Impressions of Holland
May 9, 2008
The first time I visited Amsterdam was in 1977, just after I had spent two years in Chad as a Peace Corps volunteer. I hadn't been there since. What impressions I had from my first trip were small: clean, orderly streets; handsome people; good food and the astonishing sight of ladies in underwear in the red light district.
Nothing I experienced on my most recent trip (just last month) contradicted those impressions: Amsterdam is one of the cleanest and most orderly in the world. The food, though not gourmet, is amenable to US tastes. The red light district is just as amazing as it ever was and a refutation to those who believe that prostitution demoralizes culture.
Other impressions:
- The security system in the Amsterdam Airport is better than any in the USA. The screening goes on at the gates. There are one or two stations at each gate. This reduces waiting considerably and eliminates any chance of missing a flight because of security delays.
- The security personnel are intelligent, dutiful and courteous. They view themselves as professionals. The US should fire all the hoodlums and misfits that populate our security checkpoints and replace them with workers from Holland.
- Although the Dutch are famous for their chocolate you don't find much chocolate on the dessert menus.
- The Dutch people are almost universally handsome but rarely beautiful. They are taller than North Americans. I have no idea why.
- English is spoken as a second language in Amsterdam and throughout most of Holland. Dutch is a difficult language to grasp quickly. The sounds are different. The spelling is unusual. The vocabulary is unfamiliar
- The Euro is the currency of Holland. That means that almost everything is comparatively expensive for US citizens today. What would cost $5 in America (a hamburger and coke, for example) would cost five Euros in Holland. Trouble is that five Euros equals nearly eight bucks.
- If you convert all Euro-based prices into dollars you will not be able to buy anything. The pragmatic strategy is to pretend that the dollar has equal value (the way it used to) and spend accordingly.
- Like everything else in Amsterdam the canals are relatively unpolluted. Traveling around in this city of canals is challenging at first - just as it is in Florence. But once you understand the layout you can get around quite easily - almost as easily as you can in Rome.
- Using public restrooms in Holland is not the horrifying, health-threatening experience that it is in the US. Rest rooms are almost all regularly staffed by competent workers. Toilets were all very clean.
- Walking down the city streets at night, you never feel in any danger. People are quieter and better behaved than they are in the US or England. The only noisy people we encountered were from England or America.
- The Dutch economy seems stronger than the US economy. I saw no bums, no beggars and no one who seemed poor. A cab driver told me that the "regular" people don't live as well as the people of Amsterdam. A bartender told me there was a growing problem with immigrants from North Africa who are a drain on the economy. But I saw none of that. The local papers report that the Dutch economy is declining and that real estate prices are dropping. Talking to merchants it seemed clear that most tourism-related businesses (including taxies, hotels and most retail stores) are suffering because Americans are spending less. But generally speaking, Holland seemed better off than the US.
- Amsterdam is a city of young people. The average age of age of the restaurant goers we saw was about 25. In New York it's more like 35. In Delray Beach it is older than that.
- The history of Holland is informative. They became a major economic power in the second half of the 16th century. By the middle of the 17th century they were the world's biggest bankers and most successful international traders. The Dutch government was decentralized during this Golden era. Individual states were clustered in a federation through representatives but had a good deal of local power. Wars were fought mostly through private trading companies and mostly to secure economic interests in India and the New World. Eventually Spain and England came to dominate world trade, but the Dutch settled comfortably into a secondary but important position as merchant bankers and stockholders of international companies.
- Although the Dutch covet personal economic, social, and personal freedom (which is why prostitution and drugs are legal) their culture is fundamentally conservative.
- You can smoke pot or hash in coffee shops throughout Amsterdam. Despite the availability and legality of drug use, drug use seems relatively modest and there is no appearance of a drug problem in the city. You don't see addicts lying in door portals or in alleyways. You aren't accosted by them on street corners. If there are drug addicts in Holland, they aren't noticeable and don't appear to be bothering people. As with prostitution, Amsterdam proves that we have nothing to fear from making these vices (if they are vices) legal.
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posted by M. Masterson @ 4:41 PM,
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How Much Editing Is Needed? Is Publishing a Ready, Fire, Aim Endeavor?
April 24, 2008
I sent a note to Charlie Byrne and Jason Holland about installing more layers of editing in ETR's books and courses.
