Friedman the Terrible

Thomas Friedman writes,

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power.

It is also no accident that China has the most sophisticated system for suppressing dissent in the world today, beginning with friendly warnings to stop visiting "subversive" websites, and culminating with a vast network of prisons into which troublemaking journalists, community organizers, trade unionists, and tenacious citizens can be disappeared. The number may be in the millions even in today's "reasonably enlightened" China.

The fact that China can make impositions which Friedman favors is a direct consequence of its ability and will to impose such "drawbacks" as he effortlessly elides. If the Chinese government proposed only policies which had the strong support of the people, then the entire armature of control--whose cost is well into the billions of dollars per year--would presumably be unnecessary. Where the majority party in our Congress must at some point throw up its hands and cry, "blame the opposition!," the Chinese system brings out the truncheons and beats opponents to a bloody pulp.

It is pointless to wonder whether the common man in China supports the general direction of the government, because his right to disagree ends at the point where his disagreement becomes effective. Much dissent occurs in the hinterlands far beyond the earshot of the Times' Beijing bureau, more is nipped in the bud when a spouse, sibling, or teacher cautions the potential offender to keep it to themselves, and most never occurs because in China, all you get is Fox News--to use an analogy my left-wing friends might appreciate.

Friedman's argument is thus nothing more than a rationalization of tyranny in the name of enlightened policy, without any consideration for determining what constitutes said policy. Our system tolerates dissent to such an annoying and inconvenient degree because it is the most certain method by which to ensure that government policy conforms to the wishes of those who live under it. It is endlessly frustrating to those on the losing side of the debate, and like all systems, not without its own drawbacks, but it beats a hole in the head--which remains the ultimate wage of dissent in Friedman's promised land.

Not Just A Bad Candidate

Yes, Martha Coakley had two of the worst weeks a campaign could ask for, short of a bimbo eruption or federal indictment. The line is going to be that it's all her fault: if only Mike "you're screwed" Capuano had won the primary, Brown would still be an unknown state senator in Wrentham, and even I don't know where that is.

Baloney, I say.

Not to say the candidates aren't different: Coakley was hack insider wholesale politics; Capuano is pure retail, and he comes in three unique flavors: "angry," "really pissed," and "fucking bullshit." Capuano would have kissed every baby inside state lines, known which team Curt Schilling pitched for, and personally challenged Scott Brown to a bare-knuckles boxing match on center ice at Fenway.

But let's not forget: Coakley beat him like a gong in the primary, 47-28. If I were running against Capuano, I'd have just one question: "What have you been waiting for!?" Unlike Martha Coakley, Mike Capuano has had two years in Washington to do something about jobs, and for two years he's marched in lockstep with the House leadership.

The Democrats hold the largest majority of the Federal government in decades. I listened to liberals complain that mean nasty Republicans were filibustering healthcare in 1992. I've listened to them complain about Newt Gingrich hamstringing Bill Clinton in 1995. I listened to them gnash their teeth and rend their garments when the GOP took the Senate back in 2002. I listened to them howl in 2007 that they were being force-fed the agenda of the most unpopular president in history, mere months after dealing his party a historic defeat in the midterm elections. In short, they blame everyone and everything, except their own agenda.

So thorough is the delusion that they are now preparing to blame the Republican smear machine for losing in Massachusetts, where Ghandi could run on the Republican ticket for Registrar of Deeds and lose to some Democrat's brother-in-law with two DUIs.

This election was not just about Martha Coakley--that's good for 15, 20 points maybe, not the 35+ she gave up since this shindig began. It wasn't a vote against the president Obama promised to be, the one who carried Massachusetts by over 25%. It was a vote against the president he's become, the one who still blames his predecessor for every problem, who flew frantically into town two days before an election to deliver a speech full of mockery and spite against an opponent who came barely up to his ankles.

Even if She Wins, She Wins

Apropos Martha Coakley's now-infamous rapemailer, I've heard several pundits say, 'after that, even if she wins, she loses.'

Precisely which planet do these people call home? Al Franken won by much dirtier tactics, and his Senate career seems off to a perfectly normal start. The difference between a campaign and what one does in office is like the difference between high school and college. If Coakley wins--and I still see that as the most likely, if no longer preordained, outcome--campaign strategists will almost certainly cite that mailer as the turning point.

Creative Destruction

Jaron Lenier's "You Are Not a Gadget" is probably well-suited for the zeitgeist of austerity-chic, and I predict endless positive reviews from newspaper writers delighted to have someone unmistakably of the Web somewhat on their side. Lanier joins St. Bono in the list of unlikely critics of the Web's admittedly dismissive approach towards intellectual property rights. I suspect this will start becoming a fashionable opinion as newspaper writers start to think that heavy-fisted IP would offer their employers some chance at profitability again.

Bono writes,

A decade’s worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators — in this case, the young, fledgling songwriters who can’t live off ticket and T-shirt sales like the least sympathetic among us — and the people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business.

What a load of shit. First, blaming ISPs for playing any role in this is more than a bit like blaming the telephone company for taking business away from the post office. If anything, ISPs would love for the BitTorrents of the world to go away and stop using the bandwidth they can't figure out how to charge people for.

Leaving that aside, Bono is still barking mad if he thinks the environment of today is worse for a "young, fledgling songwriter" than the world that one Paul Hewson walked into some decades ago. The recording business was built upwards from the realities of distribution and promotion, which dictated a strategy focused around a limited number of mass-market products. Because the buying public was fickle and loved novelty, the labels were forced to invest in a large catalog of artists in hopes of finding the occasional winner.

For a very few artists like Paul Hewson and David Evans, there were great rewards to be found once you reached the Mt. Olympus of being a multi-platinum artist signing your second recording contract. That part is important, because it goes almost without saying that the first contract you signed was highly unlikely to put much money in your pocket--the labels had to cover all their losing bets somehow. You could say that it was communism in a fairly pure sense, but I digress. This system worked very well indeed for Paul Hewson, who has enjoyed a life of ego-gratification on a scale not seen since Roman emperors watched lions dining in the Colosseum.

The most likely fate for a young artist--even one of great talent--is not to have his or her work pirated to oblivion: it is to be utterly, completely, and hopelessly ignored. And with the major-label focus on top 40-contender acts, there was nothing worse to be than a cult favorite.

Today, the world seems to be moving towards almost nothing *but* cult favorites. If the Pirate Bay has made the world harder for musicians, it certainly does not seem to have completely discouraged many of them. Not only is music becoming a more pervasive part of life, with 16GB portable players in the pocket of every person under the age of Mick Jagger, the range of sounds, of influences, of voices seems wider than ever before.

Chutzpah

As demonstrated earlier today by Mitt Romney, on Fox News:

And right now, there's a lot of anger in Massachusetts, among independents in particular, about the Obama health care plan.

Let's give credit where credit's due: Mitt Romney knows when to hop on a bandwagon, and having the benefit of choices not available to the family dog, when to dive off. He was happy to take author's credit for a health reform bill partially force-fed to him by the Democratic-owned legislature, and realizing he stood scant chance of reelection, he left poor Kerry Healey to take the beating from Hopenchange (beta version) so he could move on to more gratifying projects.

Like a campus Marxist who maintains that socialism would succeed if only some imaginary country would practice "true socialism," Romney could no doubt give a long list of artful dodges for why his version of ObamaCare is far from the same thing as Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi's version of ObamaCare. There is some distance to be sure, but you need a a vernier caliper to measure it. Now that the Tea Partiers are massing outside town with tar and pitchforks, one can understand Romney's eagerness to proclaim "ceci n'est pas une pipe."

Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth...

Honestly, I appreciate Brian McGrory taking a few minutes to notch out a pro-forma "Martha Coakley really ought to debate Scott Brown" blog post before the inevitable coronation proceedings begin. But really, I can't let him get away with this piece of earnest, civics-class tripe:

"Here's one problem with all this: When you're a United States senator, you're expected to get up on the Senate floor and forcefully debate the issues of the day. You're expected to be a strong voice in hearings. You need to be a major factor in conference committees. Sometimes, you're left to push politically unpopular issues against formidable opponents."

This would be true if those issues happened to include the Teapot Dome Scandal, the XYZ Affair, or the Whiskey Rebellion. The last real debate to take place on the Senate floor involved a member of British Parliament named George Galloway, who laid into Norm Coleman like Mike Tyson settled arguments with Robin Givens. Forget New England, that shit was some straight OE800.

Since then, the next highest moment of drama came when Coleman's successor, gave a rousing rebuttal to the senator from Connecticut, uttering words which will no doubt one day be carved in granite below a statue in equestrian form, "in my capacity as senator from Minnesota, I object." To be fair to Franken, he is the only Senator who can at least claim to have been a professional clown prior to winning being elected the election. Either way, senators usually read prepared remarks to a bunch of pages and a C-SPAN crew, with the biggest debate of the day being white or wheat in the cafeteria.

If Arlen Specter or Ben Nelson teaches us anything, the real measure of success for a senator today is your willingness to lie, cheat, and ultimately sell out everyone who doesn't already own you. Just ask the former senator from Illinois, who managed to get his seat the old-fashioned way: by knocking any decent competitor off the ballot. With a performance like the one she's put in so far, Martha Coakley is on track to becoming our first female president.

Europe's Lesson on Innovation

A recent comment on a TechCrunch article about the excessive focus on Valley sompanies whined that "even today, Europe is number one in new patents and research. The problem is commercialising things."

If commercial success is like having a sold-out first show at an art gallery, patents are like your mother hanging your sketches on her refrigerator.

If I had to quickly throw out a guess as to what the EU's problem is, I'd wager heavily on the excessive amount of government funding. I spent about five of my ten years in IT working at a European company, and along the way I noticed a major disparity: in the US, people talk about raising angel or VC funding, while in Europe, the same sorts of people always seemed to talk about getting EU research grants.

Dispensers of capital--whether VCs or civil servants--profoundly shape the markets they participate in. If step one of your business plan is "Raise five million dollars," then you are going to go out of your way to cater to the tastes of those kingmakers. In the VC world, success is measured a little tiny bit by being early on the bandwagon with cool ideas, but really mostly by picking companies that make squadzillions of money in one way or another. And that is terribly hard to fake. I don't know whether Youtube was worth well over a billion dollars, but clearly even Google had to think pretty hard about that, and where else do you go when you want to find clips of commercials from your formative years?

Government grants (or non-profit ones, to be ecumenical) are another game altogether. As with VC, the objective is to be associated with very successful ideas. Success, however, is usually defined by much softer criteria, like the ability to win yet another round of grants.

Ideas are funded because they appeal to the affections and aspirations of the bureaucrats, but really, the difference between success and failure is limited: when prestige is largely a function of being approved by a tight peer group, then the only way to fail is to really challenge the consensus. In this case, commercializing ideas is actually somewhat counter-productive, because (a) if they succeed commercially, you won't really share in the success like a VC would, and (b), if they bomb, you'll be humiliated. EU research grants (in my experience anyway) often produced nothing but enormous, turgid reports full of formal and impenetrable language, and technology demonstrations that wouldn't even merit a "Beta" label here in the land of the ruthless capitalists.

As we consider the future of "green tech" and its ilk, we would be wise to keep the government as far from the role of kingmaker as possible. But if you're a government official, where's the fun in letting other people decide where to spend the money?