Want to use a toll road, but don’t have change or a pre-paid device like SunPass? Soon, all you’ll need is a license plate – and a high tolerance for being tracked wherever you go.

The St. Pete Times reports that Tampa’s Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway will ditch all toll booths as soon as September.

[V]ideo cameras will snap pictures of vehicle tags as they travel at highway speed past collection spots. The tag number will be matched to vehicle owners, who will get a bill in the mail that can be paid with cash, credit card or money order.

“There’s still a cash option. You just don’t pay it on the road,” said Joe Waggoner, executive director of the Tampa-Hillsborough Expressway Authority.

From an innovation standpoint, this is great. It reduces costs, speeds up the toll-collection process, reduces traffic congestion, and will reduce the kind of accidents that occur at toll plazas. And while I’m fine with toll roads as a concept – self-funding roadways definitely appeal to me – I’ve always been a hater of the congestion caused by the collection process. So this solution fixes a lot of what I hate about tolls.

But it comes with a price. Before now, toll-road travelers who wanted to remain untracked had the option of just paying cash. They paid a higher price, both in terms of money and speed, than those who opted to pay electronically, but the choice always remained with the traveler.

Now? Sunpass or snapshot. No other options. If you use the toll road, you’re on record, and there’s no way to dodge it.

I’m not surprised that the tech is moving in this direction, nor do I think it will slow down. But when my children grow up, I know that their location will probably be tracked and recorded at all times, whether by video cameras, cell phone providers, or technology we might not even imagine yet. And that involuntary loss of privacy will make their world very different from the one I grew up in.

Last year, I promised: “Next year, I’m writing about prison rape.”

Close your eyes and think of America

It’s tax time, and as always, our thoughts here turn to the forcible penetration of our wallets and our privacy by a government in full tumescence, turgid and needy, far too large for its proper place in our lives.

Taxes are…

While Oliver Wendell Holmes famously stated that “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society,” not everyone agrees that we’re getting our money’s worth, or even that the extraction is justified. “Taxes are theft!” they cry – if you don’t voluntarily pay, the government will use force – arrest, imprisonment, or just simple seizure – to make sure you do.

Of course, it’s not enough to say merely that taxes are theft – in some ways, taxation resembles a much more personal crime. Under our system, it’s not simply the extraction of property that our government seeks. All government do that, and have various ways to do so. But every April, our government compels its citizens not merely to pay, but to file. This filing involves the forced labor of millions of people, compiling information demanded by our government, figuring out complex forms and formulas, and confessing to the authorities virtually every type of activity we’ve been involved in during the previous year. Get married? Have a kid? Tell the feds. Move to a new state? Get dumped by your spouse? Tell the feds. Get an embarrassing STD and rack up a lot of medical bills? Uncle Sam wants to know. And Uncle Sam will make you tell – just ask Wesley Snipes.

In most relationships, if one party feels taken advantage of, they can simply leave – pack up, seek shelter elsewhere, even get a restraining order if one is necessary. But you can’t do that with your Uncle Sam. You’re trapped in that relationship just as surely as if Uncle had the top bunk in your cell. He can get a hold of you any time you like, and you can’t get out. (You can’t escape because U.S. citizens are subjects of the IRS no matter where in the world they live – and even renouncing your citizenship may not relieve you of your tax obligations to the federal government. )

Like a good cellmate, Uncle Sam will protect you from other threats in the prison yard, and may provide other signs of favor. But still, there is that price to be paid, whether you want to or not.

And don’t forget to look at the bright side: next time, it’s going to hurt worse.

( Photo Source / Photo Rights )

You’ve got a dirty little mind, don’t you?

As tax time approaches, we watch our government borrow more heavily than ever to soothe the economic chafing caused by, well, borrowing too much money, ultimately increasing the amount of money we’re going to have to send to Uncle Sugar next year at this time, some of you seem to be a bit upset.

And, a little twisted. (You freaks.)

Three years ago, I wrote “Getting the Switch,” an allegory about the cruelty our government foists upon us every April 15. Not so much the payments, but the paperwork. (Ok, the payments, too.) That’s become one of the most popular posts ever on this website.

The search results that have spawned from that entry are, to say the least, disturbing.

But willow-switch spankings were so 2006. In 2009, the new style is Boston Tea Party re-enactments. Anti-tax protesters around the country mail tea to their Congressional representatives (sometimes shutting down the offices in the process) and otherwise distribute tea in its most common commercially occurring form – the tea bag.

Which means, of course, that the current tax protests are now known as “teabagging.”