Here's what ETR's editorial protocol for its daily e-zine looks like: Every essay and article is reviewed and critiqued at least twice: first by Charlie and Suzanne Richardson who look for weaknesses in the "big idea" and then by Judith Strauss who edits for style and usage. Sometimes Charlie asks for my thoughts as well.
But because we are pressed for time, we often do less editing when we publish books and courses. In fact, we need to do more.
This thought occurred to me recently. A few weeks ago, we published an essay on "my early morning routine," (which is meant to be a chapter of a new book I'm writing: How to Master Plan Your New Life. By Wednesday of that week, we had a half dozen letters from readers who had questions and objections to what I'd said. I answered those questions and we're running the responses in ETR. But I realized that we should also include the questions and answers in the book or emend that chapter to include them - or otherwise we will leave our book readers unsatisfied.
So I emailed a note to the editorial team, saying:
Guys: We should talk about the editorial process in general...there are two kinds of editing all our stuff should have...maybe three...
Draft 1: Critical review of the big idea by someone smart....and knowledgeable...maybe Charlie
Draft 2: Review for quality of content by an expert
Draft 2 or 3: CUBA review (Confusing, Unbelievable, Boring, Awkward)
Draft 3 or 4: Spelling, punctuation, grammar
Our products would benefit from a better editing system
Michael
It occurs to me that some people might look at what I'm doing and say: "By adding these extra layers of editing, you are going to make publishing too expensive and slow. You are the king of ready, fire, aim. Why are you advocating so much aiming?"
Fair question. I'm asking it of myself as I write this.
But I can think of two quick responses. First, at ETR our writing is our product. To stay ahead of the competition we have to continuously improve our products. There is no contradiction between ready, fire, aim and continuously improving products. In fact, I talk about the need for this continuous improvement in my book Ready, Fire, Aim.
Ready, fire, aim is about priorities and cash flow in starting and growing a small business. Incremental product augmentation is a perfectly compliant principle with ready, fire, aim.
That's one response. The other is this: In devising these extra editorial processes, we need to find a way to make them inexpensive and fast. Because when it comes to creative production, speed is a critical component. (Another principle explained in detail in Ready, Fire, Aim.)
I can think of ways of streamlining these procedures and making them less costly.
- The first review focuses on the "lead" paragraphs of every chapter or lesson. That is, on the big idea. This could be done even before the chapter was written. Charlie could ask for a precis of each chapter be written - 200 words or so - that articulates the "big idea." He could review and comment on those very quickly - 15 minutes per chapter. By critiquing the big idea early - before the chapter/lesson is actually written, we reduce the amount of time it will take them to write each chapter/lesson.
- The expert review could be shortened and made less expensive by sending out the chapter with a simple questionnaire: we could figure out three or four key questions that would identify whether anything big was wrong or missing.
- The CUBA process - pinpointing copy that is confusing, unbelievable, boring, or awkward - is already efficient. (And this will be carefully explained in the book I'm doing on editing copy with Mike Palmer.)
- The final editing process is already very efficient. Judith's job should be easier in the future because the editorial will be stronger.
These are my preliminary thoughts on the subject. Charlie and Jason will have their ideas. As will MaryEllen. At the end I'm sure we will come up with something that ensures that all ETR courses, programs, and books are better edited than anything else in the marketplace.
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posted by M. Masterson @ 4:02 PM,
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The Recession: How Long and How Strong?
April 17, 2008
We were at a patisserie in Tribecca. It's me, AS (a restaurateur), JF and ES (executives with large companies), and AE (an attorney). We were talking about the recession, comparing it to other recent recessions.
"The last recession, in 2002, was relatively mild," AS pointed out.
"But that was before the real estate market fell apart," AE said.
"And before the dollar started tumbling," JF added.
"And before inflation reared its head," I said.
"When you think about all that it seems much more ominous. Yet even today in the newspapers half the articles I read were still asking the question: is there a recession at all?"
"It's crazy," I said.
"You can see it even in my restaurant," AS said. "My best customers are coming in less frequently. And overall the tabs are getting smaller."
"The cost of gasoline is making everything more expensive," JF said. "My company is having a tough time holding profit margins at respectable levels. It's getting tougher every day."
