”I have heard people suggest that because humans are natural that everything humans do or create is natural. Chainsaws are natural. Nuclear bombs are natural. Our economics is natural. Sex slavery is natural. Asphalt is natural. Cars are natural. Polluted water is natural. A devastated world is natural. A devastated psyche is natural. Unbridled exploitation is natural. Pure objectification is natural. This is, of course, nonsense. We are embedded in the natural world. We evolved as social creatures in this natural world. We require clean water to drink, or we die. We require clean air to breathe, or we die. We require food, or we die. We require love, affection, social contact in order to become our full selves. It is part of our evolutionary legacy as social creatures. Anything that helps us to understand all of this is natural: Any ritual, artifact, process, action is natural, to the degree that it reinforces our understanding of our embeddedness in the natural world, and any ritual, artifact, process, action is unnatural, to the degree that it does not” -Derrick Jensen

The Millennial Party

A political party that embodies the views of the Millennial generation that is open to all, and believes Americans are far ahead of the typical politician and deserve a viable and permanent third party.

Millennial Party Beliefs

 The United States is ill-served by only two mainstream parties and desperately needs a legitimate third party representing a more diverse set of views. Over 300 million people with unbound diversity, and we have two parties? This is archaic.

 We support thinking over ideology. And we obviously (and thankfully!) don’t share all the same views- that would be boring. But we support each other and seek collaboration and honest cooperation. To support the Millennial Party, one does not need to be doctrinaire and one does not need to agree 100% with what’s written here. We are dynamic and flexible; homogeneity and staleness are bad. We are not self-serious either.

 All campaigns for national public office should be publically financed. We believe that only people are people and only people should elect their representatives, drive public policy, or influence elections. In a $3 trillion federal budget, we can easily provide some $5 billion every two years to fund our national campaigns and ensure our democracy is in fact driven by the people. And candidates cannot opt out. We think lobbyists should be legally barred from providing benefits of any kind to public representatives, as this corrupts our political system.

 We believe the bedrock of America is its values: hard work, commitment to our dreams, a blue collar attitude of rolling up our sleeves, individualism, diversity, and a free and prosperous marketplace driven by dynamic capitalism. The free market is the best way to provide the most opportunity, freedom and wealth to the most. But we realize that we live in a mixed economy with both markets and public institutions, and that each segment has unique and vital roles. We believe in civil society and do not think it can be fostered exclusively by private actors. There are myriad problems that can only be addressed by government and we support a strong and active government in protecting us, caring for our sick and destitute, fostering civil society, and serving justice and authentic compassion to all. From growing beneficial relationships with other nations, inventing new medicines, feeding impoverished children, limiting Mercury in the air we breathe, airlifting Tsunami victims- the U.S. government is essential and we wholeheartedly reject the idea that it should be further weakened or vilified. Perennially attacking our government is akin to attacking one’s immune system. The goal should not be to eliminate it, but nurse it back to health.

 It almost goes without saying, but we demand full and equal rights and treatment for people of all races, genders, ethnicities, religions/belief systems (so long as they basically follow the Golden rule), sexualities and any other thing that is part of who a person is. We support gay marriage across the nation and world. We support a woman’s right to choose about when and if to give birth. We think these stances are self-evidently moral and the basis for law.

 We believe globalization, the Web and information technology have created a historically unique confluence of freedom and community. The Web has revolutionized global society and in no small part shaped our generation. We believe the freedom of the Web, global markets and international politics reinforce one another, and that open information is part and parcel of the first amendment, is inalienable and should not be centrally controlled. We’re just at the start of the potential for technology to improve communities, foster understanding and creativity, grow our economy, improve our health and topple regimes. We invented and were the first adopters of blogs, social networks, torrents, and mobile applications. These are not diversions, they enable us to meet and learn from people we would have never known in previous generations, and see views from the primary sources so we can think for ourselves. In older generations, this information would have been passively presented via vertical media, or ignored. The technology of our generation can foster peace and understanding in ways never before possible. Our use of technology is neither petty nor selfish; it is open, diverse, collaborative and often irreverent- like us.

As such, we support innovative future solutions like stem cell therapy (although not human cloning, ever), nanotechnology, concentrated solar energy and many other game-changing ventures. We support websites, but also investing in the Webs of the future. We think the government is woefully behind in engaging the people and conducting public policy on the Web. We believe plain text versions, with open source functionality, should be posted for all bills, Administrative policies, and Committee work so that we can all work from the same facts. Keep the Federal Register, but for most citizens this is not useful. Furthermore, we think politicians are often calcified and uncreative because they have been in office too long and we want to make government more civil and mature, including having more fun and being more creative. We support more funding for public television, radio and media to provide a bigger voice to people, not just advertisers. We support a representative democracy that looks more like a plain old democracy.

