I Wish I Didn't Know Now What I Didn't Know Then

It's a sad day when you think you're reading satire or some piece of phony humor, and it turns out that it's really an article from ten years ago in the New York Times that contains the following quote:

'I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010,'' said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. ''I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.''

The article is worth reading for a host of reasons. For one, it exposes our political system and highlights that some legislators do, in fact, understand our complex economy -- even if they're unable to stop the train of stupidity that they're riding on.

Another quote from the article that's telling:

''Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,'' Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said. ''This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.''

That sounds like a commercial, if there ever was one, for economic destruction. Of course, my rear-view mirrors are spotless, so take all of this with a grain of salt. Remember this when someone decries the role of government and casts them as regulators holding back innovation. Remember all of this because there are a lot of people that make loud noises as great pundits that think that "simple" answers to complex questions are substitutes for history and intelligence. Remember things like the events, documented for posterity, by this article for what they were.

Hopeless, stupid mistakes by people that had all of the facts, the history and the understanding to know better, and yet they still proceeded to enact legislation that would be our downfall.
-=FeriCyde=-

More Partisan Stupidity

The latest Republican hopeful, Bobby Jindal, is going to continue a tradition:

"Make no mistake: Anything other than an immediate and compliant, 'Why no sir, I don't want the president to fail,' is treated as some sort of act of treason, civil disobedience or political obstructionism," Jindal said at a political fundraiser attended by 1,200 people. "This is political correctness run amok."

What tradition? The idea that simple rhetoric and posture are replacements for true leadership.

This was attempted by prior candidates for president (mainly vice), and make no mistake, there are people that are gearing up for the 2012 presidential race with bets on Jindal.

The problem is fundamentally bigger than the above: The president-buying-public as it is, is looking for someone who can solve problems. My view is that they want a president engaged in dialog. Someone who is inclusive. Talk like the above is not inclusive -- it's disastrous. It really is un-American to wish that your president will fail.

The issue at heart that is not being addressed is that this was a game created by people like Bill O'reilly when he pontificated that people should "Shut Up" in regards to (name that tune, you un-American moron). Bill and people like him started and pushed the idea that to speak anything negative at a crucial time -- that's un-American. This is exclusive dialog -- it separates, rather than unites. At its core is a fundamental problem -- we as a nation are allowed to disagree sometimes. At the end of the day, however, we're supposed to work as a cohesive whole for the greater good. We're not supposed to wish for failure, in other words.

On the other side, Rush Limbaugh comes out after the Dems win the election and says he wants Barak to fail.

Out of control Republican pundits, in other words, have brought the biggest hope for success for the Republican party into the spotlight -- and his first order of business is to attempt to reconcile the moronic rhetoric of their pundits and talk-show egotists. He has to do this because if he doesn't, Rush and Bill are not going to support him.

What's really wrong with this picture? Rhetoric, exclusive dialog and simplistic thinking (in my not-so-humble opinion), have lost the conservatives a lot of ground lately.

Bobby Jindal, if he hopes to win the hearts and minds of the people that are going to elect him, is going to have to address the real problems in America with real solutions. He's going to have to find a way to include more people in his party. He's going to have to distance himself from the stupidity of what's running the party today -- Bill, Ann, Shawn and Rush. These people are doing real damage to the party that they supposedly want to win the presidential race.

I don't think Jindal is up to this, for what its worth. I think that there are far better conservatives up to the task -- but they're not going to get Rush and Bills support.

There is a guy right now who's engaged in real dialog with the nation. That guy obviously doesn't want to fail -- at least, that's what he's saying (and it sure looks real to me). He's an obvious problem solver. That guy has been working hard to be inclusive -- it's really obvious on a lot of fronts. That guy is our President. We have him for another 4 years.

I don't want him to fail because I don't think we've had problems this big for quite some time as a nation. I think we do need some Partisan balance to solve the problems that Barak wants to solve. I think we need more than simplistic thinking and negative, exclusive discourse to fix what we're up against. More to the point -- I think that the American people are smart enough to tell the difference, at the end of the day, between simple rhetoric and complex solutions to tough problems.

And now I'm going to do something I rarely do -- I'm going to take Bill O'Reilly's advice. I'm going to shut up.
-=FeriCyde=-

Spitzers' Latest Column -- Read It

Eliot Spitzer's latest column, entitled "The Real AIG Scandal" is about more than the shameless bonus money -- it's about what's really wrong with the bail-out cash. It's about transparency (rather, the lack of it), corporate courtship (or affairs between corporations -- collusion and the potential thereof) and it's about how everyone but us (you and I, the taxpayers that are funding this charade) is getting paid in full.

In short, it's news that for some reason, is not making its way to the front page or onto the main screen of CNN and FOX.

Eliot -- glad to see you back doing what you do best -- exposing criminal behavior.

And if it isn't criminal today, you can bet someday it will be soon if enough people figure out how we've been robbed.
-=FeriCyde=-

More of the Same Problem With Our Media

In case you've missed it, something interesting happened Thursday night -- Jon Stewart in a show segment that more or less would probably make Morley Safer proud, took apart "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer.

And, following up it looks like his producers asked for the interview to be squelched by the rest of the NBC network.

I don't see any easy way to regulate our media. We can make all kinds of pontifications and express the deepest beliefs about freedom, but the fact of the matter is that popular crap sells advertising. Fox news, by pandering to ultra-conservatives gains a chunk of viewers that (from what I can tell) end up upon a news island of sorts, believing the rest of the media to be run by "media elite" liberals.

We could make laws to fix this, but I think the end result would be something even worse than what we have today -- because ignorance is much easier to achieve than intelligence. It's much easier to not understand the facts of the matter and to draw some stupid conclusions than it is to dive in and understand the specifics.

It's easier to live in a fantasy world, such as the one that Ayn Rand has created, than the real world we live in today.

Because of these kinds of vectors and human nature, we face a problem of sorts with the media -- media conglomerates that own the news have motivation to go for economies of scale. They are not motivated to, for example, fund local news efforts. It's easy to see that newspapers are dying, local TV stations are much a thing of the past. Cable, the Internet, blogs -- there's a lot of diversity that's supposedly going to come in and balance this problem.

Except that maybe my blog, for example, is read by a bunch of people in Cleveland or Washington -- and at the end of the day, is no substitute for a newspaper. Not quite that long ago, newspapers employed local reporters and op-ed writers. Those people told the local story to an audience that more or less cared. They had an easy way to make local waves when the tide was needed.

This is the focal point of this post -- as these things are dying off, one has to wonder just what's going to maintain the sense of community required for a local society to function. What will be the local check and balance for broadcasting local corruption or just a basic focus on local issues?

The terrifying part for me here is that usually I can see some way to either remove some regulation -- or to add it. I don't think this particular problem is going to solve itself, in other words. I've known people that started their own publications -- it's extremely hard to do. Finding advertisers and talent to write the content is difficult enough -- the reader base has to have motivation to consume the news.

