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When you consider the recent World Economic Forum, you must understand what “economic” means.  It is essentially the scientific study of the allocation and distribution of scarce resources.  If you believe resources are scarce, then that will drive your conclusions.  For example, if you believe we will always drive cars powered by internal combustion engines consuming fossil fuels, then you rightly conclude that we are running out of energy.  On the other hand, if you believe in the abundance of resources driven by our expanding universe combined with necessity and human ingenuity, you would conclude quite differently. 

When the Club of Rome commissioned their 1972 book The Limits to Growth it was controversial and not widely accepted by experts.  In this follow-up document by Graham Turner http://www.csiro.au/files/files/plje.pdf comparisons are made with the projections and reality.  It is often said that past actions are the best indicator of future performance.  If you are an economist, accountant or social scientist, essentially the only research you can utilize for the purpose of future predictions is historical.  When I look at history I see a pattern.  History is cyclical, but it never repeats itself exactly.  Just as the tide can be relied on to rise and fall, the beach never looks exactly the same when the tide goes out.  Take care which indicators you rely on or you may be blown away by a hurricane of innovation.     

Here’s what Herman Daly had to say about the subject in his presentation titled  Uneconomic Growth in Theory and Fact.

In fact globalisation is just a way, it seems to me, of undercutting the ability of nations to deal with their own problems of overpopulation, unjust distribution, unemployment and external costs. It tends to convert many difficult but relatively tractable problems into one big intractable global problem. For that reason I think we should be very careful about celebrating and pushing globalisation and should move back towards a model of internationalisation. That’s not giving up on global economic community, world community, it’s a different model of community. It says that world community should be a community of communities, of nations federated into a community rather than a direct membership community in which there’s no intermediation by nations and in which nations basically disappear. Well, with that provocation I think that maybe I should stop.

http://www.feasta.org/documents/feastareview/daly.htm

To me what is most striking about Professor Daly’s comments are the title of his paper; uneconomic growth.  Most people would say that being “uneconomic” is being wasteful.  Wouldn’t the contrary be the case?  If economics is about scarcity, wouldn’t uneconomics be about abundance.  For example, wouldn’t everyone agree that we currently use solar energy in an uneconomic fashion since we don’t capture it everday?  How about our current utilization of pure rainwater.  Is it economic or uneconomic because it merely runs off our roofs, and out into the street while we carry heavy cases of bottled water home from Costco in the back of our suv?   

I’m not a scientist or accountant, but I do have experience in business.  Every time I have written a business plan or developed projections for review by shareholders, lenders or other stakeholders, the projections have been based somewhat on historical information.  The projections are also based on my personal beliefs.  Regardless of what final plan was agreed upon, in the back of my mind I knew one thing for sure.  No one really knew what I was going to do that would influence the plan except me.  No historical perspective could predict the actions that I may take and how those actions would affect a particular outcome.  If there are no new frontiers, I don’t believe that you would see humanity making investments such as the $9 billion being spent on the Large Haldron Collidor near Geneva.  Maybe it’s a waste and the money should be sent to Haiti for reconstruction.  Maybe it will result in being able to bend time which would allow Haiti to be warned of the earthquake.    

Thomas Edison’s work on refining the light bulb was described in his comment that he had not failed, he had merely discovered thousands of ways that would not work to make a light bulb.  I wonder where the next light bulb will be coming from?  It may be from the likes of Cameron Cohen, the eleven year old who recently invented the iSketch application for the Apple iPhone.  http://www.cccdevelopment-llc.com/iSketch.html

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For immediate release

Davos, Switzerland

Official Calls for Second Makeover to Golden Rule

In an striking show of confidence, Lawrence Henry Summers,director of the White House National Economic Council called on the world’s bankers to set aside the key rule that they have been operating under since the rise of the Medici Bank in the late fourteenth century and the acceptance of Medici currency across Europe.  Summers called for the repeal of Golden Rule version 2.0 and implementation of an entirely new system that is being called Golden Rule version 3 by observers.  The U.S. Government’s call for a reworking of the Golden Rule comes at a time when there has been steadily increasing worldwide interest in returning to Golden Rule version 1 which has not been in effect for over six hundred years.

Although there is some debate about when version 2 actually went into effect, nearly all Jews, Christians and Muslims agree that version 1 of the Golden Rule is based on words spoken by God to the people of Israel on Mount Sinai and later authored by God and given to Moses in the form of two stone tablets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments

It’s not clear when it got it’s official name; Golden Rule, but the reasoning behind the name was clear.  Treating your neighbor as you wanted to be treated not only allowed you to accumulate more gold, it also allowed you to hold onto the gold you already had.  If you’re neighbor recognized the rule also, then he would not kill you and take away your wife and your gold. 

Version 2.0 of The Rule evolved primarily as a result of the concept of banking, loans and interest.  The ability to borrow and hire mercenaries for nation building, organized warfare and world trade all required the use of other people’s money for which they required an additional return commensurate with their risk.  Although considered by many to be unsustainable or a perversion of the original rule, version 2.0 of the Golden Rule was simply “He who has the gold makes the rules.”  Political leaders and the world economies have been operating on version 2 ever since the first loan was made or the first battle was fought over scarce resources or hurt feelings. 

The Summer’s Davos salvo was directed at the world’s most elite bankers and also those individuals and families who own most of the world.  On behalf of the White House Mr. Summers is essentially advising them of his intentions for version 2 to be replaced with version 3 which states that the White House, in the near future, will arbitrate the golden rule.  Here is Mr. Summer’s statement in regard to the United States role in the economic bailout of 2008 – 2009 at this weeks World Economic Forum in Switzerland. 

“Our Challenge now is to put in place a new system.”

“We are going to put in place a set of reforms that will make a real difference.”

“Half a trillion dollars of market value exists today that would not have existed.”

In other words, it appears that the plan is to establish a new set of rules so that those who have the gold will no longer make the rules.  Instead the U.S. Government through economic policy, leadership of the United Nations Security Council and influence over the International Monetary Fund will gradually takeover responsibility for the Golden Rule Version 3. 

It was unclear from Mr. Summer’s statements on behalf of the White House how they intended to implement the rule change.  Nagging questions remain such as how to do this if the U.S Dollar was no longer the world’s reserve currency, and what about the Chinese and all the U.S. Treasuries they are holding.  Many of the world’s richest and most powerful people that are not U.S. Citizens were unclear on how such a rule change would be enforced.  One expert on global policy trends was overheard asking, “Is it reasonable to use a nuclear threat to enforce banking reform?  That may be overkill.  An entirely new currency may be a simpler and more enforceable solution.”  Another unnamed observer was heard asking “Is the half a trillion dollars Summers mentioned based on today’s value of a dollar, or next years?” 

The announcement of a new golden rule comes at a time when the political fallout from the AIG bailout threatens to tilt the balance of power in the U.S.  The decision to pay one hundred percent of the money which was owed to many of the same people in attendance in Davos is now being scrutinized.  Here’s a copy of the mysterious Schedule A reflecting the $62.1 billion payout just released this week.

 http://static.reuters.com/resources/media/editorial/20100127/Schedule%20A.pdf 

Some of the locals in the plush Davos ski resort village were thinking that the situation was comparable to of one of those stories about being snowbound where the starving survivors trapped on a mountain top must resort to cannibalism.  It looks like AIG was the main course at the global financial meltdown campfire meal.  Is that why a pirate ship clearly displays a skull and cross bones?  Is being eaten by your counterparty a risk that comes with the job?

If the private company known as New York Federal Reserve Bank had chosen not to make these parties whole, the U.S. may have been in a stronger position to thrust Golden Rule version 3.0 upon the world’s leading banks and nations.  Then again, allowing AIG to fail, could have resulted in a systemwide collapse and an end to fractional reserve banking.  It is unclear at this time whether or not the Federal Reserve’s decision to take care of its international owners, many of who were in attendance at Davos,  will reflect positively on the White House and the U.S. Government.  Treating your neighbor as yourself may not mean giving your wealth over to your neighbor according to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.  It is a common belief amongst the financially elite hip hop community that this only gets you disrespected. 

One unofficial observer of the forum had this to say; “We appreciate very much the people of the United States willingness to allow the withdrawal of 100 percent of our money prior to their recession.  The decision to use AIG as the conduit for getting all of our money back into the central bank, was simple and relatively clean.  It was much better than having a run on the money center banks such as JP Morgan, Citi and Bank of America.  Systemwide failures, food shortages and riots would have been inevitable if we had been forced to cut off the U.S. Treasury or to discontinue all counterparty risks with the world’s major banks. We believe this was better and may have been the reason that a central banking system was installed; so we could make our withdrawls first.  As far as Mr. Summers request to replace Golden Rule 2, I’m sure it will be taken under advisement.  From our perspective it is much easier to look at it objectively since we were able to get our gold back.  If we didn’t have our gold stored at the IMF, we would probably be the ones proposing a rule change, so we fully understand the motivation and we’re sympathetic to the declining U.S. Dollar.  For a few days in September 2008 we thought we may have lost our gold, but the plan worked fine and we were fully funded as you can see from the release of the AIG documents.  In the meantime, we plan to explore a new reserve currency in case we stay with the existing Golden Rule version 2.0 which states clearly that those with the gold make the rules.  Staying with a U.S. Dollar seems less likely as we look at what is essentially a hostage situation for the Chinese.  We are in need of a fresh approach since Bretton Woods got us this far.” 

It’s been less than a year since the Governor of the People’s Bank of China referred to the proposal of a super currency as visionary.  He was referring to John Maynard Keynes proposal of the “bancor” super-currency at Bretton Woods in 1940’s.  Many people don’t know the history, but even F.D.R. called for the creation of a super-currency to be called the unitas.  Both of these efforts were overshadowed by the gold standard and later on by the U.S. dollar as the world standard.  The current U.S. Secretary of the Treasury has said he has great respect for those who are promoting a new super currency.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds_qGXbxK-4 

Global financier and Barack Obama protege, George Soros, is also calling for a new currency system and emphasizing the importance of China in the currency discussion and how their success is creating a flight from the dollar although it is constrained.  Mr. Soros comments on exports assume that the United States would be able to become a competitive manufacturer and global exporter again.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJVZ8sf6uBI.  As of the writing of this report, we have not had an opportunity to survey workers in Detroit to see how they feel about working for wage rates similar to those of car makers in India.   

Before you can expect a response to Mr. Summers threat to replace Golden Rule version 2.0, you should wait and see what the Chinese have to say.  The European Central Bankers have the gold and intend to invest it, the Chinese have the dollars and the United States and the Chinese have most of the nuclear weapons.  Much of the world is still undeveloped and development is what interests the banks.  They are flexible on what currency they will use and their main concern is to diversify globally in case anyone, such as Iran, uses one of their inevitable nuclear weapons.  It would appear the trick is in knowing how to spread the wealth around and still control it even if you don’t carry one of those briefcases with the nuclear launch codes commonly known as the football.

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Congressman Joe Wilson and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito have both referred to the President of the United States as a liar in front of a joint session of congress and the entire world. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pB5uR3zgsA

The definition of a lie is:  a statement that deviates from or perverts the truth

Justice Alito clearly mouths in front of the entire world the words “not true” in response to President Obama’s remarks.  I don’t know whether President Obama’s statement is true or not.  I elaborated on the court’s decision a few posts below titled Citizens United.  I don’t know if a President should condemn the Supreme Court’s ruling in a State of the Union Speech.  I don’t know if a Supreme Court Justice, or a Congressman for that matter should call the President of the United States a liar in front of the entire world.  I’m not sure that’s the right setting for calling anyone a liar.  I always felt like merely knowing if someone was a liar was good enough.  I didn’t have to holler it out to a group to make myself feel better or to try and make the liar feel worse.  

In my opinion it is simply bad form and should serve as a reminder to all of us to consider our audience before we open our mouth.  I’m not sure about the protocols, but I believe the President has to be invited before he can speak to a joint session of congress.  He deserves to be treated as a guest no matter how much you we agree or disagree with him, or believe what he says is true or false.  If I were President Obama, I would probably quit going back if I was going to be heckled noisily or with lip syncing by a Supreme Court Justice.     

Whether we agree with the President or the Court, can we agree on this?  The situation is deteriorating and expected levels of decorum are going by the wayside.  There are plenty of opportunities to call each other whatever we want to.  We have more media outlets today than ever before in history.  For that matter, there’s nothing wrong with simply writing a private letter to each other.  You can write “You lie!” on a letter and send it to someone.  You can send it to the President.  You can sign it, or you can leave it unsigned.  You can call the White House and probably leave a voice mail.  You can certainly send an email.  You can call up the news media and call a press conference.  If you’re a Supreme Court Justice, you may be limited on how you can go about calling people a liar and still keep your job.   

If heckling in the halls of congress is going to be the new order of the day, I believe we are all going to be reaching for our Official Robert’s Rules of Order.  We should be prepared for that once obscure position of sargeant-at-arms to be back in the spotlight like it was at rowdy fraternity chapter meetings when I was in college.  His name is Wilson Livingood, he’s the 36th person to hold the position and in addition to lots of other responsibilities, he is charged with upholding decorum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_Livingood.  There are a lot of things we should feel about being Americans.  Feeling embarassed by members of congress and the supreme court on how they respond to the President during a report on the State of our Union should not be one of them.  To all of the other distinguised attendees at last night’s address, your ability to display a reasonable level of self-control is greatly appreciated.  Thank you.

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If you can’t make it to University of Chicago for a four year degree in economics, you can watch this very entertaining music video instead.  Everybody starts somewhere.  Chief Bernanke started at Pedro’s a truckstop in North Carolina.  You can start on Youtube.  Milton Friedman would be proud of these guys at Econstories.tv.  It proves the theory I’ve believed all along.  People will tell you that  Economics is the study of the distribution of scarce resources.  Resources aren’t scarce… they’re abundant, just like the creativity of these rappers.  Believing in scarcity is the fatal conceit.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk

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Hoover Institution senior fellow Thomas Sowell makes an excellent point about corporate greed.  He basically says that it doesn’t exist in regard to executive compensation and proves the point quite well at the end of this four minute video.  In regard to shareholder greed, the argument is not as valid and refocuses the discussion on shareholder motivations and how they may differ from those of executive management.  For generations shareholder motivations in the capitalist system have simply been to maximize value.  Is that changing?  Should that change? 

When you examine issues such as fair trade, worker’s rights, sustainability and other potentially unregulated considerations that may lower the near-term return on investment, does that dialogue threaten to create a system that is no longer capitalist?  Is it possible that the most capitalist approach of all would be to preserve the system at any cost, even if it means “saving the whales” or some other indirect or special interest that requires a longer timeline than the next quarter’s financial results?  Where does catering to public opinion and genuine enlightenment (i.e. recycling is better than the landfill, clean water is better than polluted water) enter the picture?  What type of leadearship is capable of selling positive change to the owners, even if that change comes with a cost? 

Which has a higher cost; losing control of the dairy cow, or treating the cow better?  Is it only right to spend on treating the cow better if you are threatened with government intervention, or do humans have a built-in capacity to sense right from wrong?  Corporations may be an unrelenting money machine, but they are constrained by humans.  Aren’t those humans capable of anticipating how their business can be improved for both the benefit of the shareholders in balance with benefits for society?  Isn’t that what corporate leadership has been charged with for generations? 

Isn’t it essentially the free market at work when a company that is trampling over its community becomes restrained by that community rather than by the government?  What is our responsibility as individuals, shareholders and citizens?  If we’re watching Dancing With the Stars instead of participating in our community, then whose fault is it when the government intervenes?     

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrtoSx-NbLQ

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As a follow-up to my post on Citizens United a few days ago.  Here is an interesting article on Yahoo.  I have excerpted a couple of paragraphs from the article that are enlightening.  A few things to take note of.  The coalition is described as comprised of “good-government groups.”  It sure beats working with a coalition that is comprised of “bad-government groups.”  Also take note of the plan to sell the broadcast spectrum and to charge companies that receive government contracts.  Now you know the plan. 

I guess this is why we don’t have free TV anymore.  Taxpayers can pay for candidates to run TV ads on TV that taxpayers pay to watch.  That could be a very good business to be in.  Get paid to broadcast the ads by the politicians who are using taxpayer money to produce and broadcast them and then charge the people to watch the ads on cable.  I was wondering how Verizon was going to get back all the money they have been spending in my neighborhood on installing FIOS.   

(excerpt from Yahoo article is below)

They sent the letter through Fair Elections Now, a coalition of good-government groups who hope the Supreme Court ruling will lead Congress to pass public campaign financing legislation they have long been seeking. Others supporting public financing include former campaign strategists for President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush.

A Senate proposal would fund campaigns with a fee on businesses that get $10 million or more in government contracts. The House would finance it with revenue from auctioning off the television broadcast spectrum, which was opened when the country switched to digital broadcasting. Spectrums are the airwaves used by the government, television and radio broadcasters and cell phone companies, among others.

Fair Elections Now: http://www.fairelectionsnow.org/

end

You can find the entire article on yahoo at the following link:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/CEOs-to-Hill-Quit-calling-us-apf-1760609750.html?x=0&.v=3

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You know those yard signs that pop up around election time.  Normally they area reserved for the “Stop Foreclosure Now!” or “Hungry Student House Painter” businesses.  Every couple of years however, they pop up everywhere with the names of your potential new sheriff, judges, clerk of court and even the President of the United States.  I can only imagine how much those guys from the State Highway Department who cut the grass in the medians hate those signs.  Maybe that’s why elections are in November when the grass cutting season slows down.

Based on the Supreme Court’s decision (outlined below in the Citizen’s United post below), the White House is planning what President Obama is calling a “foreceful response” against the court’s decision.  What does this mean?  You’ve heard of the “public option” in the health care debate, well there’s also something called the public option in campaign finance.  It basically means that if I decide to run for Sheriff, or President that I can use taxpayer money to finance my campaign if I choose to opt out of the private fundraising effort. 

If you own a sign company, a commercial printing business, or a tv station, you may want to start looking around to find out who is going to be administering the public option in your town, county, state or country for that matter.  No doubt the individual campaigns will be allowed to spend the taxpayer money within their own discretion, however the rules that must be followed to be a recipient of those funds should be anticipated.  If this passes, you want to be ready. 

By the way.  What happens to those signs?  Do the politicians have to go out and retrieve them?  Are they recycled?  Who pays to have them picked up or do they end up in the landfill.  I always wondered about that…

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It’s Like a UFC Battle of Twitter vs. Bumblebee

You couldn’t have come up with a better name for this week’s landmark first amendment Supreme Court case if you had been writing a fictional novel.  I was pretty sure we were in trouble when the legendary constitutional attorney, Floyd Abrams, who argued the case, took the time to send me an email. 

