Progressive libertarians Archives
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It's been a while since this site talked about Progressive Libertarians but there's been a bit of a forth lately about this movement -- it's getting noticed -- so it's time to take another look.
Writing at Tech Central Station -- a classic free market Libertarian hang-out -- Arnold Kling talks about The Long Tail of politics which he believes is illustrated by the fact that "none of the above" is the fastest growing political party in the country. Writing in the New York Review of Books -- and taking a nice aim at Tom Friedman -- John Gray dusts of the phrase "NeoLiberal" and gives it a whirl to describe folks who believe in Friedman's view of free-market triumphalism.
Kling goes on to say that his version of the "The Long Tail" (a trademarked phrase, by the way so this won't last long) isn't a party or a coalition or a third part or a silent majority. Gray is more dismissive.
Well, they're both wrong. But much of what they say is, indeed, accurate. They are -- from their unique and very different perspectives -- describing Progressive Libertarians in all their contradictions.
Continue reading "A Move Afoot"Wed 11:11 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Over at eWeek, this week's column is about the big fight that's starting to erupt between cities - San Francisco, Austin, Philadelphia and perhaps New York - and the big telephone and cable companies.
The cities are building wireless networks. It's a great way to make tourists happy, fix what's wrong with cell phone service - here in San Francisco, we play a game called "name the dead spots" - and prove you're cool. Big telcos - most of whom run cell phone companies - don't like it. Cuts into their business. What worse they say: Cities and towns are using tax dollars to compete against them.
They could use a little competition. Doing interviews for the piece - one with a spokesman for the Cellular Telephone Industry Association, one with the guy who runs Austin Wireless - their phones cut out. Went dead. They had to call me back.
And, no, I'm not making that up.
Continue reading "Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down"Thu 09:03 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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The idea that the Internet could help create a viable third American political party isn't exactly news. But, like Tom Friedman and the networked economy, it is now in the hands of a Big Media pundit so we must, must, must take it very, very seriously.
Particularly since this pundit – The Los Angeles' Times Ron Brownstein – ends yesterday's column with the suggestion that there could be a McCain/Bob Kerrey ticket.
Yikes! We gotta get our hands on whatever they're smoking in the LATimes newsroom. Whatever it is, it's gooooood.
It gets worse. Brownstein tossed the third-party idea around liberally quoting former Dean campaign guru Joe Trippi, whose been peddling this idea for about a year now, and New Democratic Network organizer Simon Rosenberg, who uses Brownstein's column to utterly repudiate the middle-moderate strategy on which he founded and built NDN.
(SIDENOTE: Rosenberg's been as many kinds of Democrats as there are donkeys. When NDN started, he was a Lieberman man and used to talk about stock options. Then he was a Dean supporter and yacked about the Internet. After that he wanted to run the Democratic National Committee and said Dean was divisive. Now, well, he's uh, a hard core partisan? This is all drive by his financial backers; it can't get more transparent. Can it?).
Continue reading "And the Women Come and Go....."Tue 09:28 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Every once in a while, my friend and editor Micah Sifry and I get into a conversation about the power and influence of networks. Micah, the optimist, is one of those who thinks that a new politics of Liberal engagement is going to spring up from all this knowing one another. I'm more inclined to think that the power that individuals can exercise on networks isn't always a source for what Liberals would define as "good." I'm a lot more convinced that the self-reliance of Libertarianism will triumph.
On Sunday, we got a look at this conversation from another angle when Jeffrey Rosen's "The Unregulated Offensive," appeared in The New York Times Magazine. It's a wonderful – and scary – look at a group of dedicated conservative legal scholars who are working to overturn the theories and supports that justify the existence of almost every U.S. regulatory agency out there, from the Federal Communications Commission to the Environmental Protection Agency. This Libertarian-inspired movement isn't a trivial one; in fact it's cutting-edge legal theory. And it shouldn't be dismissed. It's strength – conscious or not – comes from an increasing common belief on both sides of the political spectrum that government cripples individual's rights. It can't be a coincidence that this belief is rising up at the same time that on-line activity – the ability, say, to IM someone in Beijing – is increasing individual's power to control their economic destiny. I know a little bit about this last part first-hand. You're reading the results.
The two ideas – the increasing interconnectedness of things and the belief that property rights are a personal right guaranteed by law – don’t seem connected at first blush if you don't live in Silicon Valley. But consider this: Tom Friedman, in the appearances I've seen to promote his new book "The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century"
Tue 01:59 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Only on Salon, where some days it feels the Liberals have lined the moat with alligators and pulled up the drawbridge can a guy like Glenn Harlan Reynolds – Instapundit to you – be billed a "prominent conservative blogger."