Lacking any kind of state run news (thankfully), it's a stretch to see something commercial coming along. Maybe though, it will be something based upon a device -- like blackberry or iphone essential local news. Still, all of this is hard to imagine given the fact that a lot of people think "Information wants to be free", but the hard reality is that "Information wants to be useless".

Both of the phrases in the prior paragraph are conjecture-style sayings. The first saying indicates that no matter how badly people try to charge for information, the public will find a way to broadcast said information for "free" (note, not counting, obviously, all of the bandwidth charges involved).

The second saying more or less coined by Bruce Sterling I interpret to mean something else. It states that after all information is broadcast through media done for free, it will essentially be unusable. Why? Because you won't know the source, won't know how far away from your viewpoint the broadcaster is, how old it is, whether or not it was filtered or compared to snopes.com and so on.

In other words, I would love to think that our free society principals and some blogging are going to be a substitute for a local paper -- but it's becoming really obvious (to me at least) that this is nuts.

Let's take the time machine back a ways -- let's go to some small town in the 1800 where some local press-jockey runs his own paper. The audience was controlled, the need for the paper, obvious. The cost to run the paper -- probably some serious blood, sweat and tears, but somehow, at the end of the day, the papers were cut, the copy delivered, the local news told. The local society, I'm sure, had differing views at times to the words that were being printed. At the end of the day, however, what was there served as a way to glue a local community together. Right or wrong, some people made a living doing this.

And here we are, 200 years later -- with things like free software, free desktop publishing software, cheap printers and ubiquitous digital delivery protocols -- and somehow we can't find the collective spit as a society to employ people with similar motivation to deliver local news?

What in the hell is wrong with this picture?

It's a conundrum for me. The vulnerability is obvious -- America could have a Tienanmen's square incident, and it could go unreported in the local news, because there won't be any local news. In case you're thinking "fat chance", read my last post (which is just the opposite, and a related concern).

Certain functions, news reporting and medical billing to name a couple of obvious ones, don't jibe as typical capitalistic transactions. News reporting in my view, is something that should be rewarded on an ethical scale somehow. Similar to this, when someone is dying in the emergency room at a hospital, they're obviously vulnerable at that moment -- it would be horrible to rob them blind at the same time just because you hold their lives in the balance of the "transaction".

Capitalism is great -- I believe in it wholeheartedly for creating work and making our productive society -- but it's high time we realized collectively and as a society that there are things that have to be reexamined -- and the news is one of them. I don't think we should regulate the news, but there must be some way to reward ethical news behavior outside of the framework we're seeing today.

Because it's obviously a sad day when the best news reporting you can find is being done by a couple of comedians on Comedy Central.
-=FeriCyde=-

The Problem With American Media

Over the course of the past few years in various posts I've talked from time to time about freedom-related issues. In various cases I've alluded to a problem with our so-called "free" press. I've talked about astroturf (phony grass roots) campaigns by companies trying to obscure the truth (there's a fine line between that and positive, generated buzz).

The issue is this: News is not, and never should be, a profit center. News is news -- it might be bad news about the very corporation that owns the media. In case you've been living under a rock or on some other planet, these days, there's been quite a lot of consolation of media. Large swatches of what used to be lots of independent media outlets have been gobbled up by conglomerates. As this has happened, our press in various forms has been impacted -- in my not-so-humble opinion, negatively.

I have very intimate experience (at a microscopic level) of this phenomenon in action, having done some time in the on-line news arena. The issue was advertising, and the general tendency to pander to a sponsor. If it was happening in the smallest sense, then I can only imagine the pressures of large corporations to do similar, much more damaging (to the news overall) actions.

Today, illustrating this concept, is the following sound-byte, taken from an extremely interesting article on the dirty-bomb plot surrounding Barak Obama's inauguration. What's that you say? You didn't hear about it? Oh, well, read the sound byte in the article (link provided):

But the Belfast dirty bomber is just one drop from an ocean of truth that is unreported, not repeated, and does not enter into civil discourse, because it is not perceived to be profitable to talk about, regardless of how profitable it may be to hear. [emphasis mine]

How do you like them apples? Granted, this may not be the real reason we're not hearing about this attempt -- maybe there's some other reason.

Maybe people aren't interested in the topic -- or it was somehow censored by the regular news media by the government (highly doubtful).

Before I shout Occum's Razor or attempt to speculate some other explanation, simply ask yourself:

• If there was a story like this in the press, wouldn't you have been interested?
• If a story like this didn't make it to the press, wouldn't you also be interested in hearing why?
• Why didn't it make it -- why haven't we heard about this one on CNN, FOX, MSNBC, the New York Times and so on?

I know I have my own opinions -- I'd be interested in hearing yours.
-=FeriCyde=-

Why Social Networking?

A lot of people don't use facebook but do have an email address.

This posting started as a reply to a facebook wall posting by a family member. It's only fitting. The particular family member is not on facebook. The wall posting was by another facebook network contact who was wishing me happy birthday and relaying news from a relative who was not on facebook. I pass messages through them instead of via email. I started thinking "Why don't I just email that relative who's not on facebook?".

Out of those thoughts the relevance of what's happening today surrounding social networking worked their way to the surface. This posting describes what I see as a paradigm shift in communication. Things are changing and as usual lots of people are not completely sold on the "new" way of doing something.

In this particular case, I explained to my family member (through the other family member) that they could only avoid facebook for a while -- but that it's now like an email address was in the past. I can remember this easily -- there was a time when I was one of a only few people on the planet that had a working email address. I would say to people:

Me: "What's your email address?"

Them: "What's an email address?"

---- A year or so Later:

Me: "What's your email address?"

Them: "I don't do that yet. My wife/son/brother/boss/co-worker/strangers-on-the-street keeps saying I need to do that, but I don't see-the-value/have-the-time/want-to-etc"

--- A year or so later:

Me: "What's your email address?"

Them: "Oh, hey, I'm getting AOL soon. I send you a post card with it!"

--- And so on.

Facebook/Linkedin/Twitter -- social networking -- is like that today. The conversations are very similar. The time-frame, however, is compressed (see the book "Future Shock", written in 1970 for what it's worth, on the subject of time compression).

It sounds funny to debate needing something like email in your life until you realize how much we can't get by without it. Some people argue with me here -- social networking is still somewhat optional in their eyes and will be pretty much forever.

My perspective forces me to disagree. I was an early adopter of the Internet. I was managing high volume web sites in 1999 -- interactive news where the readers were posting comments on stories (I had to write a lot of that code -- very hairy stuff). I witnessed the birth of google -- no one searches the internet these days -- they "Google".

Yeah, Google is optional -- you can still search the internet other ways -- Microsoft's new search engine is going to kill Google! And we're all going to be driving flying cars in hell through a snowstorm at that time...

Social networking is to email what Google is to the old search engines (the ones that returned a thousand unusable hits). They (the old engines) simply matched strings of text with their results. The results were mildly relevant and there was a lot of time wasted slogging through pages of stuff that was often utter garbage. Along came Google, which ranked the page by relevance -- it added a value to the hit ranking that was based upon how many times a page was referenced by another page.