 Directly related to the rise of the Web and globalization is the rise of new business opportunities. Ours is an entrepreneurial generation. We believe profoundly in startups and entrepreneurs, and government should support them more. We’re not looking for handouts; we are builders, creators and doers. We don’t just admire Steve Jobs because he gave us beautiful devices, but because he was a pioneer. We like pioneers.

 Basic healthcare is not a used car and it should not be sold as such. America pays at least twice as large a share of its income for healthcare as every other developed nation, and gets mediocre outcomes. “Outcomes” is too much of a euphemism here, because healthcare involves our lives. Too many people die and are permanently hurt by our healthcare system, while paying too much for it. This is largely because America is the only developed nation in the world that allows insurance companies to profit from basic healthcare. The fundamental problem is that private insurance companies and private shareholders enrich themselves from the healthcare system. Insurance companies need to be put on a diet, and non-elective healthcare should be non-profit. Healthcare intermediaries should pay their bills and their payroll, not dividends. There is also promise in reducing waste through comparative effectiveness research.

 We support the armed forces, but not necessarily the civilians who lead them. Our troops and those who defend our country are heroes. Their sacrifice is truly beyond what words can say. Providing for the common defense of the country is a cornerstone of the constitution and a main reason our States are united. We need a strong defense and intelligence community. This is not a panacea, however, for fighting wars that aren’t in our national interest, overspending because of lack of responsible policy, or incestuous contracting practices- all of which have been hallmarks of both mainstream parties for decades. Most Millennials have never witnessed anything but radical foreign policy in their adult lives. We support civil occupations, not militaristic ones.

 We think more funding should be used to subsidize higher education. Education is one of the primary catalysts for improving America and giving everyone a chance at their dreams, regardless of what income bracket they are born into. Yet the inflation rate for university is higher than crack cocaine. This is wrong. We think student loans are often run like a racket, and that debt that can’t be reduced, even in bankruptcy, is a form of modern indentured servitude.

 America is behind the curve in mass transit and it lowers our quality of life every day. Ever compare our rail system to other cities, say Singapore or Berlin? Their trains move lots of people, quickly and safely. We support buses, trains, highways, bike lanes and airports that work better. We also think walking and biking fosters stronger communities and connects individuals more with their surroundings. We strongly support open spaces, natural spaces, parks and public lands to be sustainably enjoyed.

 We are not afraid to say the word taxes and we do not think raising taxes is anathema to a modern party, as both mainstream parties currently operate. We think our elected representatives have too often acted like children, fighting over pet projects, pandering to us, and seeking free rides while not leveling with Americans about the true costs of society. Americans are smarter than this and are way ahead of their politicians on many issues, including the budget. There is no such thing as a free lunch, and there is no way to reduce our debt and provide the government America deserves without paying for it. This is reality. We are not afraid to pay taxes and think taxes are the price we pay for civilization and an effective government. Our lives are not measured or defined by tax rates and there is too much life and time wasted fighting about it. For too long, older generations have not paid taxes to cover their budgets, meaning the Millennials will have to pay for it. All generations should pay for their public services and benefits.

The U.S. needs tax reform and at a minimum must end the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. It needs less deductions and a more streamlined system. The government should not write off mortgages on mansions, subsidize millionaires’ healthcare, give free passes to multinationals to evade their obligations, or tax hedge funds at half the rate of school teachers and nurses. Yet we do all of this and more today. Not because it makes sense or serves America’s interests, but because powerful interests have manipulated elected representatives. Corporate tax collections have declined from over 3% of GDP in the 1960s to 1.5% today, largely because of tax havens; this is the second lowest among OECD countries and needs to be rebalanced. In 1960 the top one percent of income earners made 9% of total income and paid federal tax rates averaging 47%, today they collect 20% of income and pay 31% in federal taxes. This needs to be rebalanced. We do not vilify the affluent. They are our neighbors, friends and fellow citizens and America is a place where getting rich is the right and just reward for succeeding- this is a great and necessary result of fairness and vital incentive to advance society. But we do support a modest increase in the taxes they pay. We know many of our wealthy friends feel the same way and have yearned for a government that does not pander to them, but inspires them, calls for their leadership and engagement, and actually solves problems.

 Sustainability is a necessary condition for living responsibly. Our government today practically ignores the idea of intergenerational equity, whether it is saddling the Millennials with debt because of their failed fiscal politics, encouraging the burning and mining of natural resources without investing the resultant wealth, or spewing GHGs. Sustainability is not an idea to be selectively applied, or worse yet used in greenwash; it is an interdisciplinary science relevant to everything in public policy.

