- RT @ScottATaylor: The Guys on "Pickers" should just follow the "Hoarders" teams around- perfect mashup #
- PI/PNK test: http://su.pr/2umNRQ #
- RT @punchdebt: When I get married this will be my marital slogan "Unity through Nudity" #
- http://su.pr/79idLn #
- RT @jeffrosecfp: Wow! RT @DanielLiterary:Stats show 80% of Americns want to write a book yet only 57% have read at least 1 bk in the last yr #
- @jeffrosecfp That's because everyone thinks their lives are unique and interesting. in reply to jeffrosecfp #
- @CarrieCheap Congrats! #CPA in reply to CarrieCheap #
- @prosperousfool I subscribe to my own feed in google reader. Auto backup for in between routine backups. Saved me when I got hacked. in reply to prosperousfool #
- @SuzeOrmanShow No more benefits? I bet the real unemployment rate goes down shortly thereafter. in reply to SuzeOrmanShow #
- Losing power really make me appreciate living in the future. #
The High Cost of Keeping Richard Ramirez in Prison
Serial killers in the United States often gain cult status due to their strange courtroom antics and dramatic personalities. Recently deceased death row inmate Richard Ramirez was definitely one of the most famous serial killers of all time before he passed away of liver failure in California’s San Quentin State Prison.
After a dramatic arrest in 1985 in East Los Angeles by residents who recognized Ramirez from photographs displayed all over the news, Ramirez would sit in jail for years while awaiting a trial that finally began in 1989. There would be no more expensive trial in the history of Los Angeles County except for the O.J. Simpson trial that occurred a few years later.
At a cost of $1.8 million dollars, Los Angelinos would pay dearly for the privilege of trying Ramirez in a court of law. Incredibly, however, this massive sum wasn’t the only cost associated with this vicious serial killer. Because he was sentenced to death and due to the incredibly long appeals process associated with death row inmates, Ramirez sat in jail for over two decades without any fear of actually being put to death by the state of California.
Over the past hundred years, the number of individuals incarcerated in the United States has ballooned from a few hundred thousand people to almost 2.5 million prisoners. The most expensive people to incarcerate are death row inmates, who sit in a type of solitary confinement for decades. A moratorium on future executions in California has ensured that inmates like Ramirez have been costing taxpayers millions of dollars for housing and appeals with no likelihood of being put to death.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, there are around 700 people sitting on death row in California, which require a massive investment of tax dollars. The state’s ongoing budget crisis and inability to balance its budget has put great strain on the prison system to house so many death row inmates at such an incredible cost.
Richard Ramirez’s untimely death at the age of 53 and his decades-long residency within a state prison brings to light a disturbing fact: more inmates die of natural causes while on death row than are actually put to death. Whether support for the death penalty exists or not, the billions of dollars spent by the state to keep inmates on death row has resulted in just 13 executions since the late 1970s.
A study in 2011 that was conducted by a judge and professor in the state suggested that California has spent over $4 billion since the death penalty was reinstituted. Out of those funds spent, at least a billion dollars was used for housing and incarceration of the inmates, including serial killers like Richard Ramirez.
A further study presented by the Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice in 2008 suggested that keeping the system intact with inmates on death row would cost around $137 million dollars a year. On the other hand, if California was to commute those death sentences to life in prison and abolish the death penalty, the yearly cost would drop to $11.5 million a year.
Offering the families of victims of death penalty-worthy crimes the chance to see a killer or other criminal experience the ultimate punishment may offer some sort of closure. Unfortunately, with the expectation that individuals on death row are more likely to die of natural causes than be put to death in California, the implementation of the death penalty in the state must be reexamined.
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Reputation Isn’t Everything
I’m a code monkey by trade. Software development pays my mortgage.
I’m also–and separately–a small business owner and have been for years. I’ve actually got several side-hustles going, but only one of them is formal, organized, and incorporated as an LLC. A few years ago, a friend and I decided to go into business together, got certified by the state and start making some extra money.
I have recently discovered that two of the government agencies related to our business have been referring students to us. When our customers call the certifying organization, they are–at least some of the time–recommending us over nearly 200 of our competitors. You can’t buy that kind of marketing. At least, I hope you can’t.
