Entrepreneurship

How the CIA Helped Disney Conquer Florida

"Starting in the mid-1960s when Disney set out to establish the Disney World Theme Park, they were determined to get land at below market prices and Disney operatives engaged in a far-ranging conspiracy to make sure sellers had no idea who was buying their Central Florida property. By resorting to such tactics Disney acquired more than 40 square miles of land for less than $200 an acre, but how to maintain control once Disney's empire had been acquired? The solution turned out to be cartoon-simple, thanks to the CIA." Continue reading →

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How California Law Put a Hot Payments Innovator on Ice

"Three years ago Aaron Greenspan had a hot mobile payments startup on his hands that was poised to take a bite out of the entrenched card networks. Launched in April 2010, FaceCash signed up 25 Bay Area merchants and 500 consumers to use its novel technology, which combined mobile bar code scanning and photo identification. A Subway franchise in Palo Alto tested the service. Some suggested FaceCash could become the next blockbuster payments innovator after Jack Dorsey's Square. Then regulators put Greenspan out of business." Continue reading →

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French woman offers to breast feed gay couples’ babies for $130 a day

"A woman has posted an offer on a French website to breast-feed babies of homosexual male couples for 100 euros ($130) a day, stirring up media interest just weeks after a divisive same-sex marriage law was passed. The offer, addressed to male homosexual couples who can marry legally in France since May, promises up to 10 breast-feeds a day. Alexandre Woog, chief executive of the e-loue website, said staff had no doubt about the seriousness of the proposal. 'Our legal advisers are sure of this. It’s illegal in France to sell maternal milk but this is a person proposing a service, not selling the milk in flasks,' Woog told Reuters." Continue reading →

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Bootleggers and Baptists on the Beach

"Last year, two young college graduates had a great business idea that has become a huge success in the beach town of Delray Beach, Florida. Observing the ordeal of vacationers lugging beach chairs and other heavy beach equipment for the long, hot walk to the beach, they introduced a free golf cart shuttle service called 'The Downtowner.' The Downtowner is always fully booked and for good reason; the young drivers are prompt, exceptionally polite and courteous, and it’s free! Not surprisingly, the city government of Delray Beach is apparently doing everything it can to drive The Downtowner out of business." Continue reading →

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The Future of Transportation

"The Hyperloop is a futuristic form of travel, whereby passengers will be blasted to their destinations in ultra-high-speed pneumatic vacuum tubes. It’s not exactly teleportation… but it’s pretty darn close. We’re talking about traveling at speeds of up to 4,000 mph. Shooting from the East Coast to the West Coast in less than an hour will be doable. In keeping with his entrepreneurial spirit (Musk co-founded PayPal and is co-founder and CEO of electric car company Tesla Motors and private spaceflight company SpaceX), he wants partners who share his vision of 'breakthrough tech done fast without wasting money on BS.'" Continue reading →

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How payday lenders pop back up even after states crack down

"The products reflect a basic fact: Many low-income borrowers are desperate enough to accept any terms. In a recent Pew Charitable Trusts survey, 37 percent of payday loan borrowers responded that they’d pay any price for a loan. In 2012, New Hampshire joined states like Georgia and Arizona that have banned triple-digit-rate payday loans but allow similarly structured triple-digit-rate auto-title loans. And as in Ohio, Texas lenders started defining themselves as credit repair organizations, which, under Texas law, can charge steep fees. Texas now has nearly 3,500 of such businesses, almost all of which are, effectively, high-cost lenders." Continue reading →

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Obama’s False History of Public ‘Infrastructure’ Investment

"The makers of autos, tires and headlights began building roads privately long before any state or the federal government got involved. The Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental highway for cars, pieced together from new and existing roads in 1913, was conceived and partly built by entrepreneurs. Railroads are another example of the infrastructure-follows-entrepreneurship rule. Before the 1860s, almost all railroads were privately financed and built. Airplanes became a major industry and started carrying passengers by the early 1920s. During that period, nearly all airports were privately funded." Continue reading →

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Send Micro-Transactions With Zero Fees via Coinbase

"We launched an exciting feature today: off blockchain micro-transactions between Coinbase accounts! Here is a bitcoin transaction I just sent myself for 1 satoshi (that is 0.00000001 Bitcoin). The transaction arrived instantly, confirmed instantly, and cost zero in fees. This was possible because it did not touch the 'blockchain' (the public ledger of all bitcoin transactions), and instead was sent directly between two Coinbase accounts." Continue reading →

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New Silver Liberty Dollar QR Coin Obtains Live Bitcoin Prices

"Vaughn Perling had the courage to issue The New Liberty Dollar with a strikingly similar appearance to that of the NORFED Liberty Dollar while von NotHaus was awaiting sentencing on counterfeiting and fraud charges. However, Vaughn Perling added a disclaimer to his website that the purchaser acknowledges that The New Liberty Dollar is a 'silver piece medallion, and not any government issued coin.' The new QR engraved medallions enable a user of the coin to obtain real-time 'manufacturer’s suggested trade value' which is based on the silver spot market price. The price will be in Bitcoin as well as other crypto and national currencies." Continue reading →

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Amazon Billionaire Jeff Bezos’s Life Story

"Today, Jeff Bezos shocked the world by acquiring the Washington Post for $250 million. It's just the latest twist from Bezos, one of the world's richest men thanks to his founding of ecommerce giant Amazon. If you're unfamiliar with Bezos' story, we've put together an abridged version here." Continue reading →

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