Not only that, he's willing to forecast the demise of the GOP. Oh, happy day!
Huh? "Conservative"? Compared to whom? Jesse Jackson? If anything, Reynolds is a pretty typical example of his class and upbringing: A moderately Republican son of the South – that "Harlan" says a lot if you know how to listen – it would be more surprising if his politics were, in fact, any different.
As good as Reynolds has been for my business – and it's plenty good, believe me – I'm not here to praise him or bury him. I'm here to make a few observations. His essay today on Salon pretty much convinced me that Reynolds – net savvy, not particularly ideological, impatient with the hard Right, exasperated by the far Left – is the, er, pundit doing the best job of articulating the political aims and interests of Progressive Libertarians.
Continue reading "InstaProgress"Thu 12:05 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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For those of us at the intersection of media and politics, it was a hell of a week. Big Media, the 1st Amendment and the on-line world have met; it ain't pretty. And a glance at today's New York Times hints at more ugliness to come as Big Media's credibility -- particularly television's -- circles the drain.
On Friday, a California judge ruled Friday that on-line writers violated the trade secrets act in publishing information about Apple Computer. Also Friday, a group of bloggers calling themselves the OnLine Coaltiion – banded together to ask the Federal Elections Commission to look at its rules and decide exactly how they're covered – or not – by campaign finance laws.
In the court case, the judge skirted the question about protecting on-line writers with laws that cover salaried journalists. It's an important omission. One the Online Coalition – their slogan, "From Left to Right, Preserve Our Rights,'' sounds familiar, no? – is attempting to address in another arena asking the FEC to grant them the same status as Big Media outfits. That, of course, will have the immediate effect – in the commission's rules anyway – of diluting Big Media's influence just as the judge's ruling lumping on-line writers with salaried hacks would dilute the power and influence of traditional media outlets.
All this played out against a background described – and in some ways influenced -- by Garance Franke-Ruta's piece in The American Prospect, drawing (inaccurately, I think) connections between the Dan Rather and CBS' Memogate, Eason Jordan's resignation from CNN and Jeff Gannon's White House accreditation.
There are a couple of fights going on here. They're overlapping, which makes it hard to trace their outlines. But let's try. But first let's work from an understanding articulated by that great sage, Pogo. The enemy is indeed us. Many on the Left – particularly that section that thinks of itself as "progressive" – don't like to admit that Liberal Democrats are this country's establishment. For all his rebellious mannerism, Steve Jobs is a member of this establishment. So is Dan Rather. Eason Jordan probably counts, too. For a variety of reasons having to do with my schooling and work history, I am, too. So is Garance Franke-Ruta. And there's a cozy relationship between our nation's political and media establishments. Much to my satisfaction, it's in the process of being blow apart but many, many people feel very, very differently. John Kerry's failure to win the presidency is the most glaring sign we've had so far. This back and forth over whose a "journalist" is the next step in this conflict as the nation's political and corporate establishments attempt to defend their turf.
That's why Apple Computer has gone to court to try and define "reporter." The obvious purpose of its lawsuit is to intimidate the hordes of on-line writers who cover the company and its charismatic CEO Steve Jobs into toeing the party line. But it's suit has the extra attraction of trying to define what is and isn't journalism. That's important for large companies long accustomed to dealing with Big Media and its cheerful handmaiden Corporate PR. Apple – and it should surprise no one that a computer company is cutting the path here – is trying to find out if it has to take all those on-line voices seriously and, if it does, it wants to know just how far it can push them. It would be better for big companies, better for Big Media and Corporate PR, if a court says the on-line world doesn't matter; that it has no rights. That way, Big Media can keep its relationship with Corporate PR and Big Companies intact. Nothing changes.
Just as it would if the FEC kept ignoring on-line writing. But instead, one member of the commission has shown a spotlight on blogging in an attempt to start a conversation about overturning existing campaign finance law. He's got company. Some of the Online Coalition's more conservative and libertarian members -- who also don't like the latest campaign finance reform legislation -- are hoping debate on this issue creates enough confusion and discontent (good old, FUD: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) to get the law over-turned or substantially modified.
Continue reading "The Mirror Crack'd"Sun 10:36 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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In the past week, two different writers, from two different political perspectives – The National Journal's Michael Barone and The New Republic's Franklin Foer – have traced the outlines of 21st Century politics, writing good, clear essays that lay out some of the ground ahead. But for the tech-savvy among us – that's you and me – both pieces fall a bit short.
They give short-shrift to the rise of immediate electronic communication and its long-term impact on politics. They offer an East Coat view of the world that looks not at the changes that are occurring but at the symptoms of those changes and their effect institutions that, for many of us outside Washington, have less and less relevance every day.
Barone, a moderately conservative Republican, is living proof that political biases don't make bad political reporting. His bi-annual "Almanac of American Politics"is a useful and smart combination of the Koran, Bible, Talmud and political "Hints from Heloise" that every beat reporter whose ever hung a Senate Press Gallery dogtag around her neck relies on for basic information and pointers. To say it's invaluable is an understatement.
So the introduction to this year's Almanac which ran in last week's National Journal, is worth everyone's time. Barone talks about the death of the Democratic party as a national institution but he smartly traces the history of that demise citing the use of well-managed networks in politics. Management of these networks – where the Republicans currently triumph, that's how they won – is how politics will be played in this century, says Barone. He's kind of right.
Continue reading "Uneven Distribution"Mon 12:39 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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For the past week, there's been a really interesting debate going on between Ryan Sager, the folks at the National Review and some of the bloggers from CPAC about the intersection of the libertarian and conservative movements.
Sager filed a long and interesting column up at Tech Central Station saying, in essence, that the far right has abandon its roots as a small-government-loving, non-interfering entity. "Make absolutely no mistake about it: This party, among its most hard-core supporters, is not about freedom anymore. It is about foisting its members' version of morality and economic intervention on the country. It is, in other words, the mirror image of its hated enemy."
Continue reading "Catching Up: CPAC Edition"Fri 10:16 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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There are a few things that have come in over the past week that serve as handy reminders of why this site continues to be worth your time. No, it's not the regular posting schedule, I'll give you that (last week I was plagued by some pesky technical glitches on Wednesday and Thursday). No, it's the timeliness of the coverage and commentary.
First up, Joe Klein's column in last week's Time, "The Incredible Shrinking Democrats." Here's the graph that caught my attention:
Continue reading "Why You Read: Catching Up Edition"Mon 07:50 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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It is getting harder and harder to ignore the coming split between labor unions and the Democratic Party. The split has started in California cities where hairline fractures are becoming cracks and it's going all the way to the top of the ticket.
When all is said and done, there's a good chance that the Golden State may not be a reliable Democratic stronghold because it is labor that provides Democrats with money and muscle during elections.
The signs are pretty much everywhere. But let's start in San Francisco, long home to some of the West Coast's most powerful unions. First, despite it's pre-Christmas strikes, the union lost its bid to make all contracts with San Francisco's hotels run on the same national timetable.
Continue reading "Fading Unions"Mon 12:35 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Progressive libertarians of California, your moment is at hand. Make that moments. And if you're a tried and true California Democrat – as opposed to being a business-oriented moderate with a fiscally conservative streak -- you might want to pay careful attention to some of the strands blowing in the wind.
It's gonna be make or break for California Democrats this year. And, from the press accounts, it seems like they know it. The party that's been running the state – they run the legislature – is facing an opponent who is popular, savvy and ruthless. Oh, yeah, and he's an international movie star, too.
Here's the state of play:
Continue reading "Operation Stop Arnold"Wed 10:33 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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My growing disdain for the term "progressive" as a euphamism for "Liberal" knows fewer and fewer limits. Being a creature of Columbia University's American History department, I regard "Progressives" as important – but politically moderate – movement that served to create the underpinnings of the current (and now dying) Democratic Party. I am, it seems, almost alone in this and every time I write about "Progressive libertarians" someone writes in and reminds me.
Continue reading "Liberal Minded Thinking"Tue 11:48 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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There's been a lot of talk on the web thanks to Doc Searls' kind words and pointers about the piece below. So let me make a few clarifications. These are questions that have come up before.
Progressive libertarians are not a political party. They are a political movement that's already well underway and it is very much an open question which political party will get their energy, money and thinking. It's easiest to see here in California where we have a governor who embraces the idea of bipartisan co-operation. Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't much of a partisan player; he'd rather schmooze the opposition to death or play movie star and stomp 'em. And while, yes, he's called the Democrats "losers" – which is, by the way, technically accurate – he has a number of 'em in his administration. Other politicians who think like he does include Silicon Valley's Steve Westly , a Democrat, who supported the unsuccessful open primary measure, Steve Poizner, the Republican who ran for the assembly in the valley and Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, whose relationship with the San Francisco's business community is strained but not broken.
Continue reading "Who You Calling Progressive?"Thu 09:37 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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It's been a week and Democrats are in full self-pity mode. This being the party of Bill Clinton, former self-justifier in chief, it could last a while. Enjoy the peace, an all-party civil war is on the way.
