Democrats & Republicans Should Come Together To Support A Future Of Abundance
from the a-proposal dept
As a therapist would tell a couple bickering over each others' working and spending habits, Republicans and Democrats now quarreling over the federal budget should change the framing of topic. Instead of focusing only on how much the government should tax and spend in the economy we know, the leaders of the opposing parties should look at what the economy could quickly become if government passed laws encouraging productive private sector investment in growing technology-driven markets.Forbes Magazine has just run a cover story on how the $3.9 trillion education market--$1.3 trillion in the United States alone--is about to be radically transformed by a new breed of venture-backed disruptors. Almost half of the education venture deals in the last decade have closed in the last two years. Investments in digital health care start-ups in 2012 are up 73% from last year. Health care start-ups exceeded all other sectors, including software, as the largest recipient of angel investments.
Four major national carriers, and other regional firms, have raced to build the largest deployment of high speed mobile broadband in any large country. Cable, telephone, and satellite firms are offering faster broadband, with WiFi connectivity taking on new and better dimensions in innovative network architectures. On these new platforms, e-education, e-health ventures and all manner of e-services based on government data can proliferate.
For the two political parties wedded together against their wishes by the will of the voters, common ground for agreement can be found in asking how government can help more services be created more rapidly on the knowledge platform that already hosts the most exciting business developments in the economy. Here are four examples of a multi-step program for going along and getting along.
- Step one: Congress should require the Executive Branch to implement the recommendations of a group of a high-tech CEO council that identified about $1 trillion in savings achievable by 2020 through better use of technology.
- Step two: Congress should overhaul corporate taxation so as to reward job creation, expand research and development, encourage long term and sustainable equity growth, provide regular returns to shareholders, sustain sensible balances of risk and reward, and applaud success in exporting goods and services for sale in other countries.
- Step three: Congress should require the Executive Branch to aggregate its purchases of bandwidth so as to drive increased capital into new networks, and to move all government services into digitized forms delivered to all broadband customers.
- Step four: Congress should require that all classrooms and libraries have the opportunity to win major monetary awards from government for providing breakthrough e-learning capabilities to their communities.
Reed Hundt was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 1993 to 1997. Blair Levin oversaw the creation of the National Broadband Plan and is now a fellow at the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program. Their e-book, "The Politics of Abundance: How Technology Can Fix the Budget, Revive the American Dream, and Establish Obama's Legacy" details the plans in this article. See www.politicsofabundance.com for a slide presentation and to download the e-book from any major e-publishing site.
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Filed Under: abundance, innovation, politics
Reader Comments
The First Word
“Your aim is off.
You think the solution to all this is political, when the real solution to this is technological. Technology solves problems, but politics make up rules that say you can't do the thing that causes the problem. Why can't we bypass the bandage solution and go right to the real thing?Imperative one: Energy
We have to get ourselves off of chemical fuels and on something that is renewable. Better yet, an energy production system that is also distributed. No centralized power plants anymore, put the power where it's needed. Once we have energy production fully automated, abundant, and decentralized, we'll have no need for the energy industry. The problem is that truly abundant energy will kill the profitability of the energy industry. There's no way that Big Oil, Big Coal, and Big Nuclear will ever allow that to happen without a fight.
Imperative two: Food
We must automate our food production industry. With automated, abundant food, there's no excuse for anyone to go hungry, regardless of their ability to pay. We live in a world where some people get too much food and some don't get enough merely because those that don't get enough don't have the money. There's plenty for everyone, but the food industry can't let people have the food unless they get their money, even if they're dying from starvation. We need to change the system so that everyone gets the food they need regardless of the money.
Imperative three: Property
This one is really going to ruffle some feathers, but here it goes anyway. Property creates two classes of people. There are the owners and the owned. How do you know which of those you belong to? It's simple. If you have a job, you're the owned. The owners use this to leverage the needy as chattel that labors to sustain their opulence. Those that need to work for their food and shelter are subjugated by the owners.