I’m not sure what the literary style is called when you name the places and characters after things that describe their mood like Pleasantville or Darth Vader, but I keep pinching myself to see if I’m dreaming about Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.  The decision is handed down by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. at a time when the voice of social media had nearly begun to drown out the voice of the corporation.  That didn’t last long. 

Reading a court decision is like reading a set of google map directions backwards.  It doesn’t make sense to most of us even if you know where you went.  I’ll attempt to break it down for you.  The decision matters to anyone in business and everyone active in social media circles and if you own real estate in Washington, DC you have reason to celebrate because more lobbyists and advertising execs will be moving in soon.  It may prove to be the single biggest court decision relative to freedom of expression since the Bill of Rights was adopted. 

Most people don’t know it, but when you establish a corporation’s charter with any state, the state essentially issues a birth certificate.  A corporation is viewed by the state and the federal government as essentially human.  It can sue in court, be sued, contract and otherwise express itself in the same way that an individual can.  What’s most interesting about this however is that the corporation cannot be punished with prison time, or worse with the death penalty even if it kills people.  

There is an entire realm of study about this topic.  It falls under names such as juristic person or corporate personhood and much of the legal basis is in a case called Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad.  Progressive radio talk show host and author Thom Hartmann wrote a book titled Unequal Protection that discusses the topic at length.  With the advent of the internet and new media, business started investing more effectively in elections which resulted in passage of the McCain-Feingold Act Pub.L.107-155, 116 Stat. 81 on March 27, 2002.  It ammended the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 and is why you hear the following tag line on political ads;  “I’m Dave Harrison and I approved this message.”

Yesterday, all of that changed.  Based on the court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, business can now spend unlimited amounts of money to have their candidates elected.  This is where both the irony of the name Citizens United and the importance of social media enter the story.  Citizens United was actually the name of the small group lead by David Bossie that produced the political movie opposing Senator Hillary Clinton.  If a business wanted to support a candidate, they used to have to register and pass certain tests to determine if they would be allowed, or they could make a soft money donation in such a way as to avoid federal regulations or limits, as by donating to a party organization rather than to a particular candidate or campaign.
 

The movie is called Hillary the Movie http://www.hillarythemovie.com/ and the Supreme Court case was a result of the movie being blocked from being advertised because it was considered to be political in nature under McCain-Feingold.  Although a conservative, Davie Bossie said that he was inspired by the success of Michael Moore’s film Farenheit 9/11.  As a background to this case, before Hillary the Movie was produced, in 2005 Bossie said he filed a complaint with the FEC claiming that ads for Farenheit 9/11 were political advertising. 

After the case was reargued before the Supreme Court back in the summer of 2009, I reached out to Floyd Abrams the well-known attorney who has been a free speech advocate his entire career to see what he was thinking.  I had read over his arguments and one key thing did not make sense to me.  When he took the time to write me back, I knew in my heart that this case would change everything.  My position was quite simple.  The United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights doesn’t give us the right to free speech.  It’s not the reason that I can post this blog.  Most people say things like “I’ve got my rights!”  Well, free speech is not one of them. 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;or the right of the people peacably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. 

What the documents actually say is that congress will make no law to inhibit freedom of expression.  It’s an important distinction.  The founding fathers viewed free speech as an inalienable right.  One that we got from our Creator.  In other words, God made us so that we can speak.  We are born with the power to express ourselves and therefore no man or government should make any law that keeps people from expressing a right that was given to them by their Creator.  I wrote to Mr. Abrams and asked him why he didn’t use this approach in his argument.  When I read his answer, I was fairly sure how the court would decide. 

How did we go from a structure where no law can be enacted that inhibits a person from expressing themselves, to a situation where a corporation has the unlimited right to promote the candidate of their choice?  It is a legal odyssey that can be tracked by the old adage, follow the money.  If you want to know where the executive branch and legislative branch of the U.S. Government are headed, you can simply ask where do the most powerful and well-financed corporations want it to go.  The same can probably be said of your local elections and your local influential businesses and individuals with resources to be applied. 

I don’t think that David Bossie fully realized that he was riding into the Supreme Court on a trojan horse filled with the Fortune 500.  He probably viewed himself as an activist and someone who was trying to counterbalance the success of Michael Moore’s strategy of using the movie genre to affect political opinion.  The fact is that innovations such as TV advertising, the internet and the printing press for that matter allow a great multiplier effect.  The same can be said for social media and communication tools such as Twitter and Facebook.  Technology continues to test our Constitution. 

It was the invention of the airplane that made the tragedy of 9/11 and the Patriot Act possible.  We wouldn’t have total body scanning if we didn’t have aerospace.  The invention of Google Voice and the tracking of our mobility through wireless technologies is already a threat to net neturality against the backdrop of the arguments between AT&T and Google with the FCC.  Innovation and treason are more closely related than most people realize.  We lose sight of that because today’s public innovation focuses on the Apple Iphone when yesterday it focused on the H-bomb.    