 We believe in a strong and permanent future for America’s social safety net- including social security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment assistance and assistance to needy families (welfare). We think that these systems should support those who truly need it and we support means-testing in all cases. As Warren Buffet has said, Warren Buffet does not need social security. We think there should be choice in how individuals’ FICA social security payroll tax is used, and that Millennials should have the option, but not the obligation, to place their retirement related taxes in their own private savings account in lieu of traditional social security. Savings accounts have the potential to accrue significant wealth over a worker’s lifetime, reduce public debt, and channel more private capital towards America’s markets. This is just an option however; traditional social security should be there for all who choose it.

 We are against the unfettered expansion of government and wasteful bureaucracy. We hate red tape and see lots of waste in government, mainly because of so many layers and useless processes. There is waste in government and we support a more efficient, empowered, better funded civil service, not a substantially bigger one.

 We believe climate change is a real, multi-generational problem. It’s physical chemistry not an opinion. Greenhouse gas emissions need a fair market price that accounts for the present and future damage they are doing to our health, ecosystems, and climate. We are sick and tired of politicians yammering on about freeing America from oil dependence- it’s old and we’re not buying it anymore. The time for rhetoric is over, and it is time to debate which specific policy America will use to price dirty energy, and thus account for the true cost of our climate emissions while putting clean energy on a level playing field. We support a carbon tax, one that is potentially revenue neutral and rebates money back to all households. We support other approaches to price GHG emissions so long as they are specific and serious. A price on carbon and national energy plan can employ millions more Americans, create wealth, protect our future, and reduce our trade imbalance.

 We support the Millennium Development Goals and providing .7% of GDP towards global development and international assistance. Most Americans do not realize how little in foreign assistance the United States provides today (.2%, about 1/20th of what we spend on traditional defense) and we should increase it in line with Americans’ generous self-views. Too many people suffer in extreme poverty across the world, and too many global problems fester because of a chronic lack of funding and this hurts our national interest.

 We have been disproportionally hurt by the housing bubble and banking crisis. Bubbles are a historic pattern in markets and we have lived through perhaps the two largest. While the periodic over-allocation of capital may be unavoidable, we believe there were completely avoidable mistakes made in the financial and housing sectors, largely because of cronyism and short-sightedness. Capital reserve standards were deliberately lowered well below prudential levels because of special interests and hubris, with little thought given to risk management. And the Fed inexplicably failed to use existing law to ensure accuracy in mortgage documentation. Markets rely on transparency, which was purposefully hindered with off-market transactions. The futures market is often purposefully manipulated by rumor and gamesmanship, which has no economic value. We support a more transparent, capitalized, over the counter market, where trades are not decoupled from economic purpose.

 We support immigration reform as a whole, to provide a path to citizenship for those who have acted responsibly in America. And we support Visa reform to attract the best talent to the U.S. and drive prosperity for America. And sure- staple them to advanced degrees. On second thought, paper clips are probably better.

 We think teachers and schools are obviously crucial to education and need more support, but that children learn the most from their parents and families. Teachers stay with kids a few hours a day for nine months, families stay with them throughout their lives. We think teachers and unions are often scape-goated for the broader failures of society. We support publically financed daycare and pre-school for families who cannot afford it , to relieve pressure on families and working mothers, and invest in children in the critical first 6 years of their lives to help them be prepared to learn. This investment will be good for families, and good for society later in that child’s life.

 We love and believe in art, design and music as among the highest forms of human existence. We support it culturally, politically, socially, spiritually and financially. Art is blamed and attacked too much by both mainstream parties today and is not a problem, but an irreplaceable platform for thinking, feeling, solving, living, having fun. We also believe in the power of space and intergalactic travel.

My plan to cut the deficit

As we prepare to hear that the Super Committee wasn't so super after all, and totally failed, I thought I'd pretend a deal was struck. Something to make it seem that Congress is capable of compromising and accomplishing anything, even if it is just a delusion housed within a personal blog. The ideal deal would include these components:

• Total tax collections, including local, state and federal taxes, average 33.1% of gross national income. I would increase this to 35%, with the provision that these funds be earmarked for deficit reduction. That is, this additional 1.9% is unavailable for expenditure, except to pay down the principal debt. What's going on in Southern Europe now is a painful reminder of the consequences of a citizenry thinking they can get something for nothing. As anathema to politics as it may be, deficits must be paid off if we expect them to go away. My separation of these new funds explicitly for debt reduction would ensure they don't get absorbed by the ever-fattening public domain.

• Social security means testing. I would institute a sliding scale for social security so that multimillionaires who do not need social security payments do not get them. Warren Buffet has suggested this and it’s a good idea. Social security would be gradually phased out for high-earning households, until individuals making more than $600K per year do not receive benefits. I would also increase the cap on FICA-eligible income, at least doubling it. A commission should also be formed to plan to offer optional personal savings accounts to replace social security for those born after 1975. Private savings accounts could grow the retirement income for millions, increase private capital availability for growing public companies, and reduce the government's debt obligations.

• Higher premiums for high-income Medicare beneficiaries. This is means-testing applied to Medicare. For individuals who can pay more for their healthcare and not be subsidized, it is fair that they pay for the service they receive. Right now, everyone pays an equal payroll tax for Medicare. Individuals would continue to pay the same percentage tax, but wealthier individuals would have larger copayments for the services they receive.

• Reduce the size of the federal work force. The single biggest component of the federal budget is employee salaries, accounting for roughly 25% of discretionary spending. The current federal work force (excluding postal and military) is about 1.9 million full-time equivalents. I would aim to reduce this to 1.5 million over the next decade. There are too many bureaucrats in the federal government, often doing work that exists solely because of how many layers of people and processes must be managed to complete any task. The government will get more efficient as it gets leaner, saving money not just in salary reductions, but in second order efficiencies. I would not fire people, but offer conditional early buyouts, coupled with attrition. It is important though that these reductions not be made simply by tenure. There are a lot of old, unproductive employees in the federal workforce, and reductions should not be made at the expense of retaining top-talent that happens to have less experience.

• Reduce the mortgage and local tax deductions starting at the 99th percentile of income. For individuals in the top 1% tax rate, the amount of their homes and local taxes that could be deducted annually would be capped at the median amount of mortgage payments and local taxes. It makes sense for the government to help incentivize home ownership for middle class workers. It does not make sense for the government to subsidize mansions and write-off multimillionaires' property taxes.

• Revenue neutral carbon tax. I would tax carbon and offset it in income taxes.

Do as I say....

Next time you hear a politician talk about clean energy or climate change, remember what happened in 2011:

1) The Keystone XL Pipeline was approved. This will allow tar sands and shale, which are dirtier than coal, to be liquified and transported from British Columbia to the Gulf. The pipleine will move close to 200 million barrels of oil a year for decades.

2) Russia and Exxon have agreed to develop the Russian Arctic together and inked a deal to develop an expected 35 billion barrel block. This likely represents the first of many deals that will be struck for decades to come because melting glaciers continue to open up new seabeds for drilling.

3) China and India continued a double digit growth rate in coal imports- each topping 100 million tons. Nearly 100 gigawatts (about 100 power plants) of coal-fired plants will be put online this year.

Next time someone mentions replacing your light bulbs or improving efficiency or driving a prius, think of the globbal context of energy. It is a form of denial when people convince themselves that this is the solution to a dirty, and rapidly growing energy infrastructure. The solution is pricing energy appropriately- not employing another ad agency to sell you "green". We make the future not with our words, but with our actions. What is the true measure of efficiency? When you do not have to perenially increase supply to achieve output gains. So long as the U.S. competes on a global market for energy, and does not invest in domestic renwables, GHG emissions will rise. This looks to be the case for many decades to come.

this jobs bill got me worked up a bit

My life consists more and more of photoshop pictures of the things I used to do. Being adult it seems consists of sitting a lot more in an office and seeing depictions of the world and babbling with others about things you once did.

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The latest market downturn has set off a new round of questions about "what is wrong" with the U.S. economy. Fundamentally, I believe the root problems are the same as those behind the recent riots in London- lack of job growth and opportunity. That is to say, not monetary policy, fiscal policy, tax policy, or any of the traditional levers that Washington pulls. The problem is far more entrenched than that, that we do not have a clear answer to the question "what is America's next big market?" Where is the automotive industry of the 60s, or the chemical industry of the 1970s, or the electronics industry of the 80s, or the web of the 90s?

In short America would do a lot better to have a few dozen more Steve Jobs, and a few less Steve Forbes. A few more people who imagine, design, build, and manage high-growth companies, a few less people who talk 'til they're blue in the face about their pet issue, tax rates, or some other form of their immediate personal interest. Editorializing does not create jobs. Innovation, risk, and yes, even failure, creates jobs. Failure does because it teaches about what doesn't work, and it leverages the numbers game. Enough people risk failure and the odds of getting a successful outcome increase.

