Neil Hernandez's Blog

Liberal and Consevative Views on Inequality

Here is a great quote from Michael Medved on the difference in views from conservatives and liberals on inequality.

One of the most important distinctions between liberals and conservatives involves their contrasting explanations of the existence of inequality.

Those on the left see the disparities between rich and poor individuals, or between prosperous and impoverished societies, as automatic evidence of unfairness. They instinctively assume that some people do better than others only because they began their lives with unjust advantages, or exploited the less powerful, or benefited from random good fortune. On the other hand, the less favored members of society suffered from racism or sexism or colonialism, and progressives believe that any reference to their own dysfunctional or self-destructive behavior amounts to “blaming the victim.” Liberals want to use governmental initiatives to close all gaps and level all playing fields (to cite two of their favorite clichés), in order to make up for the unwarranted and irrational processes that created the glaring and wretched inequity in the first place.

Conservatives and libertarians, on the other hand, view success or failure as the inevitable consequence of different levels of talent, hard work and productivity. While acknowledging that a few lucky slackers may be born into fortunate circumstances that they never earned, or that some virtuous and gifted individuals can suffer reverses or tragedies that they don’t deserve, right wingers believe that worldly advancement (particularly in the USA) comes for the most part from focus, toil and smart choices. They therefore resent government redistribution programs for taking hard-earned wealth from the people who deserve it most and giving it to those who merit it least.

There is no doubt which attitude characterizes the worldview of President Barack Obama. As Charles Krauthammer recently wrote: “Obama is a leveler. He has come to narrow the divide between rich and poor. For him the ultimate social value is fairness. Imposing it upon the American social order is his mission. Fairness through leveling is the essence of Obamaism.”

The article then explains that is why the Obama administration has given a commitment to Billions of new spending to teh International Monetary Fund. Why give to those countries who cannot help themselves?

Affiliate, Importer, Exporter: some important definitions in the world of virtual recruiting

The recruiting world is being defined all the time. I'd like to write this blog post to  give my definition of the word "affiliate", "importer", and "exporter" in the world of virtual recruiting.

Consider the following example.

Let's say you are an agency (Agency A). Agency A has a job to fill and you need candidates to fill the job. Agency A has two main options in finding candidates. They can either try to fill it on their own - with their own recruiting staff and resources. Or Agency A can seek the services to use the services of another firm or individual to help them in their search for candidates. This other firm or individual, I'll call Agency B.

So in the example above, Agency A is an affiliate to Agency B. At the same time Agency B is an affiliate to Agency A. They are affiliates to each other because, they are using another entity to either help find candidates (Agency B) or to find a job requirement that needs to be filled (Agency A)

The entity that has the job is called the importer. Agency A is the importer in the example above, because they are the ones providing the job that needs to be filled.

Agency B is the exporter because they are the one providing candidates for the job.

Red Apples; Green Apples; Rotten Apples

Several years ago I went to a sales seminar. The instructor said that in sales there are three types of prospects: Red Apples, Green Apples, and Rotten Apples.

Red Apples - These are prospect that are ripe and ready to go. These prospects require no convincing. In many cases they have contacted you expressing interest in your product.

Green Apples- These are prospects that for some reason or another are not ready at this point to move forward. Maybe they are busy with other things at this point of their life. They are still prospect, but you have to wait until they are ready.

Rotten Apples-  These are prospects that have absolutely are not right for your product- nor will they ever be.