (let's say the top 2% of earners) in order to guarantee fiscal health, assuming no other change in expenses or taxes?

For an economy such as ours, at what level does the national debt become a death spiral? And where are we now in relation to that point? How soon would we reach it at our current pace?

------ End of Questions -----

On the same topic, I'm a fan of the 30-year back-weighted budget plan. You start cutting budgets only slightly in the early years, when reductions are psychologically and politically difficult, and you defer the bigger cuts for the later years, when technology enables you.

For example, I think it would be much harder to cut the military budget by 10% next year than it would be to reach a 50% reduction by year thirty, so long as we make it a national priority to do so.  In thirty years we'll be able to crush smaller countries with nothing but, for example, one indestructible robot with laser eyes. Meanwhile, big countries won't be dumb enough to screw with each other, thanks to nuclear weapons. It should be much cheaper to protect ourselves in the future, thanks to technology, if we start now and plan it that way.

Likewise, with health and social services, any cuts today would be cruel. But big cuts in the future might be feasible if we aim our technological sights on improving how we deliver those services.

I imagine a future in which we become so adept at the prevention and early detection of problems that health care costs become a fraction of what they are today. On top of that, I predict that in thirty years, end-of-life care will include a doctor-assisted euthanasia option. That would cut costs a great deal.

There's a nearly universal opinion that it would be unethical to push our problems on future generations. That would be a reasonable point of view if no one worked on solutions for reducing costs between now and then. But I believe we could accomplish big budget cuts in the future if we made it a serious goal today. Technology gives us that option.

The best part of my 30-year, back-weighted plan is that it would create the illusion, if not the reality, of a better future. Optimism is what drives the economy. What we have now is something that looks more like a hopeless budget death spiral, and people are hoarding their investible cash. A feasible and predictable budget plan would goose the economic engine and improve government revenue in the short run.

If you are a pessimist who believes that government spending will increase every year no matter what, I can't disagree. You might be right. But it has never been a national goal to use technology to greatly reduce spending by year thirty. Goals can matter.

As part of my 30-year, back-weighted plan, we could include provisions to raise taxes at an ever-so-slight pace for each of the future years as a hedge against not making the cost reductions. The economy is pretty good at absorbing any sort of change that is both gradual and predictable. And if you knew your taxes would only increase, for example, 1% over the entire next five years, you might be willing to live with it, even if 40% of all economists tell you it's a bad idea.

Here's where I remind you not to make and life-and-death budget decisions based on what you read in a cartoonist's blog. I'm just thinking out loud.

 

Eliminating Political Parties

Imagine a democratic political system in which no one is allowed to be a member of a political party. How would things be different?

My hypothesis is that confirmation bias, or cognitive dissonance, or something of that nature, influences voters to irrationally agree with the platform of their own party no matter what the facts suggest. My hypothesis is easy enough to test. All you'd need to do is come up with a phony issue and present it to your test subjects as something to which their party agrees, or disagrees, and see if party affiliation influences opinions. I think the effect would be large.

Now imagine what would happen to campaign funding if political parties didn't exist. In our current system, a union can give a million dollars to the Democratic Party and it doesn't seem too wrong because the party represents about half of the voters in the country. But if political parties didn't exist, unions or corporate interests would have to donate to individuals. And a large donation to an individual campaign would either be illegal or it would look so much like a bribe that it would be counter-productive.

I think political parties made sense in pre-Internet times. It was a good way to organize and to produce candidates who had a legitimate chance of getting elected. Now it's easy to imagine the Internet being a better platform for electing the right people. The problem is that there's no way to get to a different type of system from here. The major parties are too entrenched to give up power, and belonging to organizations is a fundamental freedom.

I'm fascinated by the fact that the freedom to organize into political parties limits our other freedoms more than most people realize.  Political parties make the government incompetent, and the result of ineffective government is that citizens are less prosperous. Poverty is the ultimate restriction of freedom.

If Thomas Jefferson sprung back to life today, and learned about the Internet, I wonder how he would recommend changing the Constitution of the United States. I think he would favor banning political parties.

Monetizing Business Ideas

Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything.

That's what I tell people when they ask me how they can sell their ideas. There's a general misconception that ideas have some sort of market value, if only one can find a buyer. Sadly, that is not the case. Everyone reading this blog is full of great ideas. But usually we don't have the time, talent, resources, or risk tolerance to pursue them. So we keep our wonderful ideas squirreled away in our heads, where they remain until dementia eats them.

There are exceptions. Some patents have value. But 99.9% of all ideas are not the sort you can patent. McDonalds came up with a great idea for an efficient way to sell dead cows and potatoes, but it wasn't patentable. I came up with an idea of using reader suggestions about the workplace to make comic strips. That worked out well, but the idea isn't patentable. McDonalds succeeded because one person devoted his full energy to making it happen, and he had access to of the resources he needed. Dilbert worked as a comic because I devoted my full energies to making it happen. And thanks to my syndicator, I had the business resources I needed. What happens to all of the great ideas that never match up with the resources that could set them free? Is there a way to unlock the potential of these otherwise wasted ideas?

I think there is a way. And I think it could change the fabric of civilization. With your indulgence, allow me to develop this idea.

The economy works best when we have the right resources in the right combinations at the right times. A few hundred years ago, that was easy. If you wanted to open a business, you just hung a sign on the door and word got around town. You didn't need a lawyer, accountant, IT guy, or a salesman.

Today, starting a business is a thousand times more complicated. But our tools for combining resources in the right combinations are still primitive. In my view, that's why we have a 9.6% unemployment rate in the United States. The rich have money to invest, we have plenty of great ideas, and talent is everywhere. But there's no system for efficiently bring those resources together. 

If you have a potential billion-dollar idea, you might get the attention of venture capitalists or angel investors. But how many people have ideas that good? How do you get funding for an idea that might only make a million dollars? And how many people know how to effectively pitch a project to investors?

On the opposite extreme are the ideas that require very little funding to get off the ground. The story of Facebook is one example. Microsoft is another. And in both cases the miracle of their successes involved extraordinary luck that the resources they needed were readily available.  If you didn't attend Harvard, you might not have a friend who is a programming genius, another friend who has a lawyer dad, and a third friend who can loan you $15,000.

The vast majority of stranded ideas are the ones that are not big enough to interest venture capitalists, yet they do require a both capital and expertise. For the sake of this discussion, let's say that almost any new business in modern times needs ten resources to start.

Leader/entrepreneur
Idea
Capital
Management
Marketing
Sales
Legal
Accounting
Technical
Human Resources

To free up the value in all of the ideas that would otherwise die of neglect, imagine a web-based service for bringing together all ten resources to support any sort of business idea, but in a special way.

By way of example, suppose you have an idea for creating a chain of ping pong themed restaurants. The business would have lots of tables for rent, along with music, food, and a bar. It's fun for the whole family. I pick this idea because it's already being done, in a fashion, by actress Susan Sarandon. Her ping pong parlor in New York City is called SPiN. More are planned. I picked this idea specifically because it can't be patented. And besides, maybe you want to do yours a different way, or in a different city, than SPiN.

In my imagined future, you start by making a home video of yourself pitching your idea, just as you would to an investor. You upload your video, along with a detailed description of your idea, to a web site where other entrepreneurs around the world are doing the same thing. But instead of simply soliciting funding, you solicit an entire team, based on whatever skills your business requires. The key to making this work is that no one quits his existing job, or provides funding, until all of the resources for the idea are lined up. The main function of the system is making sure everyone's conditions for participation have been met before any risks are taken.

Now imagine that the legal contracts for your new business partners are based on standardized agreements that have been created by the online business to be fair to both sides. There's no wrangling about the legal details. All you need to agree on are the "fill in the blank" stuff, such as who does what, and for what equity or salary. Likewise, the funding agreements are standardized.

As the entrepreneur, you might have a hundred people vying for the job of marketing for your new company. Each person would submit a resume, perhaps some text on how they would approach this specific job, and a minimum compensation requirement. The entrepreneur might choose a marketing expert with weaker experience to keep payroll low, which might in turn cause another potential team member to back out if he thinks the marketing person is too weak for the job. This process of adding and subtracting potential team members would repeat until everyone was happy with the contribution and compensation of everyone else. And during the process, all potential team members could communicate with each other to negotiate deals and refine the idea.

In my ping pong example, you would also need a retail location, an interior designer, and a builder to do the improvements. Those would be three more conditions that the entrepreneur sets up at the start of the process. The business wouldn't launch until all of those elements were in place to the satisfaction of everyone else.

Now suppose you have a great idea for a business and you don't want to be the CEO/entrepreneur/leader. But you still want to make some money from releasing your idea to the world. This imagined web site would allow you to post your video describing the idea, and hire just one person - the project manager - then back out. Your stake in the company, should it ever get off the ground, might be 1%, for example. It wouldn't be so high that the people doing the work would try to cut you out, but still big enough that people with great ideas would have a reason to post them on the site.

By now your mind is racing with all of the imagined problems with a system of this type. I'll anticipate the obvious objections and address them.

First, no one wants his ideas to be stolen.  You would hate to make a video of your terrific idea, put it online, and have someone simply copy it. That would happen. But if you were proposing a ping pong business in a particular town, a potential competitor would think twice before opening one next door. Contrast this to the current system where three yogurt shops opened in my town at about the same time, presumably without knowing that the others had the same plan. If the system I am imagining existed for them, perhaps the first one would have opened and been a success, and the other two entrepreneurs would have made other plans.  My point is that you shouldn't assume it would be bad for the economy if some types of startup plans were to be public. It might fix more problems than it caused.

Next, you might wonder if ten people could ever agree on the same set of conditions to launch a company. While it would be almost impossible to get a specific group of ten people to agree on anything, you could almost certainly get ten people out of the 6 billion on Earth to agree on any reasonable set of conditions. And keep in mind that it's healthy for the economy if the worst 95% of the ideas never happen.  For example, if no lawyer in the world wants to be part of your startup, there might be a good reason for that.

Perhaps you are concerned that making it easier to launch companies would create a lot of weak businesses that would fail. That might be true. But most businesses fail now, and while they are in the process of failing, they generate salaries for employees and revenue for suppliers. A modern economy is comprised mostly of companies that are in some stage of failure, whether they know it or not.  Also, the conditional nature of these future startups might guarantee that only the strongest launch in the first place. It would be hard to get ten people to agree on a weak idea in an environment in which stronger ideas can easily be found.

There's an obvious risk that the system would become crowded with so many atrocious ideas that it would be nearly impossible to find the good ones. That's an issue, but probably one that can be managed. And I would expect some superstars to emerge, who can pump out three great idea videos per week. The good ideas would float to the top.

It helps to have a name for new economic ideas such as this one. What would you call a system that conditionally combines economic resources? I'm stumped.

The Ultimate Case Study

By now you've probably heard the news about the prankster who gave his "friend" a huge penis tattoo on his back.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/27/australian-artist-charged_n_774608.html

My immediate reaction was that this story could be turned into the greatest case study of all time. It contains most of what I learned in business school and half of what I learned from my parents. It is the ultimate parable. Let's open the valve and see what valuable lessons spill out.

Don't make decisions while drunk. The story doesn't say alcohol was involved. But did I mention that one guy tattooed a giant penis on the other guy's back?

Stay in school and get good grades. Again, the story was silent on the academic achievements of the people involved, but did I mention that one guy tattooed a penis on the other guy's back?

Test first. Start with something small, such as a leprechaun on an ankle, just to see how the business relationship works out.

Supervision matters. If an employee unexpectedly volunteers for a project that can only be performed behind your back, something bad is going to happen.

Capitalism never sleeps. If someone offers you a free service, you should be suspicious of what he expects to get in return.  It might involve, for example, your friend laughing himself into a near coma.

Jerks never change. The tattoo artist didn't suddenly become a jerk when he started drawing a penis on his friend's back. I'm going to say the signals were there.

Credentials matter. If you're in the market for a brain surgeon, don't stop when you find a guy who owns a saw.

Network smartly. If there is even the slightest chance that your friend will misspell a gay insult that he secretly tattoos on your back, it's time to broaden your network of friends.

Don't believe product reviews. An accomplice of the prankster praised the artwork as it was being drawn.

Solicit opinions from others. Before you decide to get any sort of permanent marking on your back from an unlicensed tattoo artist, find out what other people think of the idea.

I could go on. I think you could build an entire law school curriculum around this case. And I'm pretty sure it would replace a bachelor's degree in marketing and advertising, unless you think you'll ever forget the story of the penis tattoo prank.

My point is that every school should build its curriculum around the story of the penis tattoo.  In grade school the kids could learn about the importance of good spelling, resisting peer pressure, and staying in school.  In graduate school, students could learn the legal, economic, and psychological implications of the story. It's all there, like some sort of fabulous gift from God.

But I'm a little bit suspicious why we got it for free.