Category: Political Science & Economics

#FixYoungAmerica

Category : Entrepreneurship, Political Science & Economics
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Since the Great Recession started, young people have weathered a disproportionate amount of the shocks that have resonated through the economy.  Four years later, youth employment is at a 60 year low and student loan debt, which you can’t even get rid of via bankruptcy, is almost $1T.  That’s trillion.  With 12 zeros.  Even recent college grads with decent degrees are having trouble finding jobs.  Our government is broken, refusing to deal with real problems head on, preferring to engage in partisan bickering and gotcha politics.

We are going through the biggest changes since the industrial revolution.  Technology is changing fast, replacing jobs with computer programs and robots that always show up for work and never get sick.  In the late 1990s and early 2000s, we lost our manufacturing jobs.  In 2008-2010, we lost many middle management white collar jobs.  These jobs aren’t coming back.  Our new industries only employ a fraction of the people our old giant companies did.  Instead of looking for solutions, our institutions are failing us.

It begs the question: how safe is your job?  Do you have a skill?  Are you willing to work harder than other people?  Do you take criticism and work under pressure?  Are you better at something that just about everyone else?  To succeed in our new economy you either have to create something on your own, have skills that help those who are creating succeed or be willing to work incredibly hard.  You need to be willing to learn every day.  You have to compete with the rest of the world!

From government to Wall Street, our instutions are failing us. They’re busy talking about how bad it is or recycling old ideas that aren’t going to work anymore.   The loudest voices are not proposing real solutions.  They are stuck in the past.  So how do we help fix the problem?

Enter #FixYoungAmerica and The Young Entrepreneur Council.  “From the Arab Spring to the Tea Party, from Occupy Wall Street to the SOPA and PIPA protests, we’ve seen the power of what like-minded individuals can achieve.  #FixYoungAmerica is about starting a much-needed conversation in America and implementing a REAL plan of action,” writes Gerber.  A combination of entrepreneurship, education, government policy and hard work will make things better.  #FixYoungAmerica is designed to start the conversation and force it into the halls of government by getting our ideas into the hands of every member of Congress.  It’s a movement that needs to happen.

I’ve been a big supporter and member of Scott Gerber and Ryan Paugh’s YEC movement from the beginning.  I’ve seen the good work that YEC has accomplished so far and know this campaign can really make a difference.  But #FixYoungAmerica needs your help.  Check out the #FixYoungAmerica website and add your voice to the conversation.  We need it.

Losing our Civil Liberties

Category : Personal Thoughts, Political Science & Economics
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Much of the world used to look at the US as a bastion of freedom, free speech, personal expression, the famed “city upon a hill” that the first colonists dreamed to create as they escaped across the Atlantic to try to freely practice their religion.  But over the past 10 years, things have changed.

For example, two young British citizens were not allowed into the US after tweeting “Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America” and “3 weeks today, we’re totally in LA pissing people off on Hollywood Blvd and diggin’ Marilyn Monroe up!”  When they got off the plane, they were arrested and questioned for 5 hours.  They explained that “destroy America” means that they were going to party hard and that the digging up Ms. Monroe was from a Family Guy episode, but the police didn’t buy it.  Instead, they were thrown into a holding cell with drug dealers for 12 hours, then shipped back to the UK.

We’re patting down 6 year olds in the airport and forcing old people and young kids to take off their diapers because there’s a chance there’s a bomb in there.  When pressed, the TSA said that because a 6 year old in Iraq set off a bomb, we have to check our six year olds too.  That’s just asinine.

To get on an airplane, we require people to go through body scanners that show every detail of your body to some government employee and could potentially cause cancer.  An now the TSA and Homeland Security are debuting bodyscanners in random highway locations.  It used to be that the government needed probable cause to search you, but now, they’re just scanning away without any sort of justification.

We have the “if you see something say something” campaign to try to get citizens to inform on each other.  That’s straight out of Orwell.  The government could be monitoring your social media, your private email, your search traffic for signs of a “national security threat.”  When you enter the US, immigration has the right to look at the entire contents of your computer or any notebooks you might have on you, whether you are a citizen or not.  The last time I entered the US, the agent looked at my notebook that was filled with business ideas and personal writing for about 5 minutes before he let me pass.  The time before it, the agent opened my computer and looked around for a minute or two.

