economicmultipliers_85

Economic Multipliers (85)

Do you know what these are?

They help CREATE wealth in systems.

Bundling can be an economic multiplier.

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Products and services are bundled all the time in the for-profit sector:

• • Bundle two insurance policies and give a discount: You’ve sold two products (most likely year after year). The customer gets a discount and possibly even further reduced premiums if they have no claims. The insurance company gets a customer who is easier to quantify in terms of risk.

  • Sell a traditional personal computer with a keyboard, monitor, mouse, and software and you’ve sold (in terms of each product’s components) almost an infinite number of products. The package generally costs less than the pieces individually, works well if all the pieces are there and the customer is happy because they don’t have to figure everything out AND pay more.

I personally think a lot of financial ‘instruments’ like complex derivatives shouldn’t be bundled together: You can find thousands of articles (and people) who think the same way.

Recently an article showed up in the local newspaper about how the county district attorney’s office is swamped with drug cases because they’ve been getting so many ‘tips’ and police officers have been following up on solid leads.

I don’t know whether any D.A.’s offices consider ‘bundling’ cases but this seems like a perfect area to do so. First offender drug cases (I expect many of the cases are) could be ‘bundled’ by:

• • age of offender

  • drug type and quantity

  • targeted customers (you never want kids in the stream)

Defendants could ‘opt out of’ bundling if they thought that their day in court deserved ‘special consideration.’ If they ‘opted in,’ prior to and after going through the proceedings, they could note any special circumstances that made their case different than all of the other ones.

Judges would have an easier time being consistent when sentencing and bundled cases could even be coupled with ‘it’s easier to stay out of trouble’ sessions.

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An interesting movie is: ‘What We Lost In the Fire’ … no fire … but an opportunity to explore what will probably never happen to you if you ever get involved in drugs … an unusual rescue … (In real life, wealthy people rarely take such personal risks).