There was an article in the NYTimes over the weekend discussing the issue of recruiting in the tech sector as it relates to immigrants and temporary work visas.

There is no better example of an intersection of both our screwy economy and our screwy immigration system than the tech industry, which hogs up all the H1-B visas every year to recruit highly skilled programmers outside of the U.S. and claims that, with unemployment nearing double digits in the U.S., the talent needed for these positions simply doesn’t exist in our labor pool.

Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

First, the article warns that Sanjay Mavinkurve could be “a self-entitled immigrant”, and that’s absolutely correct. He comes across as a child. I’m glad that he’s Canada’s problem and not ours. (I hear that one could start a new company there, too, if it were important enough to him/her.) “He thinks America should embrace him, given his contributions and taxpaying potential.” Eh, go fuck yourself. Now with that out of the way…

Silicon Valley is filled with crybabies who predict doom for the industry if they don’t get their way. They’ve muddied up the argument quite a bit by entitling themselves to operate entirely within the borders of the United States (and ideally within the metropolitan areas where a strong tech industry presence already exists) while recruiting globally. The government entitles NO company to do that freely, and has good reason to maintain limits on work visas for guest workers of all types: it is in the public interest of the citizens of the United States, and the interest of the citizen population trump that of both corporations and non-citizens.

Let’s do a little math here, and keep in mind that this explanation also works on the opposite end for all those “jobs no one will take” in the bottom skill percentiles of the labor force: There are 300 million United States citizens, and approximately 6.8 billion people worldwide. For simple rounding purposes, let’s say it’s really 6 billion people who exist and are not U.S. citizens. Our labor force is equivalent to 5% of the remaining labor force worldwide. So… if you completely and freely opened up work visa eligibility in the U.S., you could conceivably take EVERY JOB IN THE UNITED STATES employing a U.S. citizen and replace them with someone from the top 5% in the remaining global workforce. If salaries were held constant and everyone was blandly non-cultural (guaranteeing business-as-usual, no language barriers or ethnic hate or anything like that), you’d end up with a U.S. workforce with better skills and experience than what existed before. Adding this population to the residents of the United States, you’d now have 600 million people living here, and 300 million of them would be outraged, having just lost their jobs and any chance of ongoing survival.

This would never happen, of course, but within specific industries, this sort of one-to-one replacement as a zero-sum game is exactly what’s happening. Capable workers in the U.S. are often disregarded for computer-based technical positions in favor of better skilled workers overseas, who will always exist because of the sheer numbers of the global workforce outside the U.S. For any one of these highly skilled roles, if you can locate one person in the U.S. who can handle it, you can likely find at least 20 other people in the global workforce who are statistically identically capable, and a whole lot of people above that level who would probably find a U.S. job and a U.S. lifestyle strongly appealing. This potential competition has a dilutive effect on the U.S. workforce, pushing citizens downward in the labor pool. Imagine 5 people standing on a ladder, and the top person suddenly slips and impacts the person directly beneath, causing a chain reaction… Every programmer working in a clerical temp job means that an office temp is working at Best Buy, and the electronics salesman is working at Wendy’s, and the dude who would have worked at Wendy’s is now at home drawing welfare.

Is there any downside for global corporations to take this to the extreme? Nope. And we’ve learned this in other industries, where significant quantities of labor roles were shipped across borders and overseas to places where equivalent work could be done by a cheaper labor pool, the second that such work became economically feasible and advantageous. Tech companies have shown in particular that they really REALLY like taking on H1-B workers here in the U.S. under similar motivations, and that program in particular has had a history of enabling labor abuses against the guest workers who participate in it because of its strict terms on those workers. (This really isn’t anyone’s problem but the guest workers’, but it is a key reason why these companies do not consider U.S. citizens to be of equivalent labor value. They will do what they can get away with, it seems.)

This leads me to a fair proposal: You can and should increase the number of visas if you can demonstrate that the U.S. labor pool is expanding to accommodate them. Want to be generous? One extra visa spot for every 5 U.S. jobs created. Want to be stingy? One visa for every 20 jobs created. This would limit most of the destructive qualities of guest workers. And none of this prevents U.S. companies or investors from expanding global subsidiaries with international locations, in which case they could likely hire citizens from any country as long as there was a “home turf” presence for that particular labor pool.

