Credit / Debit Card Memos

When you write a check, you can jot down a memo on it. This small 'feature' can make it much easier to keep track of what the check was written for.

The problem is, most people don't use checks most of the time anymore. I cannot count the number of times when I was looking at my statement and asked myself "what in the world is this charge?" I then need to go through all my receipts and try to figure out what I was doing around that time. Over 90% of the time they turn out to be legitimate charges. Perhaps I went to a gas station and they routed it through some company in India, or maybe I ordered something online and the charge went through some company in England. Sometimes the names on the statements seem to be little more than random letters, being an acronym for some organisation.

Whatever the reason, the names on a credit or debit card statement are frequently of little use when attempting to track down charges. The ambiguity can make it difficult to be responsible and aware of what is being done with your cards.

There is a simple solution. Credit card and debit cards could allow you to enter memos when using them.

This would be easiest to implement online. Whenever there is an online 'purchase' forum, there simply would need to be an extra box to allow the user to type in a quick note for themselves: "B-day gift for mom","New laptop case","Online Magazine subscription." Basically something to help a buyer remember what those lines on his or her statement represent.

It would be a little harder at stores and gas stations. After all, you don't have keyboards on hand there. You do however, have keypads to enter your pin. Numeric keypads are how people typed text messages for years before phones came out with full keyboards. If I counted right it would only take 6 key presses to type in 'gas' at a gas station. Or perhaps a person simply enters in a 3 letter combination that is their own secret signal to themselves that the charge is legit. It is not the most ideal of ways to do it, but it is relatively easy to implement.

The hardest would be at places like restaurants, where you had your card over. The best way I can think of in this regard is for them to have a 'memo' line underneath the signature line. They would then need to scan that in and send it to your credit card company.

Most places would not need additional hardware. It would simply be a matter of updating the software that deals with the cards. If people don't want to take advantage of it, they would not need to. But for those that did, it could greatly simplify the 'balancing of their checkbook.'

Ultimately this would require two things to happen. Credit and debit card companies would have to put in the system to support this. Then stores, gas stations, online retailers, and restaurants would need to support it as well. The second point would be the harder to enforce. A credit card company could easily require online retailers to have a memo form (or otherwise would not honor any charges) because updating online checkout would simply be a matter of adding one line of code. For other stores, they could provide 'Memo Secure' stickers for retailers to advertise that they are helping customers protect themselves.

Its something that could take awhile to be implemented. But then again, it took awhile for debit card or even credit card support to become widespread. The only way the system will improve is if we begin working to improve it.

Environmental Labels

One of the ideas behind nutritional labels is that the government doesn't keep us from eating food that is bad for us, but they do make sure that we are informed about it if we want to be.

Now if people want to eat themselves into the grave you can't really stop them. But if people want to eat healthy they can do that easily.

The same thing can not be said about people who want to try to 'live green.'

Certainly people can try simple things like turning off the lights, composting, and not wasting water. But when it comes to making purchases it can become a bit more murky.

I propose, in the same way foods have nutritional labels, other products have environmental impact labels.

Now there are a lot of issues with this that I am going to address. The first one is exactly how do you quantify environmental impact. I believe that such a label should contain the following information.

Manufacturing Emissions: This is how many pounds of CO2 that were produced in the manufacturing of the product. Not only does this include the emissions from the factory where it was built but also the emissions from factories that built required parts. It would also need to include emissions caused by electrical power consumed by the factory. This last number could be reduced easily if a company purchases power from a 'clean' source. This number would be calculated by monitoring the emissions from a factory over a years time and dividing by the number of the product produced.

Transportation Emissions: This would be a measure of, on average, how much CO2 is created in transporting a product from the factory to the store. This is obviously going to be higher for products made oversees. This could perhaps encourage people to buy local. Of course unless labels were printed for each region it would not specify how much emissions were produced getting the product to your particular store.

Manufacturing Biodegradable Waste: Manufacturing is going to produce a certain amount of waste. Luckily some of it may be biodegradable or at least semi-biodegradable. In some cases the waste may even be recyclable. This category as well as the following waste categories would include waste produced earlier in the manufacturing chain in producing any parts or materials that go into the product. This type of waste would have the least negative impact on the environment and a conscious consumer would want to see most of the waste fall into this category.

Manufacturing Regular Waste: The measures how many pounds of non-biodegradable, but non hazardous waste are manufactured in the production process. This would include plastics, metal slag, and the like. While its not great to have this stuff filling our landfills for hundreds of years, there are worst types of waste.

Manufacturing Hazardous Waste: This measures how much hazardous waste is produced. Basically any type of dangerous chemical byproduct that needs special handling would fall into this category. Its inevitable that some products will produce hazardous waste but people would want to avoid products that seem to produce excessive amounts of this type of waste.

Packaging Waste: How much waste is there in the packaging. This might not be a necessary entry as it should be obvious by looking at the product.

Product Waste Breakdown: A listing of the type of waste that will be produced when the product is thrown away. This is more to help put things into perspective with the manufacturing waste scores.

Power Consumption: A clear label of how much power (if any) this product consumes. Rather than just looking for an 'energy star' label a consumer could clearly be able to find the 'peak,' the 'average,' and the 'standby' power consumed by electronics.

These are the only major categories that I can think of that I would want to see on the label and that could easily be measured. They could be given as both straight up values, and also in percentage form measured against the weight of the product.

Note, this isn't requiring companies to meet any types of standards in terms of being 'green.' With these labels they can be inefficient as they want. What it is requiring is accountability. Companies need to keep tabs on how much they are polluting and also need to consider how much their suppliers are polluting. A company may have incentive to switch to a 'cleaner' supplier in order to improve their numbers.

One issue with this is that it would require a fair bit of governmental oversight to ensure that numbers are being accurately reported. Now some of this oversight could be paid for by fining companies for cheating or misreporting.

Another issue would be the international complications. Do you disallow products that lack this information from being imported? What happens if a company wants to buy steel from another country that does not track the environmental impact of their actions.

One option for that last example at least, is that the company buying the steel must assume 'worst case' environmental impact from the steel if they can not get solid numbers. This could perhaps lead them to encourage their supplier to start keeping track of things.

In the end though there is one major problem. It is a similar problem that nutritional labels have. An environmental label can only have a real impact if people actually care. Of course, part of my hope is that the label would make it easier to care.

American Politician

So to celebrate this 4th of July, this post is regarding the time honored American tradition of voting.

One issue many people claim to have with our government is the difficulty that third party candidates face in getting recognition.

My proposal is for a TV show in the same vein as American Idol. The idea would not be for the show to replace voting, but rather to increase awareness. 

The show would start with 30 some odd third party presidential candidates. The first episode would be designed to let the viewers know a bit about each candidate as a person. The next one would give a brief overview of their political stances. After that each following episode would focus on a particular issue and the candidates would make their views known.

There would be no first party candidates on the show. Furthermore to prevent people from rallying behind party names, the contestant party affiliations would not be revealed until a few episodes in. Granted people could just look them up online, but most viewers wont.

After each episode people would vote by texting their favorite candidate. As the show went, a candidate would  be eliminated each week Near the end when only a few candidates remained they could engage in head to head debate.

Viewers would also be able to vote on which issues they would want to see on the show.

Now there are issues with this. I'm not necessarily sure that this is the way I would want my president selected, but thats not the goal. The voting mechanism could also end up having the voting being manipulated, but once again, that is why it would not be official.

Contestants would agree not to do outside campaigning while the show was running. As a nice twist the network that is hosting the show could contribute commercial time to the campaign of the winning contestant.

It might not have any impact on politics in America. In fact such a show could further contribute to the sensationalizing of politics. However, it just might have a positive impact and maybe could make some network money.

