What Is Going On?

Comments (Archived):

1. failure to teach that change is the nature of life and the world.

   1. so many people fear changebut once they experience it, it is liberating in many casessome people are destroyed by changethat is sad

      1. You will find, getting down to it, the parents of kids just want to know what direction to push their kids looking at the future as 10 years from now.

         1. That may be what the majority are doing, but that’s certainly not gonna happen in my household.Instead I’m just going to try throw as many things at them as I possibly can and then let them figure out what they like and are good at.Right now it seems the oldest one wants to be a princess. Anyone know a 5 – 8 year-old prince, who hasn’t been promised to anyone yet?

            1. Ha!  Very good. 

         2. Up. I always push up.

2. Yes, entitlements can be an issue for companies.  However, there needs to be something, someone, anything that can assist in providing the humanistic benefits those entitlements provide.  For instance, health care for profit is not sustainable.  If we could somehow, someway have cheaper healthcare as part of the social contract of our citizens then businesses could be freed of that particular burden.Unionism was in place to product workers from corporate greed/hubris.  But what is to protect the workering person now?  The government?  There has to be a check in place.

   1. the whole idea that companies pay for health care is nuttywe should never have gotten off on that foot in the first place

      1. In my first company it was trivial to cover health care for employees. The best plan, “all you can eat use any doctor, no pre approvals” cost only $65 per employee. They don’t even sell this plan today. It covered everything and there was no deductible etc. It was an easy benefit to provide. 

         1. My point was that when companies started providing health care benefits there was no way to know that the cost was going to escalate like it did. It was reasonably priced and didn’t go up much every year actually.  It cost about .39 per hour worked per employee. Today that cost is about $3.60 per hour per employee. Back then you might have paid $7 to $10 an hour for (our) labor. Today that labor cost is maybe $12 to $18 per hour in that industry.  (My numbers are from memory for the labor cost by the way..)

   2. Why do you say that health care for profit is not sustainable? I understand that the system you have now in the US is not perfect, but making that sector public as we have in Europe is not a great solution either… If you prevent people in health care doing profit then innovation stops.

      1. It’s a good point about innovation. The rest of the world often free rides on the R&D and innovation conducted in the U.S. and financed by U.S. consumers. Canada’s “cost plus” drug pricing is one example.That said, there are huge inefficiencies in our system, driven in part by enormous government spending on health care entitlements, an astonishingly large percentage of which is estimated to be lost to fraud.

         1. I wonder how to kill the fraud and entitlements….

            1. I would imagine technology could help in this case. I wonder if there’s anything like credit card fraud detection possible for health care? From what I know, the health care system seems woefully behind the times when it comes to this type of detection.

            2. Supposedly, Sam Palmisano of IBM offered a technology solution to reducing the fraud in government health care spending but was rebuffed. 

            3. Figures…

            4. “Plausible deniability” is a key phrase in such discussions. Technology does not fix problems that are not technological in nature. Having a machine provide the likelihood of a transaction being fraudulent would only make the political problem worse when you could not act on this information efficiently.If you could not shut these guys down – http://newyork.cbslocal.com… (they got an injunction) what use would a Watson hand-delivered by Palmisano do?

3. “65 percent of today’s grade-school kids may end up doing work that hasn’t been invented yet.”From an article in the NY Times in August on education.Remarkable number. Equally remarkable is that this was true for my generation as well. Makes me think that the changes coming are equally as big, no bigger, then what has come before.Change is good. It amazes that we don’t embrace it.Article here:http://opinionator.blogs.ny…

   1. this is why we need to hack education

      1. It’s a nice trough for the ed tech industry, but there doesn’t seem to be so much ROI for taxpayers: “In Classroom of Future, Stagnant Scores”.

         1. The reason I’m going into that realm Dave is because many are fighting claw, tooth and nail to keep things in the same left/right debate.It isn’t that you get better scores if you give kids all of the tech possible, but how you use it.  A child who missed out on vocabulary by 4th grade is going to go under the bus.  A child who has to use calculator for 3×3 is never going to advance above a modified math (creative).Currently, the tech espoused has not much to do with forward looking curriculum… just toys in the eyes of kids.  For the kids who are falling behind, a toy that is payoff for them to stay in the babysitting room.I know there are some who don’t want me to box myself in, but it will take a tool that offers the instructor the ability to do more, doing so in a way that is affordable to the bigger swath of school districts.  Then you can make a difference and allow the continued spending on stadiums and so on.

            1. I’m not anti-toy when learning (we know playing for kids helps them learn). It is does the kid do the heavy lifting vis a vis the toy or the toy does the heavy lifting for the kid?I’m all for the first approach, the second doesn’t appeal so much to me.

            2. Don’t worry, the former.  Actually the equation is:Instructor >< Tool >< Student where both sides are aided.  It is the only way to enlarge the pool when we get to JH and HS moving into critical thinking that involves understanding of formula.At this moment, we’re putting some pieces together for the first step that will lead over into Education/Therapy/Higher Learning… you’ll love it!

         2. The testing systems that evaluate the kids need to be hacked first.  There is plenty of research to suggest those test are biased (racially, gender, economically) and are based on an old, frankly, industrial way of thinking.  Not to sound like a broken record, but technology in the classroom won’t do anything if kids aren’t taught critical and creative thinking – not currently a focus in most public school systems that are mostly focused on multiple choice test scores.

      2. was just going to say that — critical and creative thinking vs. route – it’s a MASSIVE shift for the education system where illiteracy rates are still shockingly high.  

4. We are crossing a huge chasm from an industrial society to an information society.That’s a common statement, but I don’t think it’s quite true. We’re still enormously reliant on industry. The problem is that we’ve outsourced so much of it over the last couple of decades, and with it, millions of good-paying jobs. And at the same time, we’ve welcomed millions of immigrants, the vast majority of whom are job seekers, not job-creating entrepreneurs.To ignore the effects on jobs of the outsourcing of industry and the swamping of the weakened job market with immigrant job seekers is to participate in what Michael Lind recently called “the intellectual collapse of the left and the right”.

   1. tom evslin has a great post up today about “america’s next industrial revolution”http://blog.tomevslin.com/2…

      1. Thank you.

         1. it was the perfect next read. and it put a jump into my step yesterday too.

      2. Thanks for the link, looking for some morning optimism. It’s not often that the bartender tips the regular :). Maybe we should call quality links a buy back.

      3. Thanks for the link.  Here’s another front @tevslin:disqus and @daveinhackensack:disqus … http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/s…  

      4. I’ll check it out, thanks. 

      5. I read the post. Don’t have a comment on the post itself. But I thought Rick Bullotta’s comment on it made some sense, particularly in the later paragraphs of the comment.

         1. To be more specific, I mean the part of Rick Bullotta’s comment that starts thusly:”Somewhere along the way, we chose to starting interfering with nature – whether it be overusing our planet’s resources or intervening in the process of natural selection”And my viewpoint on his comment above: I think the US and Europe and other “developed countries” (***) are probably doing the most (in some smaller ways, like the EPA and related orgs and people) on those issues of stopping the overuse and abuse of our planet’s resources, but are also doing a lot (probably more) on the reverse and harmful side, and the developing countries are probably doing mostly a lot on the overusing (and harmful) side of things, and negligible amounts on the beneficial side.(***) I put the phrase “developed countries” in quotes (above) because I don’t think that _any_ country in the world is “developed” — enough ….. 🙂 Though a lot of things are good, there’s also a load of crap around – everywhere.

   2. Speaking from Canada (that Northern country that had bank regulation and accepts immigrants as a way of life) ….. The issue is that outsourcing (which brought greater profits to large corporations) is not going away.  That is the move from an industrial economy to an information one where different skill sets are valued.  Immigrants for the most part take low wage jobs that most middle Americans (and Canadians) wouldn’t bother with.  If over time they work themselves up from that to take a higher paying job, then i would say, they are doing a better job with less advantage than the other guy (or gal) … isn’t that what America is all about?  

      1. The American Dream is at the core of America.  What is happening right now is the attempted throttling of that dream through government intervention in picking winners and losers without any real expertise in doing so.The recent debacle of attempting to further green jobs by backing such companies is a perfect example.  In one example, over $500MM lost in a single investment.A flop sweat dead on arrival stinking carcass failure with funds advanced to a political supporter.It makes me want to puke.

         1. I’m pretty captialistic, but even I wonder if pure capitalism works.  I’m ok with the government investing in companies if they do so like VCs – knowing a company will fail.  I’m also ok if they do it for selfish reasons, such as bringing battery manufacturing back to the US (there has been a lot of discussion about this around the Chevy Volt).  You can’t be so innovative if you lose centres of manufacturing how to….

            1. Governments are intended to provide ONLY what cannot be provided by the people — defense, etc.When gov’t takes on the role of the private sector with tax dollars, it is no longer government.

            2. Amen! A link to the one and only Margaret Thatcher explaining that there is no such thing as public money but taxpayer’s money:http://www.youtube.com/watc…

            3. Sort of.  I think there is a roll for the government to regulate our common resources.  Otherwise we screw them up and cause more problems.Ex – Superfund and the EPA. People hate the EPA. They hate being exposed to toxins more.  Being exposed to Toxins is expensive (severe illness, your neighborhood disappears), even if it may be cheaper for the person who created the toxins….

            4. Why do you want Government taking money from citizens and investing it like a VC firm instead of letting citizens pick which VC firm they wish to invest through?  

            5. I want to do it the way we used to do it in the fifties (government money was invested by private managers) and the way Israel does it now (government money was invested by private managers). It is money, put it to work…..

         2. That is why educating the Angel is so important.  Politicians are not very tech savvy and will always be influenced by peddlers of the ‘next big thing’.  Not to downgrade green, for it is a matter of getting the CPU down to compete with what we’ve got going.To afford a more painless transition to the next frontier, we need to begin pushing toward automation enabling the people along with employer.  That is the only way to expand the pie.Currently, everyone is of the mind where the pie is only so big and will never be bigger.  This leads to folks trying to take someone else’s morsel.  Feeling defeated (the people) only increases the power of Buffet.In the end, if you replace Obama with someone else, they’ll simply shower your money on their supporter.  The only way to win is pushing innovation past the government.

         3. “What happened to the American Dream?””It came true. You’re looking at it.”http://www.youtube.com/watc…

         4. It’s unfortunate that the American Dream was far too tied to home ownership, a chimera brilliantly advanced by the finance, construction and real estate industries.  For what other category of consumable good can a consumer deduct all of the interest expense?  Yet, houses are not a good investment.  Historically, they appreciated appx 1% per year.  So, what we had was 100% of the citizenry subsidizing (via tax deduction) the percentage who purchased homes.  By what divine right did the house attain such exalted status?  Forget Madoff; this has got to be the best scam sales job in the history of economics.  “OK, here’s how it works.  You save up a bunch of money, then give it to us, plus another percentage for fees and other sales costs.  Then, for 30 years, you pay us an amount every month that buys you a house, and buys another of equal value for us in the form of interest expense.  (It’s OK, though; we’ll get John Q Public to reimburse you for that second house you bought for us.)  You pay to maintain and repair the house for 30 years.  It will appreciate about 1% per year.  Let’s see, on a $300k house, if maintenance and repairs cost about $3000/year, you basically break even, despite having your money tied up in the house for 30 years, earning nothing.  Here’s the best part:  When you sell it, you’ll pay another 6% sales fee, plus “points.”  That will eat up about 7-8 years worth of annual appreciation, or roughly 25%.”Without the tax-deduction subsidy from non-house-owning taxpayers, housing is the most absurd investment imaginable.  Yet it’s glorified incessantly — by those who charge the PITA.

            1. Real estate is cyclical and properly financed it can capture every penny of inflation for a long period of time. The financial leverage is real and includes all the costs you have enumerated. It is a part of the American Dream but it is not the entire dream.JLM sent from my iPad

      2. “Speaking from Canada (that Northern country that had bank regulation and accepts immigrants as a way of life)…”Canada has a more selective immigration system than the US. It’s also blessed with an enormous amount of natural resources (including oil) relative to its rather small population. So you’ve got that going for you.” Immigrants for the most part take low wage jobs that most middle Americans (and Canadians) wouldn’t bother with.”The number of jobs that Americans “wouldn’t bother with” would shrink if wages for those jobs would rise. Which would be the case if the supply of migrant labor for them dropped.

   3. As a trying-to-be-immigrant in search of a job instead of starting a new business (like I did in Spain), I have to say that it’s nearly impossible to do it the other way.There is a visa to start a company, but you need a lot of time (usually between 12 and 18 months just for the visa paperwork to be approved) and there are minimum investments not easy to achieve (a million in most places, half in some). Startup visa would make things easier for certain profiles/sectors, but not for all the others. And employment also happens in those sectors. Maybe that immigrant who gets a job would happily create a small business with no employees and then start hiring when he can afford it. But with current regulation that is not gonna happen.

      1. How’s mass immigration working out for Spain? Spain has one of the highest immigration rates in the EU. Is a coincidence that Spain also the highest unemployment in the Euro zone? 

         1. I don’t think immigration has been the key driver for unemployment here, but I can be wrong. Our main problem is that the country has been focused only on building houses for too much time. We sold them to Europeans and then to the low skilled inmigrants who were coming to build them. We were starting around one million units per year and our population is around 45 million!In 2007 we got to a point where no more houses were needed and prices began to drop. Then financial markets collapsed in 2008 and everything went to hell. Last year we started less than 100k new houses.We had a huge part of our working force in low skilled jobs related to construction and now they can’t adapt, be them immigrants or not. Also, we have few entrepreneurs in other sectors because construction or auxiliary industries had amazing returns, so restructuring economy is gonna take long, very long.

            1. Sounds like Arizona. 

            2. And Nevada, Southern California, and Florida. There are definitely some similarities between the Spanish housing bubble and the one here. And immigration played a similar role, in that many immigrants were attracted by the construction jobs.Spain is probably worse off on the immigration front: it’s easier for our immigrants (from Mexico and points south) to return home when jobs dry up, as some of them have. Many of Spain’s immigrants came from Sub-Saharan Africa which is a much tougher return trip.One stat, incidentally, highlights the extent to which our real estate bubble papered over the hollowing out of our economy: during the bubble, Las Vegas had the lowest unemployment rate in the U.S., at about 4%. Now it’s at 12%.

            3. @daveinhackensack:disqus (can’t reply directly)I don’t know well the other states cases, but Florida has been mentioned many times as a comparable case because our other big economic sector is tourism and we have many Europeans coming to retire here because of the weather.Regarding the countries our inmigrants come from, the biggests are Ecuator, Romania and Morocco. Sub-Saharan Africans appear in the media all time because they arrive crossing the sea and many drown, but they are a relatively small group.

5. People would rather see their industries burn to the ground than voluntarily give up long-entrenched entitlements.This won’t be a bloodless coup. Transformation will be messy.

   1. We hold on to the things dear to us far longer than reason would otherwise dictate.

   2. How many bloodless economic coups have you read about (I haven’t heard of one)

      1. I would argue Central/Eastern Europe.  You might say it was political — most people do — but it was as much economic. 

         1. Russia, the prototypical former USSR country, is very Oligarchic.  Are the rest less so?

            1. Definitely. Totally different.

   3. Unfortunately this is true.

   4. This sounds exactly like what the auto industry just went through.

      1. yes. that’s a good roadmap for a lot of other industries that will follow

      2. And Toyota still has a $4K cost advantage on every pick up manufactured in San Antonio.  You cannot excise half of a cancer and expect to get well.

6. The issue with USPS and other old-wave companies is not the fear of change. We all fear (and should fear) not the change itself, but the ambiguity of the next step.The issue is that they are afraid to experiment. The evidence from a minor experiment with a completely different business model in just one city, one region will _greatly_ reduce the fear of ambiguity and lay the way for bigger changes to come.USPS continues to look for a win-lose solutions with the unions, leaving the rest of the business unchanged. The unions see the management looking for ways to cut down on the labor costs much more actively than to increase revenues, so the unions fight back, rather than cooperate.The only way to persuade the unions to invest in restructuring and re-learning is to show some hard evidence from experiment with a new direction.

7. Immigration is not a problem.  In fact,  I’d argue,  we need more immigrants. We can handle it.  Innovation comes from more people thinking about it  More competition,  now is not the time to succumb to our natural native-ism 

   1. i agree that we need more immigrants, not lesswe have a developed world problem in the US and keeping the less fortunate out exacerbates it

      1. We need to get in place and enforce the right policies and then get the hell out of the way.We are all immigrants.  Some just got here a bit quicker than others.That is a strength not a weakness.

         1. There’s pie slicers, and there’s bakers. You my friend are a baker.

         2. It is essential that we are THE place that the world’s best and brightest want to land.That is the signal that we are on the upswing again.  But we’ve lost that.But it’s also more complicated than in the past.  Smart immigrants have more information than ever and they’re in touch with friends in different places who made different migration choices.  So the tricky thing is — we must be the hotbed of innovation.  But perception of quality of life must improve, too, to be attractive.  Outsiders have wizened to the notion that US quality of life (edu, health, etc.) has gotten shitty.

            1. +1 on being the place where the best and brightest want to land.Still true but hanging on for dear life.

            2. I totally agree with your sentiments as a body of logic but I think we are still THE place for action.  We — you and me — are too close to the problem.

            3. You’re quite correct, JLM. Most Americans are too close to possess a view similar to those from elsewhere. As one who spends a fair bit of time in S.E. Asia (have an apartment in Thailand, had an office there, etc.), how others view the U.S. is often quite different compared to how we see it with regard to the topic of this thread. It’s still a dream that many hold to “one day visit the U.S.”, or better yet live and work here.We have witnessed decline, for sure, but must not be complacent or sell-out our values. In my opinion, we’ve lost our way some and need to get back to the fundamentals that made this nation the deeply desired destination that it has been. Individual empowerment is key, not government entitlements. I’m hopeful (and determined) that we’ll right this ship – though with some knocks and bruises along the way.

         3. agreed

      2. Immigration is how we grow.I will say the Post Office situation is simply a union problem. Salaries are insane and 80% of expenses for employees is insane.Good bye Post Office — you tried to extort tax dollars for your employees. Now, it’s over.

         1. Brilliant and well played!

         2. I’m not sure you have your facts correct. The post office has pre-paid retirement benefits to the tune of 50-75 billion dollars for people that will retire in 30-40 years. They also continue to pay 5 billion a year to prefund future retires. Of course, that money isn’t available to the post office now because its been spent by our government on other things.Yes, the post office has high salaries and good benefits just like other corporations and real government entities. Remember the USPS hasn’t had any  had any income from taxes since around 1970. All income has come for goods and services. I think the usps just wants some of its own money back to pay the current expenses. Its also trying to downsize to meet current income levels.

8. Healthcare for profit is unsustainable in its current form in the US.  We pay more and get less.  Perhaps its the hybrid approach we’re using?  My point is, no one should be worrying about going bankrupt if they have to have major surgery.

   1. I completely agree about bankruptcies and health. That’s nuts. Unfortunately, I don’t see a perfect solution.By the way, cutting legal risks in American health care system would reduce costs hugely. Although it would create some additional unemployment among lawyers.

   2. The only route is two paths:1)  Work toward delivery of medical at lower cost.  There are some promising things happening on the Bionanotechnology front along with Robotics.2)  Though we like to stick with Left/Right debate, the fact is, we are single payer in the sense of ‘approved’ where limited uses get lists of accepted charges milking as many of those charges as possible from the hospital/extended to the guv paying for motorized wheel chairs.Something to think about, I’ll repeat this link http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/s…  regarding the electric engine measuring one nanometer.  Think about where we can go if we push, sooner than later…@fernandogutierrez:disqus 

      1. Great link!There are amazing discoveries in medicine all the time, but costs keep increasing. First you have to pay for the discoveries themselves. And then you have to pay for the next problem because the discovery just solved one issue and postponed the final issue (aka, death).

         1. I didn’t want to move the next path… longevity.  Then we’ll be talking of where to cut in order to fund a study on what to do with life expectancy of 120.The reason for increasing costs is both private and public money being thrown foolishly.  Though that is (& always has been) true, this decade will enable lesser costs due to acceleration. More people today can see the delivery of care on the nano side which will evolve over to trained biobots.  You match that with the eventual disruption in imagry, robotics and, of course, AI/AGI… we can have a Renaissance.When I say this decade, remember we’re only in ’11….

9. Yes technology is disrupting but really at a macro level it is exacerbating the problem that has been facing the US and Western Europe for at least 20 years and that is that the manufacturing base has been allowed to dwindle to nothing.OT: Mike Arrington has painted a bullseye on his own back so large that I can only think his skin must be made of kevlar.

   1. I would be shocked if Mike didn’t come out of this landing on his feet. Interesting to watch that guy work.

      1. Scoble’s post on G+ today was good.  Mike admitted that he thought of himself as an entertainer.  Pretty astute.

         1. Doesn’t matter if you speak the truth, as long as you keep ’em entertained.Many people live by this.  It works.  And in this regard Arrington is a master.

            1. The Emperors of Rome knew it and it’s just as relevant today

      2. of course he will come out on his feet. he’s an entrepreneur. and a good one.

10. I think a bigger problem for USPS is the inability to diversify its services and harness the advantage of its network and brand. Most “historical” postal service in the EU are offering banking and insurance services. The shops are selling a number of products, and in smaller areas they get fused with the local cafe, grocery store or bakery. Some of them are starting to integrate marketing/advertising operations leveraging their unique knowledge of the population.If USPS should be saved, then the first step is not renegotiating workers contract, but dropping the heavy regulations that constrain USPS.

    1. i think you have to do bothit’s like the fiscal problems the US hasit’s not either orit is both

       1. The inflation-adjusted price of a stamp hasn’t changed in decades, and it’s still at 1880 levels.  How is that possible while other transportation and freight and service rates fall in real terms?  The problem isn’t “information economy”, the USPS was an early foundation of that.  The problem is structure that can’t adapt to any change, small or large.  And that is caused by a governance dedicated to the interests of a particular constituency, rather than to service of a cliente or a mission.The USPS has _always_  been a political institution.  For decades the President’s chief political fixer was Postmaster General.  That was sustainable when its function was so incredibly valuable and irreplaceable that some revenue could be siphoned off into favors.  But that value has been eroding for decades, while the politics have prevented the organization from changing services and improving productivity and sizing to the service provided.Now that political model threatens the initial purpose of the institution.  Remote and rural and poor areas really do need the “universal service” model, and it really is an important national idea.  But now there is a real risk that the cost savings will hit them first because they don’t occupy the political center of gravity.They’re symbolic of a larger problem, but it isn’t industry vs information.  It is central planning versus customer focus.  We have accumulated a host of constituencies collecting little “rents” in various corners of the economy.  These were manageable when they were smaller, and U.S. productivity was massively ahead of the world, and there were tremendous growth opportunities in rent-free zones.  But now all those dimensions have moved against the model.  

11. The Hubble Space Telescope.I think of the industries not even yet conceived from this incredible American success.  I just hope they’re coming soon. 

    1. http://blog.tomevslin.com/2…

12. I don’t disagree with your conclusion, but I do think that the snippet you posted doesn’t show that the USPS is a good example of the problem.  It may well be that they have so successfully driven other costs out of their system that FedEx and UPS are way over spending on other costs – and maybe their healthcare plans put the USPS to shame.  Impossible to say based on your snippet, even if I suspect the truth lies somewhere in the middle.I rather think that a good chunk of the blame lies in other forms of regulation which constrain the USPS from pricing the way they should and from entering new businesses.  I just shipped a MacBook across the country and priced all the services; anyone else was nearly 3x the USPS cost, for identical (if not worse) service.  That’s nuts….and I’d like a good idea of how much cost shifting is being done by the UPS, FedEx, etc al, as well.  A lot of them are leaning on the USPS for last mile delivery.  Similar to private health care insurance, which leans on Medicare for insurance of the most expensive portion of the population, yet still charges much more for equivalent coverage.

13. Great Post! It could have been written by Carlota Perez! 🙂 

    1. i get to meet her this fall

       1. Her book, (which I’ve read thanks to ur blog) really gives huge insight on what’s going on.. 

14. Yesterday: economic prosperity would differ by region (and national politics could try to influence it)Tomorrow: economic prosperity differs by type of people/skills/industry regardless of where they are (harder to manage by national politics)The concept of the nation state is fading more.

    1. You are so right about nations. The concept is useful for many things, but the reality is that today we all have personal networks that trascend nations. We feel closer to people with whom we share interests or ideas, no matter where they happen to be, than to people with whom we only share a location.

       1. Work also cuts across borders. I work in Tel Aviv, but most of my clients are in the US. I cannot work in Seattle and serve a client in New York, but it is perfectly fine to do it from Tel Aviv.

    2. I completely agree with you when contemplating the 30-50years in the future time horizon.Right now, California and Texas have earned their outcomes with their policies.Almost identical in natural blessings (though I must give San Francisco the “no equal” trump card”), hugely different outcomes.Driven by policies and decisions made over the last 30 years.Proof positive, California is looking like the biggest source of legal immigration in the history of Texas and not that many folks can love BBQ, it must be the business environment and policies.

       1. “Creating” jobs by swiping them from another state only works for governors, not national leaders.

          1. Not sure that Hu Jintao agrees….

             1. If you want to make the US into China….http://twitter.com/#!/Beiji…

          2. Blaming Texas for that is like blaming Apple for the outcome of the HP TouchPad.You can’t blame Texas for competing well.

             1. Job creation and job relocation are not the same.Job growth within one state via relocation internal to the US will not work on the national level. 

             2. And by the way, I think job relocation will work fine at the national level. If jobs start flowing in from China or Europe, that will do the trick…

             3. Foxconn pays $168 US/month.You’re not going to compete with that.Unless you appeal to patriotism over capitalism.Apple is sitting on ~$80B in cash.Apple sells iPhones at north of 50% gross margin largely due to the fact that Foxconn employees get paid $168 a month.If Apple’s shareholders as a patriotic gesture were happy with say 20% margins and only 40B in cash reserves they could make iPhones in the US.But that will never happen.

