Hi Bill,
Nothing much to tell, I love old cars and grew up around a bunch of old school mechanics.
I'm a programmer, front end developer, and web designer, and on the side I'm a mechanic, body man, and car painter.
I believe with rising interest rates, mass layoffs, the rising cost of vehicles, the lowering of wages, tariffs, electric vehicles being shipped directly to the consumer, rising food prices, rising gas prices, 3rd party sites that don't carry any inventory, and consumers developing a total distrust of dealerships, that the dealerships are in trouble.
I think Elon conned the world, global warming is being used by the rich to get richer, and the divide between the rich and poor will enslave us all.
And I don't care what type of car you drive and you shouldn't care what type of car I drive however since the people pushing EV's want to use the government to force me into a type of car I feel like I need to defend driving what I want to drive, which is really unfair and sad.
I believe congress regularly passes laws that violate common sense!
I believe biometric Authentication, things like eye scans, facial recognition, fingerprints, and other things that are unique to each individual shouldn't be used to identify you because when the company gets hacked they get more than just your password.
I believe private equity firms will destroy any business they come into contact and are to blame for the CDK Global and CrowdStrike hacks.
I believe Musk, isn’t going to recommend eliminating tax loopholes which resulted in the government losing out on at least $1.8 trillion worth of tax revenue in 2023 alone, because most tax loopholes, like the carried interest loophole that reduces taxes for private equity and hedge fund managers disproportionately benefit the rich.
I also doubt Musk will recommend cutting the billions in government contracts and subsidies his corporations receive. Or our bloated military budget that's bigger than the next nine countries’ military budgets combined.
Half of that goes to private defense contractors like Musk's own SpaceX, and StarLink.
Many federal contractors, like Boeing and Raytheon, have histories of price-gouging, largely because they faced little or no competition.
And Musk, of course, won't recommend that Republicans halt their plans to extend Trump's tax cuts, which will add at least $5 trillion to the deficit, and predominantly benefit billionaires like him.
That's more than twice the amount DOGE wants to cut in “wasteful government spending”.
I believe AI is a hoax and anyone killing kids are evil.
And I believe that for dealerships to survive they have to play a new game!
However when companies don’t have competitors like Google, Amazon, YouTube, Facebook, and the like, and everyone around the world is using them, and their destroying business, and aren’t paying taxes...your in trouble.
I Believe Capitalism has been overthrown by barbarism.
And when everyone is forced to go through these platforms to sell their stuff and their getting 40% and didn’t create the content, product, information, or anything to do with the product. When companies like Amazon are making over 42 billion a year and pay zero taxes, you know you’ve got a problem.
The reason they have all the data is because we created it and gave it to them. I believe we need a system that is owned and controlled by the people and that is where the data should go and who should make the money from it and I believe dealerships are about to get eaten alive by it.
There is a certain type of disruption that takes place in absence of innovation. When an industry stagnates and fails to keep up with the needs of their clients, an opportunity is created for someone to completely change the game. That someone usually comes from outside of the industry being disrupted and it is exactly what we are seeing happening with the dealerships but they are asleep, rolling over, showing their bellies, and blaming the consumers.
I Believe The Web Design Industry as a Whole is a MESS!
The only thing worst than not having a website is having a website that is poorly coded, designed, and thought out.
An unfortunate trend has emerged within the industry. Where instead of focusing on producing high-quality code, it’s become about how quickly you can complete the project. This has lead to a decline in the overall coding standards. And a dependency on mass-produced frameworks.
The desire to appeal to as many people as possible has lead to mundane, plain, ordinary designs, where everyone looks the same, stifling creativity and innovation.
98% of websites are full of coding errors, 95% aren't ADA compliant which could get you sued, and the average website takes something like 17 seconds to load.
But no one cares and because of it dealerships will begin to disappear as they hire the very companies they should be competing against to build their websites.
Anyway...nice to meet you all!
