<strike>25 Easy Things</strike> One Hard Thing You <strike>Can</strike> Must Do to Save the Planet

No the hardest thing is support by environmentalists for the only present day existing real alternative to more coal fired power plants, nuclear power plants.
About Earth Day
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Extra! Extra! Newspapers Need an Overhaul, Not a "Rescue Plan"

Of course if there is no marketing mechanism possible what other choice does one have other than to give away content for free. The problem with newspapers and new media is that no one has yet figured out how to make money from new media. Indeed there doesn't seem any way possible to make money from new media. Thus the resistance to new media from old media. News people want us to know will be given away for free. Unfortunately selling this news was the source of income newspapers used to get news people did not want us to know. So now we have no way of financing the getting of news people don't want us to know. That is the dilemma of the modern news organization.
About Newspapers
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The Debate Over Online News: It's the Consumer, Stupid

The problem is generating a revenue stream. Newspapers don't sell content they sell the paper on which the content is printed. Radio and television don't sell content they sell air time to advertisers. This is where their revenue streams come from. The only people getting a revenue stream from the internet are internet service providers. The only way content providers get a revenue stream is by selling advertising space on their sites. Their only other alternative is begging. The MSM fight for maintenance of the present system because it is the only way they know to generate a revenue stream. They may not be wrong in thinking that.
About Eric Schmidt
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Advice to Obama at G-20 Summit: A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

Congress builds barriers to free trade because workers in the US can't live on $3.00 a day like workers can in the underdeveloped world. The ultimate problem with free trade is simple. The downside of free trade is obvious while the benefits of free trade must be taken on faith. When jobs are lost to foreign countries it is obvious where they went. When wages are decreased because of foreign competition it is obvious why the wages were decreased. New jobs and higher wages created by free trade could have been created for other reasons. You simply can't point to any particular job and say free trade created it. So opponents of free trade have plenty of evidence to use for their position. Defenders of free trade have far less evidence for theirs.
About Barack Obama
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Why Won’t Government Tell the Truth About the Economy?

On CNN recently a commentator observed the stock market was going down because it was waiting for the government to tell it the truth about the economy. In reality the last thing the stock market wants is the truth. What is wants is confirmation of its comforting illusions. That is one thing this administration is reluctant to give. In reality many businesses already know the truth. This is why they are cutting their workforces. The stock market is simply reacting to this decrease in business activity.

We avoided Great Depression 2 for over 60 years by the following means. We encouraged consumers to buy things they didn’t really need. In order to keep profits high and wages low we encouraged consumers to go into debt for these purchases. In addition all this economic activity used material resources, especially energy, that could not be replaced. In the past year and a half we came to the point where the debt needed to be repaid. In addition energy and other resources began to run out. This lead to an increase in their price. So the system began to break down. The worst economic calamity since the 30s is the result.

This breakdown creates a difficult political problem for any American administration. Americans are individualists. Individualism is a part of what it means to be an American. In order to have a strong society based on individualism it is necessary for the economy to create enough jobs so each and every individual who wants a job can have one. In order to do this we must be able to grow the economy. If we can’t convince people to buy things they do not really need we won’t be able to produce enough jobs so everyone who wants one can have one. And if the material resources to produce and ship and use these goods doesn’t exist there is no way we can produce enough jobs to maintain our present social system.

Yes we can create sustainable economic and social systems. Yes we can create resilient economic and social systems. But in these systems the needs of the many are going to be more important than the needs of the one. This is the United States of America. We can create these systems. But we cannot make the idea the needs of the many are more important than the needs of the one politically popular. This is the truth that dare not speak its name.

The Wiki That's Building a News Organization

Unfortunately trust, accuracy, objectivity, style, and taste required money. That money came from the value for value exchange in which people paid for the paper upon which the trust, objectivity, accuracy, style and taste was printed. There are no longer enough people willing to make that exchange. That army of guys banging away at their computers at 3:00 AM in their boxer shorts don't care if they are paid or not. In an age in which information must of necessity be distributed for free this gives them a competitive advantage.
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The Wiki That's Building a News Organization

In order to have a market you must have some way of forcing people to give you money for your product under penalty of not getting it unless they pay for it. The problem with the internet distribution model is lack of a way of preventing people from getting the product without paying for it.
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When You Don't Understand the Business You're in, You're Screwed (Good-Bye Newspapers)

The problem with newspapers seeing themselves as delivers of news is the question of value for value exchange. When people had to buy a newspaper to get the news they had to give someone money for the paper. That exchange provided the newspaper with a "business model." When people get their news on the internet the only people getting money are the people who own the internet connection. I suppose if newspapers had really seen themselves as being in the news delivery business they would have bought cable companies and phone companies so they would have owned the means of distributing news over the internet.
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The Wiki That's Building a News Organization

Which means not only do you have to have something of value you have to have some means of forcing people to pay money to get that thing. This is where most web based business propositions break down. They have no way of forcing people to give value in the form of money in order to get back value. If you can't make money you don't have a business. Simple as that.
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Michael Steele 'Open To' Punishing Stimulus-Backing GOP Senators

This is the downside of Steele's policy. If they become Democrats they can run as Democrats in states that are Democrat. If they stay Republican and lose a primary to wingnut Republicans the seats turn Democratic anyway and the incumbent Republicans are out of a job.
About michael steele
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Initiating a Culture of Compensation

Now we see the real problem with the post industrial economy. In order to have a market economy you must be able to establish value for value exchanges in which money is used as a medium of exchange. For manufacturing and service industries doing this is easy. In an information "economy" where information is transmitted through electronic means doing this is more difficult. Newspapers never sold information, they sold the paper on which the information was presented. The same thing with magazines. So long as entertainment could obtained only in confined spaces such as theaters it was possible to restrict access to paying customers.



Over the air radio and television went to either a advertising based business model or were supported through government and private donations because it was was impossible for broadcasters to restrict access to paying customers. The internet has the same problem. This is why most internet businesses are failures. In order to have a successful business you must find some way to make you customers give you money for the goods and services you supply.
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There is much more to this than can be said in 250 words. The advent of an information based economy puts the whole idea of markets into question. In order to have a market based economy you must have value for value exchange. No value for value exchange means no markets. At the same time putting up restrictions around information makes the growth of an information based economy more difficult. If everyone requires payment of information then only the rich will have full access to all the information they need. But if information is free there can be no such thing as an information economy. Which means it may not be possible to have both a free market economy and an information economy. We may have to choose between these.

RNC Chair Steele On GOP: "No Reason, None, To Trust Our Word" (VIDEO)

I'm in the vanguard of the Baby Boomers. I will borrow this paraphrase from my youth. You can trust a Republican to be a Republican. They are consistent. Consistently wrong.
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Why We Won't Abandon Israel

With the horror of the Gaza invasion being shown all the time we have much discussion concerning continued support of Israel by the U.S. government. It would be nice if supporting things making us hated among Arabs and Muslims could be avoided. But it can’t. This is why.

Millions of people believe the Battle of Armageddon, the battle between good and evil that will take place just before the Last Judgment, will be a battle between forces defending the present state of Israel and those who demand its destruction. So the side of good defends Israel and the side of evil fights for its destruction. Hamas demands the destruction of Israel. So by demanding the destruction of Israel Hamas places itself on the side of pure evil. This means millions of Americans will support any action which anyone claims will destroy Hamas. Regardless of the consequences. End of argument.

Even those who don’t believe in the Christian Zionist view of reality described above will be hesitant to do anything which would be seen as weakening Israel in its fight for survival. This makes cutting off of military and economic aid difficult. But so long as Israel knows it will get this aid regardless of what it does it is difficult to see it abandoning the invasion of Gaza. Israel’s leaders really think they are making their nation more secure by this invasion. The United States has no leverage to make them see different unless we want to really make Israel weaker. Reluctance to make Israel weaker means there is little we can really do. And that, alas, is that.