Bill Gate’s recent article on Huffington Post brings the innovation issue to light once again.  In writing about carbon emissions, he states, “If we focus on just efficiency to the exclusion of innovation, or imagine that we can worry about efficiency first and worry about energy innovation later, we won’t get there.  The world is distracted from what counts on this issue in a big way.” 

What does global warming have to do with freedom of speech and social media?  It’s simple and it’s the same question we are always faced with when attempting to move forward and advance ourselves and society.  Does the end justify the means?  Is it worth having an internet if a huge part of it is funded by pornography?  Is it worth having the right to bear arms, if one child is injured by a careless gun owner?  I don’t know the answer and in most cases, I don’t even have an opinion and I’m certainly not as smart as Floyd Abrams.  What I do have is the ability to write this post and publish it and for that I’m thankful.  

I believed that Floyd Abrams would lose his argument because he tried to argue that once States allow for corporations to take on a human form, then those same states cannot act unconstitutionally by trampling over those human rights.  Mr. Abrams believes that this power comes from the state’s power to incorporate.  I disagree.  I believe it comes from the interpretation of the constitution where the supreme court views a corporation as having inalienable rights because it is a person in the eyes of the law. 

When it comes down to it, the corporation doesn’t have a voice.  It only has the voice that you and I lend to it as responsible or irresponsible neighbors.  We need to know who is speaking for the corporation and those same people need to be held responsible, the management, the board and even the shareholders.  Does that sound fascist?  I think it does and I’m not a fascist.  I’m a blogger, and I can act like Ben Franklin in his Poor Richard’s Almanac or become Franklin’s Mrs. Silence Dogood character. 

Any army that goes on a battlefield under a certain flag will have a shield.  If they believe that shield will always protect them, they should reconsider the evolution of warfare and weaponry.  Modern day “shield salesmen” such as practicing corporate attorneys and the State of Delaware may want remind their customers of the business truism “caveat emptor” ~ buyer beware.  Ultimately, I believe this decision will greatly weaken the protection found behind the corporate shield by incensing the twitter mob (also known as the electorate). 

Today’s leading commercial, technology and political innovators (think Franklin and Jefferson back then) who are capable of creating the printing press and got a shout out for that piece of equipment in the First Amendment, need to recognize what is empowering modern conversation.  It is in even more interactive, real-time and person-to-person than ever before.  Employees can talk about their companies and customers can talk back to the corporations they buy from.  It’s becoming very difficult to hide and companies that are trying to do so are finding that their business is drying up.  That sounds like free market economics to me.    

If corporations are people, then why are there none on death row?

Floyd Abram’s argument put corporations on an equal footing with humanity and then positions them head-to-head to fight it out on the battlefield of free expression.  His plea to the court that they would see the the difference between one human (a human) and one human (a corporation) was the equivalent of Rodney King’s famous plea of “Let’s just all try to get along” recently repeated by Senate Majority Leadaer, Harry Reid (D-Nevada) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lyJh5e6Xnw   Unfortunately that’s not what corporations do.  I have been active in several corporations for thirty years.  They are designed to win and in this case, just like the next election in your neighborhood, that’s exactly what they did. 

How can any person be expected to win an advertising shouting match against a corporation?  Thankfully this law will pit many private corporations against entities of equally powerful public interest and the noise will be deafening.  What interests me most in this is how the peer-to-peer power of the internet to create connections, raise consciousness and influence public opinion will play out against this background.  Ironically it is Citizens United (you and me neighbor) pitted against the election system in the battle for our family’s futures.  Unfortunately, most of us will live for less than a hundred years.  Those corporations however, (mine included) in all their so-called humanness, have managed to solve that nagging issue of death.  Think Latin for corpse… incorporate.  It’s essentially the living corpse if you deconstruct it. 

An excerpt from my email response to Mr. Abrams.

Thank you for your kind and timely response.  I pledge not to engage you further than this one email (today or otherwise) after your certainly long day.  

I would have to say that I disagree with at least one comment you made and that is your reference to “the nature of our nation.”  Sir, our nation doesn’t have a nature, only it’s people have a nature according to its founders with whom I agree.  The very spot where I am sitting was quite recently The Cherokee Nation.  That fact alone attests to the durability of any nature attributed to nations and their geography yet its people live on.  

When you consider your own strange and wonderful nature and that of your family, as I do mine, I think you will agree.  It wasn’t substantively less the words written in the Declaration of Independence itself that declared such a thing and more the signatures of men, and the risk to the real lives those signatures represented that empowered its fidelity to “We the people.”

