Saturday, February 28, 2009

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.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Friday, February 27, 2009

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.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

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.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Thursday, February 26, 2009

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.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

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
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

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.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

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.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

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.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost