2012 should be an Apocalypse ... for the Eighteenth Century
I'd like to dedicate this New Year's Thread to four antiquated business models that we should be able to upend and resolve. I'm not suggesting disruption, I'm advocating Armageddon:
Book Publishing Industry -
This behemoth has been sitting on and squelching some of the greatest thought that humankind has produced for far too long. The dissemination of ideas, from higher thought to banal experience, is powerful and world changing - in this age of nearly zero-cost distribution, why should we give so much to these giants just to wait to pick through the scraps that fall back down from their table?
Sebastion Marshall has made a good start here, it's time for others to join. There's a better way to put an author's words in front of millions of people, and 2012 is the year we should find it.
Music Industry -
If there was an Occupy RIAA movement, I'd be the first to pitch a tent. The Record Label industry is bad for the consumers, it's bad for the artists, and it's bad for the distributors ... it is a business "solution" which is efficient only at profiting from inefficiency and waste. There have been several attempts to reform this industry through new distribution mediums, but they've met with failure or horrible complication - because they're attempting to continue business with the problem itself.
Perhaps 2012 can be the year that some startup finally weds the artists and the distributors, and kicks that abusive asshole out of the house once and for all. Why try to work with the middle man, when we can go straight to the source? We have decades of cases of artists who, tired of the evils of the publishing industry, have created their own recording labels just to stop the abuse ... talk about a high money market with a huge problem waiting to be solved.
Video Game Industry -
Anyone who's picked up a AAA title in the last 5 years knows that the Video Game Industry is hell-bent on following Hollywood into the tar pit of mediocrity. Let every shitty $60 2011 remake of 2010's best seller list be kindling to the fires of this coming Judgment. The Indie Uprising has begun, but it needs more fuel and more oxygen. Go out of your way to tweet about those indie titles that grab you, and risk $5 - $10 on an alpha that may never see the light ... it's money well spent considering the competition.
Law and Legal Services (at least in the States) -
It's incredible to me the cost of legal services in the United States. It's even more incredible to me that justice is only really available to the wealthy. Even in a nation as grossly wealthy as the U.S., our middle class (and those below it) generally have no access to legal advice, nor could afford anything like a law suit should they need it. The law is almost totally inacessible to 95% of our population, but is absolutely necessary to 100% of it. If any industry is failing to meet the needs of it's incredibly large market, the legal industry takes the cake. Imagine if only about 5% of the population could afford a product that everyone needed ... we'd call it the new business opportunity of a life time. Modern technology should be able to fix most of this issue, and smart business sense the rest.
In the spirit of the New Year and New Opportunities, let's all give a couple minutes and post one of our "worthless" ideas to help bring about the Eigtheenth Century Apocalypse!