People have always competed in all endeavors, including sports, the arts, recreation, business, and politics, and unfortunately, violence. Competition for most used to be constrained to their small local circle, or their town, their place of work or industry, or maybe their county and state.
In the past half century however, we have moved into a world of infinite competition where everyone and every organization may end up competing, whether they like it or not, with any other from anywhere. In large part this is due to dramatic advances in transportation and communications, but also evolving government and business viewpoints, recognizing that growth can only come from being more competitive and reaching further. But at what cost? What impact to our lives?
Welcome to infinite competition. This web site discusses many aspects of this important topic. Thank you for stopping by.
193 nations met in frozen Copenhagen to try to hammer out a verifiable, legal deal to limit greenhouse gas emissions and financial pledges from ‘developed’ nations to ‘developing’ and other nations. In summary: they failed.
Trying to get 193 nations to agree on anything is pretty futile, with so many special interests, cultural differences, negotiating styles, and political agendas.
Ironically, U.S. President Obama, who had flown in to ’save the day’, had to leave hastily to get back to Washington D.C. before a massive blizzard hit the region.
With thousands of limos, private jets, fabulous food and a vast number of attendees, press, security people and protestors, they didn’t even appear to raise the temperature in Copenhagen.
We have lived in a world of vast quantities of postal mail, delivered faithfully every day by dedicated postal workers. The vast majority of postal mail today though is either ‘junk mail’, or ‘bills’.
Most people don’t want junk mail. They don’t really want the bills either, and rapidly increasing numbers are getting, checking and paying bills online instead.
How vast? In 2007, some 212 BILLION pieces of mail were delivered by the U.S. Postal Service (source). But in 2009, that number is projected to be ‘just’ 175 billion, down some 14% (source). While much of the downturn is due to the bad economy, much can also be attributed to a world of new infinite communication, including e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, iPhones, and so much more. With so much communication, postal mail is much less important than it once was.
We also have the rise of spectacular competitors UPS and FedEx, which have put huge pressure on postal services worldwide. The U.S. Postal Service is in a ‘no win’ situation, mandated to not make a profit, and berated when it loses money, which it is always likely to do in tough economic times. Moreover, large and increasing retiree benefit expenses are also causing huge problems.
The cost of delivering postal mail is enormous, quoted as 69 billion U.S. dollars for the U.S. Postal Service in 2006, but getting more recent numbers has proven difficult.
So what to do? Well how about changing the Postal Service delivery to 3 days a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday perhaps. Pay for mail delivery workers would be cut accordingly, although no doubt the negotiations with unions would be very difficult.
Some say it’s self-destructive to cut back service. That if mail delivery service is reduced, it will encourage even more people to find alternatives, such as online, UPS, and FedEx. So what? Wouldn’t that be a good thing? Especially for environmentalists, so concerned about ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions and not cutting down trees?
It’s no secret that social media is exploding globally.
It’s exploding so fast that governments have no chance to follow what is happening. They can of course impose draconian communication restrictions or even cut off sites, but that’s like putting a dam in front an ocean – it won’t work forever.
Here is a great (fast paced) presentation on what’s happening.
Be amazed, at infinite social media. One consequence is that this is what finally brings down e-mail as we know it.
With the explosion in content on sites like youtube, vimeo, hulu, and many others, and the rapidly expanding “video blog” universe, we are approaching a world of infinite video.
Video conveys a message faster, with more impact and emotion. Humor is more easily conveyed, and audiences won faster.
And online video marketing is making dramatic strides forward.
Almost everyone has bills to pay, and most people still receive at least some of their bills as paper statements or invoices. Businesses spend VAST amounts of money on paper, envelopes, printing, sorting, stuff, and mailing these things out. What a gigantic waste of paper, effort, energy and money. Of course consumers and businesses end up paying for this one way or another in the products and services they buy.
Many companies are relentlessly ‘encouraging’ consumers and businesses to accept electronic (typically e-mail) delivery or notification of new statements or invoices. Instead of the companies saying they’re trying to save money though (that would be too obvious), they ’spin’ it in other ways, telling people to ‘go green’, ‘go paperless’, etc. But most companies couldn’t care less about you, they just want to save money (and increase profits)! Perhaps companies would have more success if they gave consumers a DISCOUNT for going paperless. Between the paper, the printing, the stuffing, mailing & postage, and logistics, perhaps it costs company $1 a bill to send out. So give people a $1/month discount on their phone bill if they go paperless! Perhaps a lot more people would switch.
Google’s rise to search dominance has been accepted and embraced by the masses. Why? The infinite surge in information on the internet meant people needed a SIMPLE, fast, and reasonably accurate way to find relevant and timely information. Google met the need!
But search goes so much beyond what google does, with needs approaching infinity.
Where’s that picture I took? On the internet? On my hard drive? On an external drive? On my phone? On a DVD somewhere?
Where’s that document I wrote?