From a practical standpoint, managing what a state may choose to regulate or not to regulate through statute is no fine point.  On a recent trip to the Maryland shore, I was told last week to sign up for a saltwater fishing license and to report my catch to the state even if it was deepwater offshore fishing.  Can a state behave in an unconstitutional manner?  Indeed they can.  Judges in your own state courts fail to inform their juries every day of their right to nullify the law and decide based on the jury member’s conscience as is clearly allowed in our Constitution.  Are you able to produce a better example of behaving in an unconstitutional manner than failing to tell the “whole truth.”  

Certainly no corporate charter has ever, or will ever, possess the vitality of even the smallest unborn child and its ability to change the world for better or worse, to inspire, destroy or be destroyed against its will.  Consider the inalienable right to free speech of the owner of embryonic stem cells as compared to that of a state chartered entity and then convince a jury of our peers that I am wrong. 

Going Rouge On the Web

I made the decision over the past few months to do what I call “going-John-Galt-not” (my own Atlas Shrugged twisted version of Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue) by staking a public claim on the web.  Much of that decision was based on what I expected to be the outcome from the Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission case.  I have been waiting patiently since September to hear the decision.  I launched the http://TradeWithDave.com blog a couple of weeks ago.  In light of Justice Robert’s timing, I guess I got the jump on him by a couple of weeks.

Justice Stevens who was dissenting on the decision did write the following; “Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it.  They cannot vote or run for office because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters.”  

When it comes to the Rodney King/Harry Reid question “Can we all just get along?”  I’m up for that.  I would like to get along with you.  When it comes to getting along with corporations, even my own, I’m not so sure I trust them; the corporations that is.  I was looking at that corporate shield after the Supreme Court’s decision and I think I just noticed a weak spot in it called Citizens United v FEC.  In the back of my mind I have to wonder if this is not a rallying cry from the court to the people to wake up and defend ourselves.  I also had a vision of Bumblebee, that yellow Camaro in the movie Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. 

I need to be more careful what I say about Bumblebee, he’s nearly human you know.  The question has been the same all along;  “Bumblebee, what do you want from me?”  The answer is simple and it’s the same as in the movie.  “I want to stay with the boy.”  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8Nun9HGgBw.  What creation of the state wouldn’t want to stay with the boy?  He’s human you know.

Update:  This issue has grown into a huge one over the past year and we have lots of content relating to it here on the site.  Here’s a link to all the posts that include Citizens United:  http://tradewithdave.com/?s=%22citizens+united%22

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I have a confession to make.  The rise of social media made me angry.  There is only one very specific age group that spent their entire education growing up without computers and then spent their entire business careers with computers – mine.  I’m forty-eight and if you’re forty-eight you know exactly what I’m talking about.  Not only do I know what it felt like to spend $5,000 on an IBM PC/AT, I even had a Commodore 64 with dual floppy drives and I even knew a guy who had an Osborne “portable.” 

Spending a career in business development, sales and marketing I have spent plenty of time with computers in the realm of application deployment and systems integration.  I’ve run the gamut from green screen IBM AS 400′s to open source on the cloud and although tech has not been my shtick, sales has been.  That’s why the success of social media was so unsettling. 

I’m not sure when I first heard about it, but I follow this kind of thing closely, so I guess it was my kids when they were in grade school and Facebook began circulating.  I remember warning them about the dangers of sharing information publicly and the fact that footprints on the web would be permanent.  I knew it was fairly inevitable for them, but for myself, no way.  I had a network that I had spent over twenty years building.

Badges, we don’t need no badges!

I didn’t need people facebooking me, friending me or following me and I certainly had no intention of following people I didn’t even know.  If I wanted to follow someone, I would buy their book.  If they hadn’t written a book, then why would I want to follow them anyway unless I was a stalker.  The whole social web had a creepy aspirational, multi-level marketing feel to it.  Sure I had spent my career aspiring, but I did it the hard way, not through some trinket like a computer script or an online directory.  So I sat back and watched. 

Of course e-commerce had a great appeal to me as a business tool as did e-mail, application service providers and just about anything you can think of that harnessed computing power for business by creating network connections.  I saw great value in the efficiency and effectiveness of technology to serve the needs the businesses I led.  I just didn’t see leveraging a social graph as anything but uncouth.  Leave it to the rising popularity of Asian-style frozen yogurt with fresh fruit toppings to change my belief system.

I became involved in the launch of a start-up frozen yogurt  retail business.  It’s along the same lines as a Pinkberry or Red Mango, but with some key distinctions.  One of the staff members said they wanted to put up a Facebook site for the business about eight months ago.  Of course I had been familiar with Facebook and all the other names such as MySpace, Friendster, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, etc. for the past decade.  I had received my share of invitations to join these sites. 