Other than that, the H1-B program needs reform more than it needs expansion. The U.S. government needs to worry about finding work for its own citizens before it finds any more work for people like Sanjay (unfortunate for him, but fair to all). And don’t listen to anyone, particularly those with both salary and net worth in the tens of millions of dollars, who tells you that their industry will collapse if the government doesn’t help it rig the economy further against the middle class in this country.

*Eh, not really, I’m a New Yorker for life.

The plan is titled “Jobs for America” and yet only in a few places (in the new energy initiatives sections) does it mention anything about job creation. American companies need to create jobs. Government jobs as an entitlement program is not a particularly compelling answer and is not consistent with the GOP’s goals anyway.

Much of the first four pages are about gimmicky things promised in vague terms. “Immediate Relief”, “low taxes”, etc. Stuff that hasn’t worked for Bush.

The HOME plan is about mortgage refinancing and it essentially is a bailout for bad borrowers - not a market-efficient solution, but certainly one that makes failure-prone voters comfortable. (For now, until they miss more payments) Also: there were, and continue to be, sensible mortgage programs and offers. The problem is that housing is overpriced and the only way to fix that is to let the economy sort that out on its own; McCain has no solution to this, as anything to “fix” home prices downward would make his voting base very uncomfortable!

Through the first few items I gave him some credit for promising things that were totally ridiculous but would be marginally effective, and to anyone who would vote for him and not understand those policies, well, fuck them anyway. That’s not McCain’s fault. Those are his voters to lose. So, cut the gas tax in the summers and make people believe they’re better off for it, you grand old magician.

The one-year discretionary spending freeze is the most unrealistic politically-based economic proposal I’ve ever heard.

Bi-partisan Fiscal Discipline:

• Of course.
• 2.4 percent spending growth. (Related projections: Inflation? Collected Taxes & Revenues?)
• Comprehensive review of government: again, of course.
• Large(st) part of this depends on Congress.
• End subsidies to high-income individuals and corporations. Counter: the current administration, from the same party, has conflicting priorities and actions.

Eliminate Wasteful Spending

• Of course.
• “John McCain will veto every pork-laden spending bill and make their authors famous.” Politically stupid and bullying.
• “Earmarks restrict America’s ability to address genuine national priorities and interfere with fair, competitive markets.” Only when abused.
• “Eliminate broken government programs.” “Reform Civil Service” “Reform procurement programs” Expected Republican strategies.

Reforming Entitlement Programs For The 21st Century

• Very much needed. Needs a ton of political support; current solutions are unpopular or insensible (or both!).
• “John McCain will not leave office without fixing the problems that threatens our future prosperity and power.” O RLY? You’ve got 4 years, 8 if you’re lucky! Big mouth.
• “he believes that we may meet our obligations to the retirees of today and the future without raising taxes.” Needs more backing up.
• Personal accounts – again, needs backing up for strategy/logic.
• “reduce the growth in Medicare spending, improve the quality of care” again, political magic if you can get this done. What’s got to give here? This only works if the cost of care decreases. How would one go about that?

SUPPORTING SMALL BUSINESSES

Most suggestions are not in the GOP’s wheelhouse – the most sensible ideas require more entitlement programs. The tax-cutting ideas are insensible (add loopholes, benefit the rich mostly) and inconsistent with balanced federal budget goals. Goal of reforming trade rules needs actual detail. How does free trade help Americans if “leveling the playing field” means that we’re expected to compete with third-world salaries and inhumane working conditions? Free trade, in the short term, puts the US at a disadvantage in a capital-deprived economy. (The big-spending consumer, expanding credit days are over)

CHEAP, CLEAN, SECURE ENERGY FOR AMERICA: THE LEXINGTON PROJECT

Drill reserves (environmental issues), add economic reforms to control energy markets (restricting open markets), nuclear power (solution that becomes effective long after McCain’s term, death – I mean, shit, I’ll be old when those plants come online!), clean coal (we’ll see; relies on not-yet-invented tech, needs more proof), renewables (yes, good)

Transforming transportation – technology contests, Flex Fuel, tougher standards. This only addresses passenger cars! Doesn’t reduce wasteful usage, does not provide goals/numbers or timeframes.