Life Club

I was at the health club the other day and thinking about how it could be so much more.

Rather than a place you just go to exercise it could be a place you go to better your whole life. It could be made into a place where you would want to spend your spare time and want to hang out.

This post is basically how I would set up my hypothetical life club.

When you check in at the front desk you would be given a pedometer / heart rate monitor. This would help keep track of your physical activity.

The gym portion of it would be pretty similar to most health clubs. The cycle bikes would power little generators (something some gyms already do) to promote greener thinking.

Also like many gyms there would be a little cafe. The cafe's menu would be designed to promote healthier eating. A twist would be that one could receive a discount on his or her purchases there based on his physical activity (as measured by the heart rate monitor and pedometer). This would help provide that little extra motivation to really push yourself in the gym.

But the whole point of the life club is that it doesn't stop at just the gym. It's like if a gym ate a community center. There would be a club garden where club members could sign up to get a little plot of soil to tend to. An activity room with an air hockey and foozball table. A small theater that could sit maybe fifty people. They would show a movie each day (likely something old to keep the licensing down). There would be other rooms  with tables and chairs that you could check out to use for a party or just hang out.

Then there would be classes. Offering classes is nothing new to health clubs, but the range of the class topics would be increased. You could register for a gardening class or a healthy cooking class for example. Almost like an adult education center.

For younger members there could be a tutoring center. In some cases these tutors could be other members. There could even be a supervised play area to allow parents to drop off their kids before going and working out.

Regular social events could be planned. Socials or perhaps competitions depending on the interests of the members. I imagine the atmosphere being a bit similar to that of college.

And things would not necessarily need to end at the club. A persons physical activity (once again monitored by the pedometer / heart rate monitor) could be logged online. That person could then login to his account on the club's website to see this. A parent could track their child's workout and offer various rewards at home.

Now here is the key: marketing. You couldn't see this thing as just a health club with more. To many people pass up on extras their health club offer. It would need to be marketed as a complete package. If the majority of the members are not using these extra services, the effort failed. If the majority of the members are not socializing and learning from one another, the effort failed.

Such a center would be pricier than a regular health club. However, this may make it difficult for people who then want to register for a class or something that may have an additional cost. The way around this is to up the base membership price by a small amount, but then make that include one free class per season. Further incentive would be to offer membership discounts based on physical activity in the gym or perhaps participation in social events.

Now this may not seem like a good business move, but I feel that it would keep people attending and keep them involved. If they are making use of your facilities they are less likely to cancel their memberships. Too many companies focus on recruitment rather than retention.

Something like this may flop. People might not be willing to sign up, they might not make use of their memberships, they might cancel their memberships, they might not care about some of the facilities; there is any number of ways in which this could fall flat on their face. But if someone had a bit of investment capital and is willing to take a risk, it seems like it could at least be worth a try.

Identification and the Intenet

We trust the government to do a lot of things. One of these things that receives little objection and that we do not think about is identification. Society relies on birth certificates, social security numbers, and drivers licenses to identify individuals.

However none of these help much with identification on the internet. You can not see these 'documents' in person to assure their authenticity and you can not look at the person to make sure their picture matches.

Yet identification is of critical importance on the internet.

If a person is banned from a forum, nothing is really to stop them from just creating a new profile. Online polls can be spamed by the same person over and over again. The ease of having dummy accounts leads to an increase in spam.

But at the same time anonymity is valued on the internet. Well I put forward that we can have the best of both worlds.

Image that the federal government instituted a Internet ID or IID service. To register you would need to go in person to your DMV. You would create a username and password that would then be associated with your identity.

Now if a website wanted to check your IID, they would have a button on their signup page while you are filling out the signup form. The button would redirect you towards the governments IID website. There you confirm your identity and the IID site sends back either an 'ok' or 'not ok' message to the original site. The IID will only send an 'ok' message if two things happen:
1) The IID site is able to verify the users identity.
2) The IID site checks a database checks a database to determine if the user has already created a profile on the site.