How did that happen? How did two faceless bureaucracies decide that we were the company to recommend?
People talk. Over the last few years, we have worked to make sure people want to say nice things about us. What did we do?
1. We never lie. Our business is training. If one of our students asks a question I can’t answer, I admit it and promise to find the answer. Then, after class, I find the answer and email it to everyone.
2. We are reliable. If we schedule a class and just one person shows up, we hold the class. We have had classes with two instructors and one student. Our hourly rate sucked those days, but the students loved the attention and sent us business afterward. I’d never cancel if even one person is planning to be there.
3. We give it away. We give a lot away. If our customers have questions before or after class, we answer them. I spend time on related forums answering questions. Veterans take our class at cost. I try to give away at least as much value as I get paid for.
Now, this sounds like a sales page, but it’s not. I’m not mentioning the name of my company or even the industry, just so nobody thinks I’m trying to drum up business.
We have dropped a crazy amount of time and effort into building our reputation. With a firm foundation of knowledge and the 3 items I mentioned above, a good reputation is easy to build. A bad reputation is even easier. It’s been said that a happy customer will tell 1 person about his experience, while an unhappy customer will tell 100. Repairing the damage from the unhappy customer is much more expensive than just doing it right the first time.
Building a good reputation is absolutely critical for a successful business. Be ethical, honest, and helpful. Always be there when you say you will be, and try to give away as much as possible without actually hurting yourself. People will talk, so don’t give them a chance to say bad things without being liars themselves.
Reputation isn’t everything. You also need knowledge, marketing, and a product. Without a good reputation, however, the rest doesn’t matter.
Why do you need a trailer?
As I mentioned before, we recently bought a Chevy Tahoe. When we bought it, we had a Ford F150 and a Dodge Caliber that we could have traded in, but decided to sell on our own, instead.
About a month ago, we sold the truck. If you’ve never owned a truck, you probably don’t realize how handy they are to have. From hauling brush to moving furniture to donating large amount of crap to Goodwill, we used our truck.
We’ve also been on a mission to replace all of our old crappy stuff with nicer things, without spending a ton to make that happen. We’ve been selling stuff on Craigslist, then taking that money to buy other stuff we’re finding good deals on.
We found a 4×8 utility trailer for $300. It came home with us. The first thing I heard was “Why do you need a trailer?”
Now, we could have made do with delivery fees or rental trucks, but that seemed silly to me.
- We recently replaced our living room couches. One of our cats had mistaken one of them for a litter box. No amount of enzyme cleaner gets that smell out of a couch cushion. Shortly after that, my fat a** popped two of the springs out of the bottom. Bad couch. We found a good deal on brand new replacements, but the delivery fee would have been $80.
- My wife found a beautiful entertainment center last week that matched the corner entertainment center we already have. We don’t need another entertainment center, but after convincing the seller to sell us the side units without the center unit, we have glass-doored bookshelves that exactly match the largest piece of furniture we own. Without the trailer, we would have had to rent a truck to get them home.
- Tomorrow, we’ll be taking the last load of stuff out of my mother-in-law’s house. Without the trailer, that would be several trips in the car.
We’ve had the thing for 3 weeks and it has almost paid for itself in time and money. I think that makes for a good investment. I don’t expect to buy a new living room set every month, but it’s nice to be able to deal with large things when the need arises.
How come my back hurts?
My favorite book series is the Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. It’s a good sword-and-sorcery, good-versus-evil fantasy.
But I’m not here to talk about that series. Rather, I’m going to talk about one particular scene in book 6, Faith of the Fallen.
There’s a scene where Richard, the protagonist, ends up in a socialist workers’ paradise, where the government controls distribution and everybody is starving. Jobs are hard to come by, because everything is unionized and unions control access to work. That’s a non-accidental parallel to every country that has embrace socialist principles, or even leans that way. Go open a business with employees in France, I dare you.
So Richard goes out of his way to help someone with no expectation of reward. This person then offers to vouch for him at the union meeting, effectively offering him a job.
