The New Ideas Blog

As you may recall, I promised to occasionally report on new ideas and products in the world. Well, I have recently read about some more innovations. The first is from Silver Spring Networks, a company that makes and installs electricity monitoring devices.

Their new electric meters do several things differently. For example, they can set up displays in houses or buildings to tell customers when electric rates are highest, so they cut back at these times. This not only saves the customer money, but in helps redistribute electricity use so that new electric plants don’t have to be built just to handle (more…)

The role of prices is one of the least understood yet most important concepts in economics. Today I’ll explain that a little bit, but there is a lot more to say on the subject.

Suppose a country grows sugar cane, yet starts to buy imported sugar from halfway around the world, thus destroying its own industry? Why would they do this? Because the information represented by prices has been distorted. What I mean is that prices give us the information as to what to do. If local sugar is priced at 60 cents-per-pound and sugar from the United States at 50 cents, it makes sense to buy the latter. But perhaps the real price of U.S. sugar would be 70 cents if it weren’t for the subsidies and special tax breaks the government gives to the industry. That is how you pervert the (more…)

As you know, I like to put my own new ideas out there. But I also like to sometimes write about creative ideas that are in the news. Sometimes these are things that are already being tried, and other times they are the subject of ongoing debates. Here are some that caught my attention this week.

Voluntary Gas Tax

“Who would volunteer to pay more in gas taxes?” That was what I and a lot of other readers probably thought when seeing this opinion piece in Forbes magazine by a couple professors from (more…)

A couple years ago I wrote an ebook called “99 Lies,” which covered common lies we are told or common beliefs that are not true. I explained the reason for each lie (sometimes speculative on my part), the truth, and why it matters. Many of the entries were what I sometimes refer to as “public lies.”

Another description could be “participatory lies,” since they require not only a desire to deceive, but a desire on the part of others to be deceived. Politicians and businesses cater to this desire. These lies can be right out there for all to see and believe or not. Here is an example from (more…)

Just so readers of this blog don’t think that I do nothing but dream up ideas without ever putting them to use, I’ll tell you what I am doing right now. I am putting to use the idea (not entirely my own) of giving away books to make money. I have tried similar techniques before, with some success.

I just finished writing a book on Meditation and how to use it to increase the power of one’s mind. It is called “Mind Power Meditation,” and has nine short chapters. I m not entirely sure what I will do with it in the future, but for now only  select group of people will see it - the three hundred or so (more…)

A few years back I was reading a book on subliminal persuasion, and I came to a part about using inflection. The subtle emphasis of certain words can totally change how something is understood. For example, if a salesman says, “I’m sorry, but I can’t do that for you,” with the inflection on the “I,” it suggests that someone might be able to. If he says “I can’t do that for you,” emphasizing the “you,” he is essentially saying that you are the problem.

I later realized that this techniques could be used for creative problem solving. I wrote a page explaining how for one of my websites. Here is a slightly modified reprinting of that: (more…)

The “too big to fail” argument has been a popular one recently. It is thought that if companies like AIG or General Motors go down, they can drag entire economies with them. Now, if this is true (it seems to be to some extent), what can we do about it? I certainly don’t like the idea of having my money taken to prop these giants up, so I’m going to suggest something more radical for the future.

Don’t let them get that big! Now, this may seem strange coming from someone with my capitalist leanings, but I can explain this so clearly that (more…)