Over and over again, in every industry, precisely the same calculation takes place. “Should I pay significantly more to have it done the old way, the local way, the traditional way, the way that pays my neighbor a living wage—or should I keep the money?”

[...]

Abstract macroeconomic theories are irrelevant to the people making a million tiny microeconomic decisions every day in a hypercompetitive world. And those decisions repeatedly favor fast and cheap over slow and expensive.

Over the weekend I picked up Seth Godin’s new book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? from the library. (My hold request was behind a few others. I think this is a good thing: it means there’s people in the Sarasota area who (a) use the library for its intended purposes, and (b) know enough about Seth Godin to want to reserve his new book within the first few weeks after it hits the shelves.)

I’m still only in the first chapter, but I really like what I’ve read so far. This seems to be a bit different from Godin’s previous books.

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but he almost seems to be focusing more on sociological issues and concepts in this book’s opening, where previous books started off using more personal anecdotes and individual experiences. It makes Linchpin feel like it doesn’t belong with his previous “business/marketing” books so much as with McKibben’s Deep Economy and Postman’s Technopoly.

I like that. And even if it’s not how the rest of the book will read, it’s still good for Godin. Criticism levied toward the ideas in his books often takes the tone of “he’s just a clueless huckster using anecdotes to advance untested ideas.” This opening shows that, at the very least, he’s done his homework.

When an economy operates locally, everyone in it enjoys some measure of power. But when an economy operates globally, only a select few ever rise to a level of power.

Dan says that statement seems backward, but if you toss Dunbar’s number into the equation, I think it all makes sense.

When the scope of the economy is, say, 50-250 people, then (generally speaking) each person is able to maintain a relationship with each other person in the group. These connections keep us “in the loop,” which is absolutely necessary for one to retain that measure of economic power.

When the scope is increased to over 5 billion people, there will be only a very few who are able to forge and maintain a sufficient number of relationships to key players. Those few become the key players, and it’s only by their maintaining those relationships (or by being pursued by other key players) that they retain their power and influence.

Granting that we don’t like such a system, what would the solution be? We can’t force people to not use the transportation and communication tools at their disposal—particularly when doing so appears to be economically sound. (Just look at the environmentalist movements of the 20th century: it’s still the case that, for the vast majority of humankind, “earth-friendly” alternatives are only pursued when they are cheaper, more convenient, or both.) Very few households are truly willing to pay higher prices supporting local economies when they can save a few bucks buying from China.

How did this happen? It’s said that “if you tax something, you get less of it.” For decades our Local, State and Federal governments have increased taxes and regulations on businesses within this nation’s borders while removing tariffs and other barriers to trade with foreign nations. The result is that it’s cheaper to have food shipped over by boat or plane from the other side of the planet than it is to stock shelves with produce from the farmer on the edge of town.

Ultimately, I don’t think we can say that the customer is the one to blame. Free trade with other nations has been pursued at the same time that trade amongst ourselves has been made more and more restrictive. (It’s gotten to where you risk fines, or even jail time, for keeping an eye on your friends’ kids for a few minutes “without a license”!) So if you want to change the system, you may need to change the system.

As you can see, the Zen Cart team hasn’t bothered to be very descriptive about what these flags actually do. So I pulled up a few resources, hazarded a few guesses and put together a brief summary of each. After sending it to my client, I thought it might prove helpful to others… so here it is.

Used For Display Purposes Only
If “Yes,” the customer wouldn’t be able to select this attribute. (The option is intended for situations like a drop-down menu, where the default item in the drop-down is a message like, “choose from one of the following options.” You wouldn’t want a customer to choose that as their product option.)

Attribute is Free When Product is Free
It depends on what you’d like to do with the product. Some options can be set to tack on an additional fee (such as selecting a license that grants personal and commercial use); if you want to do that, then setting this option to “no” would allow you to mark an item as free for personal use, but still charge customers who want to buy a commercial license.

Default Attribute to be Marked Selected
When the customer needs to select one of the attribute options (required for “virtual” [downloadable] products), this guarantees that one of the options is selected when the customer adds the product to their cart. (Otherwise, when they order they won’t get a download link for the item they purchased.) This is especially important when there is only one option for the attribute: in such cases, the customer is unlikely to even realize an option needs to be selected (since from their point of view, there aren’t any options)!