Wait, there’s more…

Invitations to join a site usually came in the form of emails from overly-aggressive folks (often job hunters) that I had met when traveling on business or working at a trade show.  So far, I had declined to join any of them and I was doing just fine without thousands of new “friends” I hardly new.  I had managed to leave very few webtracks.  I was able to run companies with thousands upon thousands of customers all the while not hiding from anyone and freely sharing my business email addresses.  I was even told by the postmaster once that a company I was running was the second largest user of the postal service in his region and every piece of direct mail had my contact information on it.  I wasn’t afraid.  

On top of all this, being a weekly air traveler, my name got on some sort of  TSA watch list for about a year and I was hassled nearly every time I went to the airport.  I knew the implications of The Patriot Act and frankly I didn’t want my stuff laying around all over the web.  Nonetheless, as a marketer, I could not deny the reality of social media so I continued to study it. 

I had developed some early insights into mass customization and personalization technologies and had worked closely with Xerox and was a presenter to the Graphic Arts Technical Foundation on the power of personalization technologies in commercial printing.  I also had the distinct pleasure of being invited to Hewlett Packard’s Boise, Idaho headquarters for a confidential peak at their Indigo publishing platform.  This one-to-one technology was a marketing guys dream.  But it wasn’t really peer-to-peer.  It was more like B2C within the hyperclean environment of database hygiene.  Very effective, but not conversational by any means.  Back to the yogurt store.   

Yo Yo on the froyo

I asked the store manager if setting up a Facebook page for a business would be considered spamming.  She responded by saying; “People ’friend’ companies they love and people love the yogurt store.”  I said to go ahead and I intentionally stayed out of it so that it wouldn’t have any sort of corporate feel to it and that I wouldn’t be able to mess it up by trying to complicate it with API’s or some other tech leverage.  As a marketing endeavor it was a huge success and dozens of people started linking to company’s Facebook page. 

At this point I began to realize that I was going to have to make a change in my own personal social media strategy.  These people loved the yogurt store.  They loved the staff and there was nothing “aspirational” about any of it except aspiring to enjoy life in a great setting, with a great product and with great people.  That was the same thing that I had spent my entire career doing so I was very comfortable with the concept of happy customers and innovation.  That set me thinking.  

There’s something real here.  Whether Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook) is a good guy or not may not matter to me.  The fact that Facebook, Twitter and the like are a huge compromise of privacy is undeniable.  The connections being facilitated by the tool were real and it showed in the results.  If I ever planned to use a telephone or internet connection, driver’s license or passport again, any hope of privacy was diminished by a congressional act titled Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (Public Law Pub.L. 107-56).

Whenever I don’t understand something, in addition to praying about it, I usually turn to theology, philosopy or science to attempt and uncover the answer.  This time I started considering the semantics of the word friend.  Although I disagree with nearly everything he says, I enjoy listening to the ideas of guys like Noam Chomsky because I believe it sharpens my own thought process.  In a world of deconstructionism, anything goes when it comes to the meaning of the word friend.  My thoughts quickly turned to fourth grade and the time I received a note with some coins in it asking me to check a box if I “like liked” the young girl sitting across the aisle from me.

How does it feel when someone tells you they like-like you?

Was it possible that merely the act of asking someone to “friend” you, or “friending someone” (i.e. following on Twitter or other affirming behavior) could be creating a quantum effect on humans?  If I contacted you and said “I admire you, I respect you, I believe in you, I love you, I want to friend you”, was it possible that this choice on my part was supporting the three psychological needs that must be satisfied to foster well being and health according to Self-Determination Theory; competence, relatedness and autonomy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory)?  Was it possible that the success of social media was due to it’s connection with well being in an often times lonely and destructive world? 

In my opinion, there are close connections between Self-Determination Theory, the Hawthorne Effect, the Observer-Expectancy Effect and other essentially quantum concepts.  Not being a physicist or even capable of understanding quantum mechanics, I chalk it up to our inalienably endowed ability bestowed upon us by our Creator to change the future through the choices that we make.  Whether those choices involve  selecting fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, or the tree of life., there is no denying what Einstein called the most powerful force in the universe – compound interest.   

I’m am fairly certain that somewhere along the line there was a person who was going to take their own life when they were friended by someone online whom they had never met.  If all the millions of dollars made by social media tech entrepreneurs were placed on a scale, they would still would not tip the weight of the value of that one human life saved.  Although we should resist tyrannical governments and laws that will inhibit free expression, fear of our neighbor is even a greater form of tyranny.  Today you still have the choice to escape your government.  Who can escape their good neighbor?  Who would want to?  I guess this isn’t about Twitter or the latest Iphone app.  I guess it’s not even about being social.  I guess it’s about relationships.

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I decide to follow one person on Twitter.  His user name is BlindGuyDo.  The painting above is his profile picture.  Here’s what his bio says; “What Can A Blind Guy Do? …. Play Guitar , Paint Pictures like my profile pic is one of a girl i painted a few years ago , went blind.” 

I have not uploaded a photograph for my profile pic yet.   419 people follow BlindGuyDo on Twitter.

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