Author: Captain Obvious

I grew up with the adage that if you build a better mousetrap people will beat a path to your door. My second masters degree is in product innovation and new product introduction. Central to my training was the idea that improving a product would result in people beating a path to your door. It is interesting to note that the origins of this phrase are murky but most people know the adage and will repeat it indicating it is a somewhat universal belief.

Well … maybe not if this New York Times article is any indication … https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/28/nyregion/glue-trap-rodents-nyc.html?unlocked_article_code=1.gk0.QKot.aq4J-js-6hF3&smid=url-share

Banning glue traps is the latest in what some would insist is governmental overreach. I think we all understand the arguments about abortion, but are we really concerned about the suffering of rats? I have used and do use glue traps to catch cockroaches all the time and frankly, I know my wife is not sympathetic to how they die. It is funny to me how much these insects freak her out. She can’t go near a dead one no less be anywhere near a live one. She is less afraid of poisonous spiders or snakes. But, I do have to admit I have some empathy for field mice.

I know people who won’t even swat a mosquito because killing an insect is wrong to them. Sorry, that doesn’t bother me at all. However, the idea of a field mouse dying a slow and painful death does disturb me a bit. I have used glue traps and put a few of those little critters out of their misery when I found them in the traps.

Product innovation has moved from “utility” … aka how well a product works to achieve an end result to something much fuzzier to define. How do we define ridding the house of something that lives and whose life might be deemed valuable?

Rats bring less sympathy to my mind and heart than field mice. I have never been successful in using live traps for either. I have used live traps to relocate a whole family of raccoons from our back yard successfully. They didn’t like the process, but none of them were harmed. Interestingly I have been warned that you had better move them at least 10 miles from their natural habitat or they will find their way back.

My wife is in a perpetual battle to keep deer out of our garden and to stop them from eating her favorite plants. I love the product named “Not Tonight Deer” which repels deer by coating the plants with an odorant. This seems innocent and effective. The name is a hoot!

Setting all the anecdotes aside, I do find that today’s consumer attitudes are less knowable in these areas without awareness and education. Otherwise, It seems we have selective sensitivity about the pain and suffering of animals. Dogs and cats would never be trapped using inhuman methods … at least knowingly.

But, what about those adorable dolphins we see performing at SeaWorld? Now that we better understand how killer whales have been treated the days of their lives in captivity are numbered. Watch the movie Blackfish if you want to understand that issue. So, once again, if the American consumer is made aware of the “rest of the story” they respond.

The New York Times article points out that today’s consumer perspectives are much more nuanced than the simple attributes we used to justify product innovation. Simply said, it matters how a product is improved and the full supply chain for the product itself. We all remember when diamond mining was discovered to endanger the lives of Africans … we called them blood diamonds. Today’s EVs have a similar supply chain characteristic with the mining of lithium and other metals used in batteries. Fortunately, governments are onto these abuses and the horrible impacts of current production methods are likely to change for the better.

If you want to see how modern methods to reduce cost in things like garlic, chocolate, etc. please watch “Rotten” or “Seaspiracy” and of course “Planet of the Humans.” In every case innovation might cause people to beat a path to your door, but only as long as they are kept in the dark about how they are killing off their brothers and sisters on this planet.
It is time to present the full picture and let the market decide whether they care or not. The jury may still be out on rats, but personally I find our complacency toward the sickness and death of others pretty damning.

I do have a suggestion someone made that we should stop using rats for biological testing and use lawyers instead. Their reasoning was that we were running out of rats and seemed to have an excess of lawyers. Secondly, you don’t become nearly as attached to lawyers. And, finally, there are some things you just can’t get a rat to do.

So far this too has just been a suggestion.

Wow … what a wild word we are living within! A Harvard professor is implying his team can bring the fountain of youth to reality. Of course, there are skeptics and calls for his termination as well. https://www.statnews.com/2024/03/05/david-sinclair-harvard-longevity-scientist-reversing-aging-dogs/

Do you all remember when superconductivity was claimed at room temperature? Take a look at this article: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01174-6

The scientific community has become tainted by opportunists and frankly … liars … who are so hungry for funding they will compromise their ethics and “fake it till you make it” as the Silicon Valley adage goes. Theranos is the classic example but we have so many these days that the abuse of public trust and investor confidence is tragic.

I suspect we are about to see similar reversals of praise in the climate change claims of so many. The attraction of simple answers to complex questions always lures us. Knowing professionals realize how complex today’s questions have become.

A recent New York Times article in the New York Times struck me as refreshing.  These paragraphs are IMHO some of the most profound writing I have seen:

“I warn my students. At the start of every semester, on the first day of every course, I confess to certain passions and quirks and tell them to be ready: I’m a stickler for correct grammar, spelling and the like, so if they don’t have it in them to care about and patrol for such errors, they probably won’t end up with the grade they’re after. I want to hear everyone’s voice — I tell them that, too — but I don’t want to hear anybody’s voice so often and so loudly that the other voices don’t have a chance.”

“And I’m going to repeat one phrase more often than any other: “It’s complicated.” They’ll become familiar with that. They may even become bored with it. I’ll sometimes say it when we’re discussing the roots and branches of a social ill, the motivations of public (and private) actors and a whole lot else, and that’s because I’m standing before them not as an ambassador of certainty or a font of unassailable verities but as an emissary of doubt. I want to give them intelligent questions, not final answers. I want to teach them how much they have to learn — and how much they will always have to learn.”

There is a lot we can learn from these recent articles which should cause us to question almost everything we are being told. We need an informed electorate or we are going to elect charlatans again and again.