And if all that wasn’t enough, President Obama signed a law that allows US citizens to be held indefinently at Guantanamo Bay without charge or due process.  This law is so clearly against the Bill of Rights.  It’s incredible how far we’ve come in 10 years.  It’s official government policy to assassinate US citizens in foreign countries who are “associating with terrorists.”

It’s clear Bin Laden is winning even in death. If he were still alive, he’d be laughing at all the changes that have been made in the name of security.  In the name of fighting terrorism, we’ve adopted servaliance that are so Orwellian and Huxlian that the authors themselves would laugh at just how correct they’ve become.  Previously, when people did horrific things in the US, we shrugged it off as an isolated crazy person and basically said “fuck off, we’re gonna keep living the same way we have been,” but we reacted differently to 9/11.  We’ve succumed to fear from government and news media.

The ability to use  common sense and discretion was already on the decline in US society before 9/11, but since then, the decline has sped up incredibly.  The slope was a bit slippery before 9/11, but now its completly iced over and we’re quickly falling down the mountain.  I don’t like it one bit.

Santorum: The First Ungoogleable Presidental Candidate?

Category : Political Science & Economics, Technology
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Rick Santorum finished a surprise 2nd place in the Iowa Caucus yesterday after gaining a ton of ground in the past two weeks with a huge grassroots campaign that took him to every county in Iowa.  Santorum finished a surprising 8 votes short of front runner and establishment candidate Mitt Romney and did it with lots of handshakes, personal events and groundwork, all the while spending almost no money.  He spent $20 per vote, compared to $480 for Rick Perry and $155 for Romney.  He also did it by eschewing the Internet, twitter and other new media.

Now, as the American electorate is being introduced to Santorum, their first reaction will be to run over to Google and type in “Santorum” or “Rick Santorum.”  Many will not like what they find, but not just for political reasons.  If they Google “Santorum,” the first 2 results and 6 of the 10 results on the first page will refer to the aftermath of a specific sexual activity (full definition of Santorum here, I warn you, its really gross).  If you Google “Rick Santorum” #3 refers to the same activity.

Santorum got its alternative meaning in 2003 after he made anti-gay comments, including comparing being gay to bestiality.  Sex advice columnist Dan Savage proposed renaming a sex act with Santorum’s last name to forever stain his name with his antigay comments.  I remember reading the original columns in The Onion and thinking it was pretty funny, but never thought that the campaign would actually catch on like it has.  Savage set up a website and it quickly went viral.  I cannot hear his name without thinking of the other meaning and now Google is introducing millions more to the alternative meaning.  Savage offered to take down any references to the other meaning if Santorum stopped his anti gay rhetoric and then donated $5m to marriage equality causes, but Santorum turned him down.

So what does this mean for Santorum the candidate?  And what does his story mean for the rest of us?  I think Santorum’s original comments in 2003 ruled him out from winning a Presidential election, so in the grand scheme of things, it won’t really change his chances of winning.  But it does make him answer uncomfortable questions.  And I think it’s the start of a trend.

Google and other social media have become such powerful tools, especially for people with influence.  It shows that if you piss off the wrong people on the Internet, you too can be synonymous with something equally disgusting.  Before, people were accountable for only what people could remember, or what they could find in librarian’s archives.  Now, anyone with a voice can share their opinion.  And their opinion is there forever.  Google and the Internet never forgets.

What happens when my generation decides to start to run for office?  We’ve had Facebook, Twitter, blogs and personal websites since our teens.  It’s going to be really easy for people digging up dirt to find photos of us wasted or doing stupid things (more likely both at the same time.)  What about old status updates and non-mainstream political ideas?  Bad jokes we made to friends that can be taken out of context?  We’ve all got it and if you don’t you’re either incredibly private or really boring!  People will either disqualify presidential candidate with these “problems” or they will realize taht everyone has similar posts and decide that it’s just part of life.  I sure hope it’s the former or we’ll have some really boring people in office!

The other issue that’ll affect all of us, not just politicians, is that the Internet never forgets.  Before the internet, we could reinvent ourselves, change our opinions, do dumb things when we were young and nobody besides the people involved would know your past.  We could start fresh.  It’s part of what made us human.  Now our past is all out in the open for anyone to find. From blogs to twitter to tumblr and now the Facebook Timeline, anyone with enough time or curiosity can find exactly what I thought in 2005 via my Facebook Timeline, my political views in 2007 via my blog and dumb things I tweeted to my friends in 2009.