So where are the Steve Jobs? The people who do precious little talking, and a lot of doing. Most people would agree they are most definitely not in Washington. I don't think I have to belabor this point after the recent orgy of dysfunction revolving around reaching a consensus to allow for the payment of the things we already purchased. And they don't appear to be on Wall Street either. A recent quote points to the all too common tendency of Wall Street, the place that embodies the marketplace, to so quickly become dependent on the next fall from the sky government solution: “We haven’t seen policy makers come out with a plan that is viewed as comprehensive, coordinated and credible,” said Philip Finch, a global bank strategist for UBS. “We need confidence restored and there’s a lot of infighting.”

Wait. So what's holding up Wall Street is they don't have confidence in what the government's plan is for the economy? That sounds like market subservience to government action. That doesn't sound like the market allocating resources while seeking the best returns, it sounds like the market looking for the government to do that. I disagree with that perspective- yet it can be seen virtually everywhere on Wall Street today.

Wall Street needs to stop looking for some silver bullet, and actually do its jobs of investing in growth, e.g. taking more promising companies public. Of course I realize the absurdity of saying this. Wall Street is not one entity; it doesn't have a viewpoint. It's just the forum for the views, and increasingly the fears, of millions of everyday Americans. And after some recent travels, I have seen how afraid a lot of Americans are. They are in fact largely too afraid it seems to think much beyond this downturn. If enough smart people do this, it actually impedes future growth because less ideas, less work, less innovation will occur. Our anxiety, more so than even rational uncertainty, seems to be impeding the foundations of future growth. So it doesn't appear to be with the everyday American either.

Investors who think about the future, the long term, who envision new things- this is the only way towards growth. And our now 3 year long panic attack- the reasons vary from week to week, this week it was apparently a French bank's balance sheet, last week it was the debt debate, the week before that it was oil- but this never-ending carousel of fear is certainly not how you get job growth. Steve Jobs doesn't sit in his office all day and worry about what happened today, or in the last hour. He thinks about how to make people's lives, through the experience they have with technology- better. And he thinks about new ideas and how to patent them- how to own innovation.

So where are the risk-takers? Where are the innovators? Where are the people who don't turn and run with a little turmoil? Wherever they are we need to find their DNA and help reproduce it, help spread it. Surely that is what everyone, including our friends on Wall Street, really wants. They exist in pockets out there in the market. I just hope they will stay the course. It's their return on investment that everyone needs.

(PS- as specific policy, I would tout immigration reform so this country can import the world's talent, a new broader WTO agreement, and a tax shift away from income and corporate taxes to tax pollution to nurture what I think is the next big sustainable market. But we can't rely on Washington for common sense.)

When we look into the lives of any of the great people in history, we always find that they had quirks and eccentricities that earned them less than ideal labels from the societies in which they lived. Many famous artists and musicians were considered to be isolated loners or disruptive troublemakers, or sometimes both, yet these people altered history and contributed to the world an original vision or advances in our understanding of the universe. If we can remember this as we examine our own selves and the labels people use to describe us, we find that there is a bright side to any characterization.

If you have been labeled, remember that all you have to do to see the positive side is to turn the label around. For example, you may be considered to be overly emotional, and the fact that you are perceived this way may make you feel out of control. But notice, too, the gifts of being able to feel and express your emotions, even in a world that doesn’t always encourage that. You might begin to see yourself as brave and open-hearted enough to stay alive to your feelings. You may also see that there are certain paths and professions in which this is a necessary ability. As you turn your label around, the light of your true nature shines to guide you on your way.

--Daily OM, October 18, 2010

Best soccer game I ever seen

www.Domain_squatters_are_pricks_and_extortionists.com

Don't have a good idea but want to to try to exhtort and blackmail someone who might in the future? You should look into domain squatting! Just buy a domain that might have some future meaning or value, do nothing for a prolonged period of time, then charge 1,000 times that for someone who wants to actually use it to do something!

What a winning business strategy, and it adds so much economic value. Keep up the fantastic work pricks!

When all is done, then said: on narratives and not knowing

Thank goodness Osama bin Laden is dead. He provided untold physical and psychological torment to so many. He spooked my entire generation and is responsible for changing so many aspects of the modern experience. The tragedies he caused were to my generation what the great communist/Soviet threat was to our parents, an enemy that is more than a mortal foe, but an existential threat, a meme for evil personified. More than anyone in decades, he was responsible for an innocence lost across the world, where flight manifests need to be checked by the minute and departing loved ones can’t be sent off at their gate. It already seems like the world has always been this way, but he made it so.