The thing that Google added was context. Pages being searched prior to Google were not valuable because context was not factored into the results equation. Similar value is added when you post a message on FaceBook -- sure, you could send an email message to a friend, but posting a status update on facebook adds context. It's now a message in the context of your network, instead of spam.

I know some of you are laughing disagreeably with me here, but bear with me...

Like those old search engines, email is pretty much single-threaded. It has one or two targets, unless its one of those annoying forwards, which is a separate subject altogether. Email tends to arrive in your inbox, and get processed for whatever its worth, and then archived. Social networking posts (like wall postings on facebook) are very similar to email to a group email listing. Except that the context is managed by the interface. Your social group of friends can opt to read what you're up to (or ignore it). And thanks to the way that the networking algorithms work, it's amazingly easy to find people that want to be in your circle of friends (or have been in the past -- again, another subject altogether).

Social networking has supplanted email. By bringing others into the conversation things have a completely different relevance. We all feel a lot more connected than we used to be (Because we are).

The ability to post photos, to send little gifts and so on, that's all icing on the cake -- or cruft -- I'm not into turning facebook into a gaming interface anytime soon, for example. The core functionality that facebook has brought to the table is the ability to easily add social context to conversation. Email can't easily do this. Blog postings can't easily do this.

On a similar front, Linkedin is doing the same for professional networking. It's not quite there yet, but I'd argue that Linkedin is the new resume. The old resume just told people what you had done. The new one says "Oh, and hey, I did it with these people." And because you did it with "those people", the odds of a recruiter finding your talents because they were looking at one of those people's networks -- those odds are much higher than before Linkedin. Before, a recruiter had your resume and it was -- like a dead-ended email -- just your resume, targeted at just you, with no social context.

And it helps, even if you're not looking for a job (another subject for another day). Suffice to say that I pay a lot of heed to my LinkedIn profile, because it helps attract talented people to work where I work and solve the kind of cool, impossible, fun stuff that I get to solve. I can't do it alone, just like NASA can't build the space shuttle with one brilliant engineer, the stuff I'm into these days is far beyond anything I can hope to accomplish as a single-threaded human on this planet.

I'll leave this subject here for now -- I'm sure I'll be back again though.

Social networking is changing everything. It's adding relevance and bringing people together. I suspect that the economic down-turn will push even more people into this space, more out of need than out of want. I can see it pretty clearly; There will come a point where a facebook profile is as ubiquitous as an email address.
-=FeriCyde=-

Germans and Electronic Voting

Slashdot has a link to an article on a German court that has banned certain e-voting machines for a lack of transparency.

I find the lack of coverage of our own (American) voting problems, with similar issues, to be quite disheartening. Read the babelfish translation on the Slashdot page if you're interested in the specifics. As it sits, a host of similar issues troubles me about American voting devices. What is known about some of them was to be proprietary -- until it got accidentally leaked via an insecure FTP site.

I've blogged about this in the past. The Germans are doing the right thing here -- they're going back to paper and pencil until the technology requirements are clearly documented and the results transparently reportable. Too bad our media doesn't see this as news. Only a few states in our country see this as the vulnerability that it truly is.
-=FeriCyde=-

Start up the Risk Takers

The New York Times today has a interesting OP-ED by Thomas Friedman: Start Up the Risk-Takers. If it sounds familiar to you, after reading it, you probably read something similar in my blog posting: "America: Land of the Lost" here a few weeks back. The article is making its way around a bit -- it will be published in Naturally Good Magazine soon.
-=FeriCyde=-

A Positive Sign: Facebook Listening

Facebook appears to have listened to their user base. In the past I've blogged about Toxic Social Media. This is the opposite -- or maybe it's more like the user base on FaceBook has gotten to be a democracy of sorts.

Regardless, I'm glad to see this. I use facebook a lot these days -- it's become something of a community gathering spot for the world.

Good to see that Facebook, unlike other Toxic Social Media gathering spots, is listening.
-=FeriCyde=-

Creativity is Universal and a Resource

Sir Ken Robinson: A New View of Human Capacity

I encourage you to watch the above video snippet. It details Sir Ken Robinson's thoughts and experiences with the natural resource of human creativity. It's also quite funny for some sad reasons. Pay attention to the fact that a lot of humans don't value creativity when it comes to them from the outside.

Around the same time I found the above I came across this piece by Elisabeth Gilbert:

Elizabeth Gilbert: A new way to think about creativity.

Elisabeth Gilbert's piece is saying something different about creativity, but it is no less fascinating. Both of these videos are about something very elusive that I wager is what makes us most like gods -- the ability to make new things. Invention. Music Composition. Writing. All of the above -- you can argue that the lower lifeforms are creative, but the scale is obviously different. Mankind's creative endeavors are wildly complex, almost life forms of their own (think of things like operating systems and compilers).

In the past the most frightening thing about creativity, speaking from my own experiences, is the lack of ability to control it. It comes in the most inopportune times -- when I'm seriously supposed to be paying attention at a meeting the most hilarious (and often unsharable) observations will fly into my head. Things that make me laugh uncontrollably. When I need it sometimes it's not there (recent experience this past week, sadly). When it comes it emerges like an uncontrollable river torrent of thought. I paddle like a mad-man trying to get it all out in the short expanse of the boat that I call "this lifetime".

And so it was this morning when I woke up and realized that a lot of the bi-partisan thoughts I've been having over the past few weeks were creatively expressed by none other than Martin-Luther King. I know this, because my parents used to have it up on a poster in the dining room in our house in Jamestown Missouri.

We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools.

When he wrote this I have no doubts that he was addressing the racial divide in this country and hoping for a day much closer to the one we're currently experiencing. No doubt we still have a long way to go on the racial divide, but it's definitely closing.

The fact is that this statement is more pressing on the front of the partisan divide. The Republicans are in fact saying something important when they talk about fiscal responsibility. We're going to go much more deeply in debt at a time when we can ill afford it. The problem is that they are one side of a two-sided partisan coin -- and that this past 8 years or so they didn't seem all that concerned about balancing the budget if it served their needs.

The problem wouldn't be so hard to address if they hadn't spent so much time discounting the wishes of the other side. Now the pendulum is swinging back the other way and they're yelling about fiscal responsibility -- and few people are listening to this warning. It's a real problem -- two wrongs don't indeed make a right. The short term gain of power unfortunately is alluring and the Republicans are now tasting what it's like to be on the short end of the stick.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time feeling sorry for them -- the people to feel sorry for are our grandkids who are going to spend the next few decades (if they pull this off) paying off the mountain of debt -- debt brought on by both sides of the same United States Coin.

We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools.

I'm sure my Mom and Dad had that up on the wall for my brothers and I (we used to fight like cats and dogs). Or maybe Dad was simply trying to make me think (he was good at that).

In any case, we're not going to partisan our way out of our problems -- we need to work together as a cohesive country of problem solvers. Creative problem solvers. There's always going to be some moron who doesn't get what the creative types in our world are doing (the first video illustrates this), or worse, they do understand and simply want the power that is inevitably generated by the act of creation.

