Many of my posts are about things
that don't make sense -- notably those on political and economic matters
like 'free' trade, globalization, the tax system, intellectual property laws,
and my recent post about 12 aspects of business that desperately need innovating.
These ten things are more general. Some of them have bugged
me for a long time. Maybe I just don't understand them. If you do, please
enlighten me:
- The English language: Why don't we make English spelling
phonetic, or at least consistent, like most other languages? And the grammar
should be consistent as well. And why don't we get rid of unnecessary extra
letters, and capital letters entirely?
- Non-Daylight Savings Time: If DST is good for the winter,
why not all year round? In fact, why don't we all go to one time zone worldwide,
and simply let each city and business set times that make sense for it. Especially
if we use the 24 hour clock. It's not like we can't phone a business if we're
not sure what their hours are. And there are no standard hours for anything
any more, anyway.
- The Dow-Jones Industrial Index: Why in the world is this
still the most important index of markets in the world? It covers only 30
stocks in one economic sector, and comparing DJII levels over time has been
totally warped of any meaning by additions and delistings over the years (a
lot of the companies that were part of the DJII back when it started are now
defunct). And why is it still quoted with two decimal points, when the significance
of the decimals is less than a Bill Gates sneeze?
- Pay radio: Why would people pay money for a digital receiver,
and then pay again every month, to hear commercial-less music in their car. Haven't
they heard of CDs?
- The Neilsen 21-49 demographic: The 50-69 age group, the
baby boom babies, are the biggest demographic bulge in history, have inherited
a record amount from their parents and made a lot more themselves, are likely
to live on average another 20-30 years, and have a taste for luxuries, but
are excluded from viewer/listener demographics used to set advertising rates
. Why?
- Multiple sign languages: Sign language is wonderful.
You can communicate regardless of your spoken tongue, even in noisy areas
your voice won't reach, and hearing isn't an impairment. It could be the
universal language, taught to everyone. So why is there more than one
sign language in common use?
- Consumer prices: Now let me get this straight. You spend
vast sums on advertising to promote your product over some other brand. In
some cases, like fashion ads, the product is not even pictured, nor are any
of its benefits cited. And then you add the cost of the advertising to the
retail price and expect customers to pay for it. In the case of breakfast
cereal this adds up to 80% of the price of the product. This will even stump
visiting aliens, for sure.
- No-frills airlines: A 38-minute flight from Toronto to
Cleveland, where there's only one class of seating (cramped), costs $1,200
round-trip. They feed you pretzels if you're lucky, charge you $5 for a beer,
and then thank you for choosing their airline. Hasn't management figured out
that flying is expensive, and if your product is inherently expensive,
you don't cut out luxuries, you add them, because the extra cost of
the luxuries is peanuts compared to the perceived value it adds. Instead of
$1,200 for pretzels, charge me $1,300, give me a champagne cocktail in a
real glass, an on-board massage, and a free CD of my choosing to keep, and
I feel like royalty. Can you imagine if Rolls-Royce made a no-frills
car, what it would do to their market?
- Time measurement: 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week,
variable number of days per month, 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an
hour. Who designed this and why weren't they fired? Put the year first, forget
about months, and break the day into 100,000 seconds. Period. So 2004.001.50000
is noon January 1 next year. Put this with one time-zone worldwide (see #2
above) and you would save millions on calendars, clocks, schedules, and all
the archaic relics that force us to adhere to this absurd measurement system.
- Weblogs: Well you knew this was coming, didn't you? They're
great for some things, but for political campaign strategizing, philosophic
debate, and relationship-building (business or personal)? Talk about making
a job unnnecessarily difficult. Telephone, anyone?
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