Looking at all the coverage of his death, reciting the now familiar narrative of his assassination, it highlights the ease of looking back rather than forward. The mind has such a natural instinct to emplot itself in a larger picture. The world is too complicated to often navigate without these narratives. The hunting down of bin Laden is a prime example. And maybe I am mistaken, but no one thought he was in Abbottobad. No one even put him within 100+ miles of Islamabad. No one even ventured he was where he was until just a week ago, after we discovered it. Most people didn’t even know there was such a place as Abbottobad, Pakistan before last week. Now this development seems very acceptable, and is quickly becoming a completely integrated part of our story and the world's. And so we move on to the next mystery, complete with many predictions. And while there is certainly nothing wrong with predictions, it is important to realize the importance of the error margin, or in many cases realize that we have no way to even measure what the error term could be.

We don't know when we're thinking about uncertain things, how uncertain we often are. But yet we rely on these predictions, and include them in our personal and social narratives with great alarcrity. This mismatch between our confidence in action versus often lack of predictive confidence can create at best, happy surprises (like bin Laden's death) and at worst, very unhappy ones (like we actually have no idea how to rate pools of mortgages). We don't know something for a long time, then we suddenly find out and supply an all explaining ex ante narrative to explain this divergence. But finding out, i.e. being dealt a reality, is not the same as learning, and in these cases we may force lessons where there are none, or as many as we force. Because a mystery was removed does not mean it has been explained. But by wrongly assuming (or even more than that, it might even be instinctual: those who told better stories were more convincing and better able to influence those around them, and so were more materially robust and thus able to survice, as well as reproduce more) that we have deduced lessons, we can continue to rely on the very tendencies that produced errors of prediction in the first instance, falsely thinking that because we now have the answers that we can explain them or reproduce them heuristically, and thus conclude that our narrative fallacy has been eliminated. But we merely corrected the record post-script, we did not change the components of our method of writing future scripts. It is the difference between having the final narrative, versus having the construct to produce future narratives.

But let's remember how wrong we were in our predictions of the physical location of public enemy number one. The refrain for the last decade has always been, “he’s somewhere in the mountainous regions on the border of Afghanistan” or “in a cave along the border” or “in the northern federally-administered tribal areas”. This was the commonly accepted view for the better part of a decade. And when it turns out to not be true, we collectively adjust our mindsets with almost total effortlessness. What had been common sense for years is suddenly contradicted, and we don’t (seem) for a moment question our conventional wisdom.

This example illustrates a much broader trend, what Nicolas Nassim Taleb has called platonifying. It refers to the act of ascribing explanations or reasons for things when we have no reason to be sure of the answer- "we humans, facing limits of knowledge, and things we do not observe, the unseen and the unknown, resolve the tension by squeezing life and the world into crisp commoditized ideas". It is the process of forcing oneself to learn more than it is possible to learn. It is one of the growing intellectual risks of modern times. Just because we can pull up more information faster than ever, does not mean we can deduce more. And just because we can transmit new facts (like bin Laden was killed in Abbottobad) to more people than ever before faster than ever before, does not mean we can predict more. It might mean we can be confused more, surprised more. This information-rich environment is extremely conducive to assigning meaning and narratives, but that does not mean it is justified.

It is far easier to judge after the fact than predict before it, and it is far easier to watch others do something successfully (that you had not predicted, called for, or been involved with) and then instantly make it part of your narrative, than participate in it in real time. But after all, what is the narrative of finding public enemy number one where no one thought he would be? Where no one predicted? Maybe the narrative is better, more accurately described as, “we do not know as much as we think we do”, “the world is harder to predict before than judge after”, “lessons are not so easily learned when the problem is still real, only after it is solved (often by others)”, and “it is always easier for us when someone else is taking the risk.”

In the post-modern existence, we sure seem to be pretty sure of ourselves. We have filters, data engines, feeds, editorials, etc. EVERYWHERE. We see a thousand of them a day. And in the end, most of this might just be us talking to ourselves, with very little relation to the actual state of the world. Perhaps there is no harm in this. Perhaps people just must hear themselves talk to calm their fears, pass the time, or in Eliot Spitzer’s case, make a living. But perhaps it does do harm. If we are constantly attaching narratives and affixing explanations to the world, which I think is a reasonable observation (just look around), and the world is far more uncertain than we realize, then we are apt to plan, make decisions, react, and emote in ways inconsistent with the real world. We are apt to be unprepared and frequently surprised. And seeing as the only way to discover false narratives, is to experience the reverse, these surprises are often not without consequence.