Barak is obviously a creative president. He's also very funny at times (in a very dry and intellectual way). He's being nit-picked at this point by different people for all kinds of oblique, inconsequential things. Keep that in mind in the next few years (maybe longer). Any moron can come along after the act of creation and say something about how they would have solved the problem of the day.

I've seen this a lot over my career -- both regarding things I've created and the work of others. As I've gotten more attuned, I've developed different responses for this kind of destruction. I'll leave the sharing of those responses for another time. Suffice to say that today (as usual) I'm involved in some seriously fun creative insanity. I work to protect those around me that are involved in the act of creation for obvious reasons if you get the thoughts on this page.

For similar reasons, I ask the Republicans in Congress and the Senate to think about the long term health of our country -- to get engaged in dialog and to put aside their bickering, whining attitudes. Get more creative and listen to the people creating, rather than the people who are obviously wanting our new president to fail because it serves their partisan interests. We have work -- creative work, to do as a nation, and it's not going to be solved by a bunch of divisive partisan fools.
-=FeriCyde=-

Golden Handcuffs

The Fox newscaster in this context obviously wants to argue the point "The government should not interfere with Business" -- there's just one small problem; The Banks being discussed in this interview are now a part of the U.S. government. The dialog in this interview is priceless. Kucinich is a Dem and Fox is known for doing anything but "fair and balanced" reporting (and more or less bashing anything not part of the RNC mantra) -- but I have to give the interviewer credit here -- he engaged in dialog (there was no "mike-cutting" going on, one of Bill's tactics, for example) and at the end of the day, couldn't really argue with the points that Dennis was making.

What points? That the government shouldn't be bailing out failed institutions. That now that they are, people are enraged knowing that their tax dollars are being spent on lavish bonuses and stadium branding. Feel free to argue (like the interviewer in this context), that the government doesn't know anything about branding. Side note: Kucinich has a marketing background, and it makes for some hilarious "What do you know about marketing?" correction. Anyway, so the government doesn't know about branding -- they shouldn't interfere with business. Kucinich's point: he agrees, and says more or less if they don't want interference, they shouldn't be asking for corporate welfare cash from the government.

Say what you like about Dennis Kucinich -- it's at times like this I'm proud he's an Ohioan.
-=FeriCyde=-

Democracy 101

How to write your congressman:
Start by going to this link:

https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

1. Select your state from the drop-down.
2. Enter the zip code for your home address
3. Select the button "Contact my Representative

This should take you to a page like the one for my district, which includes a host of methods for contacting my local congressman.

Chose email if possible (it should be), if not, write and print your letter and snail-mail it to the address shown.

Be polite and as objective as possible. Here's an example:

Name: Mr Paul Ferris
Address: My Address
E-mail: [email address]

Message Subject: WEBECON
Message Text:

Dear Mr. Boccieri,

Recent economic events, the banking crisis and the bail-out have put our country in obvious jeopardy. I wanted to weigh in with my observations and opinions here because I'm deeply troubled. I take primary issue with the bailing out of financial institutions. I am troubled to read that the money has gone partially to bonuses for the executives of these institutions. I take issue with the fact that they don't feel that they're accountable for the money. I also don't think that our government should function as an owner of these kinds of institutions (it's a bit too late for that, I understand).

I'd appreciate some attention to these matters, mainly in the area of better regulations for the people at the top of these organizations. If we're going to hand them cash to fix some issue then:

1) The heads of these organizations have failed -- part of the rules of engagement should dictate that the board governing the organization choose new leadership -- leadership approved by some government regulatory committee.

2) Bonuses in this context are out. If the leadership of these organizations are not happy with their pay and don't have faith that they can create long-term wealth with their position (future bonuses based upon performance), then they should find some other line of work. Bonus in this context: any pay beyond base. This means any kind of perk, including travel perks, housing -- anything beyond their documented pay.

3) We should have a direct, obvious window into where the money is going -- we, being the American citizens that have provided a safety blanket. This could be done by some kind of Internet-based reporting that would be transparent to everyone.

4) As long as the company (or bank) is receiving welfare like this, the board and the executive leadership of the company should be agreeable to scrutiny and governance. Pay levels should be set at some citizen-approved level. Excess of this level should not be allowed until the organization has gotten off Congressional welfare.

5) People that do not comply should expect jail-time. We jail people that sell drugs in this country -- these people are doing arguably similar damage. Why they should not expect jail time for obvious immorality is beyond me.

Please understand that I usually write my representatives only when I feel a matter is of utmost importance. If you wish to contact me via phone, I'm available to talk about this subject at any time. Mobile: [my mobile number] . Email: [my email address]

I'm not involved in Banking industry at this time (I've worked in IT for a bank a few years back), but these recent developments are troubling and at this moment in time I am happy to report that I'm in a different industry -- and I'm saddened to see our great country projecting the image of immoral behavior at this point in history.


Thanks in advance for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
--Paul Ferris

Your letter should be to the point as much as possible and as professional as possible. Swearing is bad. Jargon is bad. Anything not diplomatic -- bad. You want to address issues objectively and express opinions where possible as such (in other words, you're free to put in an opinion -- just make it obvious).

It's fun, it's easy -- it's Democracy. Let's make it work!
-=FeriCyde=-

Art Imitates Life

Scott Adams has probably captured the back-end conversation behind the Belkin Astroturfing Fiasco that I commented upon a few weeks ago. You should read it (and laugh) here. Scott's definitely got a way of exposing the ethical issues in a rather comical fashion -- the sad thing is that a lot of people view ethics in an optional (rather than mandatory) light.

Smart -- The New Cool?

I woke up this morning and did something I usually don't do -- I turned on a TV set. This is unusual for a host of reasons; I don't watch TV as a rule, I was in a hotel room, and I had access to cable.

Bryant Gumbel was on talking sports and I stopped channel flipping for a second. He was talking a bit of hope on his program from the bully pulpit -- but it was interesting and it caught me a bit off guard. I'm not a huge sports fan, but I was captivated to hear some things about his view of hope from the perspective of someone viewing Barack Obama as a positive influence.

He was saying that a lot of today's athletes were identifying with Barack and that some of the influences he was hoping to see from our president were extremely positive from a role model perspective. He was talking about how Barak was a basketball player and the unspoken target was obviously the young African American male. Things like Barack's respect for his wife, his obvious morality were topics that he quickly touched on. His not speaking like a Gansta Rapper. His ability to articulate issues and engage in intelligent dialog.

Bryants' speech was well done from my point of view. It was extremely to the point and diplomatic -- the kind of stuff that might have an impact on someone. Hate speech doesn't work well when you're attempting to affect a target audience -- this is why the pundits gain a lot of my ire -- they're making the people that have already made up their minds happy and at the same time, intentionally or otherwise creating a rift in our country over important issues.

I liked what Bryant had to say but I caught myself wishing he'd have selected a broader audience. My own son could benefit from his words and he's not African American. The general young male population, speaking from my own observations, could benefit. We've had a couple of decades of culture focused upon young males and extreme ignorance as cool. Beavis and Butthead, Dumb and Dumber, Bill and Ted -- Hannity and Colmes. Rap music culture has components that are in part an obvious worship of the immoral but I'd argue that Jackass did similar damage.