Tax time, it seems, brings out the hidden pervert in all of us, bringing our most aggressive perversions to the core: flogging with branches, forcing one’s genitalia in someone else’s face… apparently, we’re not only mad, we’re also, well, stimulated.

So next year, I’m writing about prison rape.

Having trouble selling your home in this sagging real estate market? Clementina Marie Giovannetti of Ocala, Florida, apparently was, too.

So she’s decided to give her $1.25 million mansion away.

Crazy? Don’t answer yet.

She’s having a contest, and the submission of the winning “Pet Lover” essay gets the house. Contestants have to write a 300-word essay and submit a “4×6 color photograph of the pet” in question, and… a $200 entry fee.

Still, $200 for a shot at winning a mansion? Could be a great deal. But here’s the catch. The contest only goes on if 6250 people enter. If not, she has the right to cancel the contest and return everyone’s application fees (minus a $20 “administrative fee” per Entrant.)

So let’s do the math. 6,250 entrants at $200 each yields – $1.25 million. (Hey! What a coincidence!) If the contest goes bust and she gets, say, only a thousand entrants, cancels the contest, and keeps the $20 administrative fee, that’s $20,000 (minus legal fees and postage, presumably.) And no matter what, this author gets a hell of a lot of publicity because she’s posted the contest information on her main web site where she hawks all her books.

Win-win-win, if you’re Giovannetti or her lawyer. I wonder if they came up with the idea, or, as seems more likely, they adapted it from something they found somewhere else.

Consumerist reports that – suprise! – Cingular continues to find new ways to screw its customers.

Beckie is a reader who started out with a cell phone from a small company that got bought by AT&T. As you well know, AT&T was bought by Cingular. A few months later, Beckie received a letter from Cingular asking her to voluntarily discontinue her service because more than 50% of her calls were using competing networks and she was no longer economically feasible for Cingular. In return, Cingular would allow her to keep her numbers. No refund. No apology. No free unlocked phones.

Anyone who’s read one of Cingular’s service contracts end-to-end knows that they’re more slippery than a waterbed full of eels. But whether or not they have the legal right to terminate contracts at will (knowing full well, of course that you do not have that right) it’s just bad business to treat customers as disposable, because your reputation cannot survive for long when you do.

And the more pissed off your (former) customers get, the more likely they are to go hunting for a class-action lawyer. And that is very bad for the bottom line.

My grandparents, like most of their generation, believed in giving their kids a spanking when discipline was required. Some spankings called for the willow switch, which hard-spanking parents never kept handy in the house. They always sent the kid out to pick one.

Dread surging, the about-to-be-spanked child walked slowly out to the tree, took about half an hour to select a switch, and shuffled miserably back to the house to meet the consequences. And if the switch selected was too small? Then the ultimate spanking would be that much worse.

Of course, the psychological torture of selecting the switch was worse than the actual punishment in most cases. It was meant to be. Give a kid a long stretch of time to think about the consequences of their actions, and they – at least in theory – are much less likely to repeat that particular transgression.

Every year about this time, hard-working American citizens take part in a switch-selection ritual of their own. This so-called Income Tax Day – misnamed because most people pay so much in taxes over the year that they actually get money back – is the day Americans have to sit down and tell the government just how big a switch to hit them with.

And if the switch is too small, well, you’ve all heard the “penalties and interest” litany.

Most people filing have employers who pay them wages and issue them W-2′s. Many of those people have fairly simple taxes: take your earnings, calculate how much you should have paid, subtract from what you actually paid, and there’s your refund. Many people have kids, houses, or other sources of large deductions. This complicates the math a bit, but it’s still manageable for most – especially with the advent of computer- generated tax return filing.

But then there are the people who own businesses. They employ themselves, probably a few others. They may have partners, or shareholders. Sole proprietors, partnerships, and partnership-like entities (LLC’s, in particular) enjoy the fresh hell of taking all their business-related activity, crunching the numbers, and then feeding it into their own tax returns.

A few years ago I formed a small business. I started off as a sole proprietor, eventually moved to a corporate entity. The complexity of my return was so great I had to pay a professional accountant to assist me. Compared to most business my size, my returns were fairly simple. I had no employees to account for, no depreciation to calculate, no “targeted” tax credits to document. But just the simple question of what I paid myself and how required me to consult a professional tax advisor – someone who spent their career studying the tax code – so that I didn’t run afoul of the self-employment taxation rules, the FICA contribution rules, and whatnot.

I’ve got a law degree, and I couldn’t figure out how to manage the tax end of my relatively simple business without siphoning off a substantial chunk of my profits. How is the average joe supposed to figure it out? The answer is the same – hire a person whose primary contribution to the economy is navigating the tax code.

