Impact of the microchip on industry over the last 30 years
I recently was involved in a discussion for my current humanities class. This specific class is all about technology and how it has impacted society and culture. The instructor asked the class about what impact the microchip has made to society. I actually was rather proud of my response so I figured I would share it:
I think the microchip had a much deeper impact than that of a direct impact on society specifically. How many different things has the microchip ushered in that allowed more and more businesses to flourish and ‘pop up’ around that technology and do more and more things with it?
One thing that makes this evident is a graph of stock prices over the last 40 years:
http://stockcharts.com/charts/historical/
Look at the DJIA, see how rapidly it began to climb in the mid 80′s when Microsoft and Apple were just unveiling their products? And then another market sprung up around technology specifically: the NASDAQ. In mathematical terms you can sort of think of the NASDAQ as the technological derivative of the DJIA. The growth rate of the NASDAQ after its conception could essentially have contributed to the exponential growth of the DJIA. Sort of like how acceleration relates to velocity in terms of physics. If acceleration (NASDAQ, technology) grows linearly then velocity (DJIA, industry in general) will grow exponentially.
I’m more technically, mathematically, and physically savvy than I am business savvy so my bit at the end relating the graphs to math and physics was my way of making sense of the data 
So I'm Thinking of Starting a Business
Ok, I’m not a business guy, but I have ideas and I want to make a business out of them. I can’t decide if I want to just do business as my own name, or begin making a name formyself by filing for a formal DBA (Does Business As). Or maybe I’ll go for broke and file for an LLC.
As I understand it, an LLC creates a legal entity in name of the business and could be subject to certain fees and licenses, etc. However it has its advantages because then if I ever do something really stupid and lose a bunch of money, or if someone sues me, it will be against the business’ assets, not my own. A DBA doesn’t offer that kind of protection.
Now… herein lies the delima: In the software business, there’s all sorts of bullshit about copyright infringement. I’ve seen it happen to a few business owners that I know first hand. If someone sued me over copyright infringement, I could lose, and I could owe a lot of money out of my own pocket. However, if that same scenario happened to me but I was under an LLC, I could owe everything that my business is worth…. NOTHING. Which is a lot better than paying buku bucks to some dude I pissed off.
I’m not sure what to do. Am I even ready to start a business? Its been on my mind for some time now, but I can’t make myself go through with it unless I’m absolutely ready. The stuff I want to do requires some serious startup capital, which I can’t raise myself. If I have to get investors involved, I’m going to want an LLC and not a DBA for the reason of protection. But if I start it small, using my own funds, I can just build the business as a DBA, then roll it into an LLC if I need to work up some major venture capital or something.
I’m still not sure what kind of paperwork DBA’s have to file in the way of taxes and stuff. Luckily, my girlfriend just got her BS in Business Management. Maybe I can make her my first employee, haha, and let her run the businessy-paperwork stuff.
The Housing Market
Everyone has had their poor experiences with the current housing market in the US. I myself have been hit pretty hard by it. It is part of the reason why I haven’t left the state–because I’ve been job-hunting in other parts of the country.
I made my first home purchase at age 22, two years ago (October, 2006). I received a 100% financing on the house because I had recently gone through a divorce and was broke so I didn’t have the down-payment money for a house. This particular loan was structured so that the first 10 years of payments were interest only. I got a decent rate of 6.5% which is fixed for those first 10 years, then it will adjust. At the time of the purchase, I was feeling as if I was increasing my net worth by owning a home. I figured that in Atlanta, the housing market was going to go nowhere but up. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
In two years, my home has lost roughly $8,000 in value and I haven’t paid a dime towards principal yet. I have no equity in it and the home is worth less than it was when I bought it. In my quest to find a bank that would refinance me at a 30-year fixed loan which wasn’t interest-only I discovered that banks no longer did 100% loans for homes. I can understand why, but now I’m really screwed. The banks that I looked at required at least 10% equity in the home. I have -6% equity in the house if you include calculating the market conditions.
Friends have told me to rent it out if I wanted to buy a new house. Once I explain my situation, they quickly hush up. If I were to rent out the house, I’d have to charge $1,000 per month to pay the mortgage (and make a very small profit of less than $100). Comparable homes can sell for cheaper payments per month, plus homes of this size and condition go for a little over $800 per month in rent. There’s too much competition for me to even bother trying.
So, I guess I’m stuck here for a while. Unless someone out there has any suggestions.