Barack has obvious mental clout. Standing next to our prior president, he makes "W" look like a degenerate frat boy when he talks about anything. This isn't because George was a Republican -- it's because George thought ignorant speech was cool. I'm told that George W Bush wasn't a dumb guy behind the scenes -- that the talk was an act and the cowboy swagger part of what he thought was a cool image.

I hope Bryant Gumbel is right about this one, but I'd like to hope that the Barack effect here hits all American kids -- male and female. I hope that they learn to articulate problems and be a part of a general positive, intelligent discourse.

Yeah, I'm reaching for a lot -- I'm hoping for some rather impossible ideal conditions -- but we've had such a downturn in culture. Stupid used to be cool.

Maybe Barak's image will set a new trend. Maybe Smart will be the new Cool.
-=FeriCyde=-

It's Not That Simple

It's easy to get press if you simplify a problem so that any idiot can join a side and cheer for his ideology. In the Wall Street Journal video piece here, author Steve Moore is inteviewed about a book, which I won't read, purposely, about Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged. You can argue that this is ignorant of me but I have my reasons. I would push back that having actually read Atlas shrugged, having understood and liked portions of it myself kind of gives me some leeway.

I agree with Steve Moore on some rather key points -- I think the bailouts were wrong (I've said it here many times). I think big government is bad. But I feel compelled to point something out that is far more dire -- Atlas Shrugged is a work of fiction. I don't need to read some authors lame posturing based upon a work of fiction to understand the problems we face today -- and I certainly don't need to read some book by someone who wants to superimpose a fantasy on top of our reality. Especially a fantasy written 50-some odd years ago.

Look, it's simple -- Ayn was trying to prevent the United States from turning into a socialist, communist or dictatorial state. The more government you get, the more dangerously close to this line we get. I'd argue that we're already partially there, what with buying into the banking and auto industries. We have a huge government, despite the professed belief in less government by the prior administration. We owe a huge debt to the Chinese, in part to help fund a war -- but also due to huge trade imbalances and a lack of manufacturing in the US.

Steve Moore, the author of the book, doesn't realize a major problem he's creating -- or possibly he does realize it and is part of some vast conspiracy of people that I would classify as ideological idiots. These are the people that, if the world ends sometime soon will be still doing the same thing. Picture them sitting among the ruin, shouting at shell-shocked passers-by saying "You liberals did this!". Just as stupid, sitting on top of some other pile of debris, will be some other idiot shouting something similar back about conservatives or big business.

And the truth will be far more painful to accept: if the world ends, it will be a mass of stupid human beings that allowed it to happen. Possibly part of the problem will be that they didn't figure out that problems are not liberal or conservative in nature -- the ability to classify things as someone else fault, instead of working through the issue as a cohesive society -- I believe that this is a big part of this problem. People want to adopt an ideology much like a brand. They want to believe in something. It's human nature.

For a great example of this, watch the video segment. Steve, in the interview over his book about a hypothetical book states clearly "Liberal's are going to say it was Free Markets that cause the collapse, and people like me and Ayn Rand would say 'No it's government programs' that created the crisis in the first place." During this time he's all smug and smiling -- he's reduced our current crisis to a "debate". I have a shocking concept for ya Steve: How about it was not quite that simple. Possibly the economic problems we're facing today can't be simplified into two sides of a debate that third-graders would have on a playground. Maybe it wasn't something quite so simple as the failure of "Free Markets" or "Government Programs" that got us here.

No, it's possible that what's caused the collapse of our present system is a multitude of variables. Rampant immorality by some corporate executives. Deregulated derivatives. Legislation that allowed sub-prime (and worse) mortgages. Banking executives that should have tempered their zest to make more money by not embracing things that they knew were high risk. People that wanted to own things that they could not afford. A contrived war in the Middle east that was funded by borrowing money from a Communist state. A lack of accountability by people in the executive wing -- of our country and businesses. People voting for politicians for the wrong reasons. People not caring about government. People not caring, period. Rampant lobbying. A lack of trust in government overall -- for really good reasons in some case.

In other words, I'm not objecting to Steve's embracing of the concepts in Atlas Shrugged -- I'm objecting to his desire to simplify the debate. To make a bold, callous, and stupid statement like the one above is counter-constructive. Has Steve missed the fact that all of the things I've mentioned here were spread across the at least the past 16 years of "Liberal and Conservative" leadership? No, I don't want to debate Steve on his view that all of the problem we're facing would go away if we could just get our government to not interfere. It's a nice fantasy, and it makes a good read. But it is, at the end of the day, a fantasy.

I have my own opinions: I think we need our government to interfere -- the right way. We need them to step in and tighten the rules for financial institutions, for example. We need to stimulate new ideas around reducing our energy dependence on foreign oil. We need to re-evaluate the wars we've taken on, how we're funding them, and our image on the global stage. We need some action, in other words, that's going to take unity of purpose and general cooperation. Do I think we need more people using the word liberal or conservative as hate speech? Get a clue here: No, I think I've seen enough idiotic ideology to last me a few decades, if not a lifetime.

None of the above items are liberal or conservative agenda items. All of them are pressing problems. To make some sort of lame debate around them at this hour might feel good, but haven't we had enough of this kind of stupidity? Atlas Shrugged is a wonderful read -- I loved the book, for what it's worth. It's view of the world and the weights that government add to productive business paint a terrific canvas for Ayn's philosophy.

Coming from Russia, Ayn obvious was obviously motivated to write something that would warn people away from totalitarian communistic society, and I can't blame her at all.

It isn't going to be a liberal or conservative point of view or stupid one-sided debate that gets us out of our present jam. It is going to be some smart politicians working together on solutions. Note the shift in my language here -- a point of view is an observers stance. A one-sided debate is something that Bill and Rush do for (sad) entertainment. Solutions are things that solve problems -- dialog is something you do to hold a constructive conversation. You can post comments to my blog and I will respond to them. That's dialog. You want to simplify reality and back it with a fantasy and say "You disagree with me because you're on one or the other side of a contrived debate" -- I'm not going to be involved.

Here's a thought -- maybe I disagree with simplification of extremely complex problems. Possibly I view this kind of simplification itself is a worse problem than the oil crisis. It's worse, in my opinion, than the economic crisis. It's worse than a lot of the things we face right now. Oversimplification is worse because it keeps people from working together on solving the obviously hard problems of the day.

Steve Moore feels good reading Ayn's book. Good for him! Give the man a lime sucker and have him join the 3rd-grade debate team that's probably already forming on the playground. I'd like to say this to Steve: It's fiction, man -- get over it. We're living in a real world with lots of complex problems. We don't need you to simplify these problems -- we need you to work with the rest of us who are trying to solve them. It's time for you to stop feeling smug about your fictionalized view of the world. Let's try something new -- let's try looking at problems as they exist in our complex society, free of the prism of liberalism or conservatism. Possibly then, after dropping this filter, people can truly understand what things like our government are for at the end of the day.