All the original site knows is if the IID site was able to confirm your identity. They don't know who you are, but they know that this is your first time creating a profile. They are never exposed to your IID profile name or password. You are still anonymous.

Using this would not be required. It would simply be a service offered up by the government. Websites may choose to make it a mandatory part of their registration process, but that is up to them.

I suspect private companies have likely tried doing something like this before. The problem is, the system needs to be unified and trustworthy if people are going to bother signing up for it. Hopefully people would not be worried about the government selling their personal information (because it all ready has a lot of it).

People could even create some sort of public profile that could sit on top of their IID. They would not need to use their real name, but this profile (essentially a 2nd username and password) would be tied to their IID. Sites that support this Universal IID (UIID) could allow people to login in with their UIID without first registering at the site. Personally I hate having to register at a site I am only going to use once. This would help mitigate this annoyance.

Now there is one problem with this proposal. The 'www' part of most urls. The internet is world wide. If a website required an IID verification to login, then citizens of other nations would have no way of logging into the site. If they allowed people not from the US to register without an IID, then what is the point of the whole thing.

If we allowed other nations to participate in the IID system we would need to ensure that they are being rigorous about checking people's identity when they first register. If they were being lax in this the entire system would be undermined.

I do not know how to deal with this problem. Perhaps I could think of a way with enough thought. It may also be that there is no way to implement such a system without isolating our websites from the rest of the world. And that would certainly not be acceptable.

Volunteering for Tax Refunds

What is more important, a persons money or time? I would argue without a doubt time. Everyone has the same amount of time and there is not good way to gain more. You can 'free up' time but you are still confined to 24 hours a day. And in the end time can be converted to money. You can do more with it.

So why is it that society rewards those who donate money more than it does those donating time? Giving a donation to a charity gets a person a nice tax break, whereas volunteering provides no real external benefits (there are internally motivated benefits).

Just as people receive tax benefits to donating money, they should receive a benefit for donating their time.

Now there are some difficulty with this. It is easy to know if someone has donated money. The IRS simply needs to follow the paper trail. Methods would need to be put into place to allow people to 'prove' how many eligible hours of volunteer work they performed. I'm not sure what the best answer to that is and would need to think more on the problem.

I just used the words 'eligible hours.' I did this because not all 'volunteer' work should count. This should not be too large of a surprise, not all 'donations' count equally. So what types of volunteer work are we talking about.

There is volunteer work like assisting at a soup kitchen, sorting food donations, and assisting at a nursing center. These amount of time people put into this type of work would at least be traceable with a bit of paperwork. They also provide a clear benefit to society.

But we can take it a step further. Lawyers could do work pro bono and doctors could put in time at free clinics. There is no reason to disallow people from using their talents and abilities to help.

This could also apply to public servants. Police officers, firefighters, teachers, ect putting in overtime could have this overtime go towards a tax break. Now this tax break would 'reduce' the government's income, but it would also reduce their operating costs in paying overtime in this example.

You could also imagine public works projects being arranged where the construction workers are earning tax benefits.

Overtime this could encourage more people to volunteer while helping to provide valuable service to those in need. As time progressed we could end up with a society more focused caring for their fellow man. Even if there are not any major societal changes made, at least some good is being done.

If you really wanted to take things to an extreme the government could start raising taxes and raising volunteer benefits. Employers could institute volunteer programs where their employees can put in extra time using the companies equipment and where the product is going to help society (the employer would likely get a tax break from this).

Volunteering can tend to help people's feeling of self worth and esteem as well as giving them a chance to hone or improve certain skills. So these types of tax breaks basically encourage people to improve themselves and their community around them.

So to summarize, offering tax breaks in return for volunteer work could have affect a great change on society. And even if it did not really change anything on a large scale, at least it is rewarding people who are doing good work. And if it does encourage more people to volunteer, even if they aren't changing the world, they are still benefiting personally.