Barring a miracle of reconciliation and the complete departure of the family Clinton from the Democratic Party, leadership will spend the next few years in the Democratic WayBack Machine. Hillary Clinton is positioned to claim the party's nomination for 2008. Word is that Harold Ickes, one of her close advisors, will take over the Democratic National Committee replacing Bill's close friend, Terry McAuliffe. McAuliffe, of course, is the guy who engineered the bruising early primary schedule that gave us a seemingly never-ending campaign season.
Continue reading "Red On Red. Blue on Blue"Tue 10:32 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week's eWeek column is about a very important article that's in this month's Harvard Business Review, "America's Looming Creativity Crisis" by Richard Florida. The HBR is – after its own special CEO-level version of a sex scandal -- making a play to be seriously serious without being stuffy. It's working.
This piece also marks Florida's solidifying his reputation as the consultant/professor/wise man most likely to fill Peter Drucker's shoes as the guy who knows what's going on in this century. He's got a new book coming out next year, a consulting business and, one suspects, a very hard-working PR team. I'm normally a little suspicious of trend-spotters like Florida. He created a trend with his first book, finding his creative class and now he's worried they'll go away. But this is an important set of insights.
Continue reading "Floridian Predictions"Thu 12:08 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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It’s not often that you can feel the gentle breeze turn into the winds of change but there were some indications of that Friday night at the Full Circle Fund’s “Full Impact Forum” up on Lone Mountain in San Francisco Friday night.
Full Circle – yes, they’re an advertiser – has long been a gathering place for folks who believe that ChangeTheWorld 2.0 should be political and civic involvement. As you know, ChangeTheWorld 1.0 was that thing we call the Internet which, not coincidentally made many of these people very wealthy. Lots of them are business-savvy and well-educated and most of them are young and many of them are well-intentioned. They may call themselves Democrat – most are likely they say they’re independents – but they’re really Progressive Libertarians.
Continue reading "You Don't Need A Weatherman"Mon 09:27 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week’s New York Times magazine letters column had some interesting reactions to David Brooks' essay on reforming the Republican Party. It's Worth reading for those of you who think this Progressive Libertarian idea I keep touting is for real. I got company.
Three self-proclaimed Liberals wrote in to praise Brooks and one reader who sees the foundation of a new third-party in his proposal. Now, that’s what I like to see. Reader participation and follow-through.
Mon 11:35 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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For much of the summer, Micah Sifry and I have been going back and forth on the future of the Democratic Party with me warning that the new, tech-savvy young and wealthy folks currently getting into politics might be a lot more conservative than what East Coast Liberals like Sifry are used to.
Tue 10:48 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Sunday’s New York Times magazine showcased efforts to restructure – reform is too broad a word – the Democrat Party; the work of that group I call “Progressive Libertarians.” But it also featured a big story about what’s important to tech folks: Stock.
Writer Matt Bai focuses on fundraising efforts by folks like Silicon Valley venture capitalist Andy Rappaport, New Democratic Network and its cadre of eerily aggressive fund-raisers, financier George Soros and insurance billionaire Peter Lewis. It’s a follow-the-money story, talking about efforts to rebuild the Democratic Party that only really touches on where the party might be heading. Over on the front page of the business section, Gary Rivlin takes a little nibble on that same territory, talking about TechNet’s efforts in Congress over stock options.
Continue reading "M. R. Democrats?"Mon 07:31 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Micah Sifry and I have gone back and forth on this topic so it feels a little bit like overkill to call attention to the New York Times’ attempt to classify political parties by their software preferences. But hey, you can never have too much clarity on these things.
Mon 07:58 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Finally, finally, someone has gotten around to doing a quality profile of Gov. Terminator. The July 28 issue of The New Yorker has the best, most intelligent treatment of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s life, his political ambition and his marriage to Maria Shriver that you’re likely to see. It’s an important piece, not just for what it says but how – and where – it makes its case.
It took someone who isn’t cowed by and who understands the power of celebrity – as it’s used in and outside Hollywood -- to really look at the governor. Connie Bruck, known for her savvy and well-reported books on Drexel Burnham, Time Warner creator Steve Ross and Hollywood power broker Lew Wasserman knocks another one out of the park with her piece on Schwarzengger.
Continue reading "A New Kind of Politics?"Mon 03:54 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Once again, California Controller Steve Westly is taking a beating from fellow Democrats. They’re trying to slam the door on his attempt to revive the state’s open primary.
