Muffler from hi4hi

My first Android App.  I often forget to change back to normal mode once I switch on the silent mode, usually during movies or meetings. This app allows me to choose a timeout of 10 minutes, 30 minutes and 1-2-3 hours after which the silent mode will be automatically disabled. It also sends an SMS to the missed callers with time at which my phone will come out of silent mode. This way they know when would be good time to call me back. It is possible to disable sending sms completely or to just sent it for people in your address book.

Install Muffler from android app store if you too forget switching back to normal mode. You can also search android app store for "hi4hi muffler".

Update  Added ability to create notification based on muffler smses. Basically if you call someone whose phone is on silent, the app will read the auto sms and create a notification which will show up exactly at the time that persons phone comes out of silent mode. Instead of you waiting, the app waits on your behalf and lets you know that now is the time. Moreover, the notification can be clicked to directly dial without going back to address book or call records.

Privacy  explained.

Stopping begging mafia

Begging mafia operate by kidnapping children and forcing them to beg. They give food to these children and take away the earnings. The ethical dilemma is that if you give money - you are supporting the business and if you don't children are going to starve.

One way to get out of this would be the use of food-coupons which expire. The begging mafia works because money intended for food or education can be used for anything. If we give food coupons to beggars they can buy food and only food with those coupons. If these coupons don't expire, they will become some sort of currency which can then be exchanged for money. By making them expire we insure that they are used for the purpose they are intended for. The expiry could be as small as today and as large as may be a week. We don't even need to print these coupons. It can be easily managed by a mobile app that gives you a number which you can write on a piece of paper and give to anyone you want. The person can give it to anyone who accepts this coupon, who can check if it is valid using his mobile, may be by calling or by sending sms. May be you can get these number before hand so that you can write them down/take a printout and just "activate" them when you give it to someone.

Reliance GSM data plans

• The default plan charges Rs 10 per MB upto 50MB and Rs 1 per MB after the 50MB limit. 
• The other plan is Rs 99 for 2.5GB per month. 

Basically reliance sells bandwidth at following rates:

• Rs  10.00  per MB 
• Rs    1.00  per MB 
• Rs    0.04  per MB 

The default plan costs 250 times the cheapest plan. That is best use of behavioral economics I have ever seen. 

Prepaid Traffic Fine Card

The problem we are going to solve today is the corruption in the traffic police. It is obvious that given the circumstances corruption is the best strategy for both police and people.

• Let's say traffic light jump is fined at Rs 200. If a corrupt policemen charges Rs 199, it is good deal for both the driver and the policemen. Because people are not just rational but emotional too, a fair deal will probably happen around Rs 100. 
• This means that if fines are 0, their will be no corruption. The reason fine is not 0 is that our objective as a society is not just reduction of corruption, but:
• As less travel time as possible 
• Less and less accidents 

The problem is it is was hard to measure these things when traffic rules were invented. Accidents are not too hard to count, travel time across all people shouldn't be so difficult given mobile phones and GPS.  Traffic police has no incentive to solve these problems. So lets leave these things aside and just concentrate on the corruption part. 

Lets define the Prepaid Traffic Fine card. Basically drivers can buy such a card with various denominations. It could be a coupon booklet like sodexo. Lets say everyone knows their own driving style, so they know what kind of "crimes" they are likely to commit and how much they end up paying to corrupt cops. Now when I say crime, I don't mean running over people. Just the soft variety like may be 10% over the speed limit or 20% over the speed limit. Jumping a red-light by 2-3 seconds etc. Or may be 10%-20% over the alcohol limit. 

Whenever a driver is fined, he can pay his fine using this booklet. The other condition is that this booklet just like sodexo expires after a year. Now:

• Driver should always pay using the booklet because he already paid for it. 
• This money is already with the government, so nothing goes to the corrupt police guy. 

Few more cases arise.

People either underestimate or overestimate their "fine budget". If they overestimate, they have incentive to always pay using the booklet because any money they give to the traffic police guy will overshoot their "budget". If people underestimate or don't care to buy the booklet, the usual scenario applies which means government gets 0 and corrupt police guy and the driver share 50% each of the fine amount. Now lets assume that we give some discount on this booklet. 10% should be easy because government can earn 10% interest in one year with this amount. The more "interesting" or "value for money" government can make this "offer", the incentive for corruption reduces by the similar amount. For example, 50% discount means that the driver has no incentive not to buy it because that is the maximum he gets by sharing the profit with the corrupt police guy. Which means the corrupt police guy now has to ask for 25%, giving 75% to the driver. 

I think at some point, the convenience of the time saved in bargaining, social pressure, some sense of dignity, investing in the future would make this converge at much lower discount levels. So here we have the solution to the corruption by traffic police. In the super rational humans case government need to give 100% discount. In case humans act like humans, government gets money, humans get peace of mind and corrupt traffic police 0.  This fund can be used to give education to children of traffic police, bonuses, construction of roads, better technology to monitor and manage traffic, something sensible. Using average of Rs 500 per two wheeler and Rs 2000 per 4 wheeler, Bangalore traffic police will have about Rs 370 crores to work with per year.

People Futures

I don't know if the title does justice to what I am about to say. The other two I considered were "Investing in people" and "Partial Slavery".  "FDI in people" was another contender. I am not going to talk about future of people in the sense we usually do, but instead the "future" here refers to ones used in financial markets.

Labor doesn't have a future. Again I mean in the financial sense of the term to avoid any Marxist connotation. The question is what if it did? Let's say any person could sell upto "49%" stake in himself subject to investment. Just to simplify implementation, lets say income tax of the person will be used by government to pay dividends to the "share holders" and in case of death of the person, they automatically get assets of the person (bank balance, property, etc) in proportion to their shares. Further assume that these shares are traded on a stock market so that other people/corporations can trade them.

Now that we have defined the model, lets try to see if it helps us in any ways.

Obviously anyone who made investment in Amitabh Bachchan or Sachin Tendulkar or Shah Rukh Khan would be making tons of money. In theory at least some investments could be handsome.

Consider education. Let's say the retirement fund of a teacher is exclusively or at least heavily influenced by the future income tax of the students he teaches. May be even his salary. Does this gives a teacher an incentive to educate the children to best of his abilities?

Consider education again. Does an industry benefits by investing in students which will be part of its labor force tomorrow? May be industry doesn't realizes this, someone else with money does.

Consider sports other than cricket in India. If their is any possibility of someone winning a medal in Olympics and possibly signing up for brand endorsements, would someone invest in players of these games?

I don't know what would this all really mean. But I do know that people are the future of any possible future we have. May be if that future is invest-able,  some people might invest in it. If nothing else, it gives us some measure of "human capital" vs "other capital" so that at least we are clear on what we as a generation believe is the "future".  May be this brings some reality (funny that speculation is what I propose as real?)  to the over simplified model of people as commodity.