"It's inflation. It's debt. And it's the collapse of the dollar," I said. "A triple whammy. It will be hard to imagine that the recession won't get worse."
"I agree," ES said, "Yet nobody in the mainstream press seems too concerned. In fact, lots of people are saying that everything will be fine in a year or two. Nobody agrees, not even the experts. For us, all this disagreement makes it difficult to write business plans and schedule acquisitions."
"Everybody in my industry is worried," JF admitted. "There will be jobs lost. This is not a time you want to be out there looking." . "AE doesn't have to worry," AS said. "Lawyers and bankers always make money. The worse things get, the better the lawyers will do."
Nobody argued with that.
"This war has cost us three trillion dollars," AS said. "Three trillion dollars we didn't have to begin with."
"Our competitors, like China and Japan, have been bailing us out," JF said. "They've been buying dollars and getting punished for doing so. But this is only a temporary fix and it's only scratching the surface. I don't know how long it will be before the give up."
"It's true," I said. "It's just a surface fix. I read something the other day that blew my mind. David Walker, the former Comptroller General of the United States, said that the government has incurred a $53 trillion debt for future Social Security and Medicare benefits. He said that figure is up from $20 million at the start of this decade. What's worse is that it is rising by $2 million to $3 million a year." "Fifty three trillion dollars? Are you sure it wasn't 53 billion?" AS wanted to know.
"I'm sure," I told them, but I could see they didn't believe me.
"One thing is certain," AE said. "It's going to get worse before it gets better. I read that almost 3 million American homeowners were behind on their mortgages at the end of last year. And another million were listed ‘at risk' of imminent foreclosure, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association."
"Most of those people are holding mortgages that are larger than the value of the houses," ES pointed out.
"Which means they have no vested interest in the houses," AS said. "It's cheaper to let them go."
"When you have no skin in the game, it's easy to quit," ES said.
Again, nobody argued with that point.
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posted by M. Masterson @ 5:13 PM,
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The Growing Wealth Gap...Incorrigible People and the Arithmetic of Wealth
April 16, 2008
Here are some notes from this week's reading. Periodically, I plan on posting similar notes. They are short. They are sometimes cryptic. And they are not fully thought out. But they might provide some useful ideas to the motivated ETR reader. Some of them will emerge as essays, briefs or blogs in the future.
- I've been reading a book on wealth and poverty from a man who won the Nobel Prize for his work helping the poor of Bangladesh. His name is Muhammad Yunus. His book is called Creating a World without Poverty. It's a good, quick read. I found myself arguing with it a lot but admiring it too. I recommend it to anyone who wonders about global poverty.
- One thing that Yunus said that got me thinking was a reference to the"growing gap between rich and poor." You hear that all the time. Usually - as with Yunus - it is a call to arms. Some parts of the economy may be getting wealthier (or smarter or more Internet savvy or whatever) but the gap between them and the bottom is growing. This is supposed to be very disturbing. And it used to alarm me. But lately I've begun to wonder if this isn't a specious concept. Yes, the economy is expanding. Yes, the poor are getting richer. But what about the gap between the rich and poor? That is getting wider! It's an interesting bit of logic. Very appealing. But fundamentally flawed. I should look into that. It may be that any time an economy improves the poor get richer faster because that is how it naturally happens in a free market. The rich, after all, have more resources: more capital, more intelligence, better connections, better financing, more education, more experience, etc. And on top of all that, they begin as the economic leaders. How could it not be that they would get richer faster? But is that a problem? And if so is it real or relative? You can't eliminate that except by force which ruins the economy. We should not measure the gap but the gap between how poor the poor were and how poor they are now. Compare this thought to the study Alex Green talks about that indicates people would rather have $50 in a $100 distribution than $100 of a $500 one. What does that say about human psychology? It goes a long way to explain why we worry about relative gaps.
- In Creating a World of Wealth Yunus admits that free markets create wealth but wants a new sort of World Bank to eliminate poverty. One like his own bank, the Grameen Bank. But what if poverty is not caused by social and economic inequities but by an uneven distribution of intelligence, ambition and tenacity?
- Yunus believes that capitalism is insufficient because it is profit based and therefore simplistic. Human beings are more complex than that, he argues. He proffers another model: Social business.
