Opportunists: You will be assimilated Sadly, the tidal wave tragedy is barely a day old and I have already gotten what appears to be a scam email asking for aid (it even slipped through the new spam filter).

It has occurred to me lately that there are far too many people out there who do not add real value to their fellow human and who make their living off of the work of others rather than their own work. There are entire careers, whole businesses in fact whose existence is solely based on being glorified parasites. I'm not just talking about the scammers either - there are many industries where things like referral fees, finders fees and layers of "value added resellers" (who don’t add value) clog the system and probably prevent as many sales as they help. I have some friends who have had this experience with realtors lately. The realtors I worked with recently were good. There are some in the industry however who survive more on finders fees to other out-of-town realtors and getting listings that they don’t work and sell (another agent does and they still get half the fee) rather than actually working hard and adding value.

One good thing about the internet is that it helps level this playing field to some degree. There are enough small businesses out there that are adding value one user at a time that it makes a dent in the huge phony companies who try to outspend competitors in advertising in place of having a good product. With the increase of shareware, freeware, royalty free music, use of the creative commons copyright and other developments, companies better make darn sure they have a very good product that people want if they are too survive. Workers at these companies should likewise make sure they are adding some kind of value to the equation as well.

After a decade of mainstream use, the internet now promises to start doing some of the things that were predicted in the mid 90s.
  ¶ 2:23 PM