Westly and former LA Mayor Richard Riorden are behind a ballot initiative to allow voters to cross parties in a primary election. It’s one of those “may the best candidate win,” ideas that Progressive Libertarians like Westly are so fond of. With good reason, of course. The idea here is to get more people into voting booths. One way to do that: Make voting easy and interesting and less partisan.
Tue 04:57 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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In his response to my response – we’re going to stop with this, I think – Micah Sifry reminds me why I’m a happy Liberal. Optimism. Faith in the future. All that gooey stuff that conservatives dismiss as pie-in-the-sky. Deep down – shhhhh! Don’t tell anyone – I actually believe most of it. But, unlike Micah, I think that many of the pressures being brought to bear -- less job security, a falling standard of living for many in the middle class, disappearing health care and other social services -- encourage a go-it-alone philosphy. That's, I think, what's happened here in California and it's why Progressive Libertarians are a native species.
Fri 09:45 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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My new best friend Micah Sifry writes in to nicely give me a hard time about Tuesday’s post about the lack of good ideas in the Democratic Party. “There’s no thesis or theme uniting Democrats, anymore and no one seems to be looking for one, either,” I said.
Thu 01:16 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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There a few trends bubbling around in California politics that are worth noting and today seems like as good a day as any to do so.
First, check out Mark Simon’s piece in Monday’s San Francisco Chronicle about Steve Poizner’s race for the 21st California Assembly district. Poizner’s a Republican – a rich Republican, having sold one of his companies for some only-in-Silicon Valley lump of cash that’s funding his political career.
Continue reading "Hearts and Minds"Thu 11:26 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This entry was also posted over at The Blogging of the President
Today is the 98th anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake as convenient a metaphor as any for the thinking I’ve been doing in response to two provocative posts, pointed out and dissected by Matt Stoller. In separate essays, Peter Levine and Mark Schmitt took hard and not particularly sympatheic looks at American Liberalism and Democratic Party politics. The ground is moving underneath our feet.
Continue reading "Bend It. Shake It. Break It."Sun 05:56 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Author Michael Lewis has long argued, with most in Silicon Valley, that stock options encourage loyalty since they give employees a stake – sometimes a marvelously lucrative stake – in the place where they work.
For a while, they do. But there’s a downside for giving away all that stock. It encourages employees to think of the own net worth (measured in stock, which we should all know by now is no measure of good management) as their sole motivation. That thinking was encouraged in a host of ways. Back before the 'net, Silicon Valley companies used to post the day’s opening price on little sign board at their reception desk. Technology’s only made that sort of contemplation an hourly event and it’s not the sort of thinking that keeps people around unless thing are going well. Instead, it makes them wary – cautious almost to a fault – about any fluctuations in their employers’ fate. It makes them obsess about Wall Street, where their financial fates are really decided. It turns them into amateur Henry Blodgets, selling to the outside, dumping on the inside.
People working for stock want to know that the time they’re spending will be well – if not fabulously – rewarded. If it’s not, they’re gone. The return on their investment – the ROI – isn’t sufficient. And be sure of this: The folks who leave for better pastures don’t waste time looking back and they can be scathing in their reviews of what went wrong. One thing is almost always clear, however: It wasn’t their fault. Someone else is to blame.
Well, that thinking is now seeping outside the valley. Take New York Times reporter Amy Harmon’s piece yesterday about Geek anger over viruses. This is probably what (still) passes for quaint humor at the New York Times which is amused at the contempt Geeks are showing toward the not-so-technical. They’ve tried, the poor Geeks, but all this helping and explaining, well, it’s just a time sink. If people are too stupid to learn, you can’t help them, can you? If they can’t learn to spot a simple virus – it’s an attachment for crying out loud! -- well, that’s their fault. If they can’t see what’s going wrong and how they need to get out of the way – well, to hell with them. Anything more is a waste of time.
Want another example of this thinking: Network Solutions dumping the Washington Post off its own URL. Me? I bought this url for the next five years or so. Because I know. But the guys at the Post, well, they probablly figured they were a good customer. Or a big newspaper. Maybe somebody'd use the phone and, like, call? Ha!
The same sort of thing’s happened with the Dean campaign. When Dean failed to win his initial contests, the Geeks couldn’t get off the bus fast enough. Once Joe Trippi was fired -- or they found out he was making money, it's hard to tell which was more important -- they ran for the doors and they ran fast. Partly they can’t stand the embarrassment of being “wrong,” of picking a not-so-successful pol in what for many was their first go at organized politics. Partly they were following Trippi because he “got it,” which Silicon Valley speak for being in agreement. They’re defensive about leaving, too, which is natural. But they’re also looking for people to blame (and they have every right to blame the national press) which isn’t. But they’ve left Dean. He’s a loser. There’s no ROI on Dean any more. And his "Wisconsin or nothing" message is getting them even more anxious to leave.