My wife Susan and I were visiting a friend’s home this week and I noticed what appeared to be a branding iron embossed with his initials hanging on the wall. He shared that it was a gift from a friend enabling him to brand steaks he grilled.

That triggered an almost instant connection to the concepts of branding in companies, artists, and service providers. They all leave a mark on their products that distinguishes it or them from competitors and hopefully from copycats.

It turns out that mental connection was right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand

There you see the origin of branding irons was to prevent theft. I think we all are aware of cattle being branded so rustlers could be caught and the cattle they stole recovered. Knowing this traceability, clever thieves would simply slaughter the cattle in the fields and leave the hides behind.

Today, companies recognize that brand identity and differentiation are crucial elements in brand loyalty. Then, how do you differentiate a commodity like electricity or natural gas that are indistinguishable from providers. The only clear differentiator is price, right?

Some of you quick thinkers will respond insisting that it is the way electricity is made that differentiates the provider. Was it produced using solar, wind, hydro, nuclear. or fossil fuels? Others of you will remark that the time and duration of supply matters because the value of keeping the lights on for everyone changes all the time.

So, the value of the commodity depends upon the value of timely and reliable supply for a customer. Therefore, customers who are flexible about when they get their power should pay a lower price than those who simply want it available at the flip of a switch.

In every case, the energy provider leaves a mark on the minds and hearts of their consumers. Now that we define this objective, it seems to me that education and proof of your generation, delivery, and reliability excellence also define that mark.

Over the years, energy providers learned that one of the most important brand differentiators was their energy efficiency and demand response programs and services, which educated and enabled consumers to be participants in this brand identity.

I am not sure energy providers realize how important this is any longer. The mark being left today is the impression that the industry simply doesn’t care about these essentials any longer. The result is we reduce this all to price … it is moving back to a pure commodity.

Well, it’s that time of the year again that many of us dread … filing our state and federal tax returns. As attested to by one of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, over 235 years ago in 1789, nothing is more certain in our lives:

“Our new Constitution is now established and has an appearance promising permanency. But nothing can be said to be certain in this world except death and taxes.”

However, the taxes Franklin was referring to were not income taxes. They were mostly sales taxes by the British and our government on goods being bought and sold here.

The history of income taxes in the United States is remarkable in that it is so recent. It was only 150 years ago (1862) that President Lincoln signed into law a revenue-raising measure to help pay Civil War expenses, creating a Commissioner of Internal Revenue and the nation’s first income tax. It levied a 3 percent tax on incomes between $600 and $10,000 and a 5 percent tax on incomes of more than $10,000. The income level threshold was an enormous amount of money back then so most paid little to nothing in taxes.

It may be surprising given how small this tax appears to us today, but there were terrible reactions to this new tax. By 1867, just five years after it was introduced, public opposition was so fierce that Congress cut the tax rate, and in 1872, the income tax was repealed. From 1868 to 1913, 90 percent of all tax revenue came from taxes on liquor, beer, wine and tobacco. Today, we would call these sin taxes. A few years later, prohibition killed that golden goose.

In 1894, the Wilson Tariff Act revived the income tax and an income tax division within the Bureau of Internal Revenue was created, but a year later, in 1895 the Supreme Court ruled the new income tax unconstitutional on the grounds that it was a direct tax and not apportioned among the states based on population. The income tax division was disbanded. So, what started in 1862 ended in 1895.

Then in 1909, just over 100 years ago, President Taft recommended Congress propose a constitutional amendment that would give the government the power to tax incomes without apportioning the burden among the states in line with population. Congress also levied a 1 percent tax on net corporate incomes of more than $5,000.

The arguments for and against taxes have provided full employment for accountants and lawyers. Just ask any accountant these days how complex the tax code is. Do you remember Herman Cain’s 2012 campaign called the 9–9–9 Plan? It called for the replacement of all current taxes, such as the payroll tax, capital gains tax, and the estate tax, with a 9% personal income tax, 9% federal sales tax, and a 9% corporate tax.

So, based upon this very quick review of tax history, I would hope you agree that taxes are far from certain. Being taxed is certain … we just aren’t sure how much and how it will be extracted. Each year most of us rely on professionals to tell us what this all means and what we must do to comply.

So, eat, drink and be merry! And enjoy one politician’s explanation of his position on alcohol. This funny and true story is from Armon Sweat, Jr., a member of the Texas House of Representatives. In 1952, Armon was asked at a campaign rally about his position on whiskey, which was a contentious campaign issue. From the Political Archives of Texas, what follows is his answer to the question about his stance on alcohol:

“If when you say whiskey, you mean the devil’s brew, the poisonous scourge, the bloody monster that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, and takes bread from the mouths of little children. If you mean that evil drink that topples Christian men and women from the pinnacles of righteous and gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, shame, despair, helplessness, and hopelessness. Then, my friend, I am opposed to it with every fiber of my being.

However…. if when you say whiskey you mean that oil of conversation, that philosophic wine consumed when good people get together, that puts a song in their hearts and the glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean the drink that puts a spring in the step of an elderly man on a frosty morning; or that enables man, if for a moment to forget life’s great tragedies, heartbreaks and sorrow; if you mean that nectar of the gods through the sale of which pours untold millions of dollars each year into our treasuries, providing tender care for crippled children, the infirmed, and builds highways, hospitals, and colleges in this nation. Then my friend, I am absolutely, unequivocally in favor of it.

This is my position, and as always, I refuse to compromise on matters of principle.”