Plot points in the popular serials are quite instructive.
You realise everyone has to balance books, including criminals.
The difference is that taxmen go after legitimate businesses to collect their dues while police dig into criminal enterprises.
In the series Animal Kingdom on Netflix, the lady running the show has an elaborate set of businesses through which money is 'washed.'
And from the detailing, it's highly complex.
Taking over businesses where cash is king - like laundromats, car washes and bowling alleys. Then slipping the illegal proceeds into the chain and making sure the accounting is perfectly legal and above board - because they shouldn't come on the radar of the regular tax authorities in addition to the police.
Buying up properties with cash, keeping low-cost renters and getting higher receipts from them.
While crime films are the craze, the accounts are the carpet under which the cash is swept. There's no drama in drawing 20 money transfer receipts a day, collecting rent and then entering a higher receipt in the books and so on.
This was explored in the series Breaking Bad as well, when the flow of money gets too large to be hidden away in vaults and there's no way it can be legally spent without attracting attention.
Drawing up legal agreements to cover illegal ownership. Which involves the setting up of shell companies that cannot be traced.
The way tax havens get around scrutiny is that all the paperwork remains as paperwork. There's no online repository and the conversion is eternally 'in progress.'
Laundered money should tell no tales - because the handcuffs are just a wrong move away.
The tapeworm queues at airports
Like Nokia's famous 'snake' game that grew progressively longer on the small black and white screens, the queues at the security check-ins have grown.
Web check-in now makes it easy to get a boarding card but now, every little additional convenience has transformed into a revenue generation point.
And airline bookings are getting to be like telecom bills - complex and hard to decipher.
At the Bangalore airport, getting past the security is a marathon. Stripping down every little metal bit, from belts to purses.
The security guy insists that you put in only one article per tray for automatic scanning, so even if you only have one laptop bag and a small suitcase, you have to put them into three or four trays.
Add another one for shoes and belts.
The X-rays seem to be automated, and any suspicious objects are flagged and sent down another line.
And the humans there have become the bottleneck.
In the space of ten minutes of waiting for the suitcase, passengers had to surrender batteries, some unknown metal parts that looked vaguely threatening, shampoos and open up jewelry boxes - anything metallic was immediately suspicious.
Maybe the systems have improved but what we're seeing is the degradation of the travel experience.
Booking tickets has become easier. Travel times to airports has mushroomed. You can check-in faster at the automated counters. And then slow down at security.
Then, when flights get delayed, the chairs in the post check-in area are packed.
Touch. No touch. Scans and beeps. Hostesses wearing PPE.
And with passengers masked and sanitised, it's a long time before air travel will feel anything like normal again.
Site visitor analytics is more fragmented than you'd expect.
Google Analytics is right up there going by the data.
But a couple of guys trying to build an alternative are finding holes in coverage.
Tech savvy audiences aren't granting Google the access it requires. And on some sites, its over 50%
The tension between providing access and being compensated for it is a flash point.
While Google builds up huge troves of data on usage, most of it is hidden behind the company's walls.
This one-way traffic is not an advantage for those who rely on the data to make important decisions, or even use it to determine their own ranking.
There are some surprising statistics on the blocks - 68% of laptop and desktop users, 88% of Firefox users and 82% of Linux users.
Now, the universe of Firefox and Linux users in comparison to Chrome may be small but this is a significant chunk. And it could be skewing the drift of the data.
So, a competitor to Google Analytics is long overdue but it isn't going to be easy to execute or stay in the race.
Google has a lead built over decades of watching entire categories and sectors grow. It knows what people are searching for.
But a pure play analytics company won't have access to search data.
Fragmentation is good and bad. Good because it dilutes the power of the major player and bad because a lot more work is involved in determining what the visitor count is.
What's your take?
Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.
Share this post