This isn’t an exaggeration. One of the things that was so very annoying about the Dean campaign coverage was the emphasis on the “belief” factor. There was plenty of it. But where’s the story on the disengagement? A story talking about the self-administered application of corporate think among some of Dean’s staunchest supporters, particularly those on the web? For many of these guys, sunk costs are sunk costs, it’s time to cut the cord and move on to the next gig. There’s a lot of that going on here. And there’s going to be a lot more of it as the independent minded entrepreneurial thinking that brought you the 1990 Internet Stock Boom keeps going, spreading East from me to you. These guys are fickle and the ‘net gives them the power to move and move quickly.
There’s a lot to be said about the political, social and philanthropic reforms that Progressive Libertarians want to enact: a better run, more efficient non-profit community, municipal governments that actually function. But their anxiousness to move on when things go their way – exactly their way – isn’t one of them.
Fri 01:49 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Someone asked me at a party last week who I’d pick to run Wal-mart, pointing out that the company’s economics -- $2.2 billion in sales, a market cap of over $225 billion with 1.2 million employees in the U.S. alone – make it, economically speaking, a small country.
My nominee? Ralph Nader. I was promptly chastised for my bad judgment. As president of Wal-mart, Nader would be terrible for the company’s bottom line. Well, I said, that’s the idea.
Wal-mart certainly behaves as though it’s a sovereign nation, one not subject to the usual laws. Wal-mart talks to customers about supposedly ethical behavior – it won’t sell some kinds of racy magazines or videos or music that violates its ‘family values’ standards, for instance – but doesn’t seem too bothered by the idea that it should comply with U.S. laws when it comes time to compensate its employees.
The allegations of illegal behavior just keep coming.
Wal-mart’s being sued in several states for failing to pay workers for over-time and, in some cases, for time worked. It’s wages run about $6.50 a hour for most rank and file and there are additional reports or workers going without breaks (mandated by law) or being forced to clean up stores – after they’ve closed – off the clock. Wal-mart denies the allegations and is fighting them in the courts. A few months ago, raids at several Wal-marts across the country turned up allegations that many of the janitors working at the stores were illegal aliens, paid well below minimum wage. The company says it knew nothing about illegals, blaming the sub-contractors it hires for cleaning. On Sunday, The NYTImes, ran a front page story about the stores’ policy of locking employees in stores for the evening. Wal-mart said it only did this in “high crime” neighborhoods – about 10 percent of its stores – for its worker safety. That makes you wonder how stores managers didn’t know that janitors – who normally work at night – were illegal. But, more seriously, it calls up images of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, a famous, turn of the 19th century fire in New York where girls sewing shirtwaists were killed as fire swept through their factory. The site of young girls jumping from windows to escape the first and smoke – fire escapes and other exits doors had been locked to keep the girls at work -- haunted many witnesses. Public outcry led to the creation of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and caused a series of reforms – building code inspections among them – in New York City where the factory was located.
But it’s hard to see any sort of movement coalescing around Wal-mart, isn’t it?
Why? Business-like thinking has simply over-taken every aspect of American life. In these “brand of you” days, it seems, everyone is a businessperson with an eye on the bottom line. That thinking helps places like Wal-mart. And it hurts employees. Take a look at the long-standing grocery store strikes in Southern California. Workers aren’t picketing the front of the stores – where customers’ enter – they’re just protesting at the loading docks. Unions say that’s because they don’t want to “confuse” customers. More likely, it’s because they realize they won’t get much sympathy, something unions have traditionally relied on when it comes to picketing.
What’s worse is that Ralph Nader, an aging Lefty if there ever was one, is the only public figure who regularly criticizes the Wal-mart mentality. And Nader, for all his good intentions, doesn’t have any new ideas that set what could be a new agenda of the Left apart from the old, tired, agenda of the Left. It's a problem and it's one that can't be blamed entirely on the Bush administration.
A clue to how pervasive market-driven thinking has gotten was, by coincidence, provided by the NYTimes magazine on Sunday. In a piece – a book excerpt – writer David Shipler, talked about how one woman’s problems juggling her job and the care of her disabled daughter might have been easily resolved:
“Perhaps the most curious and troubling facet of this confounding puzzle was everybody's failure to pursue the most obvious solution: if the factory had just let Caroline work day shifts, her problem would have disappeared. She asked a supervisor and got brushed off, but nobody else -- not the school principal, not the doctor, not the myriad agencies she contacted -- nobody in the profession of helping thought to pick up the phone and appeal to the factory manager or the foreman or anybody else in authority at her workplace…it has never occurred to them, and second, it seems hopeless. Wages and hours are set by the marketplace, and you cannot expect magnanimity from the marketplace. It is the final arbiter from which there is no appeal.”