Building Efficiency – government “applying a higher standard” (vague), energy efficient home fixtures/furnishings/appliances (this is good)

HEALTH CARE REFORMS:

BETTER CARE, AT LOWER COST, FOR EVERY AMERICAN

Big promises! “look into” cheaper drugs, “prevention” for “chronic disease” (already implemented), “coordinated care” (big government! Bad GOP!), “Government should promote greater access through walk-in clinics in retail outlets” (needless spending. Plenty of existing clinics), “rapid deployment of 21st century information systems and technology” (this is NOT a problem in the US in otherwise modernized/gentrified locations), common-sense vague promises for Medicare and Medicaid (no details given), “smoking cessation” (already implemented by states), “tort reform” (why isn’t this done already? Been a problem since the 80’s), transparency (exists!).

Health care costs: “reform”, “use competition”, allow families to “purchase health insurance”. Details please. Health insurance is available, just hardly affordable.

Tax credits for health care costs… bullshit. Tax people what they should be taxed, let them spend money how they choose, and charge them a fair price for care and insurance. Don’t complicate things through new paperwork and agencies. Most individuals will either fuck this up or not be eligible for credit through some bullshit loopholes. (Or by means of not being sick!)

Portable insurance – no details. Sounds like a good idea! Who’s paying for it?

TAXES: SIMPLER, FAIR, PRO-GROWTH AND COMPETITIVE

Repeat about pro-growth tax ideas (covered above in the small business section.

Ban internet taxes (they already are.)

Ban new cell phone taxes (or, keep the status quo! How is this a creditable idea for “change”?)

TRADE

Repetition about pro-growth policies and free trade encouragement. Overhaul UI (which, no one should be on in the first place! Entitlement program!) Better education (probably needs more spending, since that’s always the first thing you cut! Inconsistent with prior budget talk).  And that’s all he’s got on this.

Another thing about reading the McCain plan: so, he says he’s going to look into a bunch of things that are pretty much already done or in practice, and therefore taking credit for work that precedes him. It makes up nearly half the list.  I’m disappointed that 70% of the country knows nothing about any of this and is going to think McCain is a visionary if they see him speak or write about any of this. I do think McCain deserves some marginal credit for backing good ideas. But take away the good ideas that are already in place, and he has few good ideas for change.

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So today, Governor Patterson of New York is saying that shit’s already hit the fan:

“When I travel across the state, I see communities suffering,” Mr. Paterson said in his address, from the Red Room of the State Capitol in Albany. “Everywhere I go, I meet people who are losing their jobs and their homes. I meet families who are forced to pay more for gasoline and for food while their paychecks stay the same. Next winter, some of these families will have to choose between heating their homes and feeding their children. The rising cost of health care means that they cannot afford to get sick.”

Hah, they cannot afford to get sick. What an artful way of saying, “They don’t have the means to finance medical treatment like the upper crust always does.” Wouldn’t that most accurately describe the problem, in regards to the wealth gap in society? It’s not that it’s a technological problem, that medicine does not exist to treat people for illness. It’s not as if being sick and down-for-the-count were a privilege that only trust funders could execute.
But I am leading you far from the point.

He says, “When I travel across the state, I see communities suffering.” And that’s a lot of traveling. New York State is BIG. New York State has huge differences of population density among its metropolitan areas and rural towns. New York City is well known to ship more money upstate than it gets back in budgetary considerations. Where does it go? Small towns and small cities that expect more spending per capita for government service than what would be given if it were all distributed evenly. New York State has one of the biggest cities in the world, resulting in extraordinary efficiencies of public services (and a lot of elbow bumping, too), and the savings of that money goes into what amounts to welfare checks for upstate residents. Not actual welfare checks, but money put into things that people expect from government. Administrative functions. Police. Fire patrol. Hospitals. Road building and repairs. All of which cost WAY more per person for a rural resident than, say, someone who lives in Harlem.

But not everyone can afford to live in the city, either. Some people have actual moneymaking jobs out there in the boondocks, and those jobs provide economic activity and business products/services that all of us need to buy, and those jobs are only sustainable on wide-open land, not quite on 125th Street. (I, for one, would not buy apples grown on 125th Street.)