             4. Again, much of the growth of Texas jobs is not relocation of existing jobs but rather a new division being started from scratch in Texas.California has a law which makes it very, very difficult to shut down a California division which has more than 50 jobs and move it anywhere.

          3. Fair and unfair — most of the growth in Texas is from companies sending their “growth” to Texas not their core employment.Amazon, Ebay, Apple, Samsung, Facebook, Google — not HQ units, new growth units.Bit of both.

       2. A lot of government energy is usually spend to boost poor performing regions, rather than fueling the economy in regions that go well

          1. Do they have a choice? If they want to keep a nation state together?

             1. Probably not

       3. As a Californian, I could not agree more.I love my state. If I had to move, it would be where Apple has put hundreds of employees….Austin, Texas.

          1. Aaron, look into my eyes, you are getting sleepy.  Get that ticket and come.  Come to Austin.  I live in Austin and I will pave the way for you.  You are getting very, very, very sleepy, Aaron.

             1. LOL +1

             2. Wife and I just discussed such a move over lunch.  If Texas doesn’t come to us, we’ll go to by-god Texas.  I am a natural-born citizen of that great State.

             3. You are not coming to Texas, friend, you are coming HOME!”The stars at night are big and bright…deep in the Heart of Texas!”

             4. ha!

             5. Haha, JLM is the Austin Chamber of Commerce Patron. ;)Like Aaron, I’m located in California, and have been for 26+ years. With colleagues from PA and NYC (and elsewhere) we’re looking at Austin to locate our startup. This nation has many great locations, but Austin has some wonderful characteristics. Obviously, it’s not a secret these days. Congrats. 

             6. Dale, look into my eyes,…

    3. It hasn’t completely, and I am not sure it will for a long time.  If I am not mistaken, you’re Israeli.   I’ve often thought that because of childcare rules there and health insurance rules, it would be easier to start a company than the US.  

       1. I am 50/50 Israeli/Dutch.Maybe it is easier here to start a company. Don’t know. I am based in Tel Aviv, but most of my output flows into the US economy. Most of my clients are there, most of my purchases are there (software).

          1. Therein lies the real power — without even knowing your nationality, I already respected and admired your intellect.

             1. Ooh, thank you for that compliment!I am not sure though whether there is a correlation between nationality and intellect.And if there was one, not sure at all whether it would apply to Dutch and/or Israeli people 🙂

          2. I’m just wondering what would happen to @Tereza:disqus ‘s company if she moved to Israel because of health care costs and childcare costs…

             1. START COMPANY IN COUNTRY FULL OF SMART PEOPLE WITH GOVERNMENT THAT PROVIDES PERFECT ENVIRONMENT FOR ENTREPRENEUR, THEN SELL BACK INTO UNITED STATES IS GOOD IDEA.BUT NOT SO GOOD FOR USA.

    4. Yes, Jan, the concept of a nation state is fading….With free markets the concept of nation is obsolete.  

       1. Well not completely obsolete, but on the decline

       2. Neither in decline alone nor obsolete — in competition.When ideas wrestle — compete — better ideas emerge.National pride has got to get into the game and compete again.  It cannot be taken for granted.Nobody is willing to die for free markets but they are still willing to don the uniform and die for America.

          1. so right JLM.My father, who was born in 1924, brought up during the Great Depression, fought in WW2, lived with rationing in the years after,  often reminds me that most people in the UK do not know what mass poverty is.  There are not many people left that have experienced what he has. He also thinks that it is those experiences of hardship that brings a country together.My father always purchased as many items that were manufactured in Britain as possible.  He would never buy a Japanese, French or German car.  The problem is that the UK doesn’t manufacture anything anymore, so he cannot choose to support UK manufacturing.In Britain we have lost all national pride.  US citizens are still the most patriotic in the world (although the French come a close second) I think that patriotism will eventually win through in the US and there will be a revival in the US economy.I’m hoping I can bring my family into the US and be part of that.

             1. @RichardForster:disqus   I know what you are saying.I have told you my brussels sprouts story at one time or another.

             2. The only time my dad will eat a token brussels sprout is with his lunch on Christmas Day.  For the very reason you’ve mentioned before.

15. The tough part is that politics will not solve this issue – with the current government attitude of slashing costs instead of supporting growth, I feel there is little Obama can accomplish in this effort.Watching ABCNews’This Week today, I was saddened to see how the Republicans were knocking what Obama could suggest (payroll tax reductions, extending unemployment benefits) but their argument was that business is looking for more tax breaks.What I would see is that Labor and Management needs to come together and discuss from a point of transparency and cooperation, instead of internal mistrust and zero-sum game.The Post Office has a major role in our society – and needs some level of renovation to find a positive resolution. Will business and labor come together here? I can only hope so.

16. There’s another turn of the screw here that makes Obama’s speech even that more pointless: our K-12 education system has been systemically failing kids for so long that we do not have a pipeline of qualified students trained in math and sciences to fill the job posts of today or tomorrow. These are jobs that look more like “knowledge work” than the manufacturing-intensive jobs that America thrived on through the 1960’s. I fear that the income inequality gap in the US, which is often compared to the likes of Mozambique, will only grow worse in the face of an upper class that has not only vastly more economic resources, but also educational resources. I fear for the job security of the educational underclass, who by no fault of their own, may be left out of the new land of technological opportunity entrepreneurs and VCs are seeing flourish every day.No solutions from me, but the point here is that strong structural issues are impossible to solve in the short-term, especially during election season. Obama will probably give it lip service and then pass the buck to the next guy in the Oval Office.

    1. Wealth is no longer measured solely in the form of money.The most significant measures of wealth are parental supervision and access to technology.While these correlate well with financial wealth they are also signposts which indicate where money should be spent — mentoring and access to technology.The wisdom of the campfire is passed along by sitting at the campfire with parents, siblings, grandparents — not hanging on the street corner with ne’er do wells.The kid — geeky kid — with the zits, braces and laptop is going to rule the world not the saggy pants guy with the potential NBA jump shot who gets diverted into the drug trade for a while.

       1. I sympathize with the geeky kid. However, one day the kid will discover she is not the new Zuckerberg, but more like the average geeky kid. The geeky kid will be liberated from industrial type companies, and will live on her own in the eco-system of some 21st century constellation of distributed companies. The slightly above average geeky kid one day will have more trouble concentrating and new smarter kids will do her job in a smarter, faster, better, cheaper way. Oh yes, the geeky kid had problems concentrating after finding out she suffers from some cancer. Being liberated from entitlement-systems, unions and industrial behemoths, the geeky kid lacks money for adequate care. But aren’t we all so very pleased in our new free market high tech fully distributed society? 

          1. Computing may over time make it cheaper to treat cancer…..

             1. How?  A computer can’t stick the needle in for your chemo juice.Tech can help determine doses, and I think many already do.  But the deliver itself is very low-tech and I’m not sure how that can change.Thing is, if your life is imperiled, you really do want to talk to a human.

             2. Actually, you’ll probably be talking to more humans if the way drug research on cancerns continues on the path it is going.The newest, blockbuster (or to be blockbuster) drugs work by interfering in the signal path that cause cells to grow or the signal path that prevents them from going.  Mistakes in these paths tend to come out of mistakes in the genome, which then get transcribed into the proteins you make.So not only do you need computers to do lots of comparisons on your genome and your cancer’s genome in order to determine what paths are malfunctioning, you also need a massive load of raw computing power to actually draw your proteins, and their correlating anti-protein. (because the new drugs work as “anti proteins” that stop the signal from functioning.  From what we know about proteins and their use in signaling, they work in a lock and key sort of mode – mess up the key or the key’s ability to get into the lock, you stop the cancer).We’re also finding out that our internal biome of the flora and fauna that live with us can great help us and inhibit cancer (or the reverse).  Their genomes and all their signal processing, proteins, etc, also need to be mapped. (need computers for that)Also, longitudinal studies of behaviors within families predisposed to cancer could point to other causes.  Computing power would be useful for running the math.By the time I get cancer, I’ll probably have had a lot of appointments with a genetic counselor to do drug matching as result of these changes….

             3. @ShanaC:disqus is right.  I’ve sent her a reply via google which I’ll just place here in case it doesn’t work:”True, but go to the link I’ve placed here a couple of places re the nanometer electric engine.  The next step is training on the molecular level (going beyond bots) where you have a demo crew and a lead/foreman that directs the rebuilding needed once tumor is gone. As we are in that period, the true proactive care will be something we can’t imagine at this point. Otherwise, we have the nano plus strides taken in growing organs.  Remember, the decade has just begun  ;)”

             4. @davewbaldwin:disqus  I didn’t get the message.I’m not so sure about the organ rebuilding. You run some serious risks with cancer plus organ building… (I mean, think about what cancer is, it is a type of cell growing because it went haywire.  All organ building is growing an organ in a similar method to cancer without it going haywire.)For someone like me, (I get to be in the rare camp that actually has to be worried about this stuff already.  And yes, I’m still on the very young side, doesn’t matter in my case), I’m honest most upset that a lot more money goes into PR efforts (primarily to normalize screenings) than pushing forward on preventive care.  By preventive care I mean – 1) Not just early screenings 2) Not tamoxifen treatment before cancer 3) not preventive cutting apart my body.  Something a little more cutting edge that actually works and doesn’t take apart your body and its processes…I hate the stress of this….

             5. IT TURN OUT EVERY MEDICINE WORK BETTER, WORSE, FOR EVERY HUMAN. CURRENT MEDICINE JUST CRANK UP DOSE AND HOPE IT WORK.COMPUTER READ DNA, TELL DOCTOR EXACT RIGHT MIX FOR THAT HUMAN, THAT DISEASE. IT WORK LOTS BETTER.

             6. Actually cure cancer… and if we push, achieve that goalpost sooner.

             7. Not quite – it seems that the outlook that could happens is that cancer becomes manageable, the way heart disease is.  You take your pill every day to stop your cancer, and you go about.  (unless the cancer mutates and the pill doesn’t work anymore) (I got that from the end of Interpreter of Maladies…great book)

             8. Grow up, folks.  BigPharma is in the razor blade business, not the laser permanent hair removal business.  BigPharma will never cure cancer or any other major disease, and they’ll likely acquire any promising technologies or therapies and put them in cold storage.  What possible interest could they have in curing cancer?  They’re in the lifetime-maintenance, treat-the-symptoms business, and cancer is the ultimate cash-cow.According to VisionGain’s report “LEADING ANTI-CANCER DRUGS: WORLD MARKET PROSPECTS 2011-2021 HTTP://WWW.VISIONGAIN.COM/REPORT/578/LEADING-ANTI-CANCER-DRUGS-WORLD-MARKET-PROSPECTS-2011-2021: “Anti-cancer drug sales exceeded $50bn worldwide in 2009, with impressive growth. Our report shows you where cancer therapies are heading from 2011 to 2021 – technology, competition and revenues. Over 20 million new cases of cancer are predicted in 2025, compared with 12 million in 2008 (WHO).”That $50bn in revenue comes not from administering a one-time dose or regimen that eliminates the cancer.  It’s based on recurring revenue from cancer sufferers buying and consuming those drugs for the remainder of their lives — plus buying a number of other drugs to offset the side effects of the cancer drug.  A cure for cancer would be an economic disaster for BigPharma.  Why would they fund R&D whose success would put them out of business?

             9. Mike, who said it is necessarily Big Pharma that will do the cure?Before allowing conspiracy theory to say all is bad, expand your horizons. But no matter what, ENJOY THE WEEKEND! ;)Oh yeah… and let’s do a protest over lack of respond opportunities via disqus!

             10. Dave: I suppose that’s possible if the cure turns out to be a non-drug cure. Otherwise, given the capital intensity of drug research, it seems as though only BigPharma can finance a drug-based cure. In recent years, they’ve scaled back their internal R&D, effectively outsourcing more of it by buying small stakes in emerging drug innovators, and exercising their option to buy a controlling interest in those that make it past the proof-of-concept stage or early trials, or some other legitimizing benchmark.With that, I’ve exhausted my exposure to the topic, and defer to those better informed. You have a great weekend, too.

             11. Oh yeah, spend money on airtime giving possible side effects…. Curing cancer will be done from different source than Pharma. You have a good one and get a marketing guy to buy you a cod one… Least he can do. 😉

          2. Interesting little piece in the WSJ this weekend, about focus.In the information economy, the scarce skills become Focus and executive function (e.g. resisting temptation for immediate gratification).  And our educational system does NOTHING to foster these.The article mentioned a few activities/places can teach them.  Montessori-style problem solving.  Karate.  Yoga.  At any rate, yesterday I was also needing to decide whether to sign my kids up for soccer or karate.  For time, carpooling and budget reasons we can only do one.  My girls are 4 and 8.  Soccer quickly ramps up to travel team, which is a big commitment and could be a lot of standing on the sidelines.  Karate is right in town.  If the kid is there she’s engaged.Anyway I floated the question “Soccer or Karate?” on Honestly Now and 66% said do Soccer.Hmmm.  My decision.  I’m signing ’em up for Karate!  There is nor shortage of team sports in their future.  But very few options to improve their executive function.

             1. Howard Rheingold has great insights about Attention (and other social media literacies): http://librariesandtranslit…And yes, karate. I love it, and even though it’s not necessarily a team sport, a traditional karate club often turns out to be a great community. All of which can help us in this age of shifting formats for life, work, and play. 

             2. I agree more w/ you than you do w/ yourself.

             3. Karate is very good because it is a proxy for self defense.When I had a bunch of apartments, I used to send the women (almost all women) to Israeli style self defense classes on my ticket.Huge, huge, huge confidence builder while also having a superb practical benefit.

             4. LOOK AT PEERS AND KNOW YOU CAN DESTROY THEM WITH BARE HANDS IS VALUABLE LEADERSHIP SKILL.YOU MAKE RIGHT CHOICE.

             5. Seriously, you have a staff of writers, right? Like Bob Hope mechanizing comedy in the 60’s & 70’s?Too funny.

             6. this was my first LOL of the day. thank you so much!

             7. karate and yoga for sure

             8. tereza – I coach soccer and missed a detail in this post. Minor soccer in any good association will stress participation. 3on3 for your 4 yo and 6on6 for your 8 yo, at most. They will get a lot of fresh air and work on basic vision & movement skills.What is interesting is that karate is, in fact, the least effective of the martial arts, as it relies on a single devastating blow, as it philosophy (family member into this stuff).But, for women, it is a really good choice. A friend’s daughter saved herself and a friend from 3 predators outside a nightclub, by breaking the lead slime ball’s nose (if she’s 5’3″ I’m 7″4″).

             9. Ah, the Holy Trinity.See, breathe, pain.Poke in the eye with a thumb.Chop in the neck or stomp on the top of the foot.Break something.This is the Holy Trinity of thought modification — turning shitheads into more thoughtful folks.

             10. Why not chess? What happened to people playing and learning chess? What other game is as much about sustained focus, attention, mastery of details, tactics and strategy?I am biased. I played as a kid, enjoyed as a teen, and now see the progress my son makes and am wondering why more parents are not signing kids up to play chess?

          3. What an extreme, dark body of thought.  I was contrasting the kid from the broken home family and the kid w/ all the advantages.Cancer, probably not.I am not “pleased” with anything.  I want the old fashioned American Dream — the life I have lived — available for everyone.Accept nothing.  Expect everything.  Do something.  Now.

             1. Yes of course. I did not want to be cynical. I do see the opportunities of the end of the old factory-system (with everything that involves in terms of education, jobs, self-employment, collaboration). But I also see the dangers (the scenario I depicted is dark, but not extreme in the sense of very unlikely to happen to someone). So I think we should think about ways to organize affordable healthcare, to promote solidarity without regressing to old-style unions. Maybe answers can be found in peer-to-peer networks, stuff like that. But I do agree: accept nothing, expect everything, do something, now. 

             2. I am not a rocket science.  For 30+ years I have provided thousands of employees w/ health care.At times fully paid company health care.I have never had a conversation w/ anyone from the gov’t as to how I did it.  I have never gotten guidance as to how to do it.I believe I own my employees problems.  Simple concept.  True statement.  No baloney.I just did it.

             3. The “American Dream” has been sold to us for so long as something that “was” but no longer “is” and I just don’t buy it. If you define the American Dream as the ability to “pull yourself up from the bootstraps” and create a situation/scenario/business that you can profit from, this is still very much alive and attainable! It is the pursuit of politicians and the media to sell you the notion of what “was” and could one day “be again”. Nostalgia for better times is a dangerous drug, be careful what you wish for. -All you will ever have is “now”. As for the “old fashioned american dream”, there’s an excerpt from this movie speech that I’ve always thought was true, “you gather a group of middle aged, middle class, middle income voters who remember with longing an easier time and you talk to them about family and american values and character”. -Pretty much the formula, isn’t it?http://www.youtube.com/watc…

       2. So this is sacrilege but I personally believe we should do away with the rah-rah football-and-cheerleader culture which doesn’t really do anyone any favors.The sport is over-spent on, the guys on the team are elevated higher than they deserve, for the wrong qualities, and this exaggerated elevation makes the geeks resentful and jealous.Meanwhile, what are the girls doing?  Well the ‘pretty’ ones (read: popular) are “cheering” for the boys.  Not really doing much constructive in their own right except looking pretty.  Oh, and they’re ignoring the nice geeky boys because this social structure made them uncool and amplifies all the crazy teenage crap.  Oh, and it also points everyone toward elevating the high school ‘glory days’ as the be all end all.  It shouldn’t be!  Life should only get way better after high school!This whole system is idolized in the US and other countries don’t have it.  Outsiders come in and are like — wow, that’s kinda fucked up, and they generally keep their kids out of it and opt for Kudon or ethnic Saturday School instead.

          1. As a parent, you must find the right thing for YOUR child.Perfect Daughter was a great athlete — Div I full ride field hockey or basketball — of course, she chose……………………………………….sorority girl.  OK!She makes a 4.0 in college and is happy as can be — does not miss the competition.  Except very late at night when she remembers those glory days?Find their focus and force them in that direction.  The Devil has right of first refusal on all uncommitted time.Let the kids be kids.

             1. that ones going in my little book:”the devil has right of first refusal on all uncommitted time”love it.

             2. +1

       3. I love to tell marketing departments who have totally skewed views of the working poor the story of my friend Edna.  New immigrant from Columbia – she had subsidized day care, was the queen of used items and couldn’t afford to spend $5 on a sled for her daughter.  However, she had high speed internet and the best (non Mac) computer she could find.  Technology for her was as important as breathing.  She prioritized it over many other things and all bc of access – access to her family abroad, access for her kids education, access for her to resources/tools in Canada.

       4. he already doesthat was me JLMhigh school sucked, college was better, career has been fantastic

       5. Geeks are the new Jocks!(Excuse my English attempt at American parlance)  ;-)Thanks for the ‘welcome back’ JL – missed you!Take care re: fires – I did some fire-breaks work when living in Western Australia back in the late 80s (my cousin was then head of the WA bush-fire crews). Most Brits don’t realise how fortunate they are to have such clement weather (apart from fires via the occasional riots, which is where most of our fires originate from, lol).CheersCarl

    2. The perhaps Freudian slip of saying “…Obama’s speech…” speaks volumes.We need policies hammered out by bi-partisan work — as messy and as ugly and as petty as that may be — not speeches.What kind of knucklehead comes to someone’s House to give a speech which one knows will not be well received and does not coordinate the timing or discuss the content?This is Dancing w/ the Dopes taken to the extreme?What tone deaf elitist says — “I’ve been thinking about you up @ Maaaaartha’s Vineyard and have come up with a few ideas and will give you yet another “eat your peas” speech?”We are dealing w/ life and death issues with folks whose sense of purpose is rivaled by 3rd grade recess.  Yes, America still “likes” the President.  Hell even I “like” the guy.But for goodness sake, not ANOTHER speech, commission or scowl.  It is all nonsense.Jobs, jobs, jobs.

       1. I agree w you JLM but it takes two to tango.  The big O’s been trying to get those girls to dance and they keep running to the ladies room to powder their noses and talk about their own outfits.They need to get their asses out there and dance, too.

          1. But they’re not going to. Their goal is Obama’s failure. The fate of the nation is secondary.If the democrats had been as obstructionist to GWB as the GOP is to Obama we never would have gone to Iraq and the tax cuts never would have passed.

             1. Perhaps it is unfair to inject a bit of truth into the debate but the US went to war w/ Iraq under the authority granted by — Authorization for the Use of Force Resolution of 2002 which was voted into law by means of a bi-partisan vote of the House and Senate.GWB went to the Congress.  Asked for authorization.  The Congress authorized the war.Again, President Obama had the entire government — WH, Senate, House for 2 complete years and accomplished next to nothing.He has only Himself to blame.  He had 2 full freakin’ years.

             2. …yes it was voted on. But the democrats could have killed it using parliamentary procedures but they did not because they accepted that the lost the election and GWB was president .How many filibusters were there in the two years Obama had the house and senate? (and how many more threatened?)

             3. @ErikSchwartz:disqus   Having control in the Senate means 60 votes enough to invoke “cloture” and to shut down any filibuster.He HAD that level of control and squandered it.Filibusters, threatened or real, were NOT a factor in the first two years.

             4. @JLM:disqus he had 60 votes in the senate for 4 months, not two years due to the Minnesota fiasco and then Kennedy dying. Much of that time of those four months the senate was in recess.

             5. INCORRECT STATEMENT.OBAMA HAD WHITE HOUSE ONLY. OTHER CHAMBERS HAVE CONSERVATIVES, CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRATS, AND PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS.CONSERVATIVES HAVE MAJORITY ENTIRE TIME. RESULT ONLY SURPRISE TO HUMANS THAT NOT PAY ATTENTION TO FACTS.

             6. @grimlock. So the votes? They were not along party lines?You are simply wrong, my friendly robot.

             7. THIS IS USEFUL LINK:http://www.truth-out.org/go…GOP HUMAN ON GOP DECISION TO DESTROY COUNTRY ON PURPOSE FOR GAIN POWER.

          2. Whoa, Sugar, not so fast — President Obama owned the WH, the Senate and the House for two freakin’ years and SQUANDERED it on policies which  will never ever become the law of the land.He owned the powder room and he spent all his time working on the lighting.He could have had them all line dancing to HIS music and He failed to take advantage.He has nobody to blame other than Himself, Cher.As I predicted on avc.com — His biggest enemies were Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.He was pretty damn dumb for a very smart guy.

             1. The problem is that Obama has never had to do anything in the real world.The argument that the GOP is not playing with him is just an excuse, remember that they did not play with the GOP or let them be a part of the healthcare debate and ramrodded the bill through without really even talking to them. I believe it was Nancy Pelosi that said, we will need to pass the bill to find out what is in the bill……I would love to have the responsibility of a politician, I would not have to create a thing, come up with an idea or even be held responsible for what I do. Because it is always the fault of someone else.

             2. @ccrystle:disqus   Real world question — for $50 WTF did write that 2.7K monstrosity?Who read it before it was signed?Who has any inkling as to what is in it?Why was it never debated, sent to subcomittees, sent to committee or even printed before it was voted on?Because THEY didn’t want it to be.  And people will tell you today that Obama did NOT have control of the Senate and House?GMAFB!

          3. exactly. bad marriages are both people’s fault

       2. WHAT IS ALTERNATIVE? DOES WHITE HOUSE HAVE SECRET JOBS WAND THEM CAN BREAK OUT AND WAVE IN EMERGENCY?ME NOT KNOW THAT.

          1. Why wait 3 years and 4 vacations?The guy is clueless.

             1. CLUELESS MAYBE.BUT USE FACTS FOR ARGUMENT. HARD FOR PRESIDENT TO DO THINGS WHEN 51% OF CONGRESS WILLING TO DESTROY COUNTRY TO DESTROY PRESIDENT.THAT NOT CONJECTURE. THAT QUOTED GOAL.

    3. More people are realizing the pathways we’ve been following are useless.  Their only usefulness is to plan political campaigns.We do need to concentrate on enabling the larger population.  The government needs to push the transport side of knowledge and the knowledgeable need to see how you can market to the underclass as well as the privileged. You can do this and still achieve the accepted profits and dividends to investors.Better yet, you can invest lower capital in more places increasing the odds of overall success, buttressed by increasing the number of investors so the underclass has a chance of real return.

    4. To go along with the science education I agree we need, here’s a civics lesson: We don’t have a unitary government. This means that every little thing that goes wrong isn’t the President’s fault.The President could address education problems, but we happen to have a congress that is unprecedented in its desire and ability to obstruct his agenda. The mindlessness with which the Republicans oppose Obama means that if Obama came out in favor of Mom and apple pie, the GOP would propose a constitutional amendment banning those things.

       1. Of course not, everything that goes wrong is Bush’s fault.Get freakin’ real — Obama owned the WH, the Senate and the House and he accomplished nothing.  Nothing.Only Results Count and he blew it.

          1. so did GWB before himwe haven’t had good leadership since clinton

             1. I wouldn’t trade you a Canadian PM for a US President since 1960.Seriously, as much as it is a cliche for GOP hopefuls at this point, maybe Reagan. Sound tax policy, great vision for and of the country and his fiscal policy set off a great bull market.Clinton? The beginning of Credit Card America was on his watch.For history wonks, Joe Clark v Jimmy Carter is too close to call, admittedly.

             2. The further I get from W, the more critical I become. He was a great Tx Gov and fiscal conservative. It is a mystery to me how he became such a profligate spender.Clinton was totally immoral. I cannot get beyond that lens.

             3. What’s with this fixation on a blow job?  The rest of the world laughed at our Puritan silliness.  (“This is what Americans have time to worry about?”)  Who cares if he’s fucking his German Shepherd?  Our only interest is in the job he does as President.Forced to choose only one, I’ll take “effective” over “moral” any day.  I think Obama is a moral man, and I voted for him and his vision, but as you pointed out, he wasted huge advantages and accomplished nothing.

             4. False choice and silly comment.I did not mention a mouth hug, you did, Mike. So fixation? You, my friend, not me. But just for the record, yes that German Shepherd would be a matter of some small concern. We can have both competence and morality and usually you do get both.Like having a lawyer whom is both competent and ethical?JLM sent from my iPad

             5. JLM: There wasn’t any need to mention it; that’s what the impeachment was about, and the basis for many people’s view of Clinton’s morality. Obviously, the GS remark was flip, to make a point about what matters and what doesn’t. Since morality is in the eyes of the beholder, there may be some disagreement about the degree to which we “usually get both.” In the case of the lawyer example you chose, legal ethics are codified by the state bar associations, who have licensing authority over lawyers. As such, unlike “morality,” they are not a matter of opinion.My point, admittedly made in a more jocular fashion than some might prefer, is that today, if you offered the public a choice between a President of unquestioned moral fiber but political ineffectiveness and one such as LBJ, an admitted cad — but unquestioned master of the legislative process — who could get Congress to take the necessary steps to create jobs and restore the economy, I suspect that most would favor the latter.

             6. Not to belabor the point but why is that the ONLY choice? Why not a moral man or woman who knows what they are doing? Why settle? JLM sent from my iPad

             7. JLM: Obviously, we’d love to have both. Unfortunately, there’s scant evidence that there’s a ready supply. Those who most loudly proclaim their morality often later reveal their feet of clay. Legislative adeptness is not a game for rookies; it seems to be acquired over decades of sleeping with the enemy. Some of lawyers I’ve coached make their living in the formal labor arena, often serving as honest brokers behind the scenes. While the sturm und drang play out on TV, they’re quietly informing each side about what can really get done. Because their word is trusted, they can be very effective. Likewise, people like LBJ earned what I’ll the “legislative trust” of both sides of the aisle. Whether or not they trusted LBJ personally, they knew that his commitment to accomplishing legislative aims was absolute, and that his word on such matters was reliable. In short, they knew that they could make a deal with him and count on him to deliver what he’d promised, in exchange for them doing the same.Right now, the congressional paralysis threatens to destroy the nation through indecision and inaction on some era-defining problems and challenges. Each side has demonized the other to the point that agreeing with the enemy is reliable political suicide. The current GOP commitment to assure the failure of Obama’s presidency without regard to cost to the nation and its less-well-off citizens is evidence that this juvenile thinking has reached the level of destructive absurdity.Until somebody steps up to the plate with both morality and effectiveness,I’ll take the latter.

             8. I agree with you completely as it relates to LBJ’s reliability as a negotiator.I have gone to the LBJ Library and listened to some of his tapes.His word was good as President when dealing w the Congress.

    5. I agree about the education system Alex. I was able to skirt my way around math all the way through high school and college–able to take the minimum amount of lowest level courses and graduate with a BA in English Lit. Once I came to New York I got into interactive advertising and had to quickly pivot–now I’m working every day with data and despite my extra-curricular reading still have a fair amount of catching up to do. It’s slow going, and I’m working on it, but there are many days I wish I could go back in time and tell my 16 year-old-self to shape up and Do. The. Math.If I ever have children I will still encourage them to devour great literature, but they sure as hell are going to take more math classes.

       1. I already know you are a great Father.Your kids will love you for it.

       2. math is so key. i make sure to supplement my kids math education with real world examples. there are so many math learning moments in real life. it’s actually easy and fun.

    6. EDUCATION NOT BROKEN. IT BETTER THAN EVER BEEN.PARENTS ARE BROKEN. NOT CARE IF CHILDREN LEARN ANY MORE.IF PARENTS NOT CARE, CHILDREN NOT CARE. IF CHILDREN NOT CARE, BEST SCHOOL IN UNIVERSE NOT MATTER.

    7. let’s not wait for the politicianswe need to hack education ourselves

17. I agree that the postal service’s union workers aren’t adding much value to the business.  If those entitlements were not around, maybe the US Postal Service could hire some knowledge workers to apply new processes to old problems.I recently saw Page One: Inside the New York Times.  The movie addresses the changing environment of media with the information revolution.  David Carr is one of the main characters in the film (what a character).

18. In 1994 we passed NAFTA and it was sold as a job creator, we were going to trade low skilled, low paying jobs for high paying innovative jobs.  That was 17 years ago and in that time we have created……nothing.Job growth has been nil for the last 11 years and wages have stagnated for even a longer period of time.  Once our trade imbalance starts to shift in our favor then you might have an argument for the wonders of technology.Yes, entitlements are nasty, but don’t forget that payroll taxes make up 40% of the government’s revenue, if it was not for entitlements the government wouldn’t have that income stream.  So, you see a few immigrants in the tech world, the reality is the vast majority of immigrants are standing on street corners attempting to get day jobs that pay cash.Yes, the USPS is obviously a victim of technology, but that does not create a soapbox to a discussion of all that ills our economic system.  Look at all the technology and innovation in our healthcare system and yet our costs are out of control, and you got to wonder exactly what our healthcare system would look like if it wasn’t for medicaid and medicare.The folks on Wall Street love to believe that they are doing “God’s work” as we experience one investment bubble after another and as we create the most absurd distribution of wealth ever seen.The reality is the USPS is in a unique situation and it tells us nothing about the economy as a whole.  The only mail I get is junk mail, which is unprofitable and if they only delivered once a week I would not be disappointed.  I heard all these points 17 years ago during the debate over NAFTA and the only thing I have seen since then is that we have watched as we have shifted from a supply/demand economy to a finance economy and we tend to forget that one person’s debt is another person’s asset.  

19. Any one who paid attention in high school history learned that the US Postal Service was intended to be subsidized by the government. Like “post” roads it was a service to the general public and was subsidized to make communication available to people who otherwise could not afford it. The article is right in pointing out that we are in a time of transition and the postal service may be a casualty with private services such as UPS and Fedex replacing that subsidized service.

    1. You are absolutely correct in every manner.  Well played.The creation of the US Postal Service was the right reaction to a fundamental fact — AT THAT TIME, only the government could provide that service.Now the times have changed and with the advent of the Internet and companies like UPS and Fedex, perhaps there is room to consider a different way to solve the same problem?Time to pivot?Not to condemn government but simply to thoughtfully consider there may be another way available to us?Sometimes the government can be very smart and this may be a time to consider getting out of a business which can NOW be handled by the private sector in a more cost effective manner.

       1. Subsidized packaging services?  I mean, we ship more today…

          1. …and provide customers considerable choice on price/duration in shipping.  Even all-you-can-eat.Shipping has become a feature.  When in the past was shipping a feature?

             1. Well played.  Freakin’ shipping has become a deal maker.

             2. Actually, I find it super bizarre that USPS wasn’t approached about the whole locker and amazon idea.  They could have brought that idea to scale and to smaller retailers, far better than 7-11….*sigh*

             3. Who would partner with the govt on a business that required exquisite execution and data management?Not that much of a surprise, really….

       2. Pivoting Govt to a 21st century role – and then defining that role sensibly – could elect the next President.A Kennedy-esque vision of a renewed America.

          1. +1Either a Democrat or Republican can do this.But it will take a Democrat willing to work against his/her union base, or a Republican willing to work against the big business lobbyists seeking to legislate an advantage for themselves.

       3. Exactly. The USPS isn’t just an expense problem, it’s a product problem. Why is it so cheap to deliver a letter? Why does it cost the same across town as across the country? I had hoped that we would look at “Is there a better way?” type solutions. Unfortunately, the shouting match has devolved to the point that few of these thinkers will ever emerge as political leaders.

       4. time to get out of that business. it’s a shitty one.i make those calls all the timeour country needs to do the same

          1. The US cannot get out of the mail business, it’s vital to our countrymen in rural and remote areas.  UPS and Fedex can deliver truckloads of credit card bills from Delaware to the suburbs, but they ain’t gonna go to West Of Nowhere, Wyoming.  This isn’t simply an “obsolete business model”.  How do we sort out which mail service can be provided privately and which requires subsidy?  How do we provide that subsidy in a manner that doesn’t create an outrageous rent for the service provider?  The current model is exhausted, but defining the replacement isn’t easy.The real problem is that we allow reasonable discussion to be shouted down by interested parties and their coalition partners.  Our thinking is more wishful than hard-headed because we don’t want the confrontations.  There hasn’t been anything new about the USPS for forty years, but suddenly it’s about to collapse?  THAT is the problem.

    2. If the USPS triples the price of a stamp it would still be an order of magnitude cheaper than the private alternatives.How much of a subsidy do we want to pay fedex?

       1. Agreed.  If Fedex and UPS had to deliver to each household on a daily basis, I doubt they would be a competitive alternative.

       2. None but we do want to see if we could subcontract a big portion of the mail delivery to folks who are good at it.

    3. Not just privatization, but tech leapfrogging.Think Ma Bell and delivery of the last mile telephony which couldn’t have happened without subsidies.  New tech has leapfrogged wireline phone.  Why would developing countries invest in wireline if everybody has prepaid cell plans?  If you were pimping up a new startup office, why would you get a wireline phone system?  What 23-yr-old has a landline in his apartment?

20. There is no doubt that the environment in which business operates is the most significant determinant as to whether jobs are created or not.  To take an absurd example — not much job creation in the Antarctic — a bit cold and no markets.The comparison of state markets in the US really brings that lesson home.  Compare and contrast California and Texas.Texas — no personal income tax, low corporate taxes, low levels of regulation, tort reform, clear & consistent & simple policies and a positive attitude toward business.California — I will not pile on but I will observe you cannot swing a cat in Texas without hitting a business owner who has moved his business to Texas.  I can cite you examples of guys I know personally who have move 3% margin businesses to Tx and have grown margins to 25%+.Results — Tx has created 40% of all the new net jobs in the US in the last three years running.If the results were close, one could mumble about illegal aliens, low paying jobs or mean spirited disregard for the under classes — but they are not close.When I hear elitists say — those are crappy jobs, I am tempted to take pictures of all the building signs in Austin and show them Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, Samsung, Applied Materials, Freescale, IBM and the list goes on forever.More importantly I am prepared to debate the efficacy of minimum wage jobs — hell, I worked in restaurants, construction, lifeguarding, cutting grass all at minimum wage.  I was a kid and that was all I was worth but it was OK.BTW, put ALL my $$$ in a Merrill Lynch Sharebuilder account and that worked out OK by the time I was 25, I had a nice pot of money and by the time I was 30 (getting married), I could pay cash for anything I wanted.FULL DISCLOSURE — I have known Rick & Anita Perry for a couple of decades in the way you get to know someone when your girls sleepover, when you see folks at church and chat afterwards, when you are on the sidelines watching your kids play sports and when you spend a couple hours talking over a cup of coffee — and only then as the guy who created and maintained that Texas environment.  He was the head cheerleader at Tx A & M (you have to know what that means in Tx cause it is not what you think), he is the head cheerleader for the State of Texas and he would make a damn good one for the US.Fred Wilson has created the environment which we all have come to know and love as avc.com.  His very actions prove the power of leadership in creating comity, thoughtful discourse, progressive thinking and intellectual rigor.LEADERSHIP — either from Fred Wilson or in the political realm is often what determines outcomes. 

    1. JLM,In 2005, the last year the data was available Texas received 94 cents from the federal government for every dollar of federal taxes sent to DC by Texans.  California received 78 cents from the federal government for every dollar collected in California.That is a subsidy (source:  http://www.taxfoundation.org)I have to remind Rand Paul of the fact that Kentucky gets 1.51 dollars for every dollar of federal taxes collected and it amazes me that the states that get the highest return on taxes collected are also the states that garner the greatest support for the Tea Party.

       1. Carl, let’s disagree here.If you send a dollar to the Feds and you get back $0.94 that is NOT a subsidy or did I read your comment wrong?If one sent $1 to the Feds and got back $1.25 THAT would be a subsidy or did I read you comment wrong?

          1. JLM,I doubt we disagree…I hate politics and can’t stand politicians.  My point is that to compare California and Texas is not fair, and that Texas does derive a benefit from the federal government and in a comparsion of the two states Texas receives 21 cents more in governmant largress than what California does.  If you just focus on Texas it is not a subsidy but when you compare Texas and California then the difference becomes a subsidy.Its like locally, Fruit of the Loom gets a 11 million dollar tax credit for transferring 365 jobs from Atlanta.  Now, since half of those employees did not transfer Fruit did create some new jobs.  I told the governor at the ceremony that if he gave me 3 million dollars I would create 150 new jobs!  Or you got the Corvette Plant and its 18 million dollar tax benefits package…..Personally, I am tired of paying taxes so that I can be run out of business!  I love competition, but damn, I got to find a fair fight….Right now I feel I am in a basketball game where the referees have sons that play on the opposing team!

             1. The analysis of Tx v Cal is not as simple as you indicate as Texans do not get a State Income Tax deduction on their Federal taxes as there are no state income taxes.I get what you mean.

             2. I am not a big fan of comparing states…Kentucky has a state income tax and Tennessee doesn’t and the battle is always waging one over the other and the truth is, neither state is worth shit! 🙂

       2. The Tea Party is not a political party or an intellectual philosophy for governance — it an organizing theme much like the French Resistance.The Tea Party, like the French Resistance, is organized opposition to what is perceived as an oppressive regime.As the French Resistance enlisted the aid of the Communists, unions, Loyalists, Royalists, industrialists, workers against their common enemy, the Nazis and Vichy regime, Americans from every walk of life have bonded in opposition — not rallied to a common and singular governing philosophy.The guy who is mad about taxes bonds with the person who is angry about unemployment — the Tea Party does not have a platform, it has pitchforks with each tine focused on a potentially unique complaint. Obamacare, taxes, size of government, unemployment……Persons who think of the Tea Party as being monolithic and singular in focus will fail to recognize it is made up primarily of folks who have never been particularly politically active or vocal but who have now said: “Ya Basta!”It is the glue that will bind together a fleeting coalition of the far center. The freakin’ Far Center.  Obamamania was also such a force but that Perfect Storm has now moved on.My beloved wife, an educated and cultured person (spouse picking to the contrary), is a Tea Party sympathizer — not a “member”, not an activist, but a sympathizer. Just a sympathizer, not manning the barriers but a sympathizer.She will vote that sympathy the next election.

          1. JLM,  I like to think that I am educated too, but I doubt one would consider me cultured…and I sympathize with the Tea Party!  Where I differ is in the fact that I find buying and or influencing politicians for personal gain disgusting.  Business no longer is about competition but rather all about influence.But then again, I still believe that demand creates jobs, not supply.

             1. That’s the money system.Bundling in political fundraising is the root of the problem. Individuals or organizations who expect quid pro quo for their support either via soft money or bundled donations).Both sides do it, which makes both sides equally corrupt.

             2. Erik, I am Perry for President #2130 and I am going to raise $1MM and I expect nothing in return but good government.I have known Rick and Anita Perry for 20 years and I think the guy can do it.I have prospered in the business environment he has created in Texas.I want nothing other than to be left alone.I also recognize exactly what you are saying and know that the influence of $#$# $ in gov’t is obscene.BTW, will you send me a check?  #2130

             3. Well, with strict Constitutional limits on what politicians can do in office, you really cut down the incentive and profitability of corruption.  When politicians control the pull-strings of taxation and redistribution, corruption and the currency of favors are a forgone conclusion.

             4. Um no, I won’t.I’m not sure how anyone who sandbagged the investigation of the state executing a likely innocent man can be called in favor of small government.I am also VERY concerned about Perry’s (and Bachmann’s) ties to Dominionism.

          2. Well, Tea Party as resistance movement!!!I know it was a hot summer down there but still.  If you’re looking for a historical analogy I think we can go with the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850’s.

       3. Kentuckian and Rand Paul supporter here.  I don’t understand your argument.  Because my state gets more from the feds than it puts in, I’m disqualified from siding with the founders on the role of Federal Government?If anything, I would think it makes our argument even more effective:  Look, as a State we profit from this scheme and we still reject it!

          1. No, it does not make your argument any more valid. Because the reality is we all want government to get smaller except we want the other guy to sacrifice and lose.We sit here and discuss taxation as the redistribution of wealth while at the same time statistically it can be proven that the rich are richer than they have ever been and the poor are poorer.We point to the income tax as proof that the wealthy are paying their fair share but that does not acknowledge that the government derives as much of their revenue from payroll taxes as it does income taxes.The reality is we cannot go back to the vision the founders had for the Federal Government but we do need a new vision of the social contract and of government because the one we currently have is useless.

    2. Amazing accomplishments for Texas, and would be great if the lessons can be applied elsewhere. But curious as to what extent has the availability of oil revenues been a key factor for this prosperity? 

       1. It’s been huge, enormous.  All those royalty checks are real.  Real money.Of course, Perry has made the oil industry thrive because you have a sound Energy Policy which allows drilling to occur in real time.I just was involved w/ drilling a well in an urban environment — 4 months from prospect to hitting oil.  To paying royalties.If energy has been a nascent player in Texas, it has not been by accident.The rules are simple, easy to understand, efficiently applied and reasonable.

21. Brilliant comment.  Really.  Well played.

22. Some of my favorite wines are anything “Newton” unfiltered.  I love everything they make particularly an old fashioned Claret.  [AW, help me out here.]I now have begun to love my information and news unfiltered also.I can turn down the volume and read the words and listen for myself and make up my own mind.I value your thoughts and opinion as much as I do Krauthammer or HuffPo and I get them delivered to me in essentially the same manner.Unfiltered.

23. The PSTN is not far behind the PO. It actually receives agreat deal of government support today through Universal Service Funds andvarious other subsidies. The number of landlines is declining about 10%annually. The total number of voice calls is declining and those on the PSTNeven faster as we use many different ways to communicate. Costs are more afunction of miles of line than numbers of subscribers so cost per sub israpidly rising, especially in the rural parts of the system where subsidy hasbeen concentrated.The bankruptcy of FairPoint less than a year after buying Verizon landlines inNorthern New England and Verizon PSTN line-people ending a strike without anyvisible concessions by the company are both symptoms of the decline andharbingers of the future.New telco employment even at companies like Verizon Wirelessis mainly non-unionized and with less benefits and especially less strict jobrules than the old contracts written when the PSTN was the nation’scommunication lifeline.The nation gains from better telecommunication alternativesand many new jobs have been created – as we all know – based on bettercommunications. Just how you would hope things would work. But there will alsoa hobson’s choice of either paying exponentially increasing subsidies percustomer to keep the PSTN alive for those who today have no alternative – againmainly rural – or shutting it down and leaving grandma with no way to call 911.Planning is needed to assure that alternatives do exist everywhere soon so thePSTN (and all its subsidies) can die a graceful death after a distinguishedcareer and free up resources including pole space for better communication alternatives.A little off Fred’s topic of jobs per se but a natural seguefrom the PO story. More at http://blog.tomevslin.com/2…

    1. we are now completely off the PSTN in my life. VOIP in the office, apt, beach house, ski house. my total monthly phones bills are literally 10-15% of what they used to be. you taught me how to do all of this Tom, so thanks

24. I don’t think it is just a problem of industrialized countries.It happens with every public sector units across the world. Labor union makes sure that the labors remain lazy and stagnant. All government subsidised public sector units across the world is going through this phase.It is more than a decade i visited any of the post-office in my country (except for 2-instance where i was forced to use government postal service for some governmental transaction) … it is not only the problem of developed country. It is the problem of adopting to technological update happening around. These PSU’s can sleep … because their labor union BACKBONE is very strong.

    1. yeah but the problem is way worse in the developed world

25. And I believe, that time will be shorter than we think.Already this coulture of consumerism is shifting from materials to information. More and more we all consume bits instead of atoms. Things that make us happy are songs, books, documentaries, movies, games, social networks, news, ideas… all coming in digital form (bits) which is cheap and fast to produce, store, distribute, consume.Everyone will be able to become a producer of digital goods. This will be P2P (peer-to-peer) economy. “Companies” will be pop-up collaborative entities with no room at all for entitlements, subsidies or similar.The education system should position for such future. It should teach students how they can learn, unlearn, relearn, change, adopt…

26. One of the things I think is lacking in our governmental system is a way to support “creative destruction”.  I generally hate the “government should be run as a business” mindset, but when parts of the government have become obsoleted, they should die and we should welcome and properly manage this death and find the next thing that government can truly help.  The post office, oil subsidies, farm subsidies were helpful when needed, now it’s time to move on.

    1. yup

27. Our current problems have nothing to do with transformation from manufacturing to information. Monetary inflation is and will destroy the quality of life we have come to know. Monetary inflation is a transfer of wealth from the productive to the unproductive. Monetary inflation is the cause of volitility, booms and busts and the destruction of the dollar.The unproductive cannot create wealth and therefore cannot create jobs. As long as we continue to bail out the unproductive ( too big to fail banks, homeowners, unions,  and everyone else there will be a continuing decline.  Fred how do you even begin to value a company in dollars when there is a dormant supply of 3x the dollars that have ever existed that could be unleashed at virtually anytime?END THE FED. STOP COUNTERFEITING.

    1. “END THE FED. STOP COUNTERFEITING.”You wouldn’t let a cheater be the banker when playing a game of monopoly.But in real life that seems to be just find with everybody ?

       1. At the very least, as a first immediate step, force the Federal Reserve to rebrand itself to remove the widespread confusion among the American electorate that they are an official part of government.  The Fed is a private bank that, somehow, got the right to declare money into existence, then loan it to the legitimate government at an interest rate that they decide themselves.  If they were called “Unbelievably Rich Guys’ Bank,” how might we react to CNN saying, “Today, Unbelievably Rich Guys’ Bank raised the money supply, i.e., conjured up illusory cash, and loaned it back to us at X percent.  So far, in 2011, we citizens have paid Unbelievably Rich Guys’ Bank $600 billion in interest on money that didn’t exist until they said it did.”This may correct my previous comment that the real estate tax deduction was the most brilliant scam sales job in history.  The Fed is definitely the leader in the clubhouse, and I don’t know if anyone is still remaining on the course to challenge their score.

    2. where is kid mercury when you need him?maybe you can replace him as the monetary czar here at AVC

28. The world is being eaten by it’s informational environment. Industries become digital and then take on the growth characteristics of Moore’s Law. An example: drug discovery, it’s my understanding that previously it was, make a drug, and then test it’s effects, now chemicals structures can be created and tested on information systems.And the growth at the rate of Moore’s Law is desirable (obviously).Information systems are created to bring back control to atomic — vs bits — systems that have improved with technology. When the rail system was created the telegraph was required; without it we wouldn’t be able to communicate the schedule and timing of the trains. Moving forward, could we have globalization if we solely relied on the postal system?Creative destruction is afoot.Trade across borders is crucial. It’s basic economics in line with Ricardo — that is, comparative advantage and division of labour. To demand jobs be kept safe within nationalist borders is at a fundamental level incorrect. And is closer to FUD than economics.

29. The Industrial Revolution was transformational to a society that was highly polarised – whilst we may think society has become a lot more equitable for many the Information Revolution we are in the midst of will be just as exciting/intimidating (delete as applicable) for many in today’s society.And let’s not forget those who are the modern-day Luddites – or nowadays a movement more likely to be referred to as the ‘Disenfranchised’ (in PC-talk), as evidenced by (eg) the recent English riots…

    1. Note: One of the reasons it was a revolution was it was such a violent change in people’s lives.  We’re seeing a lot of that sort of emergent behavior already around big data alongside work, all sorts of issues.

    2. saw your tweet carl. made my day. 

       1. Hey, don’t get me all emotional now, Fred! ;-)I’ll write about it all, one of these days. May have to be obliquely so.Lots of wonderful catching up to do here – I have so missed this community. My brain/soul feels re-energised since coming back online here.Many thanks, Jerry/Fred/David – and others who have been a rock during the past few weeks whilst I have been offline due to illness.Caring about others is the best feeling in the world – giving and receiving.

          1. Glad you are back!

30. B”H  Amen for the title!

31. A) Worrying too much isn’t going to change things – it is action by inaction.  And I sometimes wonder if our political sphere loves us when we are acting worried – easier to manipulate.B)The Post office thing could be solved.  There are more post offices than 7-11s.  Why is Amazon using 7-11s for a delivery location?  They could have totally worked with the post office for a great deal, and the post office could have rolled out this thing to other, smaller, online retailers as part of a delivery cost. What is stopping them is fear of change and a bureaucracy that doesn’t push for changeC) I’m already seeing more small businesses being started by friends because the job situation is such a killer.

32. Instead of complaining about entitlements (which I don’t think Fred is doing, but that tends to be the easy boogie man), we need to think ahead to what will replace those entitlements.We (the entrepreneur economy) are going to be supporting our parents, it may take longer for our children to reach financial independence, and we will likely be supporting more of our community (either through providing jobs or increased taxes which seem inevitable).Fred is right about this being the biggest change. What opportunities will exist as these big organizations like USPS or GM fall? How can we use the work force? How can we keep our communities afloat?I don’t see this as the government’s problem to fix. I see it as our problem and our opportunity.

    1. this is a very insightful comment Jackson. we are the provider of entitlements going forward.

33. It’s so important now to learn all we can and try to “skate to where the puck will be, not where it is,” to use a hockey analogy. Many people are already skating not even to where the puck is, but where it was. Those people will lose out — and there will be lots of them, unfortunately.

34. One interesting piece from this weekend’s paper was an analysis of work.So many jobs are just plain shitty, dispiriting jobs.  This has been the trend for 20 years.When people hate their jobs, they don’t perform it well, they show up late, they steal, they feel stress, they get sick.The single biggest driver of job satisfaction and hence performance is not pay — it’s that they derive meaning from their job, that they can problem-solve on the job.  That they MATTER.Too many jobs are dumb jobs with no latitude to be human and make front-line decisions.  This is a big chunk of the crisis.  We need to architect jobs that people actually love, that put a spring in their step, that they’re proud of.  It is completely doable, and it can be infused into any function.I fear the ‘new jobs’ will be stupid ones where people just clock in and clock out for the paycheck.Create meaningful jobs, at scale, and America will be unstoppable again. But unfortunately I don’t see anyone thinking or talking about it.  

    1. On Labor Day I wrote a letter to every worker in my company thanking them for having trusted me with the investment of their work in me and the company.  I told them I work FOR them.  As CEO, I do.The problem is with how one views the org chart.  If the CEO thinks of himself as the top of the chart, then — not always — there is the potential to screw things up.If the CEO sees himself as a servant to the workers providing them an environment in which to be productive — thereby achieving the goals of the owners — then you have a chance at excellence.I have dug ditches, washed dishes, cooked, cleaned, constructed and been a CEO and owner.  I never worried about much when I dug ditches.  I worry a lot about my employees and how frustrated they are just now because of the economy — a lot.It comes down to something very simple for me — do you actually love people?  Your people?  It has always been easy for me because I really do.  I am a pissant on the world’s rump — just a lucky pissant but a pissant nonetheless.When we have a good view of our own luck, we are less likely to step on others.

       1. And it’s this kind of thing that makes JLM an awesome CEO.I learn something from almost every comment he makes here.

       2. you may like this post from my former partner Jerry, who is now the best CEO coach i knowlook at the upside down pyramidhttp://www.themonsterinyour…

       3. I saw your Tweets (and shared them) over the Labor Day weekend about Business Owners/Employers thanking their employees and Employees appreciating (versus thanking) their Employers. It was a very powerful notion for a Labor Day holiday. Personally, I have many traits that make me a champion of the “working class” – the thing is the working class can mean CEOs as well. Your tweets and this post are a testament to this idea. Nicely done.{Updated}

       4. Love your comment, JLM. Unfortunately, you appear to be an outlier in the corporate world.  For the past 10 years, we’ve institutionalized greed in the form of “tax cuts” being the only economic tool the Right was willing to embrace.  This despite the claimed trickle-down effect having been ridiculed by GHWB as “voodoo economics” during his humbling of the addled Reagan during the primary debates.  Somehow, we were expected to believe that by forfeiting direct tax collection in favor of some illusory investment by those no longer paying taxes, that we’d be better off.  From that day forward, “tax cuts” became the one-note mantra of the GOP, and the corporation became their Buddha.  Now, the idea has been around so long that people actually act as if it held some legitimacy.

          1. Without exception, tax cuts accelerate revenue.Every aeronautical engineer agrees that aerodynamically a hummingbird CANNOT fly. Same principle.Corporations do not really PAY taxes, they include them in their costs and pass them along to the ultimate consumer. JLM sent from my iPad

35. This is absolutely true.And arguing with it is like arguing with gravity – everything still falls in a downward direction when dropped.The reaction to this shift has been a war on prosperity that could well ensure that our economy never gets moving again.But we’re never going back to the entitlement era no matter how many laws or regulations get passed.

36. “Postal workers also receive more generous health benefits”If we took care of everyone by giving everyone generous health benefits and the basic ability to survive and be happy, and social, and productive if you so choose – then there’d be no sense of entitlement.And it is possible. Money doesn’t exist. Money is simply time. With enough people, and enough time – anything literally is possible; It’s the management and fighting corporations who want to maintain control that prevent these systems from happening.And in the past it wasn’t so easy, but now that we can track literally everything then it becomes possible to give people what they need, when they need it – and make sure people aren’t getting more than they need unless they are striving to earn it and work harder and be more productive than others.Capitalism on top of socialism/communism? Communism with natural caps? Not sure what you’d call it. Just call it the New Way?

    1. Sounds like Utopia to me!  Only problem is, like all Statist utopias…you’ll end up needing a wall to keep guys like me IN.

       1. “Guys like you” have the misconception that you can’t earn more money than everyone else. 🙂 There are enough resources for everyone to live like a millionaire, and then there’s still room for there to be billionaires.

          1. At some level of wealth, one cannot eat any more tacos.  You cannot consume any more resources.The balance is invested to make more.That is the genius of capitalism.  It is self funding.

             1. Until it’s hoarded, like now.

             2. Very interesting comment. I will have to think about that.What is the evidence that capital is being “hoarded”?I can kind of see that in holding gold directly but suspect that most sophisticated investors are holding securities rather than metal. JLM sent from my iPad

             3. JLM: I used the term “hoarding” loosely to contrast it with active investing and otherwise putting it to productive macro-economic use. There is no shortage of evidence that economic benefits to the wealthy resulting from tax cuts have not resulted in the promised “trickle-down” investment. It’s more like the beneficiaries put it into financial instruments or other passive repositories rather than increasing the pool of risk capital for ventures such as so many in this thread correctly argue are the solution to macro-economic malaise. The same complaint was raised loudly and publicly by the government after the bank bailout, the clear intent of which was to increase lending. Yet the banks didn’t increase the availability of credit then, but instead used some of the funds to shore up their balance sheets and get into compliance with reserve requirements, then sat on the rest.

37. Wow. 10:34 and already 120 comments on this post today. People are in a feisty mood.I really enjoyed Carr’s piece on Arrington this weekend. There’s nothing I love more than when journalists get all high and mighty and sanctimonious about their ethics and holy crusade for true unbiased reporting. It is a human right – don’t you remember?Whenever I look at entitlements, they tend to fall into two buckets: defined benefit plans (i.e. pensions, social security type plans etc…) and medical plans.there are any number of good suggestions to deal with the social security type plans – means test them, move the retirement age out, etc…what we never seem to see is good plans for dealing with inflation in medical care. Why is it that in a world where competition has relentlessly beat down the margins of every industry., where information workers have competed so vigorously that the internet has flattened whole industries, that we blithly accept 8%-10% health care inflation year after year?Why do we accept this same fact at post secondary educational facilities?Are the outcomes 8%-10% better every year?Hack that. Solve that problem, and we might find a solution to some of these problems.Alternatively – have all of the institutions that have made these promises declare preemptory bankruptcy, and renegotiate from the very beginning.

    1. Harry, America is mad, frustrated and angry.This is the bottom in consumer confidence in perhaps 50 years.The hot summer has exacerbated a bad thing and now the combination of earthquakes, hurricanes and the Presidential election have all begun to make it worse.And, yet, for some reason, I am thinking this is the time to make a big move.And I am.Love the new theatre.  Have been there several times.  Hope you are knocking them dead, friend.

       1. me too JL if you have the right car, now is the time to step on the gas. plus, if not now, then when?i’m getting older

    2. HEALTH CARE IS SIMPLE PROBLEM.ANY SYSTEM THAT PAY PER SERVICE TREND TOWARDS MORE SERVICE.ALL USA ADVANCES IN MEDICINE NOW FOCUSED ON INVENT NEW SERVICES TO SELL TO PATIENTS. NOT INVENT NEW WAYS TO MAKE PATIENTS HEALTHY.ONLY FIX IS CHANGE COMPENSATION MODEL TO PAY FOR HEALTH, NOT SERVICES.

    3. we need true competition and consumers need to own their medical decisions from a cost perspective. until that happens, costs will go up forever.

38. One thing that’s interesting about all this is the way that the internet is killing the USPS, while  at the same time being (I assume) a huge boon for fedex and ups.

39. The time to be fiscally conservative and prescient of bad things to come was 5-7 years ago. That’s what Canada did and why it is in a much better situation today than most other developed nations. Just saying this, as the lessons are for the taking. Very well said that the problem is not with the President or the Democrats, but with the system itself.The only thing standing in the way of better times is change itself. Change is the solution and change is the problem today.

    1. The Canadian banking system did so many things right that it is incredible.  The Canadian banks alone are safe in the whole world.I want Canada to become part of the US.  Now.

       1. LOL. Thanks for the compliments, but no need to go that far…All you needed is a better Secretary of Finance and Fed Reserve Bank head. As my friend Taleb said many times “If the pilot crashed the plane, you don’t let them fly the plane again.”

       2. I thought it was….(ps…that’s a joke William, I have spent a lot of time in Canada and relatives that live there)

          1. No offense taken…although it’s a old joke that resurfaces once in a while 🙂

          2. JOnathon Winters at Just for Laughs in Montreal:” I love Canada. Great women. Great hockey. Great escargot (he is in Montreal after all). One day I hope we can take you….peaceably.’V funny guy.

       3. Be careful what you wish for…I hired up a great guy from Austin TX who was warned about our tax system (public health care etc.) and loved our Canadian system from afar for all the right reasons – and then he got his first pay check.  His response and i quote”Screw the old pple.  f*ck the poor.  I want my goddamn money back”:)  

       4. In canada we set the tipping point between private and public interests a little more towards the public interests.(Public Healthcare oh what a relief that is!)That said, no matter where you set that private / public policy tipping point there are attending services and disservices.As a Canadian I often envy the advantages of the American approach.But as a Canadian I would vote to pass on that offer to become part of the US if for no other reason than I like and feel secure with what I am use to.

       5. WHY WOULD CANADA AGREE TO DOWNGRADE?

          1. Plus, it turns out that Hu Jintao buys oil and he pays in the world’s emerging reserve currency……….loonies.

          2. Well played! Because we pay them?

             1. IF BEGGAR OFFER YOU A DOLLAR, YOU MOVE IN WITH HIM?

       6. ‘we kicked your ass in 1812, don’t make us come down here and do it again’.This quote from the mouth of an amazingly inebriated pal, in response to an Syracuse undergrad asking if ‘we were having a good time getting OOOT and aBOOT eh?’

          1. truth serum

          2. Best out of 3?

             1. No, but I will go winner take all RCAF Top Gun versus USAF Top Gun!

    2. Agreed William that Canada took some bold steps in working to reduce the debt and eliminate deficits (at least for a while). Aggressive change was necessary and while not popular, it achieved results.That said, Canada’s postal system is certainly not the example we should be pointing to. In spite of much higher postage costs and far lower service than in the US, Canada Post is awash in red ink. How about a 10 year plan for the government to get out of the mail delivery business altogether?  

       1. Paul,From a Canadian to another: Canada Post has earnings of $233 million in 2010 and is efficiently run by the levels of service we see. They have been increasing their rates, but that’s ok. Not increasing the rates would have been a problem like the USPS has now. In contrast, the USPS has lost $8 billion in 2010. The USPS is moving 566 pieces per person whereas Canada is at 366, so the US is still relying on snail mail a lot more than Canada it seems. The USPS problem isn’t just the # of employees (584,000), it’s their revenues that suck. Sources: http://about.usps.com/who-w… and http://www.canadapost.ca/cp… to the US: Stop resisting inflation. It has bitten you already, chewed you and been spitting in your face. 

          1. If Canada Post is profitable, it’s time to return home. The land of opportunity (and snow) is open for business!

       2. they aren’t in the mail delivery business – they are in the advertising flyer business – a dying model that will see their demise over time 🙂  

    3. Bill – the Canadian angle is a bit of a red herring, unless you are deeply serious on the change front:Our banking system looks nothing like the US. While it is, at the moment and from a public policy wonk perspective, the envy of the known world (including JLM), it likely wouldn’t work in the US of A. The very limited number of banks, the closely ( although I think it is fair to say not highly ) regulated structure and the absence of political influence is a starkly different scenario and our political financing laws are a lot different.For our US friends, Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien, after using the financing laws to stay in power forever, changed them on the way out. Donations are ridiculously limited and there are no PACs.And, if you want the US to look like Canada, then you seriously have to adopt Fred’s suggestion and re-orient things the way Tom Evslin lays it out (heavy on the natural resource extraction). Western Canada is powering the economy of the entire country through the energy industry, with the exception of Ontario, which is the part of Canada that looks the most like the US (manufacturing, finance dominated).

       1. as JLM says “drill the shit out of the US”i’m not sure i’m with him on that one, but his stump speech above is a winner.

          1. I drilled an oil well in a bingo hall parking lot in Abilene TX and hit oil.[Full disclosure — royalties only.]Getting permission was easier than getting a building permit.Because the City of Abilene is run by reasonable people.BTW, that’s Abilene, TEXAS — where the local environment is pro-business and where 40% of all the jobs in the US in the last 3 years were created.A freakin’ oil well in a parking lot.

       2. I never said nor implied that the US should copy Canada. There are lessons in anything but they have to be adapted differently. 

          1. That’s exactly my point – I think there are no lessons if the systems are so fundamentally different.I think Americans who point to Canada and go ‘their like us, why don’t we just do some of the things they do’ are completely wrong to do so. We are not at all like Americans in our structure or culture.Individuals find connections, sure. But lessons from one culture rarely translate to another culture – at least not as easily as individuals from one culture translate themselves into another culture.

       3. Getting the money out of elections is the most important controllable variable.  Super Pacs are an obscenity.

40. I was having dinner with a young factory owner in China in the Guanzhou (west of Hong Kong) during the Obamacare debate. This man is a registered communist, but doing his best to be a capitalist (like most of the factory owners).He asked me, “What is the deal with the debate over health care in America, I do not understand it?”As politically correct as I could put it, I said, “Many people in America believe that it is the responsibility of the government to assure that the people have good health care.”His response was, “Interesting, in China we believe that it is the responsibility of the people to take care of themselves first and it is our responsibility to not be reliant on the government. Maybe that is why America is having a tougher time competing. You are waiting around for someone to take care of you.” This was quite humbling coming from a self declared communist.I have had many friends lose work and not find it again for months. My response to them is to go and build a business. Do not wait for someone to take care of you, get going and create something. I usually get the same response, “When will I then look for a job?”My belief is that until we reignite the entrepreneur in everyone, we will continue to wait for a recovery. This is a great time to start a business and frankly a lot more fun than waiting for someone to offer you a JOB. Yes it is hard, but man is it rewarding!

    1. “I have had many friends lose work and not find it again for months. My response to them is to go and build a business.”I’ve dealt with a really large number of entrepreneurs in business over the years. My first question to you would be what are your friends qualifications to go out an build a business? Any business?To someone like myself, or you, or the people that I’ve dealt with this may be a trivial task (it was for me and I did it right out of college in something I didn’t even know about actually. Then I did it again once againin something I once again knew nothing about.).But to people that have worked for corporations or for even a small company in a niche job many of them are rightfully overwhelmed by things that you or I take for granted in running or starting a business. They simply don’t have a seat of the pants feel for the things that need to be done. They have anxiety of the unknown and what they don’t know.I grew up in a family business. I worked in the warehouse I typed invoices (on an IBM selectric) and I listened and overheardconversations about business and strategy. I saw employee interactions,vendor interactions and how you can’t rely on lawyers andprofessional to always do the right thing. I saw how peopledon’t pay bills they owe and how a legal contract doesn’tmean anything if you won’t spend the money to enforce it.The list goes on and on actually.So when it was timefor me to start a business I had many of the skills and knowledge I neededand was really comfortable with figuring out what I didn’tknow. And I was curious and I asked questions because I foundthe whole think very interesting. I also ran side businesses in college and high school. And all this was fun to me. Itwasn’t work.”Empathy”.I think you have to have empathy for people in the position ofyour friends who don’t feel comfortable starting business.I am always pushing people to start businesses. But theyare scared of what they don’t know and the truth is it isextremely difficult to start a business if you havesomething to loose (something many of the funded entrepreneurstoday don’t have they have parents and very littleassets so they can afford to take chances.)

       1. I have lots of empathy for people and want to help as much as possible. I offer to each one of them an office in my building and the use of my phones, fax, internet and copy machine. I also told them I would act as their boss and hold them accountable for what they are doing. I would walk them through the process of starting up and utilizing their skills.My point is that rather than sitting around waiting for a job or an unemployment check, I say get out there and do something. Be productive and find a way to keep the moss from growing underneath you.One example is my friend who is a technical writer. There are hundreds of marketing firms in our area that could utilize writers and I told him that he could utilize my resources at work to create portfolios and examples to go around and pitch their services. His response, “sounds hard, I will keep checking the job boards.”Lots of ways to help and I am by no means condemning.

          1. “My point is that rather than sitting around waiting for a job or an unemployment check, I say get out there and do something.”…”sounds hard, I will keep checking the job boards.”I’ve had  precisely the same experience many many times. And it’s incredibly frustrating and very unrewarding when you feel someone has an opportunity and doesn’t take advantage of it. It really shows you the depth of their problems and how they get what they deserve. (To bad of course that this has impact on others.)

             1. Agreed.

             2. Accept nothing. Expect everything. Do something. Now!

          2. As much as I agree with everything you are saying, I also feel the need to say that it’s pretty much the opposite of empathy.Empathy is putting yourself in another person’s situation and viewing the world from their perspective.Offering advice, help, resources and all the other things you describe are what well-meaing people who lack empathy tend to do. Symoathy and empathy are not the same.

          3. WHAT ABOUT FRIENDS THAT NOT TALENTED?WHAT THEM DO?START BUSINESS AS BEGGER?

       2. We can’t all be entrepreneurs.Because real entrepreneurs need employees!

       3. Last winter two men came to my front door and asked if I’d like my driveway cleared of snow.  I said yes, and that I’d do it with them.  We got to talking and it turns out the two of them were laid off middle-managers.   They were “shoveling snow during a storm” in order to build up $10k to buy two lawnmowers, a trailer and some other equipment for their newly formed landscaping venture.  “We have no idea what we’re doing but we know people will pay to have their snow removed today….and we can’t count on big companies to need us tomorrow.”I tipped well.

          1. i love that you did the job with them andy.

          2. Andy, it has only really snowed in Austin one time in the last 30 years.Get your ass HOME, right now.

    2. That is a powerful story.  All of us in America live a life of privilege – we are privileged to be in a society that promotes the basic human rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  I believe that there are two paths to take from a place of privilege: one, responsibility or two, entitlement.  It would be nice to see us take a similar approach as is communicated by your friend.By the way, I think that China will have their own issues as they continue to evolve from an agricultural society into an information society.  Time will tell.  I bet on America!

       1. I bet on America as well. I have been to China over 20 times in the last four years and each time I am amazed at the transformation, however I am also amazed at the wall that is coming. they have built too fast too much and without enough thought on long term success. Buildings that are four years old look 20 years old and the quality of the newest buildings still look sub-par.However, the Chinese do not sit around and wait. I took my son over and we had to carry our large suitcases up a staircase down a hallway and on to a train. Not a big deal, but out of no where I had three gentlemen offering to take my bags for $1. I said sure. I thought each would grab a suitcase, but no, they each took three (I had a bro/sis in law and their two kids with us as well). My immediate thought was they are going to kill themselves. But even with the ridiculous heat and humidity these guys worked hard and did everything they could for the $1. We ended up paying them more, but the thought came to mind that these guys are not waiting around, they are making something happen.Whenever I go over I am amazed at the wealth and also the hard work. The hard work reminds me of the pictures I saw in the great depression. People selling apples and oranges on the street.My kids do not get allowance or money from us, I make them work. My twelve year old is in a wheelchair and my seven year old is very fit. Last year they each sold ice cold water at the local farmers market all summer and each earned about $500. This last time to China my seven year old went to the Silk Market in Beijing, bartered the price (in Chinese) for beautiful silk ties and this summer they have been selling them at the farmers market. They have seen great success. This is what I want my kids to learn, do not expect anything from any one else, you take care of yourself.

          1. Very good Brad.  The end run to that ‘Plaza/Cloud’ thing I referred to back when was about the real new economy coming.  Your kids are learning.Also remember, along with the quicker pace moving toward originality in China than most accept comes the other parts of the Developing World.  They will take education seriously and the bartering/marketing of goods.  Will the US wake up?

             1. I believe the US will wake up, but we have to get over the idea that their is a soft landing. I agree with Fred, we have to create new businesses and new frontiers. This is how we stay ahead. However as long as people are sitting around putting up with mediocre education and jobs we will be slow to recover. We have to create and develop new things. We talk a lot about technology on this board but there are incredible new products that are developed every day. It is that ingenuity that makes America awesome, not the soft landings that everyone thinks we need.

             2. True, there is no soft landing.  With the unemployment rate, especially among minorities it is a big uphill climb.As for the next year, politics will drive the naming of straw men to blame just as we’ve endured.  Unfortunately, there is no one in opposition that can offer the new day… they truly sound like they don’t have a clue.Education is the pillar we can develop off of, but if you’re 13-16 in a poor family with the establishment telling you there isn’t any chance… what will you do?The private sector needs to pull harder, creating and funding useful technologies and stop blaming the government, just ignore it.

             3. Having only eaten what I have killed for about a third of a century, I can assure you there IS a soft landing if we can fully fund the SBA, get the banks to loan money to small & medium sized businesses, pledge no new taxes for 5 years, freeze gov’t spending at 2007 levels, drill the shit out of American energy, bring back all overseas profits, stabilize foreign exchange on a PPP basis, stop defending the entire world for free, delay all defense development programs for 5 years, open all Congressional deliberations to the camera, ban all “czars”, win various wars and come home and get a new head cheerleader.If we stop pissing on our own campfire the fire will roar to life.If we do all of that, the economy will come roaring back.Of course, WTF would I know about jobs?  I’ve only been creating them for 30 years.

          2. i think your kids will benefit a lot from your approach

          3. Great stories.  Great lessons.  Well played.New venture — knock off eBay Polo shirts sold to college kids.Buy in bulk.  Sell individually.  Check the pricing.

       2. i agree about china

    3. There’s a lot about your anecdote that doesn’t add up, but if this guy really was a party member, then he’s a member of the ruling class in China and the party takes care of his health care.

       1. I have 4 employees that are members of the party and I can assure you that they do not take care of their healthcare, we do.

       2. Note to self – Learn to be more succinct like Jeffrey

    4. I love all the independent thinking communists in China these days. 

       1. Sort of beside the point, but China took off because of universal literacy and adequate health care. Since the takeoff those have backslid quite a bit. When the economic unit was the village cooperative, they would designate some people to get training and be the part-time medic. Now that the economic unit is the family which owns land, there’s often no local medic and the kids sometimes don’t go to school because they pursue economic opportunity, or they can’t pay school fees. In any event, capitalism in China is a misnomer, there’s selective application of free market incentives, but the overwhelming majority of legitimate capital is in government and party hands, and they have a lot of levers to pull in the private sector.

          1. The Communists in power use capitalism in small doses — like an antibiotic — because it immediately cures what is wrong w/ Communism.If Communism worked, you would not need capitalism.Communism will not feed the Chinese but a bit of capitalism has a chance.This was a great, great civilization long before Communism and capitalism.

             1. Well said. China uses Communism as a pretext for Government Control.

             2. My undergraduate Chinese history professor said, “The Chinese are not imperialists, democrats (democracy) or communists. They are Taoists, regardless of the current, past or future governments they are Taoists.

             3. The fundamental difference between the US (always looking to the future) and the Asians (revering their ancestors, the past and their history) is profound and enlightening.

          2. What do you mean by legitimate capital?

             1. As opposed to informal peer-to-peer capital formation, which is illegal and is an excuse to get you thrown in jail if you don’t pay off the right people or have the right ‘guanxi’.China’s legitimate financial system is best understood as a form of financial repression and rent-seeking, as opposed to risk-taking and capital formation as we understand it. You can either give your money to a bank at low interest, which insolvent connected entities use as a piggy bank for bad loans which eventually get bailed out… or you put your money in listed stocks, which give you no rights to cash flow or control, but benefit entrenched management which pays off itself and the Party that perpetuates the system.Just like the US, come to think of it.

             2. Thanks.So what you’re saying is legitimate capital is really pretty illegitimate.

          3. CHINA IS BURNING FUTURE TO BUILD PRESENT. RESULT IS FUTURE OF CHINA GOING TO BE TERRIBLE PLACE TO LIVE.

             1. very well put, GRIM

             2. oooh, GRIMi like that we need a nickname for our robot

             3. NEVER MIND TOXIC CLOUD, MERELY A SIGN OF PEACEFUL DEVELOPMENT ACHIEVED BY THE SWEAT OF THE PEOPLE’S HEROES <cough>

             4. druce with the all gaps reply to grimlock for the win!

             5. Just like every other first world country before them

       2. Of course, they are not Communists.  There has never been a real Communist just thugs who have used the “idea” as an organizing theme to get theirs.Communism will never provide stability.  Or hope.  Or love.

          1. Of course.Good article about Li Na (China) who won the French Open and actually wants to keep her winnings…http://online.wsj.com/artic…

          2. I have a feeling you and I could have some great discussions….

             1. I think I could learn a lot from you.I am always amazed at the sheer size of China.  Hell, it’s bigger than Texas!The US will become Switzerland to China’s future 3B people and we have to figure out that role now.The Chinese are starting to stumble down the path of being a superpower capable of projecting force beyond the horizon — silent subs, aircraft carriers, stealth fighters, MIRV technology, satellite destruction, hackers extraordinaire — all targeted against the US.This is not a head fake and we have about 25-50 years to sort it out.China will be 2.5-3B people when we will be about 400MM, so the people resources will not be the same.The camouflage provided for the Chinese by the War on Terror has been their biggest asset of late.

             2. China has one of the lowest growth rates in the world and their population is expected to fall in the coming decades, not double or triple.And as their wealth increases the birthrate will likely continue to fall.http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…

             3. A wise Chinese American told me that it has been fascinating watch an old civilization become modern at the speed of cell phones, computers and Ipads. I see stumbling blocks in the future but fascinating nonetheless.

    5. From what I know its ok for people in the US to buy a health insurance to cover medical needs. But for some reason, its totally different to pay taxes for the same service. I live in Norway where all medical services are provided by the state. And yes, I pay for it through taxes. A lot of it too. And you know what, I want to pay for it – even though, I have never had a serious injury or illness.You see, when the broad part of the population are in good health, because medical services are provided for them, the nation as a whole benefits. I loose in monetary measures, but I win since I can live in a country that dont need to suffer as much with the total cost of having a portion of the population ill from easily preventable diseases. What the chinese man maybe forgot to tell you is that the main reason China is doing so well, is because the main part of the population is dead poor and will work 6 days a week, 12 hours a day assembling poor quality plastic toys. To indicate that China is doing well because no-one have free medical is just funny.

       1. Personally I think Obamacare is a disaster, and I would have much rather have had a discussion about adopting something similar to the Swiss Plan.  What we fail to realize in this country is the total amount of ones lifetime healthcare expense that is spent in the last 2 years of ones life….its like 70%.  Of course, even with a lifetime of most likely employer provided health care, we still end up with medicare picking up the vast majority of the cost of our healthcare.Thus, the profitable years, the ones where we buy health insurance through our employers, are privatized while the costly years, the last two years of our lives, are socialized.Americans are known for not taking time off to go to the doctor…..

          1. Carl, I like the way you conclude your comments above with the privatized vs. public money nod. For years I have been talking about the schizophrenic accounting America seems to want to use … private here and public there. Time needs to be taken to rise up to the global level and take a look at things and much of the discourse does not seem to do this. Your comments about healthcare are just one example, I think JLM’s comment (somewhere in today’s vast cosmic ocean of comments) about costs to police the world (something along those lines) fit into this issue as well.

             1. I know the JLM comment you are referring to and I think that needs to be his stump speech as he runs for President! He has my vote!Economically we should have seen this train wreak coming a long time ago; and we now need to acknowledge that “the” problem is multi faceted. You can’t point to taxes, to government spending, to anyone thing and say, “there’s our problem!” We are all angry and frustrated and we want answers, we want solutions….but life just ain’t all that simple and politics has nothing to do with the future and everything to do with “gettin’ while the gettin’ is good!”I normally avoid politics altogether and have only voted 3 times in 35 years…my expertise isn’t politics, its making a profit, running things, and solving problems.To me, solutions are neither conservative or liberal….Even the great Austrian Economist, Friedrich Hayek, argued for government healthcare…and I believe he would be disgusted with what we came up with.Ah, but what do I know…I am just a rag maker.

             2. please vote. i lose interest in all this stuff a lot too. but i do make it a point to vote every time the polls are open. it’s our right and our responsibility.

             3. Agree with @fred In my personal opinion there is not a wasted vote (even if your candidate has a snowball’s chance in Hades) … save the one not cast.

             4. A lot of humans died to give you democracy, with all its faults and than a lot of americans have died to ensured you have the right vote.  Practical solution solvers are needed to involve themselves in the politics of today, people who care for understanding the problem and creating a solution that will work in the middle and long term.

             5. Step back a minute and be objective. In fact, the reality is that this ties to Fred’s post on identity. If you look at what GWB accomplished in his 2 terms and what Obama has done thus far, then anyone who voted for GWB should be voting for Obama in 2012. The reality is, if you laid out the records of all Presidents without labeling who the President is, in other words a side by side blind test of records, your most ardent conservatives would select the record of Clinton over any other recent President and one could be confused because of a lack of difference between GWB and Obama.The stark reality is that we are not debating solutions, nor are we debating principles or values, the political debate is more like a OU/Texas football game. We get confused between our preconceived notions and reality nowadays on a regular basis.Nothing this country does has anything to do with “middle and long term” because politics is like the stock market, its all about quarterly earnings.If you want to discuss middle and or long term solutions then a post on the USPS would not generate the debate we are having today. This article is actually the one we need to be discussing: http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPI…Which of course will cause JLM and Andy Swan to scream “European Socialism.” Which of course is exactly where we are headed….and to which we can thank all the folks who have brought us the wonders of technology and the internet.I WANT to discuss the future, that is why I read this blog everyday, as far as a discussion of Obama vs Perry, or left vs. right….I could care less.Now, to your first comment, the only people who died to give me democracy were those who died during the revolutionary war. But the reality is they died to give democracy to white, educated, males who owned property. Which means most of them died for a cause that they could not participate in initially. Then the Civil War was about the concept of slavery and the battle of industrial over agrarian economics…and nothing directly involving the right to vote.Yes, I know that we love to romanticize about our democracy and how special of a nation we are; from a romantic perspective then we should also celebrate the labor movement for all the wonders we enjoy today that the union organizers died for…I think its a shame that Fred has not invested in a company that is developing a way for each and every one of us to vote directly on issues; nothing is a greater community then democracy and it is time that we make the two parties irrelevant, and do away with the concept of representative democracy….

             6. i’m just digging in now. 5:40am the day after. cosmic indeed. this will take me at least an our. i’m looking forward to it.

             7. It’s comment trains that this one that take 3 mornings to dig through.Folks have a lot to say about social/political/economic/global change, and all of it is worth reading to better understand what’s happening.I still don’t understand why large corporations and banks are sitting on cash, instead of investing. Money does nothing when not in motion.

             8. Fred, thanks for the reply my statement was supposed to read “vast cosmic [ocean of] comments” … correcting now.

          2. NORWAY GOOD MODEL.HAVE HAPPIEST, HEALTHIEST, MOST EDUCATED HUMANS.ALSO MOST ENTREPRENEURIAL.BUT THEM ALSO SIZE OF NEW JERSEY.AMERICA LOOK GOOD BECAUSE IT CAN GROUND DOWN 300 MILLION AMERICANS TO MAKE 10,000 SUCCESSFUL ONES.

             1. yes but they eat too much herring 

             2. I love the way you distill knowledge Grimlock.  You’d make an awesome teacher because you cut through the BS and give the truth in an entertaining fashion.

          3. This is the most cogent comment on this topic that I’ve encountered.  Once again, the corporations get the profit, and the citizens get the big expense.  We have a Congress with no soul, no humanity, who, in their hubristic zeal to remain in power, have made an ineradicable deal with their corporate masters, and an electorate too stupid to see the BS in all the soundbites.Doesn’t anyone wonder why so many corporations donate roughly equal amounts to each major party?  Either way, they win.  And the amounts they dole out are less than a rounding error, less than coffee money.  Exxon’s Q2 profit was up 41%, at $10.68 billion.  These Representatives and Senators will sell their souls for a room full of $10k donors.  Now that the Supreme Court has declared Exxon to be a legal “person,” they can legally donate a million here, a million there…causing the politicians to vibrate with eagerness to please, for an amount that Exxon would require many significant digits to the right of the decimal point merely to express it.

             1. One of the biggest problems is our thinking is categorized as “pro business” and or “anti business.” As if there are only two possible opinions.Its kind of like all the talk about “job creators” I would like to know one investment Fred Wilson has made that he did so because they created jobs? The reality is we are in business to make money and job creation is secondary. Its kind of like a restaurant claiming that they should be rewarded with your business because they are bowel movement creators. Stupid logic.Yes, I go to restaurants to eat, and bowel movements are a result of eating, but it is not why I go out to eat.The reality is that corporate profits have never been higher and our tax rates have never been lower…so obviously profits and tax rates have no relationship with job creation.But that is logic, not hyperbole. I would have no problem drinking the kool aid when I hear the first person claim they invest to create jobs not make a profit.

       2. One of the fundamentals of our country — the UNITED STATES, not the Federal Republic of America — is that the Federal government only has those powers specifically granted by the States.All powers not granted are reserved to the States.This mandates a SMALL Federal government.Our government was founded and is authorized by the Constitution only to provide services — such as defense — which CANNOT be provided individually or by the States.It is our National founding will to safeguard such measures to the individual and States.

       3. Norway? You mean the baby country with less than 6m people? Hardly apples to apples Brad, please try again.

    6. “HIS RESPONSE WAS, “INTERESTING, IN CHINA WE BELIEVE THAT IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PEOPLE TO TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES FIRST AND IT IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO NOT BE RELIANT ON THE GOVERNMENT.”Unlike in western democracies where we have this crazy idea that government exists as a democratic institution empowered to focus the will of the citizens on their collective self interests. Unlike in China, here we believe relying on our government is a form of relying on ourselves because ultimately we are the government.Yes, the many bureaucratic failings of democratic governance are all too clear today but we are not at the end of history as regards the evolution of democratic mechanisms. When it come to the long slow up hill battle to perfect democratic governance we need to keep our noses to the grindstone and keep slugging for Jesus.The democratic woods are lovely, dark, and deep,But we have promises to keep,And miles to go before we sleep,And miles to go before we sleep.- Robert Frost(almost)It seems this guy simultaneously subscribes to both fake communism and fake capitalism all in the service of state nationalism.We should not be taking our political advice from communist elitist in China.Let ‘s not give up to easily on perfecting capitalist democracies.

       1. IN CHINA, NO RELY ON GOVERNMENT. OTHERWISE IT NOTICE YOU, AND THROW YOU IN JAIL OR MURDER YOU FOR ANNOYING IT.

       2. Amen, brother.  Well played!

    7. BE ENTREPRENEUR WHEN LAID OFF IS LIKE BE NBA STAR WHEN LAID OFF.IT NOT VERY GOOD ADVICE FOR OTHER 98% OF POPULATION.

       1. Not every business has to be huge, nor overly complicated. I’m surrounded by business folks: authors, artists, hackers, painters, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, landscapers, walk in clinics, delis, hobby shops, hot dog trucks, food carts…What’s tough for me to get my head around is the divergence of what people want versus what they need. It’s amazing how rare it is to both see and act on an opportunity.

          1. Well said.I’ve been hearing from a number of people who need help developing what I can only call  ‘lifestyle’ businesses.No intent to sell. Goal is to create profit for the family for a goal, like college education.I love working on these with people on these projects.

             1. These types of businesses are where I have spent most of my time and professional life. They are real, they are strong and they are meaningful. I am a very proud cheerleader of these types of businesses.

             2. I spent a big chunk of my career on the opposite side…start-up to global brand, IPO, acquisition.Now that I’m working on a couple for myself, a group of clients in this area are finding me. Loving it.And interesting….many of these will mushroom in size as they are the epitome of the niche community that just may have broader appeal now that the social web has providing that reach.

          2. You are spot on Mark. There are loads of businesses in this category and many more to come. I am doing (honestly attempting to do at this stage) a couple of things in this very area right now. 

          3. Mark, take a look around your area at all the empty commercial space formerly occupied by defunct painters, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, landscapers, clinics, delis, hobby shops, etc.  Most retail enterprises are heavily dependent on macro-economic health.  When the economy falls, their customers disappear, holding onto their money until they’re more confident of their own economic futures.It’s one thing for a 20-something to quit college, pursue a dream, lose $500k of Fred’s money and go back to school wiser.  That kid has no responsibilities, and the failed venture is a mere speed bump that, now, is recognized as a badge of honor for having tried.  Yeah, he might have cost Mom & Dad $20k or so, but he has the rest of his life to make it up to them.The 40-year-old deli owner has everything tied up in the deli.  When 30% of his customers stop buying lunch or prepared food, his crash and burn takes his family with him and his life savings.Investors?  Please.  They’re like a herd, all of them chasing the bright shiny object we call social media.  Try to get anything else funded.

             1. I realize Fred’s the exceptional VC but he and Gotham Gal invest in local businesses as well.I don’t think we can rely on big banks and businesses to begin investing heavily anytime soon and trickle down economics to rejuvenate the middle class. The work and capital has to come from smaller financial units (lifestyle businesses).

       2. Sage comment.  It’s possible that a decent % of the population, given some guidance, could figure out some kind of product or service based on what they already know or observe.  However, almost none could capitalize it, market it or sell it.  That part is the hard part.  Given that a tragic % of Americans are one missed paycheck or one blown transmission away from financial disaster, this is a silly prescription.  If everyone could be an entrepreneur, everyone already would be one, rather than put up with commutes, prick bosses, starvation wages and soul-deadening work that might be taken from you any minute.

    8. my brother lost his job recently. i suggested this path to him. he said “i’m a soldier, not a leader”. how does someone who sees themselves as a doer, not a leader, find the entrepreneur in themselves?

       1. This is in fact, an important issue.Someone I know had her father pressured into business ownership. It ended in the worst manner imaginable.Self knowledge first, situation knowledge second, action last in major life changes……IMO

          1. Some very insightful thinking afoot there.  Well played.To know oneself is powerful.  To act against form is daring.  To redefine oneself is rewarding.  The reward is to begin the circle of knowledge again.We are all capable of much more than we ever think we can do.  Much, much, much more.We are learning little beasties and we are not static.  Daring becomes doing, if we let it in.

       2. There’s also the challenge of finding the salesperson inside yourself…not a small undertaking for many.

       3. Fred that is a great question. I admit that being an entrepreneur is not for everyone. My point is that if I were out of work, I would not wait for my 99 weeks of unemployment to run out. I would do everything possible to provide for my family.I believe when our back is against the wall we find the greatest possibilities within ourselves. It is at that point of true need that the entrepreneur finds a solution.

       4. There are entrepreneurs — guys w/ ideas who MUST try to make them happen.  They are often good leaders and sometimes good managers.There are leaders — guys who can rally around a mission and accomplish it.  They are often not idea guys and usually good managers.There are managers — guys who can take orders and make teams accomplish them.  They are rarely idea guys, sometimes good leaders but always detail guys.There is a role for everyone and the guy who knows which one he is is a liberated individual and is not a fakir or a poseur or a pretender.  He is a true man, true to his own talents.I had a guy who worked for me who was a stud — two tours flying F-4s into the gaping maw that was Hanoi.  Courage beyond belief.  He had worked for 2 companies that had failed and he simply could not do it on his own.Give this guy a mission and he was relentless and would not waiver — like bombing Hanoi at 800′.  But the entrepreneur had been beaten out of him.  He knew it and we made a great team.  He worked for me in 3 different companies and he was spectacular.Every time it came to divvy up the equity — he took cash and I took equity.  When we went to the paywindow, I still cut him in for a generous slice.We were both happy.  Horses for courses.

    9. As many of us in the AVC community are entrepreneurs, our gut feelings may be to agree with you. But if you look at it objectively, countries where almost everyone is an entrepreneur are desperately poor ones, a point Prof. Milfred Bateman made in a letter I quoted in a post here. There’s lots of entrepreneurship in Bangladesh, for example, as Bateman noted, but high levels of poverty too, because it didn’t develop the sorts of sustainable businesses East Asian countries did.

    10. Only when healthcare is affordable for the vast majority of people in this country should it be an individual’s responsibility to attain and maintain it, rather than the government’s. I’d also add that the irony of a communist behaving more like a capitalist is not lost upon me as we have a nation full of capitalists striving to behave a lot more like communists.  You only have to look at the political landscape as well as the mainstream propaganda machines masquerading as independent news to see what I mean.  The fact that FOX news can call themselves news and get away with it is only the most glaring example, but not the only one.  Our country is now run on the principle of keeping it’s citizens dumb and out of the political process as much as possible, thereby keeping the richest among us rich and driving up their influence over the country.  Lest my comment here confuse, I’m an admitted capitalist and I’ve had treatment for the disease and I’m happy to say the treatment didn’t take.  However, I also know that naked capitalism, just like all ideologies is not a political system that is workable in the real world, nor is it one that we practice in the USA here today.  I’ll stop abruptly here as this is becoming a rant and I only wanted to make the point that we have more in common with the communists in areas other than healthcare than anyone ever wants to acknowledge and those commonalities are in place deliberately to protect those with the most to lose while also making it more difficult for the nation to function as closely to the pure capitalism ideal that we like to advertise, having the side-effect of making it harder for others to succeed.  

    11. I guess he forgot about the dirty float that his government is undertaking to allow for artificially low exchange rates. I do agree with Fred’s point on the Post Office.  It is a disgrace.  But the fix to the entitlement problem isn’t telling incompetent people to start a company.  That is a silly suggestion.  Most businesses fail.  And that stat is heavily skewed against people with poor training.The main issue we have a legacy employee problem.  Which is a made up term that I am using to create an analogy to a big company with a legacy revenue problem.  We have a bunch of citizens who don’t have the training to compete in today’s world. Nor the means to obtain that training. That is the root cause. And a rah..rah speech starting with “go build a business” doesn’t solve that.

    12. Brad while I don’t deny the conversation you had with your communist friend, his comment is completely dillusional and the exact opposite of reality in China. Maybe he was trying to impress you but what he described is exactly what is going on in China today…not America. It is the nature of a communist nation to take care of their people and for those people to rely on their government to provide everything for them; it’s not the other way around. lol. “Chinese believe it is their own responsibility to take care of themselves…” Are you kidding me? The recent economic boom in China has created great confusion and disruption in the daily lives of many Chinese because they don’t know how to progress forward into a more free marketplace while it conflicts with their traditional tendencies of relying and expecting the government to take care of them, provide them with loans, provide them with business oversight and handholding. This is in fact is true because I see it every month. 

41. If we look back at how the country was built, we never operated off of a mentality that no job was too small to do.  You did what it took to make things work.  Whether that mean laying tracks for rail cars, shoeing a horse or even delivering mail – there was a greater sense of self in doing a job that represented something bigger than yourself. Aspirations existed and there was very little or dare I even say no sense of entitlement. How many people today want to be mail carriers compared to working at FedEx or UPS? And when you ask why would someone choose one over the other, a lot of it has to do with what the offer is.  Fred Smith is a genius. Having met him several times as well as a few of the original pioneers of the company, they knew that technology would help, not hurt their idea.  They also developed a culture of employees that you dont typically find in government jobs today.  They educate their employees and inspire through education.Of the $1.2 trillion in cash reserves sitting in just a few private companies, they all seem to have similar traits.  Can one imagine what would come if we took all the money we spent in the past 6 years in the war(s) and put it into education?  We may just be smart enough to resolve conflict in a very different manner and inspire along the way. 

    1. you can’t just throw money at education. it’s a complex thing. 

       1. YOUR WRONG!It doesn’t need to be that complex.You CAN just throw money at education.THEN JUST WATCH AS IT GOES DOWN THE DRAIN!

       2. It seems that the biggest weakness in public education is its geographic, physical-plant anchor.The combination establishes a virtual “means test.,” i.e., if you live in a poor district, for whom the cost of building and maintaining the physical plant is beyond means, you get a substandard, poorly-maintained physical plant, plus salary disadvantages that logically constrain your ability to recruit great teachers.  Students whose geography subjects them to these limitations receive (relatively) poor educations, comparatively, in part due to stress caused by the physical dangers that often accompany such environments.What if we redirected the capital wasted on physical plants toward e-learning investments?  Buying high-speed computers and Internet connections for those students would be a rounding error.  Released from geographic constraints, students would be free to select e-learning courses from the best teachers in the world (who would now be scalable).  This makes students consumers, with a choice.  The resulting competition to create excellent instructional content and learning experiences would force all teachers to raise their games; otherwise, they’ll have no student-customers, and will be out of business.To level the playing field for teachers, we could apply some of the recovered physical-plant capital and use that to subsidize teachers’ access to curriculum-development tools and course-development guidance.E-learning already offers more ways to engage students and measure progress, or its lack.[Disclosure:  I have a virtual training company.  Right now it’s focused on sales training for lawyers, but one day we’d like to tackle this public-education tragedy and make things more equitable.]

42. serious question- how many jobs have your portfolio companies created in total?. not saying its your job to create jobs but your firm seems to be a lot better at supporting massive user populations than creating jobs. 

    1. By default Information technologies and or most high technology solutions are designed to eliminate jobs.As one of my friends stated, when Facebook adds 10Million new users it may at most add 10 more people to the team that manages new accounts and the servers that are needed.It is very easy for Mr.Wilson to point out entitlements  are to a large extent the cause of the problems, but he forgets to mention that the Management was the one that negotiated the deals in the first place, they hired high priced consultants from the McKinsey’s of the world. Their projections and their knowledge of how the future would turn out were way off the mark, yet those people are never held accountable, nor are required to make any changes. More importantly they keep getting hired again to offer advice for higher prices which benefit a few.I would say that jobs are not created or destroyed by any President of a nation. What a President and the congress can do is put in place policies and structures that allow for job creation.The U.S. Govt setup the NSF, NIH, DARPA etc that either do fundamental research or fund fundamental research that then spawns many new industries and jobs, that is progressive, not conservative or liberal.  If we want jobs we have to bring back manufacturing and for that to happen businesses will demand lower wages ( they have stagnated for 40 yrs inflation adjusted for manufacturing). You can accept lower wages as a society only if we as a  society are also willing to share resources thereby lowering our operating costs as an individual/community. Tough sell in a capitalistic society, try and think about sharing your internet service with your neighbors and collectively paying the $50 to the telco’s for example, that wont happen.

       1. This is off the wall Baba12, but what if everyone opened up their routers/Wifi’s at home?

          1. If you bought a wireless router between 2001 and 2008 you did not get a default screen at time of configuration requiring you to put in a password.Most folks would leave their wifi routers open and neighbors could share the connection ( officially or unofficially). Telecom companies realized that it was cutting into their profits, they made a deal with router manufacturers to have the default password screen forcing consumers to place a lock on their wifi networks.Most folks have also been made to believe that an open wifi network would allow intruders to get access to their systems…Sharing ones network is not just about lowering ones operating costs it is also about sustainability. If you dissect a router or any solid state electronic device, it contains materials that are in fixed quantities on the planet, for a moment think that if 40% of Indians and Chinese has the same per-capita  consumption  of Americans and Western Europeans, there will be two things that will happen, the cost of products for the Americans and Europeans will go up and the resources needed to fulfill this consumption will be depleted at a far greater rate than ever before. This model is un-sustainable and as much as capitalism is fine and dandy it has to re-calibrate  to address these discrepancies or else the ability for the Human species to sustain only diminish further.Mr.Wilson has kids, will hope to have grand kids some day and I bet he would want to see they have a sustainable life that is better than what he has had. Unfortunately money wont be any match to nature taking care of things.As the comedian George Carlin says http://goo.gl/0fnd  the plane twill save itself, it is basically saving ourselves.Jobs and sustainability…. wonder if we will see President Obama address it in those terms, he is more worried about getting elected.

             1. Thanks.  I had wondered about that.  With all of the “Your Computer Is Going To Take Your Life” marketing going on it makes sense.Consumption is going to grow elsewhere, the growth in spontaneity in China would catch most by surprise… you know they’re the ChiComs and all…Possibly with encouragement, the change can come from the new generation.

          2. Fon (Fon Wireless Ltd.) is a company that operates a system of dual access wireless networks. Fon is the largest Wi-Fi network in the world, with over 3 million hotspots.Members are called Foneros and they agree to share a bit of their Wi-Fi signal, so that they can connect to other Foneros’ hotspots.Consumers who do not share their internet connection can buy Wi-Fi access passes or credit from Fon. Fon members whose hotspots are used to access Wi-Fi by a paying customer can receive part of the revenue.http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…

             1. Me like!!! 

    2. Have you seen the job postings in the USV portfolio?http://www.usv.com/jobs/

    3. if you include zynga, and you have to, then it is between 5,000 and 10,000 i suspect

       1. Not counting freelancers/consultants (like designers), marketing and other outsourced services, and thousands (tens of?) people on Etsy.How many jobs have these 5,000-10,000 replaced? 🙂

43. The problem as I see it is that the post office is not evolving. With the resources that they have/had I think it’s incredible that companies like Fedex/UPS/<other> are eating their lunch.They cannot expect for their business to get better without at least reacting to change.Change business model & service type then retrain the postal workers.People are not going to stop shipping goods. You can’t email a tv/guitar.Market those people. 

44. I’m sure many of you have read this already but in case you missed it among information overload, Andreessen’s recent WSJ op-ed complements Fred’s thoughts well – http://online.wsj.com/artic…

    1. that was a great piece by marc

45. Thanks for sharing this article, I had missed it. I don’t want to start a political debate, so I’ll keep my points very specific.- The postal service hasn’t received tax dollars since the 1980’s. Although that does not preclude it being an “entitlement”, it isn’t a tax burden. A better comparison would be to that of an ailing business that fails to adjust to its customers’ needs.- I still find it borderline jaw-dropping that one can send a letter to any remote addressable corner of the American wilderness – a vast expanse of land – for 42 cents, and have been able to for over 200 years. To me, it is understandable why this institution is not on the cutting edge, and it clearly needs modernization, but it demonstrates a fairly high level of logistical sophistication.- The postal service is the second largest civilian employer in the US (after Walmart), another component that makes change so difficult.

    1. Stop being so level headed !

46. Fred,Have you been inside a post office lately?  Your post makes me think that something is not only wrong with the macro environment, but the overall management and structure are faulty.  If their are no layoff clauses and their labor is so much more than Fedex and UPS, then why is their customer facing service so poor?Take these workers and put them in the windows.  I rarely mail things anymore, but in the case of sending out an ebay auction or something, there are rarely more than 1 or 2 window employees working at the busiest times of the day.  8-9 am (when people try and send things before work), Noon to 1 (when people try to send things on their lunch hour), and after 4 pm (when people leave work early and try and send things before the PO closes.)If you are stuck with all that labor, why not (at the very least) improve your customer experience so that people may continue to ship packages, instead of leaving them with such a horrible experience that they think to themselves “I’m never going to ship anything again.”

    1. Wow, it took ~120 comments for someone to finally point out something I feel like seems obvious: despite all the logistical advances in getting a piece of mail from one end of the country to the other for less than a dollar, the USPS has to have one of the *worst* customer experiences ever. I’d rather get wisdom teeth taken out than deal with the USPS.Sure, the post office has two major problems: less mail to make money on, and a massive amount of exposure when it comes to labor, but one of the other fundamental issues is exactly what you said: many people leave feeling like “I’m never going to ship anything again.”I don’t care who you are–any company that makes their customers feel like that every time they use the company’s services is not a company that should survive. And it’s upsetting that one of the biggest reasons the post office is still limping along is because my tax dollars keep it on life support. Such a waste IMO.

       1. Well played!

    2. i have been to the post office. but i would rather pay a lot more and use UPS or Fedex if at all possible.

47. I agree that there are structural changes taking place in the economy, but I don’t think the data support the notion that those structural changes are at fault for the jobs crisis. If it did, you’d see huge spikes in pay (read: labor shortages) in certain sectors of the economy, and despite anecdotes of business owners saying they can’t find qualified people, that’s not actually occurring (see BLS salary data for software developers, for instance).The problem is demand, of course – when demand returns, so will the jobs.

    1. we have those labor shortages in the software tech industry. big time.

       1. How do you see the market adjusting to this shortage? I am not seeing a significant/huge rise in salaries.

48. The 12th century Jewish philosopher/codifier Maimonides states that at the time of the Days of Moshiach “knowledge will fill the earth like water fills the sea…”  He then states that knowledge will be the most sought after commodity, a transition that will revolutionize everything and eventually makes goods plentiful, ultimately leading to the end of wars…He also said that the world will change from “competition” to “cooperation”.  Oh, and he said that in the Days of Moshiach, the world will continue as always (unlike some say that it’s the “end of the world” G-d forbid), the only difference will be an end to hate and envy.  And sorry, no fire and brimstone either…We’re living through the transition.  It’s not going to be like anyone thought, but it will be good…

    1. Malthus’ population theory and spaceship earth’s fast dwindling resource base may limit this outcome.But I sure hope he was right !

       1. No one said we are limited only to planet earth.  Resources are truly infinite, and so is human potential.  We just have to reveal it.  It’s not just optimism, it’s practical.  I think Fred is one of the loudest voices on the Internet saying this.  It’s going to be good.

          1. I too am a flaming optimist about the infinite potential of human creativity.That is why you will hear me shooting off my mouth enthusiastically about abstractions such as the our emerging noosphere.I am a little more worried about our physical ability to reach out for off planet resources.Seem God was following the don’t put all your life forms in the same basket schema in a really big way.

    2. i like your optimism steeped in religious history

49. First rule – do no harm.Short term fixes like the stimulus have done greater long-term harm than short-term good (having no positive net impact on GDP). It also perpetuated and enlarged the entitlement systems that you refer to as unsustainable. Let us get our fiscal house in order through entitlement and tax reform. Then get out the way, allowing industries and governments to disrupt themselves. This will send a positive signal to markets and consumers, and would do much more to stimulate short term economic growth than any stimulus or temporary tax relief.   

    1. Banking fraud has no positive net impact on GDP. First things first, lets get that out of the way.

50. I have a feeling that there is more to this then a move from an industrial to an information age. I have a feeling that industry and information share an underlying feature/quality/dynamic that may have undermined industrialism and if left unchecked will do the same for the information age. It goes deeper.

    1. You have a point in the sense that information and industry are often closely linked, e.g., R&D often occurs in close proximity to manufacturing. So when we lose the industry, we lose a lot of the information age stuff associated with it. 

51. we discussed this some time ago at AVC. its the Amazon argument from last week. technology is gutting the job market – because it creates innovation that essentially allows 1 person to do the job of 50 – or removes the need for the 50 completely. back then i predicted a jobless recovery – except now – there is no recovery in sight.

    1. Technology by it’s very nature is meant to make things easier and or more efficient thereby eliminating need for humans. But a lot of jobs are still needed to build and maintain the infrastructure on which a whole lot of technology runs on and does not require everyone to be a javascript,HTML5,python programmer or a Bio engineer etc. The recovery is there for the taking, just not many accept the realities.

       1. Retrain and spread the work around?But that fails to generate higher short term profits for the status quo.Long term social stability does not seem to be part of the social profit equation?It is really all about the big picture. Visualizing social economy as a complex living system. Anything less will fail to meaningfully operationalize our present social situation in ways that are creatively actionable.You need to be able to adequately model reality before you can effectively reshape it. Living systems modelling is the new atomic table in an age of organic network structured realities.We need to inject organic process literacy into our everyday language and culture.In the last hundred years we have managed to get almost everyone onboard, consciously or sub-consciously, visualizing everything as a chain of cause and effect no magic required.Next stop, get almost everyone onboard, consciously or sub-consciously, visualizing everything as a complex living system, a mutually interdependent web of evolving social adjustments, no winner takes all delusions required.Just like the atomic table comes with useful valence rules, the living systems model also comes with many well established organic network dynamics rules.

          1. It’s not just retrain, it’s also don’t create any more.Until the poetry demand shows a bit more vitality, no more education money for English majors.A bit more for computer networking and HVAC folks.

    2. That has been a foreseeable problem for decades.That states the problem at hand now we need to formulate some solutions.Where are the creative social-commerce solutions that should be emanating from the mythical American exceptionalism and ingenuity.Roadblocked by the exceptionalism and ingenuity of the special interests.

    3. TECHNOLOGY MAKES PEOPLE OBSOLETE. SOCIETY PICKS UP THE PIECES.US NEED A SOCIETY EQUAL TO OUR TECHNOLOGY.

    4. Over the last 25 years, the design of CBD office space has changed dramatically.  Where law firms had big expansive offices for partners and big office space for associates and large admin areas for paralegals and huge file areas for case files and libraries for research — NOW  they have small offices for partners because they no longer meet w/ clients face to face (Skype, etc), associates just need room for a computer, paralegals are also just a computer and everything else is digital.You meet your lawyer for a coffee because you have all the docs sent to you digitally.The space requirement for a 50 person lawfirm is about 30% today of what it was 20 years ago.So, office space demand has increased but usage has declined dramatically.This is the real world.

52. What Obama should say:”We are going to out of your way now.”   What Obama will say:”We’re going to borrow money from China to pay people to dig holes.  This will spur demand and create new jobs filling in holes.”

    1. Thats what any responsible government should do, invest in infrastructure because it creates jobs immediately while plans for a long term outcome. China did it when the Sichuan earthquakes happened as well as when GFC. That and also they had a bucketload of cash stored away. 

       1. Truly necessary infrastructure programs also create real tangible long term assets that backstop the expenditure.

    2. where were you Sir, when Ronald Reagan, George H.Bush, Bill Clinton, George W.Bush all were borrowing, why did you not raise any objections when libertarian Ayn Rand follower  Alan greenspan and his many cohorts were telling the world that everything was hunky dory when in fact things were not. I bet Obama knew before he got elected as President all these facts, what he assumed was he would figure a way out. Sadly there is not much he can do nor could any of his predecessors, we al need to find a scapegoat, person to blame etc and so he bears the responsibility for what we have.It will take a lot more than borrowing to correct the system that is truly sustainable as what we have now or the path being laid out was never and won’t be sustainable going forward. What is required versus what will be negotiated  will only make it harder.Enjoy the rainy afternoon :)…

       1. Reagan, Bush Sr and Clinton did very well by me, even though I was only old enough to vote in one of their elections.  Borrowing to do what Government should be doing is fine with me…especially when in Reagan’s case it was to defeat the spread of the greatest evil the world had ever seen.As for GW Bush—well, I blame him for Obama among other things…and I was an objector to much of it.  But now we’re stepping on the spending gas WHILE declaring war on the successful and prosperity.  Not a fan.

          1. I guess you would not have been a happy camper in the years before JFK lowered the tax rates 89% for incomes over $250k .

          2. Short term borrowing is not the problem.It has become a necessary evil at this late juncture in a long standing US industrial policy debacle.The real problem is the lack of any credible long term industrial policy capable of reversing the trade imbalance situation.A more logical industrial policy would seem impossible without attacking some of the large and powerful corruption entitlements.- criminally corrupt banking and investment industry entitlements- pharmaceutical and medical industry monopoly entitlements- corrupt  “military industrial complex” entitlements- cheap offshore labor & environmental policy arbitrage entitlements- off shore tax haven entitlements- ect. . . . . . .And with the best government money can buy that is simply not going to happen in most democratic jurisdictions !If the old saying that in a democracy you get the government you deserve is true the only thing that can save America, and most other democracies for that matter, is increasing the levels of political process literacy that is a foot in the land.

          3. Whatever Obama is doing is NOT working.If you give me a trillion dollars, I will not allow unemployment to exceed 8%.IT DID NOT WORK.

53. This is hitting the news industry as well.

54. Agreed.  I wrote a piece in 2007 called “Do the Bottom 80% of Americans stand a chance?” – still applies>  The world is changing at light speed, and the middle and lower class (in all developed economies) are especially vulnerable.http://www.fundmymutualfund…

55. But i feel its not because of other forms of mail that they have this issue. On the flip side their business should have been compensated as the share of eCommerce goes up. You have so many shipping items on Ebay and Amazon through USPS. I think they need to restructure their approach..

56. What Obama might need to say or do may work against getting him re-elected…unfortunately.Things like:- the system is broken- more layoffs are upcoming- need to raise taxesOne thing the US has going for them is the ability to change and adapt. The status quo is not tenable anymore.

57. Just for fun I looked up the rate for a coast to coast fedex envelope. Fedex will get it there in 3 days for $23.97.The USPS will get it there in basically the same amount of time for $0.42.

    1. Guess private enterprise does things better always, or so the many folks on the right will make you believe. After all government can’t do anything right.There is a big disconnect between the marketing juggernaut that has managed to paint government to be bad and private enterprise to be the solution for all malaise.

    2. and i always use fedexthat tells you somethingnot sure what

58. (I’m having trouble posting on Disqus… this was in response to Aaron Klein….My wife and I had this exact conversation with our two teenage daughters last night.  My wife thinks the answers are obvious (the union has to adjust/adapt) but my opinion is there is nothing obvious when politics are involved.  Just look at the facts:(1) USPS employs 600,000 people, and that makes up 80% of their costs(2) There is a no layoff provision with the union(3) They cannot raise the price of stamps faster than the rate of inflationThese items alone make the situation untenable, regardless of political party.  Now, add in Aaron’s points about the political “base” that Democrats and Republicans need to accommodate, and this doesn’t go very far very fast.  The fact is the USPS is severely outdated and needs to be recreated – we don’t need mail every day, we can eliminate a lot of the junk mail and probably shrink the work force by 50% or more.  These are “obvious” answers, but when you talk about 300,000 new people out of work in this economy, people get afraid.  Of course, at the rate we’re going, there will be 600,000 people out of work….

59. As you mentioned technological revolutions have great effect of demand for skills. There is no quick-fix for the job loss and no way to stop the progress, but there is a great opportunity to adapt, adjust and jump ahead. We just have to focus on education, re-education and rapid acquisition of new practical skills. I think the explosion of short-term entrepreneurial education programs like Founder Institute and startup incubators, and professional initiatives like @laidoffcampphx are clear indication of what works in this environment. It is so painful to see university and school budgets being cut now, when these are exactly the areas where we have to invest.

    1. all of this hacking education is fantastic and exactly what we need

       1. Agree. Just need it to go quicker.

60. Great post Fred.  To follow Harry’s reply earlier, we’re now at 2:45 Eastern and there are 256 comments.This decade offers the opportunity to enable a better world along with United States/Canada.  As a society, we’re coming together and sharing knowledge on a level not seen before.  Collaboration wins in the end.I won’t go into Education since the comment section is full of my replies, except for this.  Do not limit your focus on improving Education based solely on Math/Science.  If you can’t read with comprehension, you won’t do well… simple.Regarding big speeches, they are nothing more than big speeches watched by few.  Most are concerned with their own lives and will get the official take by the media.  The media will turn into theater.Fact is, automation is going to be a big factor this decade.  You have complaints regarding jobs going overseas, then the announcement of 1 million robots planned for China.  We have to develop forward.Those that say blame the government, cannot at the same time think all things Apple, or Android, or Facebook and so on.It is up to all of us to make a change… encouraging each other, even if it means congratulating your proclaimed opponent for their good job.  They may have just opened a market.   

    1. i have no interest in speeches myself. i’d rather read 400 comments and counting

       1. ;D

61. None of you are even close to seeing the real depth of the issue. (I feel I can say this without even reading the 269 comments and counting). The very VALUES this society was built on, can no longer sustain it. These values are fundamental to education, healthcare, government, businesses you name it. Egocentrism, consumerism, obsession with so-called “success” over human happiness, new generations ignoring the wisdom of the previous ones, seeking profit over common sense, protecting one’s butt, climbing the ladder, destroying ecology, all this crap that you hear from communists and democrats of all sorts is secondary. The primary is the distorted image of reality most of Americans have in their minds. Why do you live? What do you want from life? What makes you wake up every morning and go to work? Inertia! Every society needs a carrot. For ancient Japanese it was Great Chinese Culture. For 19th century’s Russians it was European Industrial Revolution. For most third-world countries today it is the imaginary USA lifestyle, as portrayed by Hollywood. What is it for US? Religion is over, science is all done, the dotcomes are no more. What are we looking forward to as a nation? I guess the answer is: nothing. I’d love to hear Obama tell the country that. But I doubt he will.

    1. Love a good rant.  Hate to dampen your enthusiasm.News flash — your generation did not invent sex or even begin to catalog all the problems you enumerate.They have all been here forever and in most instances, they are neither new or novel.You didn’t even mention war or poverty.What is true is the American Dream in all its variants.We still continue to be the last best hope of mankind.  How do I know it?I have lived it.  I have provided it to others.  It is real.  I continue to live it.We Americans need to stop apologizing for being successful and exceptional and get on with making it happen.  It is still out there but it is obtained by hard work not redistribution.What is not real is the sense that it comes from anything other than hard work.  That is why America needs to get back to work.How does a man define himself?  Ask yourself how you answer the question — what do you do?  You answer with your WORK.  Fred Wilson IS a venture capitalist — not a philosopher king who makes his living doing a bit of VC.Stop being ashamed of success.  The reason Obama cannot say what you want him to say is that he does not know it and does not believe it.  He really has not lived it.

       1. Beat the kid up why don’t ya!He seems both very perceptive and preceptive to me.Although your main point about hard work and getting on with it is well taken many Americans who have worked hard all their lives would like nothing more than an opportunity to do just that!REDISTRIBUTION BAD – your other recurring battle cry is somewhat less convincing although to some degree true.A key survival feature of all complex living systems, and make no mistake political economies are quintessential complex living systems, pivots around the dynamics of distributed redundancy. Complex systems need distributed redundancy as an insurance against the inevitable failures inherent in their own complexity.In social terms that living system survival dynamic refers to the distributed redundancy of wealth, power, education and democratic community control.Andrei’s generation is staring this living system, this networked economy, this high speed global entanglement in the face.That challenge is massive and intimidating. The analytic lexicon and memes required to collectively visualize and debate these living system frameworks is not fully formed yet.So the older generations, coddled in the warm simplicity of a more linear, a more human scaled rugged individualist bootcut era should cut them some slack as they attempt to get their bearings in this brave new world of ours.

          1. I really didn’t mean to “beat the kid up” — please accept my apologies but it is really the difference in our ideas which is in mortal combat.  A sincere apology for my abrupt nature.I love youthful inexperience and would trade heads up for another chance at it.I do believe that today is a better time — and easier time — to be alive and in the mix than any other time in my lifetime.Truth is I envy the young.  They are pound for pound, smarter, more communicative, more clever and the list goes on.So, sorry and let the ideas wrestle.

       2. A rare occasion here, but I’m with Ray.And the reason is that you are not average, JLM ( no news there ).The average American wants to be part of a grander greater America. The grander greater America of stuff has come and gone with little to show (except for the Wall Street cream skimmers, who ran the game and made out just fine).America needs to pivot. They need to put the traditional American values to work on a grander, greater dream. Sadly, your President does not, yet, appear to have the goods. He is the worst example of the old saw describing a perfect candidate: ‘the only problem with him is that he wants to be President.’What noone states is that your President is an opportunist. A guy who decided ( I think while he was @ Columbia ) that he could become the first black President. A guy who is all gloss and no hoss. He learned how to get elected. And now that he is there, it turns out he does not have much to offer (Ram Emanuel, agent of change, GMAFB!) Axelrod must cry himself to sleep every night.A famous actor once said about finally dating a wildly attractive actress: ‘You know, when I finally got there, it turned out there was no there, there.’ That’s what happened to Obama’s campaign: when he got into power, he had no real, unwavering, powerful reason to be President.Not that anyone else seems too.Until that person shows up, with a credible and genuine vision of a 21st century American dream (not the plastic American dream of the 1950’s & 1960’s), your country is sucking the hind tit. While, maybe the middle tit – the Euros are getting the hind.

          1. whomever gets the republican nomination line needs to use that actress line again and again and again. it’s a winner down the line.

          2. Vision or intention is not enough if you do not have the votes you fail. I think if you every put a politician or a CEO in a position where all the people who have to agree or vote on your suggestions are in opposition you will get a BIG FAIL. Especially where their own agenda is to remove you.

             1. Is this the inherent hull speed of American governmental structures?Or is it just a temporary poisoning of the political well?

          3. For Obama’s “reason to be President”, I wish I had enough solid, numerical data to support an answer but do not; my nutshell sized explanation for his “reason” that seems to fit the facts is:He wanted to make progress on the poverty he saw as a community organizer.  His approach has been to get enough power in DC that he could, one company, industry, and state at a time, get just what he wanted by making them “an offer they can’t refuse” mostly to “spread the wealth around”.His main problem has been that the way he has used his power has kept the economy from recovering.  With recovery stopped, too many voters are TORQUED.There are many more details available.  Net, it’s an example of really dumb government and an example of why the most serious problem in the US is the determinedly, deliberately brain-dead content of the MSM that refuses to provide the information needed for an informed electorate so that we can monitor our government and avoid really dumb government. 

             1. I suspect you are right.  The challenge is to “spread the wealth around” through opportunity for all or confiscation.Opportunity, yes.Confiscation, no.

             2. “provide the information needed for an informed electorate so that we can monitor our government and avoid really dumb government.”That would be a greet stating point!

             3. I am not giving him the benefit of the doubt.He has talked at length about his monk-like, meditative junior and senior years at Columbia. I am not buying that he stumbled into the Chicago Dem scene and then got sucked up in a wave of do-gooderism.He is a top down analytical, structural thinker. He motivates himself with audacious long term goals. I like the odds that I am right on his motivation – superficial & saddening as it is.The most powerful man in the world has not learned the how, what or why of power – he saw an opening, hired a brilliant manger (Axelrod), who positioned him perfectly and leveraged his telegenic oration skills magnificently.Unfortunately, he has none of the tools to govern.FWIW, check out Jean Chretien (Canadian PM – http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…étien) sometime. He is the anti-Obama and the guy who set Canada on a fiscally responsible course (which our current PM has held steady on – which is a minor miracle, given that they are from different parties).One last thought: the populace is not you, SIGMA. They don’t want data, they want to be led.

             4. How Canada does so well in some areas where the US has done so poorly surprises me.  Apparently Canada never blew or burst a housing bubble, and the Canadian banks are just fine.  Good for Canada.I tried to be brief.  You went deeper into his motivations than I did, but I suspect we agree.I haven’t wanted to dig into these issues and, instead, just hope that the House will rarely give him even the time of day and in 2013 we will tell him “Don’t go away mad; just go away.”. 

          4. Eisenhower.  That’s all you need to know about competence.

             1. Yes, and Ike presciently warned us of the dangers of what he pithily titled, “the military/industrial complex.”  Add BigFinance, BigPharma and BigMedicine to the mix and, Voila!, you have today.

    2. i don’t live in the same place as you do andrei. i don’t relate to this comment in the least.

62. I think this is very insightful. Government right now artificially maintains unsustainable systems / infrastructure. Though it is probably true Obama or anyone can not do anything to directly improve the situation, I believe it is important to explain to the public that such issues need to be dealt with (think Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, etc.). At some point in the future, we are going to pay a heavy price for trying maintain a system that can’t sustain itself. 

    1. There seems to be a lot of corruption entitlements that make this a self fulfilling argument?The wolf says you can’t afford to run the hen house any more but he has a private financing package he can offer you.Every civilized political jurisdiction has some entitlements even if it is just basic educational services + roads + food safety + ect. . . . .The problem is how to find a sustainable balance between the public and private interests.

63. The high activity on this thread is important evidence of an extreme incongruity and problem in our country:I would like to respond directly to some of the points here but believe, and have believed for many years, that I do not have access to even as much as a weak little hollow hint of a tiny clue about real data on the real situation.  Heck, I never saw even a clear definition of GDP and how it is measured!  Similarly for the unemployment rate, the Federal Reserve balance sheet, the M1, M2, and M3 money supplies, the balance of payments, the balance of trade, the inflation rate, the Federal deficit, and on and on.  For the Federal budget deficit, I have yet to see even D- level information on either the Federal expenditures or the Federal revenues.  For the national debt, I’ve seen next to zip, zilch, and zero on the forms, the terms, the interest rates, and the counter-parties; I don’t know how much of the debt is held by the Federal Reserve, Goldman Sachs, Citi, pension funds, hedge funds, China, Japan, Germany, sovereign wealth funds, or the Seven Dwarfs.In graduate school, this combination of the importance of the economy and my abysmal ignorance about it led me to touch on ‘economics’ until I ran to grass on the campus quad to do an on all fours upchuck from the reeking sewage that passed for work in the economics department.  After the first lecture, I nicely and quietly asked the prof what he was assuming — continuity, convexity, differentiability, continuous differentiability, etc., and he rushed to find my advisor and get me OUT of his class!  First cut, as far is at all clear, academic economics has nothing important to do with any real economy.On this thread today, post after post gets deeper than the corresponding content of the ‘mainstream media’ (MSM).  Still, the MSM concentrates on drama and superficial, trivial attention to any of the details.  Heck, the MSM can’t even report percentages meaningfully or put meaningful labels on the axes of graphs.  Debilitating for anything about the economy, the MSM has a phobia about anything numerical.  Determined, deliberate, contemptible, grotesque, outrageous incompetence.On the economy, really, on anything important, with the MSM, we are flying blind.So, the incongruity:  Here at AVC.com, people are VERY interested in the economy and are eager to dig into the details, sometimes with important numerical data, but the MSM insists that their audience wants all the content just drama and otherwise at the level of the fourth grade except math at the second grade and sex at the ninth grade.So, the problem:  Again, as I have long believed, the worst problem in the US is the brain-dead MSM that just locks its feet in concrete and angrily refuses even to consider providing information for an informed electorate.  Recent example:  We are now in The Great Recession (presumably, apparently) caused by the bursting of the real estate bubble.  Only after the fact did we even begin to learn about the roles of Representative B. Frank, Senator B. Obama, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), the Community Reinvestment Act, ‘liar loans’, Fannie and Freddie being urged by Frank, Obama, and the CBC to back ‘liar loans’, lender tricks with adjustable rate mortgages, the inability of Wall Street to ‘price’ real estate derivative securities, etc.  So, not only do we not have a clear picture now, we flew blind into that storm at the beginning.  Net, the MSM gave us the ‘mushroom treatment’, kept us in the dark and fed us on BS.  Oh we heard a lot about ‘sin and corruption’, e.g., by Hollywood starlets, but our out of order economic weather radar had us fly directly into The Great Recession all for no good reason.  Dumb.  Brain-dead.  Inexcusable.  Destructive.  Dangerous.  One such piece of economic nonsense got us WWII; another could get us WWIII after which we wouldn’t have to worry about WWIV for centuries or forever.Recently Buffett was on the Charlie Rose show and tossed off some surprising, general statements about the banking system.  I wish I knew his sources.So, there’s an incongruity and a problem:  So, the flip side may be an opportunity!  Have a Web site where the percentages are reported correctly, graphs are not just ‘artistic decorations’ but meaningful with well written axis labels, where we have data enough to see where the money is and what the flows are, etc.  Easy to see that no one in the MSM would want such a Web site, but perhaps a lot of AVC.com readers would.  I can believe a lot of Hacker News readers would, also.  Actually, I can believe that a large fraction of US college graduates would.  Motivation and interest are high, and not just at AVC.com.MSM, RIP.  Good riddance.  Time for some ‘disruption’.  Don’t curse the darkness; light a candle!  Hmm ….  My project is to help people find what they want and not to create it.  Still …!

    1. Your ability to absorb and analyze data is quite incredible but I think there IS a great amount of data out there — take the BLS as an example.The BLS has six different measures of unemployment and we typically use the one that is most favorable.  Use U-6 and assess how terrible things truly are.About 1 in 5  of our citizens is not gainfully employed.

    2. Yes meaningful transparent metrics for the rest of us.Is that even possible?Would that even be tolerated!If so, when is that coming?_________________________Anyway your line”I don’t know how much of the debt is held by the Federal Reserve, Goldman Sachs, Citi, pension funds, hedge funds, China, Japan, Germany, sovereign wealth funds, or the Seven Dwarfs”. Really improved my health with laughter, thank you!