Mon 03:31 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Two very smart observations about how politics is changing appeared over the weekend.
Writing in the Washington Post, former Clinton Administration official Everett Erhlich wrote about the economics of information and they ways in which it has made politics easier. He gets directly at what's been missing from all the reporting about Democrat Howard Dean's campaign. And while he doesn’t flat out predict the creation of multiple political parties he gets very close, saying that at “third party” candidate – whatever that’s going to mean – could take the presidency in the next few election cycles.
Along those same lines Doc Searls provides some of the inspiration, er, “consulting” he’s been doing for the Howard Dean campaign on his site. Searls is a computer guy and a businessman who, more than most people in his world, seems to pay attention to politics and its mechanics. He, essentially, agrees with Ehrlich, although in different language.
Over at Slate, Mickey Kaus, has taken this to a new level and is soliciting possible nominees for “third party” candidates who might seek the White House. The latest? Warren Buffett. But Kaus is missing the forest for the trees. This isn’t about candidates, in the traditional sense, it’s about political action – that’s one thing the Dean campaign has over its rivals. Even the New York Times got that.
This all came along just as I was digesting an indignant note from the “Old Country,” -- you know it as Washington, D.C. -- where I lived worked and covered politics for many years. My friend was objecting to my tirade about the different ways non-tech people see Dean and his campaign. A reference to kool-aid was thrown my way.
My friend in Washington, a life-long institutional Democrat did a very good job of explaining – although he didn’t intend to – just how little understanding professional political people have of the mechanics of the web. They really do need someone to tell them what Friendster is and how Meetup works and why they're attractive (Friendster, sex; Meetup, convenience). My friend found the much-maligned piece in the New York Times magazine to be both sad and touching in that the people involved were using politics to connect with one another. He assigned pathos, I think, to a simple on-line reality: Sometimes when people correspond, they want to meet each other. He didn't seem to get that. On top of that, he said, there’s no community., there’s no place. How can anyone belong to something that doesn’t exist?
Well, as anyone reading this knows, you can and we do. But making that leap, peering into a screen and seeing friends and acquaintances, enemies as well as allies, requires a little understanding of how networks really operate, as webs, not as channels. And that’s not something you can explain by talking about some brand-name social networking group or even about the power of one political campaign to attract a crowd of young idealists.
I’ll give Searls the last word. It’s techno-speak. But you get the idea. It’s the many, he says, joined to the one. And they don’t need any one to tell them what to do to get together.
“The demand side now has the power to supply itself. That's the lesson of Linux, of "open source" everything, of peer-to-peer, of independent creators in everything from music to software, of the shift in media power from the few to the many, from the peerage of Big Network Powers to the peer-to-peerage of everybody with something worthwhile to contribute to the connected whole, whether it's a piece of music, a piece of code, an opinion, an observation, or a few bucks for a candidate. These developments are not opposed to business or government, but rather support both by providing more choices to the supply and the demand sides of marketplaces.”
Or, to borrow a phrase, the people, united, can never be defeated.
Mon 07:22 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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As soon as the dust settles here in San Francisco, the state’s political junkies will, once again, turn their attention to Gov. Arnold and his budget woes.
Schwarzenegger’s scuffling with the Democratic state legislature hasn’t gone well. He wants to put an initiative before voters authorizing a $15 billion bond measure as a way of managing the state’s massive debt. It’s an idea, let’s put it that way. And it’s one that’s going to draw some very funny lines, lines that are going to be important in the future.
Two men who would be Governor, Treasurer Phil Angelides and Steve Westly are on opposite sides of this issue. Westly, from Silicon Valley, Arnold country, has been cautiously supportive. Angelides, a traditional Democrat, thinks Schwarzenegger’s plan is a bad idea.
Watch this space. These guys are playing for keeps and their contest could very well turn into another fine illustration of the ways in which the Democratic Party is remaking itself. It’s Westly, who more and more embodies the ideas of his fellow tech entrepreneurs, an independent but business-minded crowd of Progressive Liberatarians, versus Angelides’ traditional little guy v. goliath corporate interests.
A look at how high the stakes might become is in the Dec. 22 Fortune. Non-subscribers have to pay to read on-line, but this magazine in particular, with stories about Schwab and Google and the challenges both these influential San Francisco and Silicon Valley companies have ahead of them is pretty much required reading.
