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.

How McCain Could Win With 22% of the Popular Vote

Actually there is historical precedence for this. In 1860 the Republican candidate for President won a majority of the electoral vote even though he only received 40% of the popular vote. In 2 states he wasn't even on the ballot. In several others he received only a few votes. When Lincoln won the election anyway the residents of 9 states were so upset they voted ordinances of secession and left the union.



Now to be sure there other factors at work here. The states in question were all run by slave owners and Lincoln was an abolitionist. The states at the time the constitution was written considered the union more of a federation and less of a unitary country. This is shown by the fact those nine states considered leaving the union a realistic possibility. And one reason why the electoral college is anachronistic is because we are far more of a united country than we were when the constitution was written.



We must also remember the founding fathers didn't think all that much of democracy. They didn't even believe in political parties. The constitution had to be amended to provide for separate voters for president and vice-president because political parties had come into existence. The people, thought of as "the mob", weren't considered capable of picking a good president. Instead they would be made to vote for "elitist" electors who would make a proper choice. So yes it is time to think of alternatives to the electoral college.
About Voting Problems
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