In the past, we could change our opinions when presented with new facts.  In fact, that’s the most admirable trait that I think someone can have.  Now, if you change your opinion, you’re branded a “flip-flopper” or you “don’t have strong convictions.”  I think that’s bullshit.

Eliminating the ability to change and reinvent ourselves is going to be a really big change for humans.  There’s no way to put a wild past, a flirtation with a non-mainstream ideology or simple youthful exuberance behind you.  There’s always a record.  I’m not suggesting that it’s good that people can lie about their past, but I don’t think its healthy to be able to get as specific as the internet allows you to.  And Santorum is  one of the first public figures to experience our new reality.

Stopping SOPA and PIPA: Explained

Category : Political Science & Economics
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There’s been lots of talk in tech circles about SOPA and PIPA the last few weeks and I wanted to write a post for the non techie to try to explain what’s going on.  For more details read Fred Wilson’s overview and the SOPA Wikipedia entry.  The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) are bills designed to stop people from illegally downloading music, movies, books, software and other intellectual property.  The stated goal is to eliminate access to websites like The Pirate Bay, which allows people to illegally download billions of dollars of protected IP for free.  Sounds reasonable right?  Unfortunately, this vague bill gives the entertainment industry the power to censor the internet.  Here’s how it works.

If an IP holder, for example Warner Brothers, believes that a website is harming their rights, it can demand that search engines block the “offending” website in search results, payment processors stop processing credit card transactions and advertising networks stop displaying advertising and sending payments.  They can even demand that the domain name be blocked in the United States.  All for one link to potentially protected IP content.    If these companies comply, they are immune from any damages relating to copyright infringement.

“Offending” websites have five days to respond. This means that if Facebook has one link to an illegal download of a Warner Brothers movie, Warner Brothers can demand that search engines, payment processors and ad networks stop doing business with the ENTIRE company.

Facebook is now a huge company and would fight back, but imagine Zuckerburg getting a letter from Warner Brothers in 2003.  He’d have to buckle to Warner Brothers’ demands immedately because he didn’t have the resources to fight: he was building Facebook into a billion dollar business that now employs over 3000 people.  SOPA will kill innovation and job creation.

SOPA and PIPA replace DMCA, or Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which passed in 1998.  It was a compromise between the content industry and the technology industry that has worked really well.  It provides four safe harbors, immunity, for companies that follow the rules: if they are notified of offending content, they can ban the user who is posting it and remove the links.  Now websites are liable for the content their users post.  This is a horrible idea.  DMCA has worked really well for the past 14 years, but the music and movie industry wants more power.

They’ve used their lobbyists to write a broad, vague bill that eliminates these safe harbors and concentrates power with large companies at the expense of free speech and startups.  Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress, Reddit, Blogger, Google and many others are at risk.  Individuals who download content or stream videos face criminal prosecution.  Some examples that will be illegal under SOPA: posting a remixed song to soundcloud, posting a video with copyrighted music in the background, covering a copyrighted song and posted it to Facebook.  It’s crazy, someone who illegally downloads a Michael Jackson video could face a longer prison term than the doctor who killed him.  There’s even talk that Justin Bieber’s original cover songs on YouTube could have been censored.

The consequences of these bills are huge.  It has the potential to end the internet as we know it.  It will kill startups.  It will unfairly punish individuals and artists using copyrighted material in remixes, videos and art.  It will allow large companies to block access to websites they find objectionable without a full court order and a transparent appeals process.  If a dictatorship was proposing a similar law, the US would be running to condem it.  This law uses similar techniques to China’s great firewall to get what it wants.  It’s not democratic, its probably unconstitutional and will harm one of the last job creating industries in the United States.  SOPA signals the end of the Internet as we know it.

In the last week, Congress has stopped trying to ram these bills through, mostly because of outcry on the internet.  You can do your part.  Share posts like this, look at companies that are supporting SOPA and think about contacting your representative.

For more information check out Hollywood Finally Gets A Chance to Break the Internet and Stop America Censorship.  They both make a better case against SOPA than I do.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.