    3. “There is no such thing as information overload;just filter failure.”– Clay Shirky

       1. yes

    4. Here is one link to some of the variety of unemployment stats @JLM:disqus references in his reply to your post.http://www.bls.gov/news.rel…

       1. Thanks guys.I will look at the BLS data.Yes, I know, in qualitative terms, the US jobs situation just sucks. The situation is outrageous, enormously wasteful, people who want to work and then buy and people who want to work and then sell can’t ‘connect’, a grand tragedy of grotesque incompetence, just for some adjectives. But it is also important to have good numerical data on just how bad the situation is and on other relevant parts of the economy so that we can be informed about policy to solve the problem and not be just flying blind.Yes, there is a LOT of data available. Good!As I recall, sometimes the St. Louis Federal Reserve bank publishes some good data; sometimes SAI publishes copies.I’ve tried to be lazy and rely on Internet news sources, e.g., Bloomberg, Forbes, SAI, etc., and not go searching dot gov sites, downloading spreadsheets, developing my own graphs, etc., but, again, the lazy approach failed.Still, for an informed electorate and, then, better government and a better performing economy, the data sources need to be more commonly presented and used, especially in the mainstream media (MSM).In particular, with good data more commonly available, we should have clearly seen the housing bubble forming and taken corrective action right away. So, as a country we just tossed away several trillion dollars for no good reason. Several trillion here and there eventually adds up to real money. Likely now there are other serious problems building like unseen hurricanes.With enough good data, I might have taken positions on some of the points in this thread. E.g., on ‘entitlements’, I don’t know just what they all are, how big they are, how fast they are growing, the major causes of growth, what might be done to slow the growth, why as recently as the Clinton Administration it appeared that we could cover the entitlements, why if the economy gets going again we can’t cover the entitlements again, the role of information technology in creating or destroying jobs, etc.With some incongruity, I just got the Romney jobs PDF and read the first half of it. It’s long. It’s a little rough in places, but overall it is striking: There is a LOT of good detail there, including numerical, that the MSM, including the business news, just does not report. So, the incongruity is that the MSM believes that their audience would not want any such detail and has ignored all of it while the Romney campaign believes that their audience wants pages and pages of detail. And, still the PDF is a campaign document with a lot of summary statements without numerical data or references; a solid treatment would need much more.I still believe that the worst problem in the US is the brain-dead content of the MSM that refuses to contribute to an informed electorate. So, we get grotesquely incompetent government which is not a pretty thing.

    5. blogs kill MSMpeople powered media

       1. Yes.  Moore’s law, the Internet, and some browser and blog software, comparable with Gutenberg — who would’ve thought!AVC.com is not a comprehensive news source, but you, JLM, ShanaC, Tereza, Philip Sugar, Charlie Crystle, etc. and the AVC.com community more generally effortlessly, topic by topic, day by day, in thoughtful, rational, informed, important content totally blow off the field essentially all of the MSM.There’re important things “going on” here.It’s more Internet ‘disintermediation’, getting closer or directly to original sources and cutting out the middle-men, in this case, the journalism, generalist writers.As Wikipedia has illustrated, it turns out ‘the people’ have a lot of the real content and have just needed effective means to get it out.Now people need more effective means to find content; back to it! 

          1. You have captured the biggest benefit of the Internet — genuine, unfiltered voices from the trenches.Not the political rhetoric from on high.Ooops, got to go, I am headed down to shut down Gitmo.

64. Fred I agree with all the issues you have outlined. Except where you may or may not have intended to frame the larger over arching social commerce problem as:”AND WE DISMANTLE ENTITLEMENT SYSTEMS THAT ARE NOT SUSTAINABLE”.Political structures in most first world developed countries are based on democratic community.The democratic citizenry in these jurisdictions have ever right and expectation that the structure and rules that govern social commerce in a democratic community be focused on the over all health and wealth of that democratic community.Yes you are right :”WE ARE UNDERGOING A BIG TIME TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION THAT IS DISRUPTING BIG INDUSTRIES AND BIG COMPANIES ALL OVER THE PLACE”There is nothing endemic to America or any other democratic community that places them at a disadvantage in this regard.The real disadvantage that first world democratic communities face is in trying to accomplish this technical revolution while in parallel preserving the democratic tradition that our social commerce and its attending political rules continue to support the needs of the democratic community at large.Set aside the debate about who gets how much of what entitlements and what are the reasonable limits to those entitlements as framed and limited by national GDP. It becomes impossible to compete against jurisdictions that are not constrained by that mother of all political entitlements, the need to frame political economy and social commerce around the financial well being of the democratic-community at large.Corporations are forced to playing the old divide and conquer game. Arbitrage one jurisdiction’s labor, tax and environmental rules off against the others. I don’t mean to villainize here. Corporations are doing what they need to do for their share holders under the current international reality that has been deal to them.We can’t pay the freight for social infrastructure let alone any, socially debatable, level of democratic community entitlements when large portions of the society are left sitting idol on the national production team’s bench. Every minute of that lost productivity gone forever. If America’s national institutions were more process literate at integrating the available human and natural resource potential that recaptured productivity would certainly be able to kill off the national debt in fairly short order.Democratic communities need new rules of engagement that refocus on fair trade not free for all trade. Corporate players also need a new social commerce framework or they will be forced to continue operating to the lowest common denominator even in the more progressive democratic jurisdictions.The demand for short term corporate profit, especially financial industry corporate profits, has now come to completely dominate the needs and goals of the larger democratic community it was originally intended to serve.The corporate-profit tail is now wagging the democratic-community dog.Democratic communities have historically elected to utilize the checks and balances believed to be inherent within an organically competitive corporate framework.No rational democratic community should seriously consider throwing out this organic corporate competitive framework with the stagnant corporate profiteering bath water.(CORPORATE PROFITEERING – i.e. massive sovereign funds accumulated by the Chinese government at the expense of workers paid pennies on the dollar for their productive output thus crippling their ability to buy much of anything made in America)BUTThe survival of  democratic values and institutions, which constitute the bedrock of all democratic community, historically obligates us to debate and retrofit the rules of engagement between corporate institutions and the larger democratic community masters these corporations must inevitable serve.Synergic realignment between a more socially responsible corporate framework and the larger democratic community needs will ultimately serve to augment the survival potential of both.Social evolution dominated by the steerage of present day, short term, corporate profit frameworks can only generate short term fragmented social outcomes.Capitalism as present formulated is not necessarily synonymous with democratic community or even true free enterprise.Capitalism need serious systemic and structural reforms or it will be, in the long run, subsumed by other forms of social commerce more effective at supporting and sustainable true free enterprise democratic communities.__________________________________________Cliché Probes to ponder- Organic Capitalism- Optimal ProfitsI don’t think Marx put it quite this way but he points out a major failing that us capitalists needs to solveWHAT DOESN’T GO AROUND IN WORKERS PAID CHECKS CAN’T CONTINUE TO COME AROUND IN FUTURE SALE AND PROFITSTRANSLATION:concentration of wealth is not so much immoral as it is mathematically unsustainable in a social-commerce networking senseororganically complex systems, like political economies, depend on well distributed participation in wealth, power, education and control in order to maintain any long term homeostasis

    1. Any ‘no layoffs’ entitlement will kill its industry during the current transformation on how people do all kinds of basic stuff.   Any ‘no layoffs’ entitlement is simply wrong and immoral and allowing unions to keep them is just like allowing a kid to eat poisoned candy.

       1. I agree!My post neither suggests nor defends any such entitlements.I was simply trying to frame the problem at hand and its a whopper!

    2. that’s a big comment and to be honest, i don’t understand some of it. but that last part is spot on. the concentration of wealth in this country is very concerning to me. and i’m one of the people it is concentrating in. it’s amazing how much wealth one can accumulate in a short period of time. just twelve years ago, my wife was crying in the supermarket because we didn’t have the money to pay for the groceries in the bank account.

       1. Wow. There’s a post that would get some distribution. Congratulations on holding it together.I was in a heated argument with a family member who was ‘worried about me financially’ when I finally said ‘I only need to be right once.’The bigger the base (of learning how to do high impact work) the bigger the break, as the WallSt crowd says….

       2. Wow, what a soulful statement.  What an insight.  What a naked soul kind of thing.  Salute!That kind of statement is the kind that makes me want to get a tattoo.Of course, I shop at Whole Foods and often find myself in similar straits even now.  I have tried to declare WF as a dependent to no avail and I knew John Mackey when he was a naturalist (polite word for pot head).

       3. Sorry thats a bad habit of mine.I need to learn to keep my comment down to just my $.02 worth.

65. To me, one of the great paradoxes of our time is that, while time WILL eventually lead us to the other side of this massive techno-societal disruption, we could have an indeterminate number of lean, painful, ugly years.Putting aside platitudes like “be an entrepreneur” or “creative destruction eventually runs its course,” the hard truth is that we could literally have a lost generation in a number of geographical and socio-economic segments of our country. The simple reality is that all of this creative destruction is destroying far more jobs than instigating catalysts for new job creation, and there is no substitute for time to heal that wound. Take print media, as one small example, where bookstores, publishers, professional writers, artists, copy editors, distributors, delivery folks go “poof” and are obsoleted.That’s all fine, and good, but there is no lateral move for a large chunk of these people, which is life, but when you multiply it across industry after industry, and reconcile the hard truth that many of these people will be 1099 entrepreneurs whether they like it or not, the uneasy question is what happens societally in the intervening years?Do we care? Would we have a different take if these same conditions came about by war or natural catastrophe (as opposed to economic one)?The paradox, as I see it, is that we have all of these false “all or none” dichotomies that stifle adult conversations about the appropriate role of government in areas like safety nets, job creation, education, health care, policing/enforcement, infrastructure and investment in bleeding edge R&D.Somewhere between shrugs, affirming platitudes and lazy policy is the the right answer, I think.Cheers,Mark–The Great Reset (Why tomorrow may NOT be better than today)http://bit.ly/iiSEcC

    1. i’m seeing it the same way

    2. I am seeing an entire Lost Decade like Japan and maybe Two Decades.If you cannot rebuild balance sheets with free money, are running massive deficits, are printing money, are widening your trade deficit, compressing your GDP, enduring crushing and demoralizing unemployment and staring down the barrel of either stagflation or massive inflation and you cannot figure out how to provide a job creating environment, then you are by definition screwed.  And screwed very roughly to boot.

       1. Again, I just wonder if it was a giant asteroid hurling towards the earth, whether we’d be so laissez faire about the outcome. Sad to say, but the historical precedent from the Great Depression was that it took a World War with multiple evil despots as clear, obvious villains to rally a values reset. Wondering what the catalyst will be this time.

66. There was a time, when that we oh so true, go west, build a business. Now there’s so much stacked against an entrepeneur it’s not funny. There are many people out there do just that, a lot of them are running businesses off the grid because they can’t afford to be on the grid. The next time you speak with your friend, ask him if why there seems to be so many plagues coming from China, maybe because they don’t have any healthcare. Finally, coming from a person who’s country manufacturers a great deal of our drugs and a lot of our medical equipment I find his attitude extremely disturbing. Or don’t you remember the hearings on the contaminated drugs that we received from China?I’ve been hearing that the Post Office by Congressional mandate since 2010 has had to pay all of their current employees health care cost and the health care cost of their retirees for the next 50-80 yrs in advance, and that it has to be paid within next 10 yrs or Congress will privatize them or close them down or something and this why they are in the red. That when the current Congress took over the Post office was not in the red, they are being forced into default so that they can be privatized. Is this true? Did Congress do this? Does anyone know if this is true? I’m not talking about market forces, I’m talking about a deliberate effort by the Congress to bankrupt an institution in order to turn the business over to the private sector which would be the only way they could justify it. If, this is true and they get away with it, they can do this with a lot of agencies.

    1. i work with entrepreneurs. a lot of them. in tech, in restaurants, in real estate, in retail. i think it is a great time to be an entrepreneur. never been better in my adult life.

       1. I could not possibly agree more.This is not only the age of the entrepreneur, it is the age of the “any age” entrepreneur.

          1. As someone who turned 50 this year, I hope you’re right….

67. As an aside, I’m giving those of you who aspire to climb the Disqus ranks here a nice opportunity: just disagree with one of my comments in this thread and you’ll probably pick up a few likes.

    1. I’d would like to disagree with you but I don’t want to look that needy!

       1. +1 from me for the sense of humor. 

          1. +1 +1

       2. Pretty damn………………………………………………………………….funny!Well played!

    2. i just liked it. will that work?

       1. You’d have to ask your man Daniel Ha, but I’m guessing it would have the opposite effect. 

68. If you’re interested in this Post Office issue, I found this article by Megan McArdle to be very goodhttp://www.theatlantic.com/…Best,Steve

    1. It’s a good post, but I wish she would stop using the word “Wither” in her post titles. 

69. I made about 10 comments on my Android today that did not get printed.Any particular sense as to why that would happen?

    1. are they here now? sometimes disqus takes a while with email replies.android!!!!!!!!!!

       1. That free stuff is Awesome ;-)The best part is that if it sucks, you can call someone to get things to work better………..oh wait :PWhen my Dad automated his office in the 1980’s, I told him to go with IBM PCs so that he could keep going up the corporate ladder and making trouble until he got the result he needed.Noone thinks about owning freeware. they only think about not buying it……

       2. No

70. The recognition that our problems are structural, that there’s no quick fix, that labor shifts are painful (and sometimes generational), that core competencies migrate geographically as new industries are clustered around new expert centers, and that material shifts in education and retraining must be embraced — all of these need to come first (and fast) before the political climate will allow politicians to effectively lead through this pain transition.At the moment, I fear that the American public is still clinging to past comfort and glory. It already knows subliminally that seismic shifts are coming, but like an ostrich it prefers for now to bury its head in the ground. When we have the courage to face the truth heads on, we will have the political resolve to shed some of our old cost structures, and invest in products and services that will be driving tomorrow’s growth.

    1. exactly. well said eyal

71. Many unemployed are unemployable today.Two examples:- friend of mine is looking for a job in a mid-size Midwest city (750,000 population in this metro area). He won’t move. Doesn’t want to move. With that lack of flexibility and very specific job skills, he’s screwed.- father of a friend is an ex-auto worker, laid off from GM or Chrysler. He is about 52. He only has the skills to work in an auto plant. Good luck with that.

    1. my brother is out of a job right now too

       1. Send him on up to Alberta. We’re shorthanded.

    2. There was man profiled in the FT a few years ago. A chemical engineer who’s been unemployed for two years. In his 50s and has had to move in with his parents while he figures out how to pay for his kids’ college. 

       1. This is where the anger is coming from.Getting out of the Army in the late 1970s, I had 20+ job offers.No 1 Son, had 100 interviews at banks to find a job in banking.This jobs stuff is toxic.I recently hired a bunch of temps to write handwritten notes to customers (part of my old to new to old/new strategy for customer retention and capturing lost business which has worked out brilliantly) — at $14/hr which turned out to be about $6/hr too much, I had a crowd of folks around which you could have built any enterprise.The talent on the sidelines is just incredible.  And, this is in Texas.

          1. “I recently hired a bunch of temps to write handwritten notes to customers”Great! I can’t even remember the last time I received a letter at all that wasn’t a junk mail letter. If I received even a personally typed letter I would definitely take notice.I bought my wife something at Coach and received a handwritten note from the young sales girl. I have it posted as a reminder of a good sales technique.

          2. And yet Fred and Mike Bloomberg want to hand out more green cards.Let’s figure out how to find jobs for American chemical engineers who have been unemployed for two years before we further glut the labor market.

72. Fred, I sent you an email about this, and would love to have your insight. Amazon is addressing this issue, and I was wondering if we’re seeing a trend where private and publicly traded companies can continue to find not only disruptive services to replace services government provides, but even replace government institutions. http://www.readwriteweb.com…

    1. i will take a look

73. REVOLUTION GREAT DEAL FOR EVERYONE UNDER 30.KIND OF SUCK FOR ALL THOSE OLD PEOPLE THAT GOING TO STARVE TO DEATH WHEN PENSIONS THEM COUNT ON DESTROYED FOR PROGRESS.

    1. i think it is the role of government to help make sure people don’t starve to death

       1. It is unbelievable that while we pay farmers not to farm and we buy all the excess cheese from the upper Midwest, we have hunger in the US.  It is unconscionable.

       2. WILL OF THE PEOPLE BIG PROBLEM WHEN 51% OF THE PEOPLE CONVINCED LETTING OLD AND POOR STARVE TO DEATH IS GREAT IDEA.

74. JLM is killing it on this post.JLM for President. I second that motion.

    1. our biggest problem in the US is our best leaders have absolutely no desire to take on the biggest leadership jobs

       1. they never did, but in the past they felt duty bound to take them on anyway. i don’t think there is a modern day corollary.

    2. I would willingly crawl through broken glass to get to a barbed wire enema to avoid politics.I am however a “bundler” for Rick Perry #2130.I think he is the man for this time.  I have known Anita & Rick for 20 years.  If he gets the job, he will do the job.But OMG, what a torture test to get the job.

75. Life is very sweet nowadays.  When I was a kid (80’s) I was getting to watch cartoons only on Saturday mornings for an hour and maybe Sunday afternoons.  Now, kids have LCDs in the car and iPads with wireless in restaurants.  When I had to make a phone call, we had rotary phones, and I had to remember a bunch of numbers.  Now, you can carry the phone with you and look at maps with gps!  News get spread and consumed within minutes.  Internet was just a glimpse of an idea on somebody’s mind.  Now everybody is on facebook.  Just saying, life is sweet indeed.  Every aspect of life has improved.  From toothpaste to shampoo and conditioner.Yet people complain and want more entitlements. Unfortunately we’ve been so effective in the past years in that we created an amazing society.  Today, if you want to live as a beach bum, you can do just that in Santa Monica or San Diego.  Teach a couple of surfing lessons (or some other non-taxable “gigs”), get some money from welfare, unemployment, etc, and life isn’t much worse than say being a BIGLAW lawyer. (in fact, it would be sweeter in many ways)  The social safety net is now a way of living.  But here lies the problem: as we’ve been so effective, more and more people will choose not to work (and be on entitlements instead).  I have many college-educated friends who are doing it.  As more and more people join their ranks, when will the system become unstable?  50-60% of people don’t pay taxes.  What if 90% of people don’t pay any?  How about 95%?  Will the remaining tax-paying 5% be ok with paying for the rest of us?America will have to wake up and realize that it cannot guarantee some of these entitlements. For example, the pensions cannot be fixed. The private sector doesn’t guarantee that anymore (they use 401Ks which vary with the market). Why would someone get such a guarantee from the public sector? As for the postal service, they should start firing people. If they get sued by the unions, it’ll be a fight in the courts and in this environment the unions will probably lose on this issue. Pay should also be tied to the performance of the firm and with the performance of the employee. Take a metric: say percentage of mail lost or time to deliver a letter from LA to NY. Tie the pay to metrics like these and you’ll see how the effectiveness of the public services will improve. In other first world countries, such as Japan and Germany, the trains are on time all the time. Not in US. Not even close. All public services are incredibly inefficient and it’s because we pay by automatic entitlements.

    1. yup

76. i know what i’m gonna do…i’ll just open up a dvd movie rental shop (oh wait), no, i got it, i’ll open up a nice bookstore (well, wait…no), i’ll just start selling chart-topping music CDs (hmmm, maybe not)….AH CRAP

    1. but you could start netflix, amazon, or spotify

77. FredWhile not normally supporting Isaa’s politics, his web site on postal reform shows options is clear and concise manner. It gives a scorecard for change options that show the impact  of 3 or 4 – like no Saturday service. see http://postal.oversight.hou…

    1. i’d love to see the USPS go private and be turned around by a entrepreneurial management team

78. 389 comments and counting and the quality of them is just amazing.  To anyone arriving late and thinks it’s too many to wade through, I’d recommend you take the time.One of the best posts for comments ever.

    1. i had a crazy busy day and wasn’t in the comments at all. and this happened without me. which is fantastic. but i’m 80 minutes in and counting this morning. and i agree with you. what an awesome conversation.

       1. It unmasks the anger, frustration and concern. Dangerous perhaps?

79. Apologies if this link has already been posted – The Freelance Surge is The Industrial Revolution of Our Time…http://www.theatlantic.com/…

80. I am re-reading Atlas Shrugged for the n-th time all these comments feel like response to what is going in the book. Maybe Ayn Rand was right after over 80 years. 

    1. Ayn Rand is so right for these times.I agree more w/ you than you do w/ yourself.

       1. For a truly real perspective you need to read Atlas Shrugged and Grapes of Wrath at the same time.

81. There should be only one so-called entitlement for everyone, no matter who the employer is.  The single payer idea has to come.  True, government benefits are overly generous and not too infrequently are doubled up on double retirees.  I am certain I am not alone in seeing a problem with this.  Twenty years and then out with benefits for life??  How about working like the rest of us into your 60’s?  Is working for the government so bad that it couldn’t be tolerated that long?

    1. ” Is working for the government so bad that it couldn’t be tolerated that long?”Yes it probably is!But seriously 20 years does not get you a full pension or does it?Can you site examples?Here in Canada for government workers the formula is usuallyyour-age + years-of-servicemust add up to 90and it takes at least  30 – 35 years to get a reasonable % of your salary as a pension with no paid benefits

82. Well said. I wouldn’t write off all the candidates just yet. I think some are capable of coming to this conclusion. But someone needs to tell the country what’s up and not just give us some BS plan.

83. 1. Prevention is better than cure – especially with health and education.  Knowledge is dying of old age faster these days.  What is your learning plan for the next year, as your job will not exist in two years at most. 2. Education is not teaching the right things.  We need to be taught how to learn, adapt, and how to change. Psychology 101. This will help us prepare for the future.3. Parenting – Preparation by parents.  “Yes you can be anything dear. In fact you will have to be 20 anythings by the end of your life :-)”4. Career Advise – What are the next five jobs you are going to have, no sorry they have to be different.  Maybe they could build you to the final three in your life. Expectations lead to entitlement. 5. Career Management – Own it, take it back from HR and college advisers.  Reflect and understand what you are good at and who you like to work with.6. Remove age prejudice – People will generally employ a 25 over a 50 or 30 year old over a 60.  If you are out of a job at the age of 50 you are screwed.7. I believe that Unions should fight for learning grants/training not just jobs.  You being here for ten years, awesome here is the fund to get a degree and don’t come back!

    1. Excellent and brilliant stuff.  Well played.I have always said that every man has 5-7 careers in him on 4-8 year intervals.I have 5 in the can and plotting a couple more.

84. In many cases we discuss policies without appreciating the underlying realities that set very real limits on what government policies (of any party) and rugged individualism can be expected to achieve.  To think about jobs require we think about the economy at large – and that means the global economy.We are presently witnessing the consequences of a long term shift in economic power.  Since WWII all a guy had to do to have a higher standard of living than his parents was (i) finish high school (ii) don’t do drugs (iii) don’t get your high school sweetheart pregnant. (literally!  they studied it).  There was no problem finding work.  Industry was sucking up as many willing hands as it could access.Why did we have it so good?  Because the US had enormous structural economic advantages.  We were not only the world’s leading industrial power, we had a huge lead.  But the change that hit Europe earlier with the emergence of the highly competitive US economy is now hitting the US with the growing economic power of Asian economies.  As they develop and move up the value chain they are putting huge pressure on our economy.  It is this process that is killing US jobs. We don’t have a divine right to such jobs. US jobs are not wired into the nature of the universe.  Great Britain went through a major period of readjustment after WWII coming to terms with its new place in the world.  The US is beginning the same process. Thinking otherwise is naive fantasy and so is believing that government policy or a frontier spirit and rugged individualism can achieve.  Government policy isn’t going to stop China and India having access to gigantic growing labor pools and thirsty domestic markets.  Rugged individualism isn’t going to make everyone in the US a successful entrepreneur.  We can entertain childish fantasies to the contrary try to whip up political support and exhort the masses to stand on their own two feet but whilst that may make the advocate of such a philosophy feel good it won’t change much.  Great hegemonic empires have decayed before, despite best efforts to shore them up.  And the last people to recognize such decline is typically those most enjoying the entitlements of such leadership.

85. My parents are entrepreneurs, and I would think of myself this way too – always have, always will. But being an entrepreneur carries certain risks: you have to save for your own retirement, provide for your healthcare etc. I volunteer as a magistrate for my local town, and the court recorder, who is about 70 y.o., told me that her biggest mistake was working her whole life as a contract worker, because she didn’t have the security and retirement cushion of a government job. Something wrong with a system when the government and union jobs end up being the smarter choice for someone thinking long term. Perhaps we should consider 1) if the general retirement age is appropriate in 2011 given the good health of most 60-65 year olds (I think not), and 2) if we should allow people to collect retirements if they take another job after supposedly retiring (hence collecting double living salaries) – these are just a snippet of the problems that are draining the system. If these entitlements cannot be corrected for this generation, it should be changed for the generation of our kids.

    1. Most government job are long suffering and low paid. The pension and benefits are the trade off you get for that life time of long long suffering bureaucratic powerlessness. Those pensions are not entitlements they are earned against a lifetime of low salaries and unsatisfying work conditions.Its seem very fashionable in the USA to deride government and government workers.Government no matter how imperfect is the instrument of citizen empowerment. Corporations have the job of fending for their shareholders.In a democracy citizens get the government they deserve. Government can evolve and improve its ability to focus the interests and will of the citizenry but only if that citizenry believes in their democratic ownership and responsibility to improve their own governments.The special interests and the Public Perception Management  firms they finance have done such a good job of selling Americans a load of mythic mind control propaganda that questions the very legitimacy of government as a public institution. If your government is so broken take responsibility along with your fellow citizens and get on with fixing it.Your only other option is to turn the social function of representing the citizenry over to the corporate institutions which in the USA is already the de facto reality / problem.The poison afoot in America is this silly polemic:GOVERNMENT BAD CORPORATION GOODLEFT ____________vs_____________RIGHTWhen in fact both the government and the corporations are complementary institution that hold powerful sway over the lives of the citizenry.We citizen are the monkey in the middle in this game. It is our mission should we accept it to balance off these two goliaths so as to prevent either from becoming too powerful or too dominant over our affairs.We are entering into an age of high flux, organically networked, social exchange complexity. The 19th century idealogical right vs left polemic is so lame and irrelevant at this point as to be laughable if it weren’t so destructively obstructionist.NO MORE POLITICS BY IDEOLOGYIt is way too late in the game to be relying on that outdated 19th century linear analytic tool.WE NEED POLITICS BY GOAL AND FUNCTION-What are our social goals-What are the array of possible implementation options-What are the services an disservices that will accrue to the different stakeholder associated with each possible implementation optionimplement those social goals as an organically networked array of social function all of which are relational linked and ratio driven by stakeholders needs and accommodations as updated in near real time(social inertia lag times as appropriate for stability).

