People’s willingness to pay a price defines market price, and that line is always being tested.

This is probably more of an obvious one, but the social implications are severe, in my opinion.  There are two evils at play here.  The first, a common negotiation strategy is to ask for twice of what you really want.  If I say I want $10 for this shirt, but I only need $5 to make a profit, the buyer can put in work to cut the original $10 price tag in half, feel like they’ve got a huge deal, and as the seller, I’m still happy.  Sellers will always push the boundary of what a consumer will pay, and as long as people keep dishing out the cash, prices will continue to grow with greed.  Think of the auction houses or even antique road show.  They just come out and say, this is worth $10,000 at auction, but they’re really just setting the standard for something that may not even exist.  As long as someone is willing to pay that, it will sell.

The other problem is more of a social norm issue.  The longer prices go unquestioned, the less of an issue it is perceived to be.  We all don’t like paying $5 a gallon for gas, but what can we do to stop it?  There’s enough political power in play that companies like Exxon are posting their largest profits ever, but the price at the pump continues to grow.  Investors are making a killing in the stock market because people keep seeing other people make huge amounts of money driving up the cost of oil.  Gas might be too big of a topic to be a good example, but even with the other side of of consumerism there are examples.  Everyone is fine paying $1.40 for a burger, until McDonald’s comes up with a dollar menu.  Now all the fast food joints are making dollar menus to stay competitive, because people are slowly seeing they can get something cheaper than what they’ve been paying.

There is a big difference between cost and worth and they should never be confused.

Just because a shirt costs $990 does not mean it is worth $990, or anything near that!  There are so many examples of materialism where people pay so much more than the practical value of an item.  Even if you ignore the extreme situations and markups, look at how much time people spend shopping around for ANYTHING.  The fact that a bottle of medicine at costco is 70x cheaper than the same drug elsewhere, or a HDMI cable is $60 at Best Buy but $4 on amazon is ridiculous.

Don’t ruin a good story with the truth.

A musical act should be rated against this rubric to determine their quality:

Band’s name – 3%

Band’s aesthetics (clothes, make up, hair, physical attractiveness, showmanship) – 7%

Ability to attract listener’s attention (lyrical hooks, real life publicity, etc) – 10%

Instrumental proficiency – 23%

Originality/inspirational quality of lyrics – 26%

Ability to perform live (without production effects/mastering) – 31%

If we used this rubric, we’d prevent over saturation of pure entertainment acts being passed off as musicians and talented.  It also avoids the ostentatious personalities that think just because they can shred on a guitar means they are the best thing that happened to the world.

Girls have a right to dance.

If you’re smart, you’ll never try to deny them that right.  Eventually, they find someone who will dance with them.

Don’t do or say anything you wouldn’t have your mother know.

#84 – Life is defined by maintenance.

All you do in life is try to maintain it.  You eat for energy to do it again.  you sleep to do it again.  You work to pay for it again.  You do more or something new to make you happy…again.  Life becomes a huge cycle of maintenance.  Therefore:

#85 – The secret to life is to avoid or mitigate maintenance.

Set your bills to be paid automatically.  Eat well.  Learn to control your dreams so you’re not just sleeping.  Spend less so you need to work less.  Find out what makes you happy and keep on doing it.  Stop your mind from worrying about what you need to maintain in your house, but start accepting what doesn’t need to be maintained.

Elevator rides are not social catalysts and therefor should not be used as social opportunities.

There are social norms to follow and you should make sure you’re prepared.

These are from “The Definitive book of body language” by Allan and Barbara Pease:

1. There will be no talking to anyone, including a person you know.
2. Avoid eye contact with others at all times.
3. Maintain a “poker face” — no emotion is permitted to be shown.
4. If you have a book or newspaper, pretend to be deeply engrossed in it.
5. In bigger crowds, no body movement is allowed.
6. You must watch the floor numbers change at all times.

The English language is stupid.

It’s ludicrous.  Rules, then exceptions to those rules.  Logic, then words that defy that logic.  We’ve have this stupid language for centuries, and we just continue with the madness.  There is no end in sight.  Sometimes, I wonder if the AOLers and shorthand IMers are pure evil or truly revolutionary geniuses.

Related:  Gallagher’s bit on words (skip to 4:30 if you’re short on time and filled on humor)

Words are stupid.

Whatever happened to “sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me”?  Words are really tools of destruction by nature, even though they can be used to come off as temporary good, but if those words aren’t maintained, it’s really just a form of prolonged destruction.  Only once you’re objective will you be able to acknowledge how unbalanced our dependence on words is.

Example 1:  You tell someone, “You’re an idiot.”  5 seconds later, you say, “You’re not an idiot, you’re so smart.”  9 times out of 10, the person still thinks you called them an idiot, even though you used words to negate and then reverse the initial comment.

Words cannot undo the destructive nature of words.  Actions, however, can.  Hence, “Actions speak louder than words.”  By placing such strong emphasis on words, you’re setting yourself up for 1) destruction and 2)prolonged disappointment if you deny actions and maintain a focus on words.

Words are also free.  Hence, “Talk is cheap.”  People can lie because it takes little to no effort.  To actually carry out their words in actions though, takes conviction.