Apply Discounts Used by Product Special/Sale
As with Attribute is Free When…, this depends on your personal preferences and whether your attribute options alter the price of the item in question. If, for example, we’re dealing with an item which is composed of a single file download (hence no surcharge added to the product listing’s base price), then it doesn’t really make any difference. If you have product options (like a c.u. license) which come at an additional price, then this flag determines whether or not something like a “store–wide 40% off sale” will apply to that additional fee.

Include in Base Price When Priced by Attributes
This one’s the most vague setting in the list. From what I’ve read, it’s intended for products which have been marked “price by attributes.” So here’s the scenario I came up with to explain the concept to myself: Say you have a shop where you sell costumes. There’s a page where one can buy a Zorro getup. On that page, the customer can choose from various hat, shirt, pants and boot sizes, as well as the material for the foil (sword). In each option group, the cheapest item can be flagged with this Include in Base Price When… option, with the more expensive alternatives adding surcharges (+$5.00) to the base price (as determined by the cheap options).

(But so long as you’re not getting into such customizable products, it doesn’t really matter what you set it to.)

Attribute Required for Text
This should instead be labeled “Attribute Required (for text fields),” because it’s only for cases (such as monogrammed items) where you need the customer to enter text in a box before they can add the item to their cart.

Now as I said, this is what I could find combined with what I presume. If someone more knowledgeable about Zen Cart would like to correct me, please do!

I’m in the middle of a project that just isn’t going smoothly. We’re dealing with version incompatibility issues between the main app and an add-on module, weird MySQL bugs, endless template hacks and multiple reinstalls.

And I’m eating it up.

Now don’t get me wrong: we do have a deadline and I am stressing out about that. But the actual work of cleaning up the mess itself? That, my friends, is downright invigorating.

Happy Monday!

But whoever saith in the Spirit, ‘Give me money,’ or something else, ye shall not listen to him; but if he saith to you to give for others’ sake who are in need, let no one judge him. —Concerning Teachers, Apostles, and Prophets (Didache)

I really don’t know much of anything about the history of the Didache. Anyone care to enlighten me?

On 9 Apr 2007 20:10:45 EST, cs1@bmgmusicservice.com wrote:

To: Travis Seitler

We received your inquiry regarding the Stelk class action settlement email you received.

We hope you’ll take advantage of placing your settlement order online by clicking on the link in the email. If you have any problems placing your order please contact us via email at cs@bmgms.com.

Thank you.

Your Friends at
BMG Music Service

I looked at the headers, and not only did this e-mail originate from a Random House server (BMG and Random House are both part of the Bertelsmann-Media Worldwide network), but both e-mail address domains (bmgmusicservice.com and bmgms.com) are administered by Random House servers.

So strange as it seems, this one is actually legit. Well, I should say the original e-mail came with the approval of a Bertelsmann company. I can’t shake the feeling that the whole “buy online from CDLounge.com” thing is an effort to transfer your membership from BMG to CDLounge for some shady legal reason (avoiding further settlements?). Call me paranoid, but I’m going to use the PDF Settlement Voucher instead (login required).

BTW, notice how this e-mail reply didn’t address any specific concerns? They just made it sound like I couldn’t figure out how to place an order online. (Their own records would show I do know this, but I suppose that would require this particular group of companies to actually know what they’re doing.) With all the ways that this settlement’s execution is being botched up, the folks at BMG/Columbia House are losing major emotional capital at a time when they desperately needed to raise it.

I have held it in my hands, and I have wept. (Though not at the same time, mind you.)

Mickey and the Gang, nicknamed “the Good Housekeeping book” in our offices, is primarily a collection of one-page Silly Symphony summations that appeared monthly in Good Housekeeping magazine in the ’30s and ’40s. That’s just the beginning, though; there’s so much additional material in here that I figure it’ll take me a good six months to read!

All of our blood, sweat and tears are bound up in this coffee table-sized book (it’s huge!). The paperback edition’s only about $20.00 at Amazon right now; I can highly recommend this as a Christmas gift! (That’s not because I worked on it, BTW… except that I know how much work went into making this one of the best Disney publications ever made.)

Anyway, since I like y’all so very much, I’ll make it easy for you: if you want to learn far more about Disney Comics then you ever thought possible, swing on over to the Disney Comics Mailing List and sign up! It’s free! Folks around the world participate! Some messages are in foreign languages!

But yeah, I get a kick out of it. =)