We don't need liberals and conservatives heaving rocks at each other over stupid ideology. I am not going to be blowing my time in stupid debates (cast from fictional work no less) -- look where it's taken our country these days. I sincerely believe that rabid, rampant partisanship has taken us here. I worry that more of the same is going to be what brings about the end of the world as we know it. I also sincerely believe that its going to be unity that gets us out of the mud at the end of the day.
-=FeriCyde=-

Bad Belkin Bayard Business ...

Seems a Belkin employee was caught red-handed looking for people to write positive reviews of one of their products.

Speaking as a person who's seen his fair share of AstroTurf (In this context -- AstroTurf refers to the practice of generating "phony grass roots"), I can only say I'm not surprised. It points to one of the darker sides of social media -- the ability for a corporation to quietly influence the blog-o-sphere or other social media with misleading content.

And the sad thing is, there really isn't much we can do about it. Social media wouldn't work very well if there were "social media police" that checked each and every blog or facebook post for authenticity or even more difficult, intent. There is the occasional story posted like this one that serves to highlight the problem.

Is this a new phenomena? Not really. For years companies have paid writers to create authentic-looking story content for magazines, for example. It's just something that's likely to increase as social media's incredible power manifests in the digital ecosystem that is the new generation of marketing.

I should take a second to mention that I work for an interactive marketing firm and that my job is IT-related -- I'm more of a user than a mover and shaker. This post is more about my experienced observations in the space, being involved as the editor for a rather popular news site in the late 1990's that featured a lot of user-contributed feedback to news stories. Issues arose that made these ethical issues apparent and caused me to reflect upon them early in the game.

Marketing campaigns are interwoven into youtube "viral marketing" videos. These videos are more than tolerated by the users for one obvious reason; they're blatant advertisements. People know, after the smoke clears, that they've been watching something created to drive traffic toward a vendor. I've enjoyed almost all of these kinds of intrusions -- they're viral for a reason -- they market and entertain at the same time.

Things go bad, however, when a company exhibits this kind of behavior posting to technical message boards or worse, staging phony letters to the legislative bodies of our government (both real-world examples from the same company -- and not one I would ever be associated with). Things like this have a way of dampening community enthusiasm, to say the least. They make people wonder what kind of noise is being generated at the community level. The long term effects of sowing this kind of distrust in the potential customer base of a product can only be bad.

All of this is part of a general break-down of our society. Ethical matters matter. Societies have to have ethical foundations or they will ultimately crumble. Treating the social ecosystem as something that can be AstroTurfed will ultimately ruin the value. Transactions are ultimately more than financial events, after all -- they are fulfilled value propositions. Taint the perceived value and you're likely, as a vendor, not to win the business.

Pushing against this obvious motivation to build marketplace trust is the lure of the quick win in the marketplace. What did Bayard expect out of this? Maybe he was surprised when this news story broke, but it's hard to imagine that he didn't know somewhere in the back of his mind that he wouldn't get caught. Possibly he was focused on the short-term gain of shoring up an inferior product. If so, it was a rather dubious gamble -- one that cost not just the trust of Belkin, but potentially the social media marketplace as a whole.

In this particular example, we can only be thankful that Bayard was so blatant about what he was trying to accomplish. Possibly he didn't see anything wrong with it at all. Belkin's management has since apologized for the misstep and although a positive sign, they're going to have a hard time gaining the respect of their market.

Is stuff like this illegal? No -- but it's far more damaging than something that's illegal. You can serve your time for something illegal. You can be fined or correct the problem and your market will probably forget about it or not notice at all.

But trust -- trust can't be bought, and as this example illustrates, it can very easily be lost.
-=FeriCyde=-

GM and Brand Name Deletion

Those of you who have never had the privilege of working behind the walls of something as massive as General Motors have no idea what kind of politics are present. All of this blog focuses upon my perception of GM from my (somewhat limited, but probably correct -- from the mid eighties) view of their internal politics, and how they apply to their present (somewhat dubious) plans to delete brands like Pontiac, Saturn, Saab and Hummer.

My view: GMs politics were similar to the ones in our government -- only with several political parties instead of just 2 major ones.

From reading the news, GM will likely sell Saab and Hummer (though that's also speculation) and simply blow away Saturn and Pontiac like they did the Oldsmobile brand.

A disclaimer here: GM -- I'm not a fan. I don't purchase your products. Although my father was a big fan of your Buick products, I didn't find the excitement there at all. But I feel compelled to weigh in (albeit, briefly here, given my time constraints) on the obvious coming shortage of GM brands.

Likely, there's some huge internal power struggle going on inside of GM, with VPs and other executive types acting upon the current crisis with all of the surgical precision of say, cluster bombing.

I can almost read the politics from remote: "My division is more profitable -- yours is not." and so on. Somethings gotta give -- why not a bunch of brands? Isn't this required to show that GM wants to pare down to some kind of lean, mean fightin' machine?

Well, in my not so humble opinion -- tactically, maybe, but strategically, no.

Brands can't easily be created (look at all the work that went into the creation of Saturn, for example). Brands have an emotional impact upon buyers. People are very brand-centric when it comes to a purchase. Getting people to switch to another GM brand if they're a loyal Saturn buyer -- and its gone, for example, isn't exactly a sure thing.

If GM wants to get serious, they should seriously rethink this thing from the perspective of the customer, in other words. Here's what comes to mind, when I quickly think of GM brands that exist today:

• Cadillac: Sport Luxury.
• Saturn: Import fighter.
• Pontiac: Sporty. Younger crowd.
• Chevy: Mom and Pops reliable shop.
• GMC: Rebranded products from the other lines. Redundant.
• Buick: Family cars for Sophisticated people that .. no.. crap. I hate the whole idea of this car segment -- ask someone else.
• Hummer: SUVs for people that want to pretend they're fighting some kind of war -- or for people that want people to see them in a Hummer... I have a queue of Hummer jokes here that I'm omitting.

This is a lame assessment of their brand status-quo from my perspective. It's probably about 80% accurate though. GM needs to do this kind of assessment with some teeth, and then re-cast the vehicles they produce to match the brands. They need to merge all of the control of the brands and engineering into one spot and keep the names and the products. They need to consolidate the management of the stuff in other words -- but don't blow away the brands.

Want to piss off your buyer base GM? Try being a Pontiac-lover and finding out that your favorite vehicle is no longer available. Maybe you (the customer, in this context), will just have to find a new favorite -- say over there at Toyota. Toyota: remember those guys? They went out of their way a few years back to create a whole new brand. Probably took them some time... Creating the Pontiac brand over again after pissing off a huge group of people isn't a snap. Moving buyers isn't going to be easy, and maybe they'll try some other game if this one has been canceled due to rain (or tactical stupidity).