What needs to be done about this is to throw out the entire idea of property. It's entirely a man-made concept, property doesn't exists in nature because property is enforced by a consensus of the people, and lots of violence from an authoritarian force (i.e. the government). Animals don't follow this, they know that it's only yours as long as you're there to keep it. We can posses most anything so long as we are making use of it, but as soon as we cease to use/occupy it or we expire, it becomes available for someone else to use or occupy (sort of like a library book). So we need to provide ourselves shelter and material goods that are designed around human needs and available resources, utilizing production methods centered around renewable design. This also means we must get rid of the concept of money and trade because these are merely mediums by which property is exchanged.
The means of production must be distributed equally to all people so that none can assert ownership over another by way of holding back the means for that person to sustain their self. This, in a way, is already happening with 3D printing. This way, all people can provide their own shelter built directly to their needs. They can feed and cloth themselves as needed, all without submitting to an owner or owners of the means to production.
I know this will set some hotheads off on their "How dare you?! Capitalism is great! Capitalism is freedom!" mantra. So here are a few choice words you may like to throw at me:
Idealist
Utopian
Socialist
Communist
Hippie
Freeloader
Nutjob
Idiot
Collectivist
Foo l
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The Narwal and the Horse won't mate yet!
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Don't want to get fooled again
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Re: Don't want to get fooled again
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More of the neo-con libertarian privatizing CRAP
Actually we need New Deal policies: moratorium on debts, build actual infrastructure with direct gov't employment, protectionism, clear the non-violent from prisons by legalizing drugs, DE-MILITARIZE, and above all, TAX THE HELL OUT OF UN-PRODUCTIVE SHEERLY FINANCIAL GRIFTING, not least with a 1% transaction tax on stock trades.
The above notions simply continue politics as usual by pretending only the R's and D's matter, when both are just wings of the same corporate oligarchy.
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Re: More of the neo-con libertarian privatizing CRAP
I would take a guess that this is the first time that either Reed Hundt or Blair Levin have *ever* been called "neo-con libertarians." But, nice kneejerk.
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Re: Re: More of the neo-con libertarian privatizing CRAP
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Re: Re: More of the neo-con libertarian privatizing CRAP
Financial incentives for libraries? CEOs - no public interest groups or their representatives - should be given, by Congress, mandatory binding "recommendation" power over the Executive Branch? Those all sound like the ideas I'd expect out of condescending aristocrats trying to soft-sell central-planning.
The whole "a trillion dollars of private investment built Internet 1.0 in the 1990s" thing is also kind of nonsense. What about Eben Moglen's "Innovation Under Austerity" speech from earlier this year?
"The very point about what's happening to information technology in the world right now, has to do with scaling up our late 20th century work. We created the idea that we could share operating systems and all the rest of the commoditizable stack on top of them. We did this using the curiosity of young people. That was the fuel, not venture capital. We had been at it for 15 years, and our stuff was already running everywhere, before venture capital or even industrial capital raised by IT giants came towards us. It came towards us not because innovation needed to happen, but because innovation had already happened, and they needed to monetize it."
At best these are noble ideals, but the details are all wrong.
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Re: More of the neo-con libertarian privatizing CRAP
What a novel idea, tax the Democrats. That is an idea I can get behind.
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Re: More of the neo-con libertarian privatizing CRAP
Protectionism is alive and well in this country. The government hands out monopolies like candy on Christmas.
Of course, being without_a_clue would cause you to think that a good thing, despite the mounting evidence to the contrary.
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Re: More of the neo-con libertarian privatizing CRAP
"Rabble robble, CAPS. Rabble Rabble robble CAPS CAPS. CAPS CAPS CAPS."
You may actually have some points worth making but all I see is the quote above...
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Re: More of the neo-con libertarian privatizing CRAP
Do not forget that Hoover was a socialist and that Roosevelt only continued and expanded them while bragging in the press about all the great things he was doing and condemning the Republicans as loud and as strong as possible. Results 10 years of depression which would have been 50 years except WW2 intervened and destroyed a majority of world productive capability while removing a significant portion of world labor supply.