In the last tax year, I’ve joined up with another former sole proprietor to form a two-person law firm. Again, we currently have no employees, he have no significant capital expenditures, no large benefit plans, or any of the other things that make business tax returns excruciatingly complicated. Nope. We’ve just got the one thing – there are two of us.

If moving from employee to sole proprietor is, say, five times as complex for tax purposes, then moving from one person to two is as difficult as you might imagine. Not by a factor of ten. I’d say it’s more like twenty. And it’s only going to get worse, assuming that we succeed and grow. Ultimately, we hope to add staff, which means capital expenditures, payroll taxation, and lord knows how any benefits plans would work in the tax scheme.

The more successful we become, the bigger the switch we have to pick out.

And it’s not so much the money we have to pay to the government – although that can and should be a lot lower than it is – it’s the sheer dizzying strangeness of the way we have to think about our business decisions. And as a lawyer, I’m usually pretty comfortable thinking about things in strange ways. Not when tax time comes around. It fills me with dread, even if I’m getting money back. And judging by the lines at the post office, most Americans feel the same way.

A few days ago I lamented the lack of useful billing software packages for Apple. Today I discovered I’m not the only one who feels the pain. Web design firm Blue Flavor does too.

One would think that this is a problem that has been solved, but we’ve had a hell of a time getting it worked out, until we reverted to the basics of technology… paper.

Electronic formats were prone to error because the solution either didn’t capture the information we needed or too many people were involved in the process.

Sounds like another user interface problem.

Krempasky’s very large PR firm is looking for communications staff.

Recall my post the other day about “ink by the barrel“?

That post was more prescient than my football picks. Tiff’s story got picked up by the Consumerist, Instapundit, and Doc Searls.

She’s gotten more eyeballs in three days than I’ve gotten total since I started blogging more than six years ago. And 90% of those eyeballs will never use the offending ISP as a web host – not because of the service suspension, but because of the post-suspension jackassery about trademark law and trying to get her pulled from her new web host.

And as one might expect, the owner of the ISP still doesn’t understand that it’s not about gay porn, it’s about trying to silence opposing viewpoints by abuse of legal process. That’s why he’s been vilified by most of his former target market. Because information wants to be free, but some people still don’t get it.

Let’s just say… it got brung.

This week saw some significant revelations in the comedy of errors that we all know as the Xbox360 launch. In the wake of widespread reports of defects in the console, a Chicago man has filed what promises to be a significant class-action products-liability lawsuit against Microsoft.

The proposed class action suit claims that in Microsoft’s bid to gain share in the $25 billion global video game market, the company was so intent on releasing the Xbox 360 before competing next-generation machines from Sony and Nintendo that it sold a “defectively designed” product.

Microsoft, meanwhile, is admitting that the launch-day drought was the result of a last-minute chip shortage that almost caused them to push launch back past Christmas:

We’re getting a little less, but not much less than the yields we expected, and we know that the yields we expected will probably outrun supply. We decided to go ahead and launch rather than wait until post-Christmas and get a few million units out into the hands of users. We’re doing our best.

Unfortunately, Microsoft chose to push ahead and launch anyway, despite the chip shortage. This caused the predictable shortages, predatory retailing practices, and disappointment amongst fans. One retailer has had to apologize for the way it handled its “bundling” on launch day. And those who pre-ordered from Amazon.com up to two months in advance found out that their orders were cancelled this week because there’s almost no chance those orders can be filled.

Though we had expected to be able to send this item to you, we’ve since found that it is not available from any of our sources at this time. We realize this is disappointing news to hear, and we apologize for the inconvenience we have caused you.

I’ve said before that Microsoft’s approach has been a disaster. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see just how bad it’s been – possibly even fatal for the platform. Many factors play into the disaster. Most obviously, legions of devoted gaming fans came away empty when launch day demand far outstripped the supply. Those people, who would be playing the games, showing it to their friends, and serving as the most effective viral marketing force one can imagine, instead left bitter and disappointed. Weeks later, they’re still griping about the 360 instead of supporting it.

The short supply also threatens the dual core of Microsoft’s marketing strategy for the 360 – the game experience and the social effect. One of the forces that made the first Xbox a huge success was Halo, the “killer app” of the original Xbox console. So far, no game for the 360 has developed the buzz of the first Halo. In no small part this is because few gamers have had the chance to play any of these games. The dearth of consoles dries up the market for game developers. Those games already on the market will recover development costs more slowly than they should; developers planning future games which are not yet committed to the 360 platform have to consider whether or not the market will be there by the time the games would come to market. The lack of consoles therefore threatens the long-term viability of the game library for the 360.