- Not everybody can be saved. Not everyone can become a successful entrepreneur. Having worked with some diehard dunderheads over the year, trying bootlessly to motivate and direct them, I must concede: some people lack the mental resources to succeed.
- If that is so, then what to do? Leave those people in poverty?
- Success is about probabilities: knowing how to use them. Most would-be entrepreneurs make two big mistakes. They start businesses that have a low (20%) chance of success and quit marketing and sales efforts because they don't realize the probabilities of direct response success. The secret to success: start high probability businesses and keep selling till you have taken a sensible amount of chances.
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posted by M. Masterson @ 3:54 PM,
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Commuting to Manhattan A Grim Ray of Hope
April 2, 2008
My second son works in Manhattan but lives in Brooklyn, about 40 minutes away from his office. He lives so far away because he can't afford the rent downtown. When he was home for Easter, we got to talking about real estate prices in New York. As long as he's been in the city (four years at NYU and now one year on his own) prices have been escalating. From his perspective of five years, he can see nothing but further increases.
Sometimes, when I'm in the city, I feel the same way. Apartments I could buy for a million dollars here in Florida would cost me $5 million there. It's too much to spend but I wonder, "If I don't buy now, will it just get more expensive in the future?"
There are arguments that can be made. New York is a unique city - there is none like it in the world. If Americans can't afford apartments on Madison Avenue or overlooking Central Park, Europeans or Indians or Chinese people will buy them up.Ultimately, though, Manhattan's real estate market is dependent on New York City's economy and that economy is only marginally affected by overseas investors. What does affect the city's economy strongly is all the financial activity that is based there. All the banks and brokerages and insurance companies and, of course, the stock exchanges.
About a third of the Big Apple's economy is based on Wall Street. That's higher than it's ever been, according to the New York Times. Wall Street's incomes – which are extremely high right now - are likely to be coming down. They are being destabilized by the recent bad news about Bear Stearns. And if the news gets worse, as it likely will, there will be lots of demotions, firings and even massive lay offs...
According to the New York Times, Wall Street incomes escalated from about $250,000 in 2001 to about $390,000 last year. That's enough to buy a pretty fancy apartment. But what will happen when that figure drops down to a more realistic figure? What will happen to the rents then?
"Up to this point in New York City, the material result of the credit crunch hasn't been felt as quickly as people were expecting," Marcia van Wagner, deputy comptroller for the budget of New York City, told the New York Times. "It took a while for the other shoe to drop."
This Bear Stearns bailout is pretty scary on the face of it. But if you look behind the curtain, it is scarier still. To save the financial giant from complete collapse, JP Morgan Chase bought out Bear Stearns stock for just $2 a share. That was barely one tenth the going market price, which meant that all those stockholders were decimated.
But it wasn't really JP Morgan that saved the company. It was the government guarantee that stood behind JP Morgan. According to the deal, JP Morgan assumed the first $1 billion of Bear Stearns' debt. But the government agreed to take on the rest. For the purpose of the deal, that was estimated to be about $30 billion.
Only a fool would think that Bear Stearns is the only big financial company in serious trouble. And only a bigger fool would believe that the government has the resources to keep stepping in at the last moment and saving the day.
It seems inevitable to me that there will be a big financial shakeout coming. And at the end of it, most Wall Street honchos that were making almost $400,000 a year will be unemployed or working for a quarter of what they are making now.
When that happens, real estate values and rent prices will come tumbling down. And that's when my son will be able to move into Manhattan and walk to work.
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posted by M. Masterson @ 4:24 PM,
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What Do We Expect from Our Politicians?
March 25, 2008
My friends who hated Clinton thought he should have been impeached for lying to Congress. My friends and colleagues who liked him thought the whole investigation into his sexual misconduct was a symptom of what is wrong with America.
The governor of New York had a weakness for high priced prostitutes. The discovery of his indiscretions - which put him out of office - was supposed to have been accidental. Now we find that it was planned by a political opponent.
The Mayor of Detroit, Kwame M. Kilpatrick, has been charged with eight felony accounts - which sounds like he must have been running a cocaine operation. In fact, he is being charged eight times in different ways (perjury, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to obstruct justice, misconduct of office, etc.) for lying about an affair.