Consolidate the management, and clearly do some surgery on the brands that exist today. Does Cadillac need a corvette? Does Cadillac or Buick need an SUV? These kinds of things, floating around your brand-space, tend to be somewhat confusing in my humble opinion. Do you need to make stuff exclusive? Can you sell the missing components from all the brands from all of the dealers, in other words? For example, you're at Pontiac -- they don't have a Corvette equivalent -- can't GM relax the rules a bit so that the dealer is allowed in this context to sell a Chevy Corvette?

All of these items probably seem crazy, so I'll shut up now. I just feel compelled to point out that the deletion of Oldsmobile was extremely short-sighted. It was short-term thinking to address a short-term problem of profitability. Rather than do the easy brand-delete, GM should have taken stock of what they were doing wrong to chase off potential customers to that brand.

My guess is that all of this deletion contemplation is a way for some executives with power to out people they don't want to work with at the end of the day. Rather than do the hard thing -- re-organize into a single power structure that makes sense, they're probably killing off brands (and all of the redundant people that manage them).

All speculation, on my part, I know.

Regardless -- making brands make sense is still the hard task at the end of the day. Blowing away time-honored brands (and loyal customers), is the easy part.

GM, think strategy here. Think about your customers. Think about a lean GM with all of the brand names of today. I know it can be done.
-=FeriCyde=-

Stewart Nails The Issue to the Wall

Jon Stewart's recent piece on "Pundits" has pretty much nailed the issue right on the head.

The issue is the confusing practice of news organizations that mix "news" with "commentary". The general population wants commentary but needs, at the end of the day, the news. People like Bill O'Reily, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage all have similar attack profiles -- they call people names, attack people from their bully pulpits, scream over dialog and are overly emotionally angry while not really making a whole lot of sense.

Or rather, they make sense by appealing to people's emotions while not addressing the world from an objective point of view. This is where it gets hairy. I've got some good friends that seem to otherwise function well (they have logic circuits, in other words), but cannot get "un-fixated" by people in the aforementioned list.

They somehow have missed the fact that regardless of the opinions these people are expressing -- for one, they're not telling the news (but are parading around as journalists) and for two -- they're doing it in a way that doesn't help build consensus. Sure, they maintain consensus among their target demographic (conservatives in the cases mentioned here -- but I could have just as easily mentioned Keith Oberman), but they don't convey new information to people that don't understand the issues from their (albeit obviously) slanted point of view.

Our country is not united right now. It has a big rift in it between "left and right". Pundits mentioned here, in my not-so-humble (pundit-like) opinion, are doing serious damage by preaching loudly and emotionally to the choir. For sure there are times to rally the troops against issues that need support. The people that take this role should make it clear that they're not being journalists. The people that do this kind of rallying should be attacking problems -- not spreading descent. The deficit is a problem. Terrorism is a problem. The financial crisis is a problem.

Liberals or Conservatives: These are points of view. They are not "problems". Pick up (and then put down, quickly) the kind of tripe Ann Coulter prints in her books (or Savage -- similar work) -- you will see that you can barely find a page where she doesn't schpew liberal hate-speech like a Nazi at a war rally.

You read a lot of print about the recent loss by the RNC. To me it's obvious. They lost their centrist (read: non-polarizing) base when they embraced people like Rush and Ann. By accepting this kind of crap as OK "dialog", they lost a lot of people. When you listen to Colin Powell's breakdown of what drove him to endorse Barak Obama, he mentions listening to Sarah Palin talk about "Small Town Values". He then, not so casually, mentions that he didn't grow up in that kind of a neighborhood.

I know a lot of people probably think that Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter are not related entities. I urge you to imagine a universe where the kind of hate speech that Ann, O'Reily and Savage talk is not toleraged by the RNC. With that missing in the backdrop, possibly Colin Powell would have felt just a bit more comfortable in his own party.

This is an obvious simplification, but overall I think Fox has unwittingly helped the Democrats by polarizing the right so clearly with "Pundits" that shout ideas rather than hold clear dialog. This in turn scared people into action. It caused a clear break for some and earned the disgust and disrespect of the intellectual base in our country. The shouting down of ideas and opinions, in my opinion, bled over into the McCain/Palin campaign.

Near the end of the McCain campaign I think he got the message. There was an obvious attempt to stop the anti-Obama train and go for the pro-McCain message of conservative change. Unfortunately for the RNC, this came way too late in the game to make a difference. People are tired of negative shouting -- they want positive dialog. In the long run, any constructive aspect of their party will demand constructive dialog as a base.

Look the popularity of Mike Huckabee in this context. This isn't an accident -- Mike, love him or hate him, actually listens to people and does this thing called "dialog" that is sadly missing in the Pundit space these days. It's a sad commentary on the Republican party that he didn't fare well in the race for the Presidential nominee. It's a sadder commentary that he has better interviewing skills than any of the Pundits listed in this article so far.

You have to give Jon Stewart credit -- the Pundit problem is clarified by the piece (linked above). As a clear "non-journalist" too, he does a remarkable job of illustrating the facts. Another piece of irony in this context. Gotta love it.

When the RNC finally picks up on this they will finally be able to rebuild the backbone of their base and we will possibly see the balance of power restored in America.
-=FeriCyde=-

America: The Land of The Lost

Sacrilege Warning

Warning dear readers, I'm about to piss all over something you may hold dear -- especially if you were raised around the time I was, a time when watching schlock Saturday Morning TV was the only thing to do. For the younger FeriCyde chat readers: there was a time when you couldn't use a game system or surf the web to shed some spare time as a wasted youth. Oh, and the "wasted" here isn't referring to any drugs, it's more a concept of wasting time.

The hallowed ground I'm about to piss upon is the old Saturday morning TV show, The Land of the Lost. Like disco (sorry, there's another demographic that's probably going to be sore), some things about the 70's were really, really bad, but for whatever reason, a whole generation embraced them and they became embedded as memes in our subconscious. Like bad subroutines in the collective minds of the mainframe that runs the zeitgeist, every once and a while you stumble upon a whole batch of things that don't add up -- or rather shouldn't, but there they are.

Hollywood, in its infinite lack of creativity, has decided that it's time, in 2009 to do a remake of the "Land of the Lost" as a full-length feature film. You read a lot of fan complaints from people that are upset with Hollywood for making a favorite book into a film, or for pissing on hallowed ground doing a remake and getting some obscure fact wrong, or for in some cases, driving all over the plot of the original material so badly that no one can even recognize the connection (see the latest remake, God forbid, of the Planet of the Apes, for example -- if you can sit through it, that is).

This isn't one of those posts -- this is pretty much the opposite.

I'm sitting here thinking "Some things were meant to die." Land of the Lost was a seriously bad piece of television. It was so bad that my brothers and I would watch it only if all other vectors for entertainment were lost. Like we had checked all other channels -- the count is 2 other channels on TV in mid-Missouri, by the way -- and say, pro wrestling was on one (don't think today's Pro Wrestling -- think something much more local and much more pathetic), and say, a farm report was on the other.

