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Justice: Purchase Accordingly

Not long ago, I posted an article on boycotting as a normal every day part of an ethical life, particularly an ethical business life. The other part of that is considering justice (ethics) in each purchase. Boycotting is about rejecting certain uses of wealth. Using justice in purchasing is about ethical use of wealth.
There are […]

Let Your People Vote

My own state requires that employers provide 2hrs off to vote, but some employers are saying they can’t comply, because they can’t afford to lose the coverage. Bullshit. If that’s the case, they can’t afford other national holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving. “I can’t afford it” is another way of saying “it’s not high among […]

Going Back to DOS

I’m reinstalling my operating system. I should say systemS, since I’m going to be triple booting. I used to dual boot Linux and Windows 2000, with Linux as primary, until my university presented me with a Microsoft-only interface to their online-eviron. Shortly thereafter, Windows went down, took the hard drive with it, and I didn’t […]

The Garden is Everywhere

I don’t understand people who can steal from their companies or their clients. Can you imagine waking up in the morning and knowing you have nothing in yourself that’s real and genuine by which you can live? This is what you’ve got - what you’re made of - this is the fruit of your character? […]

We Did It!

You’ll remember that back in April I told you about the New Futures Orphanage. Money was coming in so slowly that they had to eat it (as rice) and, especially with food costs being what they now are, they could never get together enough at once to buy farm animals and start sustainable agriculture. Their […]

Another Rule of Work

It’s been a while since I posted a new rule of work, and this is www.rulesofwork.com after all. So here goes:
Never do anything for money that you wouldn’t do for free.
It flies in the face of conventional wisdom, of course - which is, “never do for free what you could do for money”. Contrary to […]

Envision Corporations as Business

Do you work in a corporation? Ever think things would be better if you could have a Red October and terminate about half your colleagues? Not in a Arnold Schwarzenegger kind of way - but with a pink slip? Who would you fire first?
If you ran things - ran it like your own business, who […]

What’s wrong with my web site?

If you’re not getting a lot of traffic, and you’ve invested in a solid, reasonably attractive, well-organized design, and basic search engine optimization, the problem is most likely that your site is static, not dynamic. In other words, it’s the same furniture arrangement each time - the content never changes, so it’s not going to […]

Boycotting as Business

One of the most helpful things about both the David Ramsey method and running one’s own business (imo), is that you begin to see everything as business. Who you do business with, what your business can afford, when your business is open for business, and so on. And along with that, for me, comes a […]

When in doubt, Blog.

I’ve spoken with a number of people over the past couple of weeks that are searching for their work-lives - for what to do with themselves and, typically, like a Bordertown, they’re drawn to the internet. Partly by stories of heady profits made by people who don’t treat work as a source of meaning - […]

The Joy of Postage

This article has several key points that are barely but still related - despite recent criticism that this is not an acceptable approach to composition.
The poor pay more for everything. Walmart isn’t really mitigating this: First off, there’s the obvious fact that Walmart shoppers are propping up a work model that keeps their […]

Business phone under $40

The Motofone F3. For one thing, it’s an act of dissidence, like entrepreneurship, so I like it a lot in that way: it’s been called the anti-iPhone. It’s the opposite of the culture obsessed with texting and constantly communicating with little of substance to say beyond the kind of thing we all hate when someone […]

The Chickens are Finally Here!

I’ve been watching with interest the discussions in real estate news of the suburbs drying up, with vast numbers projected for empty homes and developments going into the future, and little market to fill them. This will be called overbuilding, and there is that, but I think it’s something else.
Similar news for rural communities goes […]

Swerving into Reality

Half of fearing something will fail is the fear. But fear *is* failure. Fear convinces us to chart a course so devoid of adventure, of risk, of originality, that success is replaced with mere survival. I don’t mean success as in living in the right neighborhood, driving the right car, and having the right job. […]

The News of Snooze

The biggest non-issue of the day, using up millions of dollars of airwaves and bandwidth in chatter, is whether or not we’re in a recession. Does x=y? Is this thing that thing and vice versa? It’s an exercise in absurd tautologies, and the single clearest example of masturbatory pseudo-news currently at hand.
The real question is […]

The 10-minute $2 “business” meal

A sound criterion for busy meals is: fast and few steps, few courses, inexpensive (consistently sensible), and few but complete and healthy components. Components are not the same thing as ingredients, mind you, and steps done simultaneously, I count as one. Among them, is this favorite:
Follow the directions for a bag of steam-in-the-microwave frozen mixed […]

Friends are not Food

Never sell your friends, despite what the network marketers say. For one thing, if they’re smart, they know you’re doing it and, either way, it shows a lack of respect. Likewise don’t feed the perpetual salesman, by affecting that bewildered sheep nod that they like so well. Let your body language indicate that you’re not […]

Don’t stand in the Sucker Circle

Try hard not to defend yourself when you’re falsely accused. It happens a little more than now and then, or it wouldn’t have merited a commandment. But put yourself in a position, more often than not, tangibly and emotionally, of having little to lose from it. As a general rule, if people can take something […]

The Dangers of Perception

“Perception is reality”, is a prevalent claim in business. It’s akin to “the customer is always right” or “I give it 110%”. Everyone knows it’s a bogus claim. Even the true believers - “No, that’s really true! That’s the truth! You’re just misunderstanding it!” - don’t live that way consistently. After all, I perceive them […]

Making the Jump to Mazda

Well, I made a decision. It may not be the best decision (I still have mixed feelings), but it’s certainly a decision, and that, at least, pleases me. I traded in my completely debt-free 2003 Dodge Durango (SUV on a truck body), and bought a Mazda3 on credit (with a smidgen of equity).

Previously, I had […]

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