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Re: Re: More of the neo-con libertarian privatizing CRAP
Many people use terms incorrectly, sometimes it is intentional other times it is ignorance.
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Re: Re: Re: More of the neo-con libertarian privatizing CRAP
If you have a socialist society where the people in charge are skimming a lot off the top for themselves, then it will fail.
If you have a democracy where the elected officials are all in the pockets of lobbyists and not its' citizens, then it will fail.
The system is less important than the people in it.
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Re: Re: More of the neo-con libertarian privatizing CRAP
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A question
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Re: A question
Just the other day, my girlfriend gave me a "digital startup." It may or may not have been healthy, but it certainly was caring.
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How about no. If they want to provide "breakthrough e-learning capabilities to their communities", great! But we don't need "prizes" for that. Is a library going to spend tons of money on a project in the hopes that maybe they'll win an award? If they do, is this a GOOD thing? If they don't win, aren't they going to be hurt by the diversion from their core mission? If they win, is it right to give a school district in a rich suberb money while another district struggling to provide a basic education doesn't get any? Shouldn't local libraries and schools be supported by the local community?
I always have a problem when the federal government feels like it has to stick its nose into things that should be local. It's another layer of bureaucracy.
"Step two: Congress should overhaul corporate taxation so as to reward job creation, expand research and development, encourage long term and sustainable equity growth, provide regular returns to shareholders, sustain sensible balances of risk and reward, and applaud success in exporting goods and services for sale in other countries. "
HAHAHAHA. Both parties will agree with you. And they'll propose plans that are exactly opposite. Without specifics, this proposal is meaningless.
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Whoa, whoa, WHOA!
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Re: Whoa, whoa, WHOA!
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Require the executive branch?
"Step three: Congress should require the Executive Branch to aggregate its purchases of bandwidth so as to drive increased capital into new networks, and to move all government services into digitized forms delivered to all broadband customers."
I have no idea what was suggested by the CEO's and no idea whether aggregating bandwidth purchases is good or not. But if the parties are working together, we wouldn't need a law, because the executive branch would just implement these on its own, right? You're not gonna get a law passed without Obama's signature, and he's the one in charge of the executive branch in the first place.
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Re: Require the executive branch?
Sometimes I think the founding fathers /did/ well know of that type of threat, since human nature is sadly very little progressed from back then (though, in contrast, social nature has managed to improve and rid us of official slavery (substitute wage slaves) and also has allowed significant portions of the population the right to vote as citizens (not just landowning white men...).
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Re: Require the executive branch?
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STEP ONE...
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Re: STEP ONE...
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Christ, when will you people learn? Isn't "the prison industry" enough of a debacle for you? The "health industry?"
"Investors" are usurers... they're people driven by institutionalised greed who want more out than they put it.
Basing society's life-support systems on usury is like trying to overcome the laws of thermodynamics with IOU notes.
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Your aim is off.
Imperative one: Energy
We have to get ourselves off of chemical fuels and on something that is renewable. Better yet, an energy production system that is also distributed. No centralized power plants anymore, put the power where it's needed. Once we have energy production fully automated, abundant, and decentralized, we'll have no need for the energy industry. The problem is that truly abundant energy will kill the profitability of the energy industry. There's no way that Big Oil, Big Coal, and Big Nuclear will ever allow that to happen without a fight.
Imperative two: Food
We must automate our food production industry. With automated, abundant food, there's no excuse for anyone to go hungry, regardless of their ability to pay. We live in a world where some people get too much food and some don't get enough merely because those that don't get enough don't have the money. There's plenty for everyone, but the food industry can't let people have the food unless they get their money, even if they're dying from starvation. We need to change the system so that everyone gets the food they need regardless of the money.
Imperative three: Property
This one is really going to ruffle some feathers, but here it goes anyway. Property creates two classes of people. There are the owners and the owned. How do you know which of those you belong to? It's simple. If you have a job, you're the owned. The owners use this to leverage the needy as chattel that labors to sustain their opulence. Those that need to work for their food and shelter are subjugated by the owners.
What needs to be done about this is to throw out the entire idea of property. It's entirely a man-made concept, property doesn't exists in nature because property is enforced by a consensus of the people, and lots of violence from an authoritarian force (i.e. the government). Animals don't follow this, they know that it's only yours as long as you're there to keep it. We can posses most anything so long as we are making use of it, but as soon as we cease to use/occupy it or we expire, it becomes available for someone else to use or occupy (sort of like a library book). So we need to provide ourselves shelter and material goods that are designed around human needs and available resources, utilizing production methods centered around renewable design. This also means we must get rid of the concept of money and trade because these are merely mediums by which property is exchanged.
The means of production must be distributed equally to all people so that none can assert ownership over another by way of holding back the means for that person to sustain their self. This, in a way, is already happening with 3D printing. This way, all people can provide their own shelter built directly to their needs. They can feed and cloth themselves as needed, all without submitting to an owner or owners of the means to production.
I know this will set some hotheads off on their "How dare you?! Capitalism is great! Capitalism is freedom!" mantra. So here are a few choice words you may like to throw at me:
Idealist
Utopian
Socialist
Communist
Hippie
Freeloader
Nutjob
Idiot
Collectivist
Foo l
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Your aim is off.
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Re: Re: Your aim is off.
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Re: Re: Re: Your aim is off.
Especially democracy.
Throughout history "democracy" has always been viewed as one of the worst forms of government. It is the tyranny of the majority. If 51% vote to have you killed, that's "freedom" because "it's the will of the people".
I prefer consensual relationships based on individual self-ownership derived property rights.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Your aim is off.
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Re: Re: Re: Your aim is off.
There is no way for us to exist without structure like government. Having structure is why we are civilized: we need something to say what is wrong and right and to punish those that break those boundaries. The idea of democracy is to accept these truths, and build a structure that we can can all agree on, and adjust as we go. It's not perfect, but it certainly beats the rule of strongest mob.
That being said, our current government is way overkill. But that is no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water, as the saying goes.
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Re: Your aim is off.
While I think the whole idea of IP is absurd your logic is equally so.
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Re: Re: Your aim is off.
My logic only seems absurd to you because it goes against everything you've been told to believe. They are old ideas that only apply to an old world that doesn't exist anymore. We have the means to form a society that doesn't need property law and that will set everyone free. People won't have to go through the drudgery of a mechanical tasks day after day just to attain the means to exist. Machines can do that job for us, while we explore new ideas in science, art, existentialism, exploration, technology, and philosophy.
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Government is the answer!
Diversity of opinion - the root of all evil...
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Re: Government is the answer!
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starts at the bottom
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You want prosperity? Allow individuals to voluntarily exchange without intervening with aggression (i.e. "taxation" [theft], "regulation",...etc).
Many of the comments in this thread are quite disturbing. Questioning property rights? All rights are property rights. Property rights are an extension of self-ownership. Hence why "taxation" is theft (as through "taxation" the people calling themselves "government" stake a claim of the fruits of your labor and your labor is an extension of your time and your actions).
Complex social issues cannot be solved through violence/coercion. In the long run it only makes it worse.
Two core principles to bring prosperity:
1. Respect for property rights as a logical extension of self-ownership.
2. Adherence to the non-aggression principle (the initiation of force is immoral, self defense is valid)
That's it. 1. Don't steal. 2. Don't hit.
You learned it as a child.
Please stop advocating the use of force against me.
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Beautiful thoughts, but could we get real?
Obama, I think, actually does have an approach that will work, if he can get the Republicans in the House to go along (well, okay, his approach won't work - they are more concerned with personal power than saving the nation - sigh).
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