This is the conversation that follows:
Nicci shook her head in disgust. “Ordinary people don’t have your luck, Richard. Ordinary people suffer and struggle while your luck gets you into a job.”
“If it was luck,” Richard asked, “then how come my back hurts?”
If it was luck, how come my back hurts?
Seneca, a 2000-year-dead Roman philosopher said, “Luck is where the crossroads of opportunity and preparation meet.”
I won’t lie, I’ve got a pretty cushy job. I make decent money, I work from home, I love my company’s mission, and I kind of fell into the job.
By fell into, I mean:
- I started teaching myself to program computers when I was 7.
- I worked in a collection agency collecting on defaulted student loans to put myself through college while I had a baby at home.
- When I graduated, I went out of my way to help anyone I could, which positioned me for a promotion, getting my first programming job. The first one is the hardest.
- I spent 3 years studying the online marketing aspects of what I’m doing, with no promise of a payoff.
- I launched a side business in the same industry as the company I work for.
- I built a relationship with an author to include his books in the classes I teach. He happened to move to the company I’m with.
- I offered advice–for free, on a regular basis–on certain aspects of his business and his responsibilities with this company.
- He offered me a job.
That’s 25 years and tens of thousands of dollars spent earning my luck. How come my back hurts?
I have a friend on disability. He has a couple of partially-shattered vertebrae in his back, but he keeps pushing off the corrective surgery because the payments would stop after he heals. He refuses to get a regular job, because his payments would stop. He lives on $400 per month and whatever he can hustle for cash, and he will make just that until the day he dies. And he complains about his bad luck.
His back literally hurts, but not metaphorically. His bad luck is the product of deliberately holding himself down to keep that free check flowing.
I have another friend who made some bad decisions young. Some years ago, he decided that was over. He took custody of his kid and started a business that rode the housing bubble. When the bubble popped, so did his business. Instead of whining about his luck, he worked his way into an entry-level banking job.
He put in long (long!) hours, bending over backwards to help his customers and coworkers, and managed a few promotions, far earlier than normal. His coworkers whined about it. He’s so lucky. If it was luck, why does his back hurt?
We make our own luck.
If you bust your ass, working hard and helping people–your coworkers, your customers, your friends, your neighbors–and you are willing to seize an opportunity when it appears, you will get ahead. When you do, the people around you who do the bare minimum, who refuse–or are afraid–to seize an opportunity, who always ask what’s in it for them, they will will whine about your luck.
When they do, you will get to ask, “If it was luck, how come my back hurts?”
Born to Launch
I’ve recently discovered something about myself: I like doing new things.
More to the point of this post: I like making new things.
I also like learning new things.
Unfortunately, once the newness wears off, I start to lose interest.
I’m a software engineer, so I regularly build new things and solve new puzzles. When a project gets into maintenance mode and the new stuff ends, I want to chuck the whole thing in the river and move on.
That carries over into other things, too. Start a business, lock down some skills, get some customers, then enter maintenance mode. Boring.
Pick up a new hobby, achieve a basic level of mastery, watch it stop being fun.
Play a new video game, get good at it, get bored.
It’s a flaw in my character and it’s a pretty serious flaw. Soon after I reach the point where I can fly with a new skill or project, I quit wanting to do it.
When it quits being new, it quits being fun.
When I pick up a new hobby, I get good at it, I get bored with it, so the setup equipment tends to collect dust.
Some of this is work stuff, which isn’t supposed to be fun. If it were, they wouldn’t call it “work”, they’d call it “happy fun time”.
Some of this could replace work stuff, but I’m not sure how to power through when I hit this particular wall. Just making money doesn’t keep something exciting. If I’m not excited, it’s hard to stay motivated, which is probably why I let the dishes pile up. (Sorry, honey!)
There is a good side to this flaw: I’m never bored. I fill notebooks with the things I want to do next, from blacksmithing lessons to building a foreign language learning site. I have absolute confidence that I’ll never be bored for long, and I’ll never be short of new ways to make money, but that doesn’t make me feel stable.
I have a need for stability, and I have a need for new. Finding that balance is a challenge.
Maybe I just need to launch things faster to build a bigger safety net. That would let me revel in the new without putting my lifestyle at risk.