Sun 01:11 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Charles Schwab CEO Dave Pottruck has only recently seen the light and become a Democrat. And he’s making more sense than most business people do when they get in the game.
Pottruck, opening up an all-day San Francisco meeting of the New Democratic Network made a pretty interesting observation about the nexus of politics and business. There’s plenty of criticism of the way the political parties play up to corporations and it should change, he said, because what looks like economic incentives to one group is corporate welfare to another. But, says Pottruck, everyone likes small business. Maybe that’s how the Democrats can find a way into the hearts and minds of people who make money.
Bingo!
This is one of the blindingly obvious ideas that slipped right past the room of policy and wannabe policy wonks. It shouldn't have. Pottruck has a good point. Small businesses are treated, by Washington, as if they were large established corporations. That one reason it’s been so hard for Silicon Valley to get Congress to see things its way on stock options. It’s all greedy pigs at the trough. But most tech companies begin life as small businesses. The term entrepreneur, like all French words in English, is for people who have been successful and want to chi-chi up their roots. In what’s looking more and more like a nation of freelancers (okay, so I’m projecting -- you would, too, if you saw my insurance and tax bills), a little tax reform for the self-employed (who are also small businesses) is long overdue.
The NDN is fertile ground for this sort of thinking; if anyone’s going to embrace the way business people think and move that perspective into politics it’s some of the people who help fund this thing. Guys like Pottruck and venture capitalist Brook Byers, state Controller Steve Westly, Garrett Greuner, the venture capitalist who ran for governor, and political force-in-the-making Craigslist Craig Newmark.
NDN, has moved a bit to the left since praising Joe Lieberman as the guy who could solve Democrats problems. These days it’s all Howard Dean, blogging and the Internet – you can’t say these guys don’t know a trend when they see it roll by on the highway. But the ideas this very small and very earnest crowd is noodling aren't without merit. They’re Progressive Libertarian and they may well be a way to solve the Democrat’s problems with business and the problems tech people – who are the nation’s new rich – have with Republicans.
Sat 01:26 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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The Wall Street Journal’s David Bank is on to a very good story. Do you think he knows it?
In today’s paper bank is talks about how financier and philanthropic reformer George Soros and hard-nosed philanthropist and drug-law reformer Peter Lewis are backing MoveOn.org, the Berkeley-based, computer-money-financed political organization that’s looking more and more like a well-financed political machine. That’s not the insult you think it is. Mechanics get people elected. Just ask Howard Dean’s Campaign Manager Joe Trippi.
MoveOn’s desire to change politics as we know it, Lewis’ bottom-line oriented attitude toward philanthrophy and Soros’ unrepentant rich-guy’s bossiness, are another example of how Progressive Libertarians are changing politics. They’re changing philanthrophy, too (which, in this country is pretty close to politics), taking a organized, step-by-step business-plan like approach to the world around them.
What Sorors, MoveOn and Lewis aim for isn’t that different form what Craig Newmark is up to. It feeds the privacy reform stuff that eLoan’s Chris Larsen has been steadily promoting. It’s fueling, if not encouraging, political performance pranksters like John Gilmore.
And these millionaires are just getting started.
Tue 12:08 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Progressive Libertarians, those socially liberal business-conscious types who have entered politics flush with Internet Bubble cash, are about to rack up a big political victory.
Their privacy bill is gonna pass the state legislature. Helped in part by an endorsement from soon-to-be-ex-Gov. Gray Davis, scrambling, as he does so well to keep his job, big banks have cut a deal with privacy advocates. Their leader eLoan CEO Chris Larsen had pledged $1 million to put the measure on the Spring ballot (Californians, we can't vote enough). A pretty sizable threat given the number of people who have signed for the state and federal "do not call" lists to keep telemarketers away.
Larsen's politics weren't purely personal. There was, as there almost always is with these guys, a business angle (think stock options). Larsen, a big Demoratic Party contributor, was joined in his fight by the on-line likes of Craigslist Craig Newmark and other Geeky business types who think -- sincerely -- that the information they give their credit card companies shouldn't be used to sell them mortgages or car loans. Larsen's independent loan company doesn't have that option, unlike Wells Fargo, BofA or Schwab, all of which spent millions opposing the measure, so he was against it.
The privacy campaign has been jeered at in a number of quarters but as business-like as the privacy initiative is, Larsen's tapped the same vein Presidential candidate Howard Dean is after: People who hate politics and think, as Davis has just proved by jumping on board at the last minute, that politicians only look after their own butts.
Mon 04:21 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
