Category Archives: News

Is Being Upset Enough to Sustain a National Movement?

Economics, Education, News, Politics, Social Networking, , , , , , , ,

The Occupy Wall Street movement is turning out to be a very interesting flashpoint in modern day history. If you follow the news, commentators are going out of their way trying to explain away something they can’t explain by using metaphors and comparisons to previous movements that are completely void of any dichotomous connections. What is simply happening is that something new has emerged, and the media has no way of explaining it.

So, let me explain what is really going on. What we have are a lot of people who are pissed off because the American Dream (or whatever international aspirations they might have if they’re not Americans) isn’t working out as originally sold by the marketers known as government and media. It used to be if you worked hard, put in your time, and did the right things, you would come out ahead, and that your children would end up doing better than you did before. This would continue on for generations until several generations later the new species wouldn’t even recognize the old species.

That works great in theory. However, the theory doesn’t account for the concept of greed. A capitalistic system works really well at bringing the society to a higher level of achievement, but what doesn’t get discussed is that not everyone rises up with the new tide of prosperity. In reality, a capitalistic system is designed to benefit those who are capable of taking advantage of the process, and in a zero sum economy, someone generally has to do horribly bad in order for someone to do horribly well. Socialism is the economic system where everyone comes out equally, although not always at the best they could be (as government isn’t known for raising tides of boats of economies all that well when there’s no incentive to provide for upward mobility). But capitalism is a different animal, and equality has never been a promise, a guarantee or even a necessity. Instead, capitalism promises prosperity for some, and desparity for most others. What we’ve only recently discovered is that 99% is desparity while 1% is prosperity in this zero sum game.

That is why people are pissed. You see, most people don’t want to be part of the losing side of economics. Yet, whenever this gets addressed, the 1% (and the clueless numbers in the 99% hoodwinked by the 1% to believe that they’ll one day have a shot at being one of the 1%) does everything possible to make the 99% sound clueless, making such commentary irrelevant, and even more important: Unheard.

But one thing happened that wasn’t a part of the capitalistic dilemma: Education. Many more people achieved education than a capitalistic system can actually maintain. Oh, this works out well if the education is vocational in nature, in that everyone exists for the purpose of feeding the greedy animal, but if the education is social in nature, and people become made aware, rather than compliant, then there would eventually be a reckoning. It’s somewhat inevitable, although I don’t even think Marx or Hegel predicted it would happen as quickly as it is beginning to occur; they suspected much more saturation would have been necessary first, but who knew?

That’s where we are today. The movement has no leadership because there is no one who can steer a crowd to inevitable collapse. There is no rallying cry that can push people in that direction. And there is really no rallying cry that can push a population back in the other direction once the masses have been unleashed.

So, the question is: Are we there yet? If we’re at the inevitable saturation point that leads to eventual destruction of the capitalistic system, then nothing exists that can push the movement backwards. If we’re not there yet, the people who hold onto the reins of power will continue to use their influence to push the masses back to compliance again. But one thing is certain: There will be no actual compromise because the holders of power cannot compromise without acknowledging that the system was flawed to begin with.

So we’re left with the question of whether or not there is enough anger, frustration and disgust amongst the population to fuel a movement further to a point where changes will actually take place. As collective action theory points out, people will gather together for a common purpose, but if they do not receive a payoff for their efforts, the movement dies until it raises steam again. If they do receive a payoff, they may settle down, thinking they achieved their goals but not really satisfied (meaning they will eventually have to rise again and start over from scratch), or they will be so insulted by the compromises asked of them that the movement will fuel itself and sustain itself further until it actually acquires the goals it sets for itself.

Either way, no one is going to sit down and write out a list of wants and needs to sustain the movement (something the media keeps asking for). It will either achieve what it needs to achieve (fulfilling a sense of punctuated equilibrium) and return rhetoric to a sense of order again, or it will overwhelm everything until it becomes the new world order itself.

Only the future can really tell.

Now that Spock (Zachary Quinto) has come out of the closet, will it affect his Star Trek career?

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First off, I have to say “hats off” to Zachary Quinto for coming out of the closet as a response to a bullying incident that he felt warranted his revelation of his gay lifestyle. Quinto, who is best known for playing Spock in the Star Trek reboot and the sinister Sylar on the television series Heroes, probably could have remained incognito about his sexual lifestyle and no one would have really suspected (or even cared), but now that he has revealed his personal background it should be interesting to see where things go from here.

The reason I mention this is because of a distinct hypocritical situation that is probably going to play itself out over the next few years. You see, Star Trek has always been one of those shows that likes to think of itself as forward thinking and taboo breaking. It was known for the first interracial kiss that occurred between Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura. When Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura, was thinking of quitting Star Trek, Star Trek lore reminds us that Martin Luther King, Jr. told her she couldn’t quit, that she was making strides for the Civil Rights Movement that were happening in front of the audience in ways that no one else could do at the time. Whereas she thought she was playing a simple part, and not receiving the recognition deserved, others saw her as the ground-breaking maverick who would forever be remembered for her accomplishments.

It seems somewhat ironic, or surprisingly symbolic, that Lieutenant Uhura is again involved in another stride forward from Star Trek, as it is her reboot relationship with Commander Spock that breaks the traditional lore, showing her involved in a relationship with the Vulcan, whereas none was suggested before during the Leonard Nimoy era of Spock. Now, this Spock is going to be seen in a completely different light, because now everyone going to see the new episodes of the reboot will forever know that the new Spock is being played by a gay man. If seen from the eyes of the Star Trek universe, this should be seen as nothing but a step forward, as some of the newer episodes of the later series, like the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine were not afraid to explore very controversial and ground-breaking ground in this area, including an episode where the Enterprise’s doctor, a woman, rekindled a romance with a species hopping former lover who was now in the body of a woman, causing one of the more awkward love-scenes between two women in a way that was quite brilliant in that it was not exploited, comfortable or in any way frightened of what it was attempting to portray.

However, even though the show might be ground-breaking and willing to explore new ground, I wonder if the fan base feels the same way. While I have zