Legalize Insider Trading?

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

Couldn’t help but share this article by James Altucher of Formula Capital who made minor headlines with his recommendation to legalize insider trading.

This comes in the wake of the demise of Galleon Group, a hedge fund whose head billionaire Raj Rajaratnam, was caught with a big hand in the insider trading cookie jar. This welcome clampdown on some of the real perpetrators, as opposed to the symbolic arrest and incarceration of Martha Stewart a few years back, is met with someone who should know better calling it a victimless crime.

I guess if the crime is not personal, meaning it’s committed against any and everyone indiscriminately, then those who are leveraging their positions of relative power and influence feel no one is really victimized.

Here at GoHuman.com we take a bit more of a holistic view of things. Our marketplace of local services is designed to be transparent, built from the bottom up, with shared ownership. We seek to make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for insider information to even exist, much less be exploited by a privileged few at the top.

We hope you’ll catch the vision, spread the word, and help make this marketplace the wave of the future.

blind justice

We’re Number Two!

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

I read an Associated Press release on Yahoo today that announces the U.S. slipping in global competitiveness to #2.

In 2005 Finland held the top spot, which the U.S. grabbed in 2006, and held on to until edged out by Switzerland this year.

But “Given that the financial crisis originated in large part in the United States, it is hardly surprising that there has been a weakening of the assessment of its financial market sophistication.”

Yep, hardly surprising, but the article fails to mention something that is. Have you spotted it yet?

Here’s another clue. “Singapore came third, followed by Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Japan, Canada and the Netherlands.”

Is it jumping out at you?

Think about the national debate in the U.S. around the economic crisis, and our two-party approach to solving it.

The U.S. likes to paint things black and white. Right and wrong. Left and right. You may have heard critics to the political right of our current President spreading the fear of “creeping Socialism”, claiming that we are trending closer towards an economic and global doomsday because of it.

Without getting into that debate take a look at the current top 10 “strong economies” as listed above. How many of them are considered “Capitalist” vs. “Socialist”? Can you clearly name them, and would others agree with you? Is the answer really as simple as “Capitalism” vs. “Socialism”?

Check out my Independence Day blog for my take on this question.

GoHuman.com offers a model that is outside these labels. Our vision is quite simple. A free, equal access marketplace, based on transparent reputation, to enable a restructuring of our economic system from the ground up.

Further, our business model leverages the latest technologies and trends in a platform that rewards those that contribute value to it. The principles of fairness, equality and integrity are more important to us than amassing wealth and gaining advantage over others.

We know we’ve got a ways to go to achieve this vision and these lofty goals, but we’re putting it out there. We’d also like to know how you think we’re doing.

And, of course, help us spread the word :)

Swiss Flag

Swiss Flag

Let’s Get America Working Again

Saturday, September 5th, 2009

I love a good play on words.

GoHuman.com’s primary tagline is “change the way your world works”, highlighting our mission at an individual and a collective level.

In today’s blog I’m at it again, referring back to yesterday, where I quoted a respected investment newsletter using its own play on words about there being more labor than jobs.

We can change that. We can fix it.

As our leaders work to deal with the impact of the recent financial train wreck, we at GoHuman.com are launching a site we believe will empower you to help correct the problem from the bottom up.

GoHuman.com provides a fast, free way for you to find work that needs doing, and do it, or to hire someone to help you get something done that you need help with. And it does this efficiently and inexpensively, making projects large or small economically feasible. Many of the costs that do not contribute to the actual value of the service performed are removed from the equation. This can create more opportunity for valuable work to get done, kick-starting the micro economies we all participate in at the local level.

With lower marketing and advertising costs, for example, gohuman.com can connect you quickly and efficiently to the actual task that needs doing, making it easier for someone else to pay you a wage, or fee, in accordance with the time, materials and craftsmanship it will take you to perform the service, in a win/win arrangement.

This is but one of the ways in which gohuman.com can get America working again. As we grow our userbase in each local community the impact to the overall economy will increase – one job at a time.

So get vocal about local. Help us spread the word, and let’s get America working again.

strike

How the World Became a Corporation

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Last night Stephen Colbert interviewed Douglas Rushkoff, author of Life, Inc. Rushkoff makes a compelling argument for how the world has become a corporation and how that’s not a good thing. We tend to agree! Keep it local for the economy and environment.

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Douglas Rushkoff
www.colbertnation.com
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The Story of Stuff

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

If you haven’t seen this yet, check out Annie Leonard’s Story of Stuff. An insightful animation tells the story of the global supply chain.

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