228 karma · joined February 6, 2009
I doubt that the current setup is a recipe for happiness:
- people putting of (or not getting) children because of careers
- people basically paying other people to raise their children.
- people working overtime to buy a more expensive car
This affects people a hell of a lot (e.g. the financial+current bailout will cost every tax payer $10,000). Large groups of people already made very bad decisions on this topic earlier this century. Good decisions is the difference between S. Korea and Ghana.
Astro-physics, the finer points of quantum mechanics or the Hilbert effect do not affect people directly that much.
The organism analogy of an insect society is actually due to Eugene Marais (who studied termites). An interesting book of termites is Soul of the White Ant which you can find here: http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0302hsted/030213marais/Th... It is pretty readable for a book that is >75 years old.
Termites can have little fungal farms. They also have tunnels stretching down to the water table so that it can get water even in dry times.
Marketing in small towns is going to be difficult. A lot of small towns lags behind more urban places in internet adoption. Their population are also generally older and less tech savvy than cities - so you should plan for this group (simple interfaces, etc...).
You also get small towns that are relatively near each other: if a person wants to buy something $200 + he will happily drive through to the next town. So if you implement a type of map and list nearby towns it may be good.
A lot of selling over here happens with small regional papers – a regional paper will cover one or two towns and will be filled with regional news (stuff like school performance, local politics, etc...). Those papers also contain classified advertisements. If you can maybe link up with one or two of them to put those advertisements online – or provide a system in which they can put advertisements on your system (e.g. show on their website and redirect to yours when a user clicks on the add) it would be great.
Most of those papers are usually a one or two man operation without much of a website – you should check if you can get a system in which you supply a CMS type system with your advertisement system to them. You provide the website framework and advertisement system and they fill it with content & advertisements.
American companies compete with international companies for executives.
Teaching has a couple of advantages:
- The entry requirements are not that high.
- The degree program is not that demanding.
- There is always employment (compare that with journalism or pharmacology in some countries).
- There is a huge shortage of teachers in 1st world countries. For immigration to some countries a teaching degree can count more than an engineering degree.
- In some countries there are fairly long (paid) holidays for teachers.
- There are a lot of half day (08h00-14h00) positions available. This is especially important for someone with children. - There are generally a lot of bursaries available to fund study and distance study is also a good option.
- Some countries allow abridging studies: a person with another degree can work as a teacher while doing a 1 to 2 year diploma that will make them a fully qualified teacher.
In all fairness, the Catholic Church does a lot for people in 3rd world countries (I live in an African country and they provide a lot of services). As an example, the school and hospital system in such poor countries as Lesotho was at a time almost 100% CC run and funded. The CC has probably the most extensive hospital system in Africa – and this provides medical service to thousands of people.
Some abstinence programs did work (for instance in Uganda which uses an ABC approach). On the flipside of the coin some programs promoting just condom use were huge failures (a good example is the “Love Life” program that was partially funded by the Bill&Melinda Gates Foundation – a lot of money went down the drain there). The best program (IMHO) is probably an ABC type program that promotes both.
The problem is not religious arguments - the problem is ranting and not reasoned debates (recently Reddit's Palestinian / Atheism / GOP bashing / Obama posts became intolerable).
This discussion seems civil and well thought out. A good example is dominik's post above – it is pretty well reasoned and factual post and is non-inflammatory it is a good post (even though I am not Catholic).
It is not the nature of the argument that destroyed Reddit it is the way in which it was done. And this can happen with any topic not just Religion.