But there are people who, say, live 45 minutes outside of Syracuse and commute in by car every day, for no other reason than it was cheaper and easier in that corner of the state to get enough land and permission to build a garishly large house on an embarassingly wide swath of land. I’m sure there are a lot of people living in that situation.

(This is to say nothing of the hidden or indirect subsidies/tax breaks that NYS gives to companies who would otherwise threaten to move to Mexico or China. It’s a little safer to bet nowadays that it’s a bluff.)

I’m just as sure that there are poor people in New York State collecting checks from the government, maybe not for weeks but for years, for whatever government entitlement programs exist, except that no one’s thinking to add in the cost of the road to their house (plus the cost of riding police cars by several times a day, the cost of building power and phone lines out there and the land that gets ripped up or wrecked to make that happen, or the cost of having a firehouse on standby even if the firemen themselves are volunteers) as an additional personal subsidy.

No, no one thinks to count all of that. No one’s entitled to any of it, really, but those expenses exist, and it’s politically unpopular to single out those people for service discontinuations or higher taxes.

Which is why people upstate have the upper hand.

================================

So now we’re in an era of $4 gas and a mortgage crisis. Houses are suddenly impossible to sell, and long-distance commuting is prohibitively expensive. Risky decisions are turning into intractable problems for individuals, without the government’s help. And, as we can see, the government is in no position to help those people anyway. They’re wondering who they can fuck over to get that budget deficit fixed. They’re probably looking right at Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. (Manhattan never gets fucked over. It would hurt tourism.)

If the state government is serious about both helping out their budget woes and keeping its citizens protected and well taken-care-of, it might be time for people to make some reasonable sacrifices. As in, move a little closer together, or else we’re going to tax your asses right out of your farmhouses.

People find this unconscionable. OMG, YOU CAN’T RIP PEOPLE OUT OF THEIR HOMES.

Sure you can. It’s been done before. To build a highway or an airport, you do it with the strike of a pen. “Eminent domain.” I’m not saying this is the same situation. I’m just arguing that it’s not impossible or immoral politically for the government to guide relocations. Gently, tactfully, of course.

So, if it is possible, does it not seem sensible that NYS should take a look at the idea of reversing the suburban and rural diaspora? (a phenomenon significantly accelerated by all that very irresponsible mortgage financing in the first place) This a place where we have the infrastructure to support additional people in the cities or better-planned suburbs, with close access to both jobs and cost-saving facilities like supermarkets, retail pedestrian malls, frequent public transit, parks and playgrounds, consolidated schools, etc. It’s easier to try it here than anywhere else. Especially with the backup governor in control, and most of the self-centered senior government leaders already out the door.
And, even though it’s not always comfortable to move, it would be in the better interests of everyone in the long run. Better services for lower costs. There is so much more that is possible when you don’t have many individuals continually making decisions that work against the success of government and public services, for whatever reason. (Especially when you’re fucking over the people who live most efficiently.)

The truth is that our society is not in a position to avoid compromise at this point. Everyone is going to have to take a big step back from the expectations drilled into our heads over the past 10 years. There’s a war going on, there’s a healthcare crisis, there’s an energy crisis, and now there’s an economic crisis. (With an environmental crisis about 10-15 years out) We have to focus, we have to prioritize, and then we have to change whatever is dragging us down. If there’s any clear indicator of where to look for a clue as to what is dragging us down, it’s the disparity between NYC’s taxes sent upstate and budget money coming back down.

And, finally, what to do with all those abandoned communities/housing/infrastructure? Well, you can’t sell it for 10 cents on the dollar anyway, and no one can afford to continually drive out there anymore except the filthy rich. So let nature have it back. Fuck it. In 20 years it’ll all be amazing abandoned housing for bored amateur photographers like me to photography endlessly for Flickr. You can charge them for a tour license - $50 for the permit, and a $200 fine if you don’t have one. (and, also, metered parking)

I’ve been doing the whole “online” thing for the past 12 years. Half of my lifetime and counting further. I’ve been involved in a variety of scenes and activities. Several have threatened to eat me alive, and some came pretty close to wrecking my life. However, this is a wholly negative outlook on things, because I wouldn’t be who I am today without the Internet. Or, more specifically, spending any kind of time on the Internet continues to be a big mistake from which I keep learning the avoidable ways of wasting time.

Computers are a remarkable tool for information storage and retrieval. They are also quite complicated and fucked up to the extent that anyone who does anything creative with a computer at this point is generally wasting time or making a speculative wager.

Which brings us to blogging.

Without knowing it, I’ve been on the blog scene for about seven years. I started early in college and have proceeded to be well connected over the years. I know about hot shit before it becomes played out, which is somehow a big deal to me. Hell, I knew about blogs themselves before blogs were hot shit for becoming the underground source for hot shit… and also before blogs started recently becoming played out altogether. Over that time, I’ve been exposed to so much whining, blabbering, and drooling that it’s become a permanent part of my daily articulation.

Today’s versions of blogs are more addictive than they have ever been before. Yes, I am New York City obsessed, but generally for any topic on the planet, you can do a Google search and end up at some journal-ish site that links you to the entire blogosphere rather quickly. Unless you purposely isolate yourself from the blogosphere (which is akin to trying to avoid spam on your AOL account, or trying to hold your breath in outer space), you will be invariably cross-tied to some other site, which will be cross-tied to other sites, and so on until you reach Gawker, Slashdot, Fark, Ain’t It Cool News, or DrudgeReport. The biggest blog sites are increasingly tied into everything big and small in the world, all without truly existing in the world.

I bet you that someone can take down a million-hit-per-day independent site and it would truly affect no one except those mentally-ill enough to have linked their self-identity with that site. There will always be another site with the latest episode of Red Vs. Blue, you could always get headlines straight from Yahoo! News or Google News, you could always write your own personal memoir of your thoughts rather than post it to a discussion forum to argue it against all the other big hairy shirtless geeks. Regardless, we’ll start hearing about things like “A 28-year-old white male committed suicide in Bryant Park after failing to see either a Homestar Runner cartoon, a column from The Sports Guy Bill Simmons, or an Aaron Karo e-mail over a month’s period.” And we’ll probably read about it on Lockhart Steele and FuckedCompany.

This week’s Time Out New York… yes I did buy it and please don’t judge… has a good article on the information overload that comes with this whole Google/blog/mass-media thing. I think it’s somewhat sobering and illustrative of the false perception of information intake that we possess as a society. Cynically speaking, the Illuminati have done themselves well on this one. Our information overlords have us continually distracted by constant cable TV news zippers, In Style magazine issues the size of phone books, and an estimated 10.3 million blogs this year, of which only 4 may consist of wholly original and noteworthy content. It’s also thoroughly interesting how they keep sacrificing their own to the general public to keep us entranced. Lesser members of the elite corps, certainly, but I don’t know why they’re so desperate to keep us in line. Maybe it’s the oil.

But it is useful. I’ve changed my life with the information I’ve gotten off of blogs. I’m a lot less boring now. As I’ve stated here, maybe I can use my familiarity, and my inevitable future information overload, to make something for the world. It would be nice if I could pull a Nick Denton and make money off this shit. That would indeed tie back to what I said earlier about computers, the Internet, and speculative wagers. It’s not a sure thing and would need some acquired skills, but a bet based on an educated guess has a better chance of coming up a winner.

It is not the case that I am unwilling to put my ass on the line for a good idea… rather, the reality is that I have nothing to put on the line. It’s like I’m in the Bellagio with a great blackjack strategy and I’ve got only 75 cents in my pocket. I could have all the brains in the world and, sin el dinero, I’m still as useless as a guard dog with no teeth and no bark.

So the question becomes, how do I work on my bankroll without succumbing to the mental traps of the unenlightened masses - including being an unpaid hipster wannabe blogger? I am honestly unsure how to do this and keep my sanity, but I’m currently bullshitting my way through some job interviews as a start.

======

Note: this was originally written and published 04/11/2004 05:39:17 PM

(yeah, holy shit, how did this NOT age except for the FuckedCompany reference?)

Let’s do a quick cavity search:  Arianna Huffington is what Dina McGreevey would be if she were friends with Ken Lerer; Noah Brier is a very smart and likeable guy who will be relieved to know he’s not the fifth most influential web person in New York (and lucky to crack #100); Anil Dash realistically fell off this list three years ago; everyone PUH-LEASE stop sucking @garyvee’s dick; Alex Blagg? Another guy who will be relieved to know that he’s not influential (just entertaining); Kottke is rarely seen in public, but he runs a link blog!; is Rex one of our top 50 influencers, or has he been here 50 days already?; followed by a group of people who’s names I’ve only seen on email lists; John Hodgman is influential? He’s a goddamn comedian who stars in an Apple commercial, as THE MOTHERFUCKING PC, squaring off against the guy who was dating Drew Barrymore!;  Jake Dobkin and Jen Chung, like Anil, have not been relevant since 2005; I love how Scott Kidder is almost as influential as Nick Denton himself! (and Denton comes behind Dobkin on the list! What fucking bizarro Internet are they using?); Meghan Asha makes the list but Julia Allison doesn’t?; Allison Mooney makes the list but Mike Hudack doesn’t?; Laurel Touby is another one from the 2005 time machine; Emily Gould is a writer whose presence on the web is incidental and not influential.

Did I leave out any snide observations? Go for it in the comments.

NOWPUBLIC LAUNCHES THE

“MOSTPUBLIC INDEX”

IDENTIFIES THE WEB’S 50 MOST

INFLUENTIAL INDIVIDUALS IN

NEW YORK

Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube Upend Traditional Elites; NowPublic—The World’s Largest Participatory News Network—Measures Whose Voices Are Most Heard

in Today’s Digital World

Vancouver, B. C. – July 21, 2008—NowPublic (http://www.nowpublic.com/), the world’s largest participatory news network, today announced the launch of the MostPublic Index, a detailed barometer of the most public news influencers of today’s digital world, illustrating how a new breed of influencer is shaping the media environment and what’s heard by the general population.  Today, news makers and reporters are increasingly indistinguishable.  In fact, a teenage Twitterer may have as powerful a voice as the New York Times editorial board.  Therefore, NowPublic has defined this new type as “news influencer.”  The first MostPublic Index identifies the 50 most influential individuals in New York.

“Visibility and connectedness define today’s elite,” said Leonard Brody, CEO of NowPublic.  “Today, there are innumerable new ways for one’s voice to be heard.  The goal of the MostPublic Index is to measure who is currently most effective in broadcasting their own personal brand online, as well as identify emerging players.”

“Our ‘MostPublic Index’ is a leading indicator and benchmark of who is really changing the way in which news is being produced and distributed, a core goal of NowPublic and its army of reporters.”

NowPublic created a formula to measure influence and “publicness” across four categories, including:

o       Online Visibility

o       Presence on User-Generated Content and Social Networking Sites

o       Interactivity and Accessibility

o       The “R” Factor: Presence on Microblogging Platforms (Flickr, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.)

NowPublic measured statistics in each of these categories from Facebook, Flickr, Google, Technorati, YouTube, and various other blogs and sites, to create a list of New York’s leading influencers.  NowPublic then narrowed the list to 50 by analyzing and documenting individuals’ presence and popularity in each of these channels, applying a weighted scoring system, determined by the strength of specific traits held in each online community.   A detailed account of the scoring system can be viewed here: http://www.nowpublic.com/world/most-public-index.

Without further ado, NowPublic proudly presents the MostPublic individuals in New York:

1.          Fred Wilson

2.          Arianna Huffington

3.          Sarah Austin

4.          Steve Rubel

5.          Noah Brier

6.          Anil Dash

7.          Gary Vaynerchuk

8.          Jeff Jarvis

9.          Liza Sabater

10.     Loren Feldman

11.     Paul Allison

12.     Tamar Weinberg

13.     Alex Blagg

14.     Greg Verdino

15.     Jason Kottke

16.     Rex Sorgatz

17.     Alisa Leonard

18.     Brian Morrissey

19.     Eric Friedman

20.     Jeffrey Zeldman

21.     Natali Del Conte

22.     Tim Shey

23.     Kyle Bunch

24.     Anthony Volodkin

25.     John Hodgman

26.     Nancy Scola

27.     Jay Rosen

28.     Jen Simmons

29.     John Biggs

30.     Jake Dobkin

31.     Caroline McCarthy

32.     Lindsay Robertson

33.     Lockhart Steele

34.     Nick Denton

35.     Scott Kidder

36.     Kelly Reeves

37.     Rachel Sklar

38.     Peter Kafka

39.     Jill Fehrenbacher

40.     Peter Rojas

41.     Robert Lanham

42.     Jen Chung

43.     Meghan Asha

44.     Amy Langfield

45.     Josh Levy

46.     Allison Mooney

47.     Nicholas Carlson

48.     Laurel Touby

49.     Emily Gould

50.     Brian Stelter

The entire list can be viewed here: http://www.nowpublic.com/world/most-public-index.

The MostPublic Index will issue periodic indexes across a variety of categories, including the MostPublic: American cities; European cities; Asian Cities; Indian Cities; musical influencers; political influencers, pop culture influencers and sports influencers, among others.  The next MostPublic Index will identify the 50 most public individuals in Silicon Valley.

About NowPublic

NowPublic is a crowd-sourced, participatory news network that mobilizes an army of reporters to cover the events that define our world.  In its short history, the company has become the largest news organization of its kind with contributing reporters in more than 5,500 cities and 160 countries.  The Guardian has named NowPublic one of the top five most useful news sites on the Web and Time Magazine named it one of the Top 50 Websites for 2007.  The company has received funding from Rho Ventures, Rho Canada, Brightspark, GrowthWorks and members of the New York Angels.

I’m finally done with a long stretch of parties that took place unusually at the beginning of June. This is supposed to be dead quiet time for social engagements, but it’s actually been incredibly busy lately. Even though we skipped the tail end of Internet Week, other engagements kept us busy over the past couple of days. (more…)

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Tumblr, being highly efficient in the spread of ideas, is useful to news organizations in a way that makes obsolete existing parts of the business. The role of a writer as a expert, as an experienced and learned person, is being lost to the increasing practice of using crowdsourced information to build editorial content. It seems that, as amateur publishing applications improve in their reach and connectivity, well-developed ideas are easier to pluck out of the blogosphere/zeitgeist. And if the ideas are not just well-thought but well-written (cue the “infinite monkeys” metaphor), this eliminates the need for news writers altogether.

This isn’t just about news writers, though. This is about any task that requires thinking and ideas. Advertisers increasingly rely on consumer contests for new ideas, something that was eliminated long ago within the profession by the stigmatization of “spec work”. Fashion designers can increasingly rely on blogging amateurs to do much of the work of presenting new samples and combinations. Entertainment companies can scour the web for amateur performers who are desperate to be “discovered”, but who are far more likely to either be “copied” or “exploited”. Really, any activity that doesn’t strictly involve pushing numbers can be crowdsourced. (Sometimes, even that can be farmed out over the Internet to amateurs, depending on how charitable or competitive the cause looks)

There’s a problem in this. How do you finance this? Without wealth, it’s unlikely that people will be able to continue sharing ideas online forever. Rent needs to be paid, computers need to be bought, Internet access costs money. If ideas are no longer saleable in the career marketplace (because they’re available so freely online), then what pays the bills? Tedious work? Actually, that won’t do it either, because that’s all getting farmed out to India and Russia. Remember, the first wave of outsourcing (aka “importing”) worked because we could push physical labor overseas or across borders and get the finished product for cheaper. Then the next wave of outsourcing (which is what you think of when you hear that term) promised that common office functions and repetitive/tedious tasks could be pushed overseas for even more efficient business operations. But this was supposed to help us by keeping all the really valuable mental jobs here in the US. Now, finally, this last wave of outsourcing threatens to eliminate creative work by simply relying on bloggers who talk enough on the Internet to do creative things you’d normally need done on deadline.

So, basically, there’s no financing left for people who have ideas, because there’s not enough jobs here (that pay enough) to finance the people who are educated and talented enough to have these ideas, and these same people were coincidentally the ones writing the blogs in the first place - what, you thought the Tumblrites were anyone but college-educated working professionals? If there isn’t money to pay for people going to college and then getting on the Internet after the fact, people aren’t going to go to college and then go on the Internet. Which means the ideas disappear. And then the whole system falls apart, because the ideas drive both the office work (including finance, which is grossly overpaid right now) and the need for manufacturing. Not to mention the fact that jobs and wealth drive the consumer economy, which is now falling apart due to the abuse of credit facilities across all financial markets and economies.

The great thing about smart people, though, is that they’ll go where the money is, because that’s the smart thing to do… and, even in the presence of business trends that are moving toward crowdsourced ideas in the short-term, smart investors and managers will continue to seek highly-creative employeeswho will keep them ahead of the game when the idea-thirsty companies are suffering. In other words, the solution to the problem is to do what has always been done - keep the people who drive your business happy and well-paid.

I write this as a warning to anyone who tries to get away with excessive crowdsourcing. It simply doesn’t work. It creates unsustainable products of negligible value. The market rejects it. Businesses thrive on ideas and the progress obtained from them, and businesses need a lot of ideas to really flourish. But ideas need to have worth and pricing in order for people to reliably produce them. People don’t stick around the web to provide valuable free ideas forever. Employees and managers who rely on that are lame ducks in the business world.

The Indiana law was challenged in separate suits filed by the Indiana Democratic Party and by another group of plaintiffs that included elected officials and community groups. The plaintiffs argued that the state had failed to justify a requirement they said would place a special burden on thousands of eligible voters in Indiana who lack driver’s licenses, a group that disproportionately includes the poor, the elderly and people with disabilities.

The plaintiffs lost, both in Federal District Court in Indianapolis and in the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago. Writing for the 2-to-1 majority at the appeals court, Judge Richard A. Posner agreed with the plaintiffs that the law would have the greatest impact on people who were “low on the economic ladder and thus, if they do vote, are more likely to vote for Democratic than Republican candidates.” While that fact gave the Democratic Party standing to sue, he said, it did not make the law unconstitutional.

What’s correct about that Indiana voting ID Supreme Court decision is that, while it will prevent people from voting, it does not do so in an unconstitutional way. It really has nothing to do with true justice or fairness; the Constitution aspires to be fair and just, yet is a document as human as its creators (it even needs amendments from time-to-time) and it occasionally does not serve all its followers fairly. The Supreme Court only decides on the consistency of laws to the Constitution as it stands, not on whether or not the laws or Constitution themselves are fair or have unfair loopholes. Is a youth curfew fair? Is the drinking age fair? Is the smoking ban fair?

But you knew this already. I’m just pointing this out because I find it strange that people are criticizing the SC decision, not the state of Indiana for having the law in the first place.

Moving onto that: what’s wrong with the law? I think it’s pretty equitable and useful (voter fraud is a serious problem). Have you seen any rich people lately? Many of them are so addled and drunk half the time (they’re just like us!) that I’m sure it’s just as burdensome to them to obtain government photo ID as it is for people who have less wealth. They go to the same DMV that we do! As it is, wealth is not the problem - it is mental capacity that presents the issue. For brevity’s sake (not to be un-PC) you have to be retarded to misunderstand the law and/or have your life so out-of-order as to not have a photo ID in the year 2008.

I don’t feel - actually, I’m strongly against the idea - that society should aspire to make all things functional to the dysfunctional. Because then society itself would be completely dysfunctional (and not just partially). Reasonable accommodations are great things - handicapped ramps, websites that are friendly to color-blind and fully-blind browsers, etc. Unreasonable situations - a citizen, given plenty of prior notice, with a birth certificate and Social Security number who chose not to obtain a drivers’ license, passport or government-issued ID - are probably best left aside.

It says a lot about the Democrats that they find these sort of people strategically important in elections. It puts them at a disadvantage if they can’t get that all important pants-crappingly dysfunctional demographic. (Though I like to be equitable too, I can’t come up with a counteracting swipe at Republicans on this matter. And I really tried hard!) Also, there’s nothing stopping Democrats from sponsoring photo ID initiatives for the disenfranchsed to help resolve the issue of people-not-voting. Unlike some disgustingly long legal process that lines the pockets of the lawyers and judges, that sort of thing might actually help people.