Showing posts with label Federal government of the United States. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Federal government of the United States. Show all posts

Thursday, March 01, 2012

Kim DotCom On Outdated Business Models

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - FEBRUARY 22:  Kim Dotc...Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Kim DotCom: "Piracy comes from, you know, people, let’s say, in Europe who do not have access to movies at the same time that they are released in the US. This is a problem that has been born within this licensing model and the old business model that Hollywood has where they release something first in one country but they show trailers to everyone around the world pitching that new movie but then the 14-year-old kid in France or Germany can’t watch it for another six months, you know? If the business model would be one where everyone has access to this content at the same time, you know, you wouldn’t have a piracy problem. So it’s really, in my opinion, the government of the United States protecting an outdated monopolistic business model that doesn’t work anymore in the age of the internet and that’s what it all boils down to."
I had never heard of the guy before his arrest, although there was no avoiding the MegaUpload name. I agree with the statement above. Movies should be released globally online at once. For $1 per viewing. The movie studios would make tremendous money at that price point.

The Movie Industry's Non Innovation
What Price A Movie?

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Data Explosion, Data Curation And Grassroots Governance


Barack Obama in power - in terms of grassroots involvement - feels to me like Howard Dean running for president. It's not there yet. And data is the reason why. Too much of the data is locked up. What data have been liberated have not been made visually appealing and presentable yet. Those are bottlenecks.

Thursday, October 07, 2010

$1 Trillion In Savings

ceramic piggy bankImage via Wikipedia
CNet: Tech CEOs find $1 trillion in government savings: save $1 trillion over the next decade.
When I read this headline I thought someone came up with an app that will help people lose weight, because if America could somehow go to its 1980 obesity levels - which was bad enough - America would save $1 trillion in health care costs. But no, these tech CEOs have something else on mind.

This headline also made me think that although Obama 08 did a great job of grassroots campaigning, it pretty much wrote the book on it, we are not there yet when it comes to grassroots governing where everybody is involved. Just like Dean 2004 was not there yet when it came to grassroots campaigning, Obama 08 is not there yet when it comes to grassroots governing.
CNet: Tech CEOs find $1 trillion in government savings: First off, the organization believes the federal government should consolidate its many data centers to reduce IT overhead.
No kidding.
CNet: Tech CEOs find $1 trillion in government savings: Secondly, the organization contends that the U.S. government should "streamline" its supply chain and make goods-and-service procurement more standardized.
Talk about business sense.
CNet: Tech CEOs find $1 trillion in government savings: $200 billion could be saved over the next 10 years by analyzing payments being disbursed through Medicare, federal grants, and tax refunds. ..... the government should rely on "electronic self-service" to save $50 billion; sell or auction off many of the "14,000 excess, and 55,000 underutilized buildings in the federal inventory" for a $150 billion savings; cut down on energy use to save $20 billion; and migrate to more shared services for another $50 billion in savings.
The best part of these suggestions might not be that they are totally doable, and they will save a ton of money, but that in implementing them the US federal government will become more transparent, more agile, in short a better government. I say let's go do it.

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Friday, September 17, 2010

Fixing The Economy: Drastic Job Creation

Roosevelt Signs The Social Security Act: Presi...Image via Wikipedia
Drastic job creation by the US federal government - as drastic as the bank bailout, as drastic as the stimulus bill - is what is needed, I think. And this has to be about creating and paying for the jobs of tomorrow.

But we can not take the FDR comparison too far. The biggest difference is that today America is in a global world. The global cooperation has not happened yet. The global institutions have not been created yet.

So many big things have to happen at once. Rapid pace political reform that sets America on the path to total campaign finance reform would be one, but instead you have the drama of old man Rangel dragging his feet all the way to jail time.

There are monetary moves to be made, and Paul Krugman has talked about this. I like the idea of letting inflation go up one notch so it becomes expensive for the private sector to keep sitting on the two trillion dollars it is sitting on.

I am leery of only construction jobs. I have not seen a big push for universal 100 MB broadband yet. A big chunk of that is political work that does not cost the government any money. It is about introducing some major competition in to that sector.

There is one overriding theme though. Most people seem clueless.
How to Fix the Economy: An Expert Panel: a paper forecasting high unemployment, low housing prices, and very low growth through 2017..... An expansion in credit, debt, and deregulating over the past 10 or 20 years got us here. ..... it will take time, but it need not take time. ...... We are unwilling to do drastic things that will improve the situation of households. You can do that by raising their income so they can meet their debt burdens. ...... Without drastic reforms to entitlement programs in the United States, we are really talking about something that will feel like the 1970s—but last for 20 to 25 years. ..... We should be thinking about modernizing our housing sector, improving the kind of mortgages we offer, and encouraging innovation. ...... Half of the budget is Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid... Nondefense discretionary spending is 4 percent of GDP. ..... I don't think we are going to modernize Fannie and Freddie very soon. Fannie and Freddie hold the preponderance of mortgages in the United States. ...... Non-Fannie and Freddie mortgages trade in the 6-to-8 percent category, as opposed to the 3½-to-4 percent category [for Fannie and Freddie mortgages]..... Roosevelt did things fast. He created the 30-year mortgage within months of his taking office. We need that kind of spirited innovation. ..... The most difficult issue was Too Big to Fail, and that was not dealt with. We are going to be creating even bigger financial institutions ...... We would have moved toward solving the problem if we had broken up the large institutions where they are not too big to fail. ...... It is jobs that are affecting housing prices, not the other way around. Mainly it is the failure to generate convincing economic prospects that keep people from hiring. ....... 16 percent of [Americans] would like to have jobs but don't. ..... something on the order of a 30 percent cut in Social Security taxes for four years. That would create immediate incentives for hiring. ....... continued backlash against domestic institutions ...... The key reason firms aren't hiring is that the economy is growing so slowly ...... more public projects .... Public projects are part of what we should be doing—New Deal, Civilian Conservation Corps-type projects—because unemployment is sapping the national morale. ..... general revenue sharing ..... the global economy faces a serious structural condition, and that is lack of global aggregate demand in which the developing countries continue to save and the developed countries no longer can finance prior levels of consumption ....... encourage China and other Asian countries to develop internally as opposed to simply externally for export. ...... we are not just broke once. We are broke about six times over ...... When a government is in an unsustainable fiscal position, spending more money does not improve the economy. ....... The only one that has the capacity to borrow in sizable amounts is the U.S. government. ..... to suggest that the government now contract fiscally in terms of reducing its deficits to me is simply going in the wrong direction. ..... people are very upset. They feel that the country is not theirs, and that a small group of wealthy people who get bailed out and bribe the government are in charge....... The issues are not that clearly understood today. The system is more complex. What has been legislated is a Rube Goldberg contraption. And that is wrong...... The engine of global growth is shifting from the United States to other countries ...... Firms are not buying new buildings, but they are buying new computers. ..... The most important thing we have going for us is our entrepreneurship and flexibility. ...... We are creating a Financial Oversight Council which will be worrying about systemic crises, and an Office of Financial Research, which is going to be collecting data. When we had this crisis we didn't know what was happening. ...... create jobs for the future, as opposed to jobs for current consumption ...... for the Federal Reserve to continue the quantitative easing and be even more innovative. They have to do more.

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Thursday, May 21, 2009

The Plateau Will Last Less Than Nine Months


What If The Plateau Lasts Nine Months?
That Plateau Feeling

The downturn has seen its worst phase. I don't think we will see an upswing right away, but I don't expect the plateau phase to last as long as the downturn phase did. And there sure will be a takeoff phase. The smartest among us will use this plateau phase to prepare for the takeoff phase.

The US and the world economy have seen much pain. But the US government and G20 took some right decisions. The takeoff was never automatic. Japan had its lost decade and is still reeling.

The US government has taken some right decisions on stimulus. But it still has not done the hard work for banking sector reform. The bankers are in for some tough love if America is to not repeat Japan's lost decade. The world can not afford America having a lost decade.

Don't tell me it is easy to borrow a few trillion from your grandchildren, but tough to show some tough love to bankers.

Globoeconomics: Name Of The Game
A Single Global Currency, A Global New Deal, A Global Economic Council
A Brighter Future Ahead
Needed: A New Global Financial Architecture
Stimulus: Make It A Trillion
Stimulus: Size Matters
Global Finance, Global Terrorism, Global Warming
'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
'I don't much care where --' said Alice.
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
'--so long as I get somewhere,' Alice added as an explanation.

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