And this is a much broader point, seen in many contexts. Think of how surprised nearly everyone (especially the experts) was at the economic collapse of 2008. We had our narrative pre-2008, and then completely, totally different narrative post-2008. And we switched between them almost instantly, instinctually, reflexively, without almost realizing it. We did not extrapolate from that huge error in narrative, to be more cautious with future narratives. We simply went about “fixing” the problem and using a different narrative. But we still use the same mental constructs and psychological tendencies to create new narratives for a world where, if we wish to participate in it at all, is far too complex not to attach narratives. We may have prevented another housing bubble for some time to come, but another bubble? Another error in collective incentives? Hardly. It is certainly not unusual that we would have a hard time negotiating our own fallibility, but I don’t see evidence that we even realize there was any fallibility to begin with.

The same can be said in the context of business ventures. After a business venture is successful, the norm is to describe it as though it were inevitable. This company had some really smart people, and a really great idea, addressing a clear problem, with a big market, and of course there would be customers....etc. etc. Those statements are all said post-script. They are all said after all of those things have been established. Observers will readily comment on what makes an already successful company successful, when it is firmly lodged in the public mind, including a narrative (however inaccurate). But much rarer is the pre-scripted explanation of why a company will be successful (with the exception of those who have a conflict of interest or stake in saying so). In predicting the future prospects for business ventures, the same observers who talk so confidently of why a venture was successful after the fact, will provide disclaimers about why an unproven venture may not be successful. Of course, a subset of these will become successful, in which case then it will become obvious, and the lesson of their success will quickly become deconstructed. The narrative that was not supplied while the story was in progress, is quickly written down after the definitive, concluding scene. Articles are written confidently by critics about why success was realized, but almost entirely after the fact. This challenges the whole notion of the value of this information. If the lessons cannot be applied beforehand, they are not really lessons but summaries.

If the lessons are so obvious, why not state them earlier? Perhaps because no one really knows, yet they must attach meaning to it after it has been proven to be of importance. Many people will tell you why Facebook was a success, with nary a word on Friendster, a comparable social network two years its predecessor. Friendster was not a success, therefore no explanation is necessary. Facebook was, so let us glean its reasons for success. But if the only way one can describe or predict success is after success has already happened, then there is no predictive value of success to begin with. If you have to read the whole story to know what happens, then be very wary of any attempts at ex-facto heuristics. In most cases where we derive lessons or narratives, we are really only seeking understanding and guessing at where it is. To see how inaccurate we are, look at how poor (and minimal) our predictive record is.

[ Side note-- I think the key difference between Facebook and Friendster was that Friendster tried to attack the whole market at once, but what is the value of a social network if you don't know anyone else on it? Facebook established itself in an ever larger set of closed communities. And by signing on communities, Harvard, Ivy Leage, .edu addresses and on, it ensured that people on their social network actually knew each other, and thus was an actual social network. There is no clear substantive difference between Jonathan Abrams (Friendster founder) and Mark Zuckerberg, they are both top-notch talents (witness Abrams' multiple successes). The difference may have been that Abrams was older and thus not in university at the time of founding and so had no ready access to interconnected communities by which to meaningfully grow the user base. ]

In fact as I write this, I am listening to an analyst explain why Microsoft bought Skype, with apparent absolute certainty, listing reasons 1,2,3 that it was done. But in 5 years will have Microsoft incorporated Skype like she says? Almost certainly not. Did this reporter participate in the deal? No. And yet within hours of the deal being announced, we have a complete narrative of why this deal happened, where it's going, how much money it will make. Warning: simply by the nature of technology and technological disruption, these pronouncements will be wrong. Perhaps wrong on the up side, perhaps on the down side. But they will be wrong. There is danger in this, and because we do it so much, there is a systemic risk. And yet, we can't resist the narrative. To understand it without the narrative is almost impossible, but it is the challenge of truly rigorous unbiased analysis.

There is always more uncertainty and risk in the beginning of any endeavor, and in the present tense, than after the issue has been decided or the outcome is known. And yet we are crossing into a time defined by constant and instant judgement on nearly everything or anything someone ventures to do. In a world with so much uncertainty and risk, asserting judgments with such ease and velocity may be mis-matched with reality. As hard as it may be not to instantly seek the Cliff Notes to a recent event or idea, we may be better served to dwell a little more in the unknown and relish the remaining questions, relish the chapters as of yet unwritten. Facts and outcomes always make more sense looking backwards than forwards. As Teddy Roosevelt observed, the prize surely does go to the person in the arena of battle for good reason, and not the critic.


It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings. –T.R.