But I digress: Land of the Lost was horrid. The acting was bad, the props were bad, the writing was bad, heck, even the opening sequence effects looked like they were shot by a 3rd grader in his garage. Remaking this is on the order of, say, a remake of Starksy and Hutch (crap, there goes another demographic). Yeah, I know, they remade that too. Complicating this badness, and gut-reflex, "remake" mentality, they "updated" the series in all of it's sad, pathetic glory -- and made new episodes. Now my own son has bad memories of the show in his subconscious, to match the ones in mine.

That's my point: Hollywood can't seem to embrace any kind of creative new idea. They have to revisit crappy old ones for a few reasons. For one, there's a certain amount of nostalgia that will drive people into a theater to say, waste 10 good dollars and 2 hours of their time to be mind-numbingly insulted at an intellectual level. For another, it's such a safe bet to do this that the cash for the venture is easier to raise than say for some new film idea or plot that no one else has ever tried.

Which brings me to part of our present situation -- you knew I was going somewhere with all of this toward the automotive industry and our government, didn't you? You didn't? Sorry.

The Land of the Lost is fractal image of what's wrong with our culture as a whole. We have become more enamored with backing schlock things that have a marginal success ratio than to try new things that haven't been tried, have much higher payout if they succeed, but are somewhat risky as a venture.

Let's revisit the recent "bail-out" request to congress. Here you have the big three, appearing in front of congress, hands outstretched, saying "Help! A bunch of jobs are going to be lost if we go down!" What's wrong with this picture? How about the fact that GM ispaying their CEO in excess of 14 million dollars. Even assuming worse than reported conditions -- say an average line worker taking home 140k a year, the guy is in front of congress, asking for an allowance, all the while making 100 times (possibly more like 150 times) what his line workers make.

Yeah, lots of things are wrong with this picture. For one -- GM is a manufacturing company -- 100 to 150 line workers in this day and age with some decent automation can likely produce quite a lot of product. Oh, and where were you guys for the past 20 years, worried about jobs and local economies all the while shipping local jobs to other countries and giving yourselves bonus for the transaction?

I'm not going to say they were doing anything illegal. Heck, our government has even gone as far as to make the climate balmy for such things and encourage people to move their stuff out of this country. No, I'm going to say it was, however, immoral. The people that built GM were more than the executives -- the workers, at the end of the day, good or bad, working on good or bad cars -- those people are (or were) owed something when it comes to the success of the company.

By the way, in case you think I'm a one-sided person here -- I'm not a big fan of what the Unions were doing in this transaction either. I do think, however, that if a company is successful the workers should share in that success. They shouldn't find their jobs gone one day to another country where the pollution controls, compensation and treatment of people don't align with what counts as acceptable here. The workers that helped GM be a success should share in that success. Similarly, in bad times, they should willing take a pay cut -- all the way up to the CEO, who should recognize that he's not worth 100 to 150 line workers. Can he get paid this amount? Sure! Is it legal? Sure.

Is it ethical? No, it's obviously not.

I'd love to say that the answer is regulation, but in this case I'm not sure what to do about it. Like the way our news system is fundamentally broken, the auto industry is facing a multitude of crisis. In this dimension, the guys at the top (all ready to work for just one buck now that they've been caught with their pants down), obviously aren't all that accountable for their failures. Some people want to compare the automotive bailout to the banking bailout as a justification -- two wrongs in this case, definitely don't make a right.

Speaking of accountability, we need to revisit the SEC. These people were supposed to be watching out for things like Ponzi schemes, and have supposedly audited Madoff's company 8 times in the past 16 years. It's time for some people to go to jail. Time for Congress to recognize this for what it is -- it's a moral crisis of Biblical proportion. These people (the SEC) were obviously not doing their job.

Bail-outs? Some victims of this thing want the government to bail them out. Banks are going down, charities are going down -- all kinds of things are going down in the face of the Madoff scandal -- but let's not have our government go down with it. The more I see of bailouts, the less I see value. In these trying times we shouldn't be bailing out banks or auto companies. The mentality seems to be along similar lines to breathing life into things that are dying. I think this is flawed thinking and corporate welfare -- worse, they're taking money from the taxpayers at the bottom to fund the bad ideas in a big, bad way. Like a remake of the Land of the Lost, it's cash being spent on a bad idea.

Maybe, like all bad ideas, some things were meant to die. Let's not remake America as the Land of the Lost. If we're gonna put some investment into something, we need to take some risks on some creative new ideas.
-=FeriCyde=-

Toxic Social Media

You'd hardly think that spam would be the first input toward popularity, but here it is. Recently, I made what I thought was more of a whining complaint about reunion.com (and classmates.com), thinking that if I just got the thought out of my head about how annoying these two sites are (mainly reunion.com, though), that it would settle my mind a bit and I could go back to my usual facebook perusal and joy. My reunion.com profile had been viewed exactly two times in history -- and I'm honestly proud of this fact -- or I was. Now my profile on reunion.com is extremely popular. Why? Because I used their lame blogging feature (lemme tell ya, it's really lame) to post the complaint. Knowing what I know about shiftless ethics and sites that edit your postings to remove "offensive" URLs, I posted the "real" blog entry here. Oh, and reunion.com's auto-editor chopped all references to facebook and classmates out horribly -- it left my article reading like a picket fence.

So far it's stayed. I have no idea why it's popular, because finding my own damn blog posting on their site is tricky -- how other reunion.com people found it is honestly beyond me. There is one clue, however -- the people that found it and commented upon it have all signed up for their service. Actually, I'm very hesitant to call what they're offering "service" in this context.

Let's look at some of the responses, so far:

• Very well said.
  I too am one of the lonely saps who got suckered in... I'm in a wheelchair now, not able to get out much. The net is the link to the outside world for folks like me. .Going to Facebook. The only way these predatory sites can be stopped, (or at least thinned out) is to boycott.

That's one example. Google a bit on reunion.com and boycott and some really disturbing things come up. Recent complaints come up:

• There are many rip off companies like this on the web. I was also led to believe my card would be charged $3 a month instead of the full $120. The "agreement" that says the fee is non-refundable has a window field of 3-4 lines and fails the legal contract prerequisites.

This is something lending me to believe that the problem is far worse than I had imagined. I, luckily, did not sign up for their "service". I find stuff like this, and I can only imagine how pissed off I'd be if I had been tempted to do so.

Reunion.com is example of Toxic Social Media -- media that isn't leveraging social connections to enhance the social experience one might have in real life. Instead, it's using aspects of human nature to trick end-users into choices that turn out to be more or less a dead-end street.

Here's another post on my blog entry:

• wow couldnt have said it better myself paul.

  i agree 100 percent,well lessoned learned for me,i just payed yesterday and i am counciling any future payments taken out of my account,amanda in louisiana!

And another one:

• I totally agree, unfortunately I am one of the poor saps that got robbed for $60.00 (their premium feature). This site is preying upon people searching for family members and it does not live up to what it blatantly advertises. If you enter a name and see there is a possible match-they want "MORE" money to get that information. I can see now why they say their service is non refundable, it stinks.....spread the word........

Well, that's as good a set of marching orders as I can imagine. I think I will be glad to do just that.
-=FeriCyde=-