       1. Government jobs are long suffering and low paying so retirement benefits are some sort of payoff for the long, long suffering government workers endure? IMHO there’s much less stress and suffering than in the private sector. I think it would be great to focus politics on goal and function. Problem is that Senators are up for re-election every 4 years, House Members are up every 2 years. This constant campaigning requires heavy funding – lobbyists are the ones that have it and provide it freely. Having worked for the government as part of the legal team on the Senate Judiciary Committee, first on IP issues, then Immigration, I would advocate for a pull back on the weight of special interest groups, lobbyists and unions on Capitol Hill. Obama’s campaign was pushed by more individual campaign donations than any other campaign in history. Technology helped push that disruption. I hope this trend continues – it’s profound and powerful to be elected and funded by voting citizens, and not just lobbyists, unions and corporations. We have to get back to basics.

          1. I thing your right on the money here. Pun intended!When it comes to funding the democratic process he who pays the piper call the tune.Check this out!http://movetoamend.org/

86. I started writing a comment, which turned into a different blog post http://saranyan.com/new-ski…In a way, time might solve this problem, but not without our help. So, the right question to pose to ourselves is what can we do to solve this problem. The people who are at the receiving end are skilled workers and experts in an area that several entrepreneurs are not. Can we convert these people to entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs so that they can rebuild their own organizations and secure their lives and jobs? Peer-led learning networks like Skillshare and Hourschool can help a great deal in imparting the skills to turn these people into entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs but the learning models these networks employ are not sufficient. Currently these networks scrap the tip of the iceberg by either offering one off lectures/topics or tapping your existing network to learn stuff. What we need is more than that. We need true online community colleges powered by social networks. One model can be where every entrepreneur/skilled college grad can adopt a local government office worker (or even the entire office?) and train them to be change makers within their organization. Other model can be approved internship programs for these employees with local startups. There are several more I can think of, but you get the idea…

87. The whole idea that the post office is having trouble due to high labor costs, less mail, etc is a complete misdirection.  In fact, the _only_ reason is a 2006 bill that forced the post office to save up funds for the next 75 years worth of postal retirement, to the tune of $5b a year.  Without that, there would be no problem at all with the PO’s finances.  http://www.buffalonews.com/… 

88. The other piece of the USPS scenario is the effective “unfunded mandate” for Saturday deliveries.  The USPS General has asked congress a couple times to let them run the business “as a business” http://about.usps.com/news/…

89. Douglas Rushkoff writes a nice piece on this meme.CNN.com:  ‘Are Jobs Obsolete?’http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPI…I am increasingly thinking of my work as ‘revenue lines’ (not payroll-based relations), and Rushkoff’s way of looking at what labor is needed by whom and for what resonated.I’m also highly reminded of the rapid emergence of TaskRabbit and its ilk, which seems to represent a platform-based way in which labor and what’s paid for it is being re-allocated.

    1. In the ‘Affluent Society’ Galbraith (http://www.amazon.com/Afflu… discussed these very ideas decades ago. UNeither him nor Rushkoff provide anything remotely workable or desirable. 

       1. Actually, in “American Capitalism” Galbraith describes the concept of “countervailing power” and the reality this concept is being incubated today, I believe Fred calls them “communities.”From Wikipedia: “American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power, published in 1952, Galbraith outlined how the American economy in the future would be managed by a triumvirate of big business, big labor, and an activist government. Galbraith termed the reaction of lobby groups and unions “countervailing power.” He contrasted this arrangement with the previous pre-Depression era where big business had relatively free rein over the economy.”Now we are seeing the emergence of communities…and the 21st century “countervailing power” and that is the internet and communities…..

          1. GRIMLOCK THINK SOMETHING LIKE THIS EVENTUALLY HAPPEN.BUT PROBABLY NOT AS GOVERNMENT MANDATE.IT HAPPEN BY ACCIDENT AS HUMANS BAND TOGETHER, REALIZE IT ONLY TAKE FEW OF THEM TO PAY FOR BASICS OF ALL. ESPECIALLY IF ON SMALL FARM THAT MAKE OWN BASICS.

             1. Grimlock, government is like the drum major at the front of a marching band in a parade. They neither lead nor does anyone follow…they just exist because every band has one….But the the good ones can really put on a show.

90. Regarding the postal service, the writing has been on the wall for some time now regarding their being obsolete. Watch 1:30-2:30http://www.youtube.com/watc…

91. Wow, Fred, you really hit a vein – or should I say a nerve – with this post. 573 comments (as I write) so far … Normally I don’t read all the comments, I read about 50 to 70 to 80 percent, but in this case, I did read more, lots of interesting and differing viewpoints.On a side but loosely related note, I saw on Hacker News today that Bill Dietrich, formerly of Dietrich Industries, a Pittsburgh steel company, is going to gift around $265 million to Carnegie-Mellon University, to further promote what he thinks is their good work of both faculty and students that benefits the US (and more generally, the world).These US entrepreneurship / university-industry research and collaboration / targeted philanthropy and other related practices have many aspects that are worth studying and maybe emulating (as makes sense, maybe with modifications), by other countries …

92. “dismantle entitlement systems that are not sustainable”Agreed.The first entitlements that should be cut are all city and state infrastructures.  It’s simply not “sustainable” to continue to fund these types of wasteful projects when private industry with the aid of technology can easily pick up the slack.  And in addition, only people who pay these private infrastructure companies should be permitted to drive across any roads and bridges in the country.All public schools (which are really nothing but entitlements) should be shuddered immediately, and only people who can afford to pay for their children’s schooling should have access to such facilities.Every airport in the country should be closed until private industry and the technology geniuses behind them figure out a way to transport people through the air efficiently.  This should include all security, of course.  I’ll be damned if my hard earned dollars are going to protect anyone else’s family.All port security should be abolished immediately.  Whatever comes into the country via ship should be inspected by whomever ordered the goods. FEMA (a silly entitlement, which the government says helps hurricane, fire, tornado,  earthquake victims) should be disbanded.  If you get stuck in a hurricane or tornado, well, gosh, that’s just your tough luck, not mine.There should be NO regulations on work hours, conditions, salaries, or ANYTHING else regarding corporations.  The cost of these regulations is nothing but an unsustainable entitlement.  If you don’t like working for one of Fred’s companies, get your lazy, spoiled butt out of there and find yourself a better predicament.Finally, the Internet should be unplugged.  Does anyone know the cost that went into the government’s coffers in the development of this boondoggle by way of, we, the taxpayers? It’s a national disgrace that this travesty continues unfettered after all the money poured into this money pit by all of us God-fearing, red-blooded, American individualists!All you freeloaders, who think that Fred’s wrong regarding these deplorable, unsustainable entitlement programs would do yourself a favor to read Jonathan Swift’s, A Modest Proposal.  In it, Mr. Swift outlines a very logical program for taking care of anyone who can’t feed themselves.

93. Fred, great post. Long time reader and first time commenting.This is one of the best summaries I’ve seen about the current issues. What America needs to be great at is very different today than it was 20 years ago. Americans don’t want to make ipods. They don’t want to work on farms. And they don’t want to be outside in the cold building bridges. Americans are competing in a world economy and they don’t know how to win anymore. The question is how is America going to compete in the world? America is getting out worked and outsmarted. Instead of talking about how to solve the right problems we’re fighting. America needs a real leader to step up and talk about how America is going to compete with the world, not how we’re going to convince each other of how one side is right and the other is wrong. Leadership isn’t about consensus. It’s about listening, taking in the information we know today, and making the best decision. Great leaders make decisions. But they also admit when they are wrong.I’m waiting for a candidate to admit when they made a mistakes. The best business leaders do this all the time. They’re honest about it and show their teams how and why they’re going to head the right direction.  Being a leader is hard. I agree with your last sentence Fred. “Someone should.”

94. There is a really informative (lengthy) piece at Stratfor on part of how/why we are here -http://www.stratfor.com/ana…comes down to access to and control of resources – energy being the most important.  (JLM, George Friedman -not Tom Friedman – is in your neck of the woods, and looks like you’re helping with the access to energy part.)  Access to and control of the other most important resource, information and knowledge – is probably another whole post.Human civilization develops in discontinuous steps, and access to a new form of energy and the technology/know-how to exploit that resource have been manifested as the industrial revolutions – 1) coal, 2) oil-gas, 3) electricity, and 4)information (enabled by microelectronics).One can categorize these differently, but overall the theme is pretty constant.If there are no step changes (better resources) available, societies fight to gain control of the remaining resources and ultimately reach resource depletion limits.I wholeheartedly agree with previous comments on why we need to develop new things and build new things, otherwise it’s a zero-sum game.  There are some incredible discussions on this going back to David Hume (1750s), possibly earlier.These are exciting/scary times – whole industries are facing disruptive changes.  In terms of energy – by next year, there will be 120,000 metric tons of 9-9s purity polysilicon available from two (non-US) suppliers, with 5-6 grams/Wp typical silicon consumption for photovoltaic panels and costs heading to <$1/Wp, I’ll leave the readers to speculate… (just for reference, instantaneous electricity generation capacity of US is 1 TeraWatt, ~1/4 of world total). The microelectronics industry that brought us the previous step-change (information revolution) has the potential to bring about the next one as well (renewable energy, energy efficiency, smart grid, de-regulated energy markets, energy storage, …).

    1. forgot one of the units, 120,000 metric tons/year

95. We thought we should throw in our 2 cents. New jobs can always be created, but the real problem is how do we really do the jobs that we already have. Everyone has to COLLECTIVELY do their jobs well or end up with the blame game at Yahoo or end up shipping good jobs overseas.

96. Really great point.  Straight to the truth.  If he was to say that he would lose his job.  People have to learn to evolve and change with the times.  At the same time the issue is a byproduct of our current economic model.Rodney RMerchant Cash Advance

97. thought everyone would like john stewart’s view on this :-)http://www.hulu.com/watch/2…

98. Well said Fred. My main concern is the time it will take for our people to acquire new skills. And how we get them there faster.It’s weird to see the insatiable demand for top talent out here in SF. And then to talk with friends and family elsewhere who are struggling to find jobs. There is a serious skills and requirements mis-match.Retraining will be brutal. And yet I’m more shocked at the lack of preparing upcoming generations.I wait for the day where:- Kids are tasked to create their first online businesses in the 3rd grade- Language selection includes Ruby, Python, Node in addition to Spanish/French- Gaming is a real course tucked inside of PE- CSS/HTML are taught instead of cursive:-)

99. I strongly suggest anyone who agrees on the above to read the post below by Barry Ritholtz posted on The Big Picture..http://www.ritholtz.com/blo… Its good that outstanding people in different fields arrive at the same conclusion.. Ciao 

100. I was in China last week when I read this and I really wanted to comment then, but either my iPad2, wi-fi, or the Great Firewall of China made that impossible.Your post, combined with my experience there, have been on my mind.I’ve since blogged about it and am copying/pasting a bit here (hence some of the links), but the bottom line is three things.1. when it comes to jobs, first we need to remember that they are the “means, not the end”2. Obama’s proposal is, IMHO, kind of like “fighting the last war”3. as a country, we don’t yet have the sense of urgency we require to face up to these new sense of challenges. It feels like “Debt Ceiling Redux”…wait until there’s a gun to our head, which won’t be pretty.Here’s the excerpt from the post:It’s really not about just China, it’s about competing in a globalized world. My trip to China just being the impetus for the thought.I read a book by Tom Peters a while ago called “ReImagine!” and he focused on the requirement for America to do just that…reinvent our approach to business.Of course, the first person (for me) to recognize this was Dan Pink (client) in his book “A Whole New Mind” (required reading, by the way.)With very few exceptions, it’s near impossible to out-manufacture China. They can throw people (cheaply) at pretty much any problem.Our advantage is in the innovation and in creating the BRAND experience, the emotional connection to a company that cannot be replicated.Apple is the classic example though I hate to use them since they are such an anomaly. Conceived and designed in California…manufactured in China.Zappos, I suppose, is another one. I bet most of the shoes they sell are made in China.Anyway, the big takeaway from the trip for me was the fact that we don’t have-but need-a real sense of urgency about America’s future.It’s like we need a “Manhattan Project” for education, innovation, and entrepreneurship.I sometimes wonder if the roots of the country as a “nation of immigrants” is where the strength lies…but to get there, we have to take away some of our entitlements and programs.Not the best trade-off in the short-term, but like the recent debt ceiling issue showed us, we have to confront it sooner or later.

     1. China is figuring out the brand value challenge.  Look at all the former OEMs and component manufacturers that now have respected consumer brands, e.g., Lenovo, Haier, LG, etc.

        1. Great point. Another reason to have a sense of urgency. Super small point, I thought LG was Korean? Still, you’re spot on.

101. Well here is my opinion why do we pay for Social Security if we can’t use it? why can’t healthcare be into this we pay tax’s all of our life and all we get is nothing, noone talks about the poor people who don’t have a good job and no healthcare? Now I know what God meant when He said Money is the root of all evil, what ever happen to people who use to help someone? Now if you don’t have money or healthcare they won’t treat you, they leave you to dieat home because onone even cares any more. thats a sad way But I put my faith in God to take care of me and I don’t depend on noone unless they want to help. God Bless Because you are going to need it. Danny

102. Fred – Have to disagree on most of your points.  Here’s why:- USPS isn’t a microcosm of what’s wrong with the economy.  It’s a microcosm of what’s wrong with some parts of our public sector.- Our private sector has very lean, very profitable companies that can easily dial up and down labor count and the corresponding benefit expenses.- A very small percentage of the Russell 3000 have “huge entitlements that make it impossible to operate profitably,” and for those that do, they run out of capital and die or get bailed out and restructured – unlike a government entity that is funded with taxpayer money.- This economic slowdown isn’t due to a disruptive, scalable technology making existing industry expensive and obsolete.  Just look at profits from oil companies and banks profits over the last two years.  It’s a old-school stalwart industry and still wildly profitable.- The situation isn’t rich benefits that are choking the economy, it’s empty pockets.  Citizens and governments. And if they’re both broke, who is going to spend money to generate growth?- Definitely agree with you that Obama’s in a tough spot.  

103. And thus why Peter Drucker stated in an October 2003 interview with Business Week that within 5-10 years, Wall Street would no longer exist and with 10-15 years there would no longer be large corporations as all their advantages had been wiped out by technology and globalization.There is a reason, in his later years, he said that he hadn’t lost faith in capitalism, just American capitalism, which is described as on an unsustainable course (actually he termed it as insane) and that small, medium and foreign businesses, with their more realistic compensation practices, would just about devour all (and, yes, he said ALL) large American businesses over the next decade to decade and a half.The current structural changes in the job market globally exemplify these trends he identified.

104. jealousy mostly

105. And they don’t check facts since also Michael Moritz was a reporter.

106. Depends on what you are calling a journalist and a blogger.

107. Biggest bullhorn wins in the media game, thus the blogger is a competitor to journalists but a journalist to the world.

108. There’s a difference between losing a great climate and losing basic freedoms.

109. I hired 4 persons over the last 3 weeks which is a huge increase in my little company.  Because I am feeling like things are so bad, they can only get better.Of course, I am a most ardent contrarian.

110. Just to amplify/extend point 1, once you’ve sent the jobs offshore you immediately start losing the skills locally and after some years the expertise is gone (partly by design, through retraining). The plants have closed and no-one exists to take up the jobs even if they were to return. But sometimes they do return.This is happening in the apparel industry. Now that offshore companies (in countries without a DoJ protecting competition) have the lion’s share of fabric/garment manufacture, they are hiking the prices. US apparel brands are bringing production back here, but the skilled workers and the businesses have long gone. There are precious few people to even train a new generation of workers.My long winded point being that premature retraining can have the long term negative consequences of killing entire sub-industries that we might need back a decade from now. Govt needs to smooth out short term fluctuations in the skill sets demanded because retraining is not only expensive/lossy, it also kills off the old skill set. Or at least leaves it to atrophy.

111. MAKE THINGS IS BASE OF EVERY ECONOMY.NO ECONOMY CAN LAST WITHOUT BASE.EASIEST THING FOR MAKE IS FOOD. CAN EAT OWN PRODUCTS IF SALES LOW.GRIMLOCK SAY PUT 60% OF COUNTRY BACK TO FARM, FACTORY. REST SORT ITSELF OUT.

112. i don’t think our free trade policies are the problem. they simply accelerated the inevitable

113. @ccrystle:disqus : sent this reply to your comment below via Disqus email an hour ago but it still hasn’t posted…It’s a great question.I haven’t settled on what I think about the “freedom is best achieved through engagement” theory.

114. My spidey sense tells me JLM has very solid plans on what they’ll do…even if it means creating demand.Speaking of JLM — hope your house is safe in Austin with those fires…

115. It’s a very educated hunch and a risk.  But this is not my first rodeo.I know a very, very wise man from Lancaster.The Wise Man from Lancaster says — “This Internet stuff and social media stuff could be huge.”I am making a $250K bet he is right cause I am in awe of his wisdom.True story.

116. The products on the shelves in stores that you rely on don’t come from replicators. They are manufactured in factories, and transported on trains and trucks that, in turn, are manufactured in other factories. That’s as true today as it was decades ago. The question is where those factories are.

117. Brilliant comment really.Take a look at shipbuilding, aircraft manufacture, steel and machine shops.You are on point. Well played.Now GE wants to export defense critical industries to China.China is our main military adversary for the balance of the next two centuries and we are arming them.No different than Loral Aerospace and MIRV technology and Cray computers under Clinton.We will sell them the very weapons to destroy us under the guise of making a freakin’ buck.

118. can new immigrants solve the issue about no local skills?

119. Completely agree.I was just commenting elsewhere in the thread about Germany retaining their manufacturing sector and how it’s paid off by maintaining their skills base. One specific part of their strategy was smaller, family-run manufacturing.That led me to think about rebuilding the base in the US: could part of it be smaller-scale, just-in-time 3D manufacturing. Forty-five families running those micro-plants could replace the one mega-plant a town has historically depended upon.You still want the mega-producers who fund R&D and compete aggressively overseas. But an expansion of the new and reclaiming of the old might be a good recipe.

120. JLM, I have been away all day and just got a chance to peruse a few of the debate points from many here today here in the Comments section. I need to run off again but please allow me to play a bit of Devil’s Advocate one moment. In regards to a point you make above (and one you yourself seem to champion elsewhere in the Comments) ” We will sell them the very weapons to destroy us under the guise of making a freakin’ buck. ” Is that not what Capitalism is though?

121. TO BUILD THING IS TO LEARN HOW TO INVENT THING.WHEN OTHER COUNTRY BUILD ALL THE THINGS, WHO WILL INVENT THEM?EXACTLY.

122. The 3 months of 100F heat has dried everything to a crisp.  The fires spread like the omens of Hell.The only chance to stop them is at natural breaks like roads and creeks. There is a 30-mile line of fire not far away but I am generally safe.As I have said before I could care less about physical stuff — if my house needs burning, then just bring the damn marshmallows but spare someone else who GAS cause I do not.The Devil will come get his and then we shall fight again another day.

123. OK, making time for this reply before I bolt again.And your ardent contrarian nature is one reason why you ROCK!

124. Just, stay safe…I’d like the devil to wait as long as possible

125. do you own anything physical that is special (art, family photos, etc)?

126. @fredwilson:disqus   A now one eyed Shih Tzu who is smarter than me — not running the high hurdles on that score.I have digitized all pics and the art is insured.Bring on the Devil and tell him to pack a lunch.  

127. Hopefully you and the devil have postponed your dual and you are okay.After reading @Tereza:disqus ‘s tweets during Irene and yours here, I must say that some of you AVC people are a fearless bunch. I don’t think that is a coincidence.

128. Try new concept – responsible capitalism – maybe the current notion of capitalism needs to be hacked alongside education.  :)ps. i think i’m sounding a bit fake grimlockey in this comment …

129. Capitalism has never been so global. Capitalism’s fundamental power base is the government institutions of Europe and the Americas and up until 20 years ago, Capitalism couldn’t go global. The East wouldn’t allow that. When they did, you should have known something was up!Check out where Jim Rogers lives (Singapore so his girls speak Mandarin) and his reasons for living there (7 of top 10 debt LENDING countries are SE Asian).The folks with the coin tell the band what songs to play.JLM sees Capitalism the idea giving away the base of its economic might to the East, and thereby undermining the long term economic leadership of the West. When western governments are broke, they must bend to the will of the East, who are not believers in Capitalism the idea, but Capitalism, the pragmatic tool of staying in power.BIg diff there.

130. the wise man from lancaster!

131. i just suggested the same post to JLM. i guess he’s going to read it twice. that’s a good thing. 

132. Nice points all Charlie. Sounds like you have a busy day Charlie. Go get ’em.

133. My wife is a senior exec in a global petro company.One day, a British expat colleague compared Calgary to a prior posting, in Dubai. His comment was that the two places are pretty much the same, because ‘the locals are too wealthy to get their hands dirty or truly work hard’.I was stunned. But he was right.And you are right, protectionism just breeds inefficiency and waste. Trade policy has all kinds of goofy section, I am sure, but the basic idea that globalization accelerated the inevitable, I agree with – its a wealth effect issue.

134. I understand the essence of @JLM’s underlying premise/concern. That is not what I was trying to elicit additional discussion – as I stated to JLM in a separate email. The point I wanted to explore further was the “making/saving a buck” attitude of many “capitalists” given the very realities you describe above. Under modern day capitalism what you describe can happen which leads me to conclude “chasing/making/saving the buck” cannot be the penultimate of Capitalism for if it is it can doom itself to failure.

135. The capitalism that I espouse is not naked of common sense nor does it disregard long term implications.I am always reminded that Hitler could have been stomped out in the late 1930s if the English and French had been a bit more serious and thoughtful.When Hitler took Alsace-Lorraine with no opposition, the die was cast and the embodiment of evil on earth became a reality.I feel much the same way today about Iran.  Now is the time to take this crazy MFer out.The Iranians with nukes is going to be very, very messy.

136. Leigh,First, LOL on the Fake Grimlockey comment.Second, thanks for getting to the essence of what I was trying to elicit. However, I am not sure if Capitalism needs to be hacked or if we (collectively) just need review it. For example, more ENLIGHTENED self interest less selfishness. Emphasis on private ownership but not without an understanding of what fully embracing the potential risk of loss of said ownership truly means.I am not so sure Capitalism is being practiced. Many romanticize it and want to believe it exists (especially if they happen to have “won” in life) but when entire industries are bailed out and management and investors not made to suffer when things go wrong what happens? When we fool ourselves that our cost of energy is so cheap but does not fully reflect the costs to police and protect its supply to the pump (costs we account for on the books of the government) then I think the notion of Capitalism can quickly be shrouded in myths (yes, that is a play on the word mists). When one factor of production is worshipped and glorified (e.g. capital) while other productive factors are marginalized (e.g. skilled labor) the scales can become unbalanced and system failure can occur.Personally, I believe one, large problem being confronted at present is that many people do not want to play the game any longer because they believe (and rightfully so in some cases – NOT all) the game is fixed. In this type of environment TIME is what will be needed not just “Programs” (e.g. lending, training, etc.) because a culture needs to be rebuilt. This could very well be the test of our time. Previous generations, and a great many from the current generation, sacrificed their very lives, can we sacrifice a decreased standard of living for some period of time to rebuild and reenergize the Great Experiment?Personally, I think true capitalism can be quite responsible. If the premise is long-term self-preservation and well-being coming from a standpoint of enlightened self-interest, thereby allowing for private ownership and control, how cannot it not be? I am just not sure our modern culture’s captains of industry and capitalists are truly practicing it.P.S. Erik Shwartz, the above was filled with editorial and anecdotal commentary – I hope to goodness your head didn’t explode if you read the above. RE: your comment the other day :-){Updated}

137. Great stuff!

138. Brilliant comment — when you are making stuff, you are constantly improving stuff because you are able to inject the performance data right back into the manufacturing process.Aircraft manufacture, an American strength, is a perfect example of that.Every year there are a thousand little modifications which are injected back into the required annual inspection of all licensed aircraft.

139. Yes, exactly, in the myopic focus on the deficits and national debt the issue of the trade balance has been completely overlooked.It is an important leading indicator of future trouble.Even if we get our shit together, we still have to have markets in which to sell out stuff.  And those markets have to be sound.

140. Germany has done just that and is prospering (relatively).Aside from a focus on locally-owned/family-run manufacturing, they also allowed their labour unions to remain strong. That may seem counterintuitive, but protecting the people who manage the base is what matters.

141. If they are from China :)Joking – but I think there is a lot to that. In Manhattan many (all that I know, actually) shoe repair shops are immigrants from countries were they still repair shoes. They took over from the guys who grew up in the Great Depression.I know of many businesses that people start when they come over to USA because of their previous skills that were not socially valued in the ‘Old Country’ but turn out to be profitable here.Still, consider this town in Italy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wik… and wonder if this is a good or bad development.

142. GERMANY SOMEHOW SUCCESSFUL DESPITE ALL THAT SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, STRONG UNIONS, AND LIBERAL DRUG AND SEX LAWS.THEM MUST BE CHEATING SOMEHOW.

143. SOMETIMES OBVIOUS THING HARDEST TO SEE.

144. They are — the Euro currency, artificially making Germany’s products cheaper by benefiting from the relative economic weakness of the other Euro states.But now they’re having to bail out these very economies that facilitated them benefiting from the world buying their goods at artificially low pricesDouble edged sword

145. EURO WAS GOOD IDEA, VERY POOR EXECUTION.