STARTups

I'm working on a new startup I'm pretty excited about. More coming soon. Wanting this one to be successful, it got me thinking about other startups I've been involved with and why they weren't successful. I've always wanted my own successful business. My first business was to take all my mom’s magazines and arrange them in a magazine library and then try to charge my family to come read them. A friend and I used to pick figs and sell them with ice shavings on the street. I don't want to work for other people. I want to create something good that actually solves a problem. Businesses to me have always been that place where you either put up or shut up. Business plans are relatively easy, ideas are a commodity. It's the execution that really matters, and where I think I've failed the most. Most of all, no matter how you look at it, if someone is working for some other independent actor just to make a living it is a form of oppression. Not injustice or malice or something, but a very personal oppression. I can feel the new liberty that would come from running my own thing. And I want it. Here are some companies I've worked on. The common theme I think is not so much a lack of good ideas so much as an inability to execute compared to the market scale and competitors.

ZipBird.com - The idea for this came when a friend missed the Plain White-Tees come to town. He wondered why something on the web couldn't track his interests and text him or call him when they were nearby. The site lets people create pages, upload dates, and then other users can sign-up to be reminded within a radius of their zip code. This was in June of 2006. Biz Stone and crew launched Twitter in July 2006.

Fortunately, our concept shares little in common with Twitter. As information, and the points that we can access it, continues to grow (to the extent it can take up our entire lives if we want), filtering this information so users get what they want will become more and more valuable. No one's (yet) built the right way to taper content just enough so that you are neither barraged with unwanted content, nor left out of touch with stuff you really like, there's literally no mainstream solution for this out there. Something needs to automatically connect users' core preferences with all content aggregators across users' mobile devices. This, in my view, comes down to the user interface more than anything (and some other more secret components). There is one application that literally blocks parts of Twitter feeds, but this does nothing to ensure you're informed of what you want how you want, and it's also a very clunky approach. It reminds me of one of those cones around a dog's neck, like an obedience device. No solution out there also fully connects all the forms of content on the web with mobile devices, in a proactive way. If you think I'm being a little vague, you're right, and for a reason.

NQ Systems - I worked as an intern at this company that was truly ahead of its time. The idea was, why should you have to wait in crowded restaurants for a table to open up, or worse yet, lug around a giant walkie-talkie to be paged when they could just call you on your phone? This company is brilliant. They built their own telephony system at a time when VoIP was still pretty nascent- really hard stuff. Developed working relationships with big name brands. OpenTable and others have since incorporated cell paging. It's a hit.

QMania.com - I never worked with this company, but a good friend did. The idea is online coupons. The idea kind of speaks for itself. Just imagine what you could do in this space with smart phones, real-time updates, group discounts and promos etc. The company was founded in early 2007. GroupOn was just on a Fall 2010 cover of Fortune as the fastest online company ever to hit $500M in revenue. LivingSocial is blowing up.

Plategro - This was a site I tinkered on about a year and a half ago. The idea was a mentoring based social network. Mentorships can be one of the most valuable things in the world for just about everyone, including businesses. Take a look at TechStars for instance. But it's such a crapshoot connecting with the right people. Why not create a place where everyone could post their interests, availability, and if it's a good match, have a mentorship or speed mentorship? This ran into a classic scaling problem right away- what comes first, the mentors or mentees? How do you develop trust and brand integrity? How do you attract and vet talented mentors and protégées? All of these can theoretically be overcome. But I didn't put enough into it. The idea remains TBD.

MyLastLecture - A place where each user could only submit one video or one entry (they'd have to replace the old one if they wanted to add another) about the most valuable thing they've learned. I love deep introspective, meaningful talks. It's so hard to filter for this though in the sea of mindless crap on UGC content-aggregators like YouTube. I saw value in creating a serious forum for people to provide their sort of living, evolving message to the world.

Shorty - This summer I pitched an idea that would distribute short code access to any user so that physical locations could include mobile or web plugins. SparQcode.com is killing this right now.

GroupSmack.com - This started with my work giving me a free pedometer. I think a promising model, but it is really scale-dependent with no go-to revenue model.

*** ShowKicker.com *** - I dont' have time to write about this because I'm too busy working on it. But this idea is 1) long, long overdue 2) could make so many people/customers happier, better off, and wealthier and 3) has multiple revenue models, the core one is not scale dependent and is the most legit model I've ever worked on BY FAR.

So, anyway, my bottom line is execution. If a startup fails and there are no customers, does anyone care? No. It’s about doing.

Props

This weekend I was getting my ass handed to me on a hill during a race, when I came across a wheeled competitor. He had a bike escort cheering him on as he grinded up this hill, teeth gritted, arms shaking. Now this was a LONG hill and we were near the end, long after any momentum he had was gone. All he had to get him up was one crank at a time of his arms.

I must say it was a really inspriring moment and I felt a little more willpower. My hat is off to these badasses.

In the end, there's only family