Takes Two Arms And Two Legs To Swim

This is my attempt to recoincile my stances on free trade, and education and health.

The Failure Of The Global South In The Recent Global Trade Talks
Race Relations, Personal Relations, Free Trade

There is sound economic theory behind free trade. If America had $1 in 2000, 33 of the cents got created in the Clinton 1990s. And understanding the essence of free trade was key to how Clinton achieved the longest peacetime economic expansion in history. And he did more for education than five presidents before him though still not quite enough. He fell short on health, far short. It was not Hillary, it was Bill.

Free trade is like moving your arms while swimming. Education and health are a leg each. You need all four limbs to swim well. The body is the economy.

Bill Gates voted for Clinton in 1992. Warren Buffett is a Democrat. Larry Ellison has always maintained he would not mind paying higher taxes. The two Google founders are diehard Bill Clinton fans. Those are just a few examples.

My point being the true entrepreneurs are all progressives. Progressives dream up the industries of tomorrow, they create the companies of tomorrow, they create the jobs of tomorrow. They create socially progressive corporate cultures. Progressive entrepreneurs are our allies. Only the fake entrepreneurs bribe presidents for tax cuts to pad up their bank accounts. All Nobel Prize winning economists disagreed with the George W. tax cuts. But then the guy is also a creationist. Talk about worldviews. (Dumb And Dumberer: Creationist Bush)

Bill Gates is a huge fanatic when it comes to public education. That is a progressive right there.

And I wonder if we should not pass a constitutional amendment such that noone should have to pay more than 40% of their income in taxes by all levels of government put together. That would take tax cuts out of the political equation and the Republican regressives would be deprived. George W. never saw a problem whose solution did not lie in tax cuts.

Who pays how much in taxes is a legitimate part of the political conversation, but once that money has been paid, that collective money belongs to all 300 million Americans equally. The one person, one vote mechanism has to be perfected to help the poorest Americans feel that sense of ownership.

Corporate welfare is a major drain.

I imagine a world where the global per capita income is $20,000 and growing. Free trade is fundamental to such a vision. And we have to watch out for right wing alarmist rhetoric on India, China and other emerging economies. If India grows richer, Indians have more money to buy American products and services. That is good news. It truly is a win-win situation. There is room for everybody. Wealth is literally created out of thin air.

Legendary network marketer Bill Britt once said there is enough marble just in West Virginia to build a mansion for every family on the planet. But we have to come up with the political, social, economic infrastructures to make that happen. We progressives come into that infrastructure part. We are in the business of building that political infrastructure to unleash the human potential.

Lifelong Education

The information age asks for it. Education can never stop for anyone. And it has to be reimagined. It has to be broken free of geography.

Think of this cocktail: free, wireless broadband plus all books online for free, all, textbooks, fiction, non-fiction, all.

Free Wireless Broadband, Reenergized Microsoft
In Defense Of Google Digitizing Books
Into the Nitty Gritty Of WiMax

Google has come up with a business model whereby a company can offer free wi-fi and make money through ads. It also has taken the lead on digitizing books, although the idea really needs to be thought through.

The book industry as we have known it will likely disappear. And that is just fine. If technology brings the price of books to zero, then so be it. Don't fight the technology. Not even Google has taken the next step. But I believe the next step is for a company like Google to become a digital publisher. Books are put online that readers may access for free. Money is made throuugh ads. Google and the author split the money. Google could suggest 50-50. If Yahoo says 60-40 in favor of the author, there is competition right there.

And the hardware industry needs to make the computer screen friendly to the eyes.

Print books become antiques and cottage industries.

Universal Health Care

There should be a two tier model: public health care centers that work on a drop-by basis for anyone inside the geographical United States that keep expanding in scope as the economy expands, kind of like minimum wage, although that wage has stagnated too long. And the private sector health care with reform. Let's face it, the private health care sector is not exactly in tune with basic market forces, or it would have taken the lead on adopting information technology in all aspects of its operations. Something is going on. Daal mein kuchh kala hai, as they say in Hindi: there is something dark in the lentil.

I think the total, transparent democracy weapon would work great for another major effort for health care reform. Blog it all the way. Let all voices be heard and archived, even those opposed to any reform, especially theirs, so our grassroots volunteers can see for themselves where the clots are. We want Steve Forbes on record saying a flat tax is a cure to all health care reform.

And you expand the insurance coverage.

So, have a bedrock of public health care, reform the sector in general, and expand coverage through insurance with the goal being universal coverage down the line.

And a major cultural shift has to be engineered, from an illness-focus to a wellness-focus. You score points when you do what it takes to stay healthy. Are you sleeping your six to eight hours? Do you drink your daily water? Are you physically vigorous for at least half an hour each day? Go walk. Follow me. Do you eat a balanced diet? Do you eat your fruits and vegetables? Do you stay away from smoke and alcohol? The city hall should pass a law and make bars serve mango lussee. Do you get your multi-vitamins from my online shop?

And, last but not the least, do you vote for doctors?

More On Organization

An Email From Headquarters

Luigi.

I hope you are okay with my keeping public our conversation. This is the transparent democracy part.

I just wanted to add a few things in response to your email.

I am not asking the question if Dean will run in 2008 or not. I have met him twice, and it is all over his face. He will. I knew that even before I met him. If he does not run in 2008, then 2004 was sham. And I know it was not, I was part of it.

I am not even asking the question if he will win. Victory is guaranteed. He will win.

The question I am asking is what if 2008 is more like 1776, a year when democracy itself gets reinvented. Will we have the orgnanizational framework in place to handle all that outburst of energy all over the map? That is what I think about. The grassroots organizational structure that will elect him will become even more important after he is in the White House. The very idea of governance stands to get reinvented.

When the goofy white men invented democracy in 1776, they did have many deficiencies, when looked at in hindsight and compared to the future, but it was a total revolution when compared to the past. 1860 expanded upon the idea. Then women got voting rights. In 1932 organized labor gained some sort of a victory. 1960 saw JFK really bring the focus onto the primaries. 1992 was also a watershed. Bill Clinton claimed he was the first person to get himself elected president solely based on his network of personal friends, Friends Of Bill. He said he became president because he had more friends than anyone else in America.

The original idea was of a republic. The people vote for these hopefully wise white men, and they take care of business for the next so many years. That idea stands to get challenged through DFA. Citizens organized at grassroots levels participate in the democracy on a monthly basis. That is a fundamental departure. The country moves from being a republic to becoming a democracy. Are we up for it? That is the question.

I think we are on our way to direct elections for President. Bye bye electoral college.

So the organizational framework is of fundamental importance.

You are right, most of what I am talking about is political and organizational, not technological. The technology already exists and is available for free online for anyone who might want to use it. And it is only going to get better.

I am very impressed with DFA Link.

Maybe you have the people and the resources, but I would be wary of DFA becoming too technology centric. We are not a technology company, we are a political organization. It makes sense to do some things in-house. But I think we should be leery of trying to do everything in-house.

If you think you are up for it, by all means do the blog aspects in-house. But I am kind of thinking, why would we want to compete with Google? They show signs of becoming the successor company to Microsoft itself. They have billions in the bank, and more coming. Why not just use their Blogger? They also have audio and video options. And they keep improving the whole thing. Blogger is as close to word processing online as it gets.

Instead we focus on having a framework. A mechanism that puts all Deaniac blogs on one map, a mechanism for Deanics to vote for blogs and blog entries. That way we still do the core work, but what can already be done online for free, we don't duplicate, and instead pour our resources into political and organizational work.

Just a thought.

We will keep talking.