These are just three examples that spring to mind. In the past twenty years there have been dozens of high-ranking politicians who have lost their positions because of sex scandals. Most of them were forced out of office not because of the sex itself, but because they lied about it.
Or that's what their accusers would have us believe. "It's not the blow job that bothered me," one colleague said about Clinton at the time. "It's that he lied to the American people about it."
I thought, "Are you kidding?"
What do we Americans want from our politicians? Leadership? Intelligence? Wisdom and good decisions?
Or do we want chastity and truthfulness?
In the old days - and by that I mean the days of my childhood - politicians could expect to keep their private lives private so long as they didn't flaunt their affairs. And even when they did - as John Kennedy did, God bless him - the public took a healthy view of it: You can't expect a guy like him to say no to Marylyn Monroe, could you?
Those were the good old days, it seems to me. The days when politicians vilified their opponents by pointing out weaknesses in their political philosophies. The days when politicians argued about big, scary issues like communism and the end of the world. Those were the days when ideas were important in politics and personal conduct was left to the gossip magazines.
At least that's how it seems to me now, looking back. It seems, too, that the trend toward mudslinging in political debate has paralleled the trend toward muckraking in journalism. With more frequency every decade, reasonably good public servants have been done away by this new process. It is lots of fun to read about… but it makes you wonder if we are a better or a weaker nation because of it.
When it comes to secret sex and lying about it, it doesn't seem to make any difference what faith or party you belong too. Republicans rank right up there with Democrats and Libertarians. Born-again Christians probably top the religious charts, but who's counting?
We live in an America where our President is allowed to lie to us about why we should start a war but can't lie to us about who he's diddling in the oval office.
Does that make sense?
If the American political system has proven anything in the past 50 years it is that Americans are perfectly happy to select their leaders based on their ability to attack their opponents personally and reject those same leaders later on based on their former opponents' discoveries of their own flawed personal lives.
I don't get it. I never have. That's probably why I've always stayed about as far away from politics as I could get. I've voted only once in a national election.
Imagine if America ran its businesses that way. Imagine if we chose and deposed our business leaders according to what they did in the bedroom instead of the board room. How successful would our businesses be then?
I guess that's the point: the difference between business and politics. In politics we choose our leaders. In business, people who are natural leaders choose us.
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posted by M. Masterson @ 5:08 PM,
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Idolatry - How It Can Keep You Safe
March 21, 2008
I got a funny letter from Bill R....a copywriter who attended last fall's copywriting boot camp sponsored by AWAI.
At the end of the conference we raffled off these life-sized, cardboard cutouts of the keynote speakers, including yours truly. It was a whacky idea -- would people really pay for replicas of us? Who did we think we were? Rock stars?I was hoping a beautiful young woman would buy my figure, but it was purchased by a young man - with a sense of humor.
Just last week I was thinking about that. What did that guy do with the cutout? Did he leave it in his hotel room? Or did he bring it on the plane with him?Then I received this email from him:
All Across the US Home Invasions are on the Rise.... Lucky for you, you have a friend on the inside.... your worries are finally over! One Look from Michael Masterson and would-be burglars head for the hills!!Available for the first time in the continental United States, the Michael Masterson Home Invasion Protection Kit has hit the market. Your sleepless nights are over ... no more waking to every snap of a twig or chirp from a cricket.
OK, enough drama....To make a long story short, during Boot camp 2007 I bid on and won Michael Masterson during the auction of stand-up figures. Recently some degenerates decided to attempt to break into my car. Luckily, I was home and scared them off. Then I wondered what to do when I could not be home? Michael and I sat down and talked about it....... The solution was
simple and I implemented it in no time.
Recently, a neighbor told me that the car thieves showed up again and they ran off when they saw my friend in the window. A neat trick considering that I live alone and the house was empty; empty except for Michael. A few days earlier, I installed a light with a motion detector and made sure that it partially lit up the window where I stood the cut-out of my buddy Michael.When the wannabe car thieves approached my car, the light came on and there stood Michael Masterson with his menacing "this copy is crap" look and kung-fu grip. My 1970 Lincoln was safe to cruise another day!
Tell Michael I said thanks for keeping the homestead safe and that we need more beer.....Bill
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posted by M. Masterson @ 9:32 AM,
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