The second prong of the strategy for the 360 is the social aspect of the console – the online experience. With only a handful of players overall, it will be almost impossible to have a meaningful online experience. Those players who do enjoy online, head-to-head competition will not be able to find others to play with, because the online matching pool is tiny and none of their friends have the console yet. Poor matchmaking means uneven, unsatisfying play. Combined with a possible future shortage of game titles, the reasons for buying a 360 get smaller and smaller.

The retail distribution problem amplifies the crisis for Microsoft. Anyone who didn’t get a console on Day One now knows that it’s virtually impossible to get one without paying extortionate prices on eBay or elsewhere. Days and weeks of checking supplier stocks drives home the point: there are none to be had. Eventually, that takes a psychological toll on the market’s desire for a product. Prospective purchasers will get used to the idea that they can’t have a 360 and won’t for months. They will go one gaming without it, and if the game titles come up short and and the online experience remains sub-par, they might eventually get used tot he idea that they don’t really need a 360 anyway. These are folks who would have spent hundreds of dollars on consoles, accessories, games, and online microcontent, who will now never spend a penny on 360-related products.

Since launch day in the U.S., Microsoft has launched in the U.K., Japan, and elsewhere. Microsoft could have used the components of boxes sold abroad to ramp up for the demand here, deferring overseas launches. If cannibalizing the overseas launches would not have made a dent here at home, they should have deferred the launch here as well. A late launch would have been much less of a disaster than what eventually happened. While consumers would have been disappointed at deferment due to low chip supply, they would have been much less disappointed than they have been as a result of the badly bungled launch that actually took place.

RedState reports that non-farm economic productivity has skyrocketed in the last four years – an astonishing 17%. The previous high-water mark was 12.8% for 1961 – 1960. Why is this important?

Productivity is a key factor that determines whether living standards are improving. Productivity gains allow companies to pay workers more from their increased production without having to increase the price of products they sell, which would fuel inflation.

Productivity, by itself, is not a pure measure of economic well-being. For example, one was productivity can theorectically rise is is 8-hour workdays suddenly become 12-hour workdays. If workers put in 50% more labor, then total productivity will see a corresponding increase. (To examine the practical pitfalls of this theory, just try working 12-hour days without a break sometime. Does your productivity go up or down?)

One likely reason for productivity gains is the maturity of information systems in the workplace. Increased access to information about themselves and others make companies more efficient and more productive. Increased access to information and information networks also enables new forms of business that might not otherwise have existed previously. The new systems also create opportunities for products that did not previously exist.

Our economy has begun to harness these networks and systems in 2001 – 2004 in ways that generally improve our standard of living. As this trend continues – and it is likely to continue for some time – our productivity will continue to grow at a much faster rate than ever before. Much of this productivity translates directly into greater availability of goods and services, increased competition for consumer dollars, and new sources of income for workers. The demands of productivity increases mean more focus on efficiency, higher standards for workers to meet, and a growing disparity between the value of high-skill workers and low-skill workers.

Things are just starting to get interesting around here.

So let’s say I drive up to a McDonald’s drive-through window with my son. The boy, who is two and a half, typically ges the kid’s meal. Being two and a half, he pretty much eats anything in nugget form, and disdains foods not available as nuggets (unless they serve as a vehicle for ketchup – but that’s a story for another day).

Let’s further imagine that my son sees Chicken Little serving as their spokes-animal for thier childrens’ meals – which of course include the Chicken McNugget variety my son loves so well… with ketchup.

What happens when he inevtiably figures this out? What do I tell him when he asks why a chicken is trying to persuade him to eat chopped, deep-fried, ketchup-smothered chunks of himself?

I guess I’ll have to tell him that Chicken Little just isn’t as smart as the Chick-fil-a cows.

Via 37 signals: Nick Denton’s Startup kit – the tools he and his companies use. Some of these look just right for a small law firm to adopt.

On my way in to work I saw the local discount gas retailer hawking gas for only $2.19 – prices I last saw almost a year ago. By comparison, picking up a six-pack of a decent beer will cost you about five bucks. That’s $8.88 per gallon. (128 fluid ounces per gallon, 72 fluid ounces per six-pack).

Gas prices just ten weeks ago were about 80 cents per gallon higher. Now that consumer hoarding and panic buying have largely subsided, prices have receded to pre-summer levels even as winter, with its higher demand for energy to heat the great indoors, approaches. It looks like the market works after all.

(Anyone know the relative profit margins of breweries vs. oil companies?)