As much flak as Vista has taken from ‘experts’ and the public (mostly because people don’t want to learn something new after having used XP for too long and because signed drivers weren’t available for old hardware initially), the search capability in it is really good. Click the flag logo (bottom left of the screen usually), and unlike XP, a search box is always present at the bottom of the menu that appears. Type anything in there, and Vista immediately tries to find files, web sites, programs, e-mails, and more, that match what you typed! It’s VERY well done.
In a world of infinite information and data, we need a great search tool. A tip of the hat to Microsoft for getting this right.
With so many people out of work, the competition for the few open jobs is now enormous. As competition for jobs approaches infinity, the importance of a great resume is higher than ever.
Most people are not great writers and do not know how to create a good, let alone great, career resume. So to help people, a seemingly infinite number of web sites are springing up offering people a way to improve their resume. Most of these sites will take an existing resume, edit it, and give it back, for a fee of course. Fees range widely, as apparently do the skills of these service providers!
Many appear to be in far off lands with probably little clue about a customer’s job market or even culture.
A friend, as well as an experienced and successful recruiter, recently launched EmploymentBOOST.com, providing resume improvement services. He knows what employers respond to and what they don’t. He is even getting customers who have used other services already (and did a terrible job!).
Don’t be fooled by low prices, use a service with a real background in HR and recruiting.
In a job market nearing Infinite Competition, your resume is CRITICAL!
The TV news story is repeated so often we all know the script. It goes something like this:
News talking head (NTH): “We now go to Bob Smith at the local mall to tell us how the retailers are doing this holiday season.”
Bob Smith (BS): “Yes, as you can see, the huge SALE signs are everywhere, from 25% to 75% off pretty much everything. This is Carol Jones who is out shopping today. Carol, what are you buying?”
Carol Jones (CJ): “Just some things that are marked way down like clothes and a few other things.”
BS: So these are things you’d be buying anyway, but you’re just taking advantage of the sale?
CJ: That’s right. The prices aren’t that great on other things.
BS (to NTH): There you have it, retailers are trying to entice buying with big discounts but they’re not buying anything beyond that which doesn’t look good for this shopping season. Back to you.
And thus the ‘in depth’ analysis of ALL retailing is summarized. But wait, there’s more. ONLINE sales are STILL skyrocketing. Millions and millions of online purchases are being made by consumers from the comfort of their homes, offices, or cell phones and laptops anywhere. And for the most part, the brick and mortar retailers can’t compete.
It’s not just about price. Consumers like brick and mortar stores for the social experience (going with relatives or friends for example) and actually seeing the merchandise. But that appeal is offset for many by the traffic, parking, crowds, and more.
It used to be that you’d go to the store to get TRUSTED ADVICE on a product. Now, with the vast amount of product and service reviews online, and the pressure to train and pay store employees LESS to save money, advice from the store is about the least reliable or trustworthy.
So for many, if the deal isn’t as good, the information not as good, and the hassle is greater, they simply will avoid brick and mortar shopping if at all possible.
And this trend will continue. Brick and mortar stores will continue to decline. Who benefits? UPS and FedEx!
Manufacturers have become so good at making millions of highly reliable vehicles that the world is awash in them. And this was true before the recent financial melt down, and is still before China begins producing and exporting decent vehicles (only a matter of time).
Not only are there way too many new cars coming on the market, but since cars a few years old are still incredibly useful, new cars must compete with these used cars too.
With so many manufacturers, in so many places, competing for so few buyers armed with so much information, we are approaching infinite automotive competition.
What does this mean? Great deals for consumers. Brutal business conditions for auto makers with no end EVER in sight. Vehicles are truly a commodity, with a vast over-supply. Only the strong will survive.
Manufacturers will have to clearly focus on one or at most two of the following: product, price, or service. No one can win in all three for any given brand.
A good time to be a consumer. A very bad time to be in the auto business.
Who knew that Icelandic banks were doing the same kind of investing in mortgage backed derivatives as U.S. banks, and that U.K. consumers banked at Icelandic banks, and U.K. local governments invested in Icelandic bank investments. And who knew that Iceland’s banks became vastly bigger in deposits and obligations than the Icelandic government could support?
The BBC has written extensively on this mess and what it means. Iceland’s banking system and government could well declared bankruptcy which would set that nation’s economy back years.
It is but one tragic fall out of the world of infinite banking. Where investments become infinitely complex, and in most cases unregulated. Money is moving at infinite speed around the globe, in millions of transactions per second. How can ANY government regulate or monitor this? And that is without considering all the CRIMINAL movement of money.
Speed ‘governors’ will probably be needed to slow down the movement of money around the world, so that alarms, indicators, and firewalls can be put in place to warn and potentially stop things getting out of control.
It will need the best financial and mathematical minds to work together to come up with new standards. Will it happen? Who knows.
As much flak as Vista has taken from ‘experts’ and the public (mostly because people don’t want to learn something new after having used XP for too long and because signed drivers weren’t available for old hardware initially), the search capability in it is really good. Click the flag logo (bottom left of the screen usually), and unlike XP, a search box is always present at the bottom of the menu that appears. Type anything in there, and Vista immediately tries to find files, web sites, programs, e-mails, and more, that match what you typed! It’s VERY well done.
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