'UNNOVATIONS'
Male Rompers Like walking around in nothing but your adult diaper – except less dignified. I didn’t even know about this until Steven sent me pictures of the RompHim line of men’s clothing that I’ll never be able to un-see. Infantilizing American men has been a long- term fashion trend: The permanent adolescent Pee-Wee Herman look of “skinny suits” with pants and sleeves too short and tight. The “can’t quite grow a beard yet” look. The nine- year-old-boy look of T-shirt, shorts, and gym shoes on Casual Friday. The “Look at the swell rub-off tattoos I got at the dime store” look. And now this... I’ll know this trend has peaked when I go to the liquor store and the Dewar’s bottles have rubber nipples on top. The 84-Month Car Loan On a more serious note, Steven also alerted me to this deeply foolish auto finance innovation. Eighty-four months is seven years. If I could find a new car that would last for seven years, I’d keep it forever and never need a car loan. The average price of a car in the U.S. is $28,936. The average car loan interest rate is 4.6%. The average loan term is 67 months. This is bad enough. It means you’ll pay $3,930 in interest in addition to what you paid for the car, which was too much. But you’ll pay $4,963 in interest with an
84-month loan. Yes, your car payment will come down a bit, from an average of $482 per month with a 67-month loan to an average of $400 with an 84-month loan. And you’re still personal-finance roadkill. One peek at the Internet and I found a 2007 Ford Taurus – a bit dented and in need of brake pads and windshield wiper blades, but in good running order. Price: $400. You could buy 84 of them and keep the other 83 for parts cars. Steven and I also got two great unnovation ideas from outside sources. First, there’s Matt Levine, the brilliant Bloomberg View columnist: The Dentacoin ERC20 Token A global blockchain cryptocurrency for use only in payments to dentists. Matt says: “I am becoming increasingly convinced of my thesis that the story of cryptocurrency is not one of re-learning all of the lessons of modern capitalism, but of un-learning them. “Here in the 21st century, I assumed that the purpose of currency was to intermediate between different goods and services, to make them fungible and commensurable, so that people don’t constantly have to negotiate the exchange rate between yams and goats, or between goats and dentistry. Who decided that the problem with dentistry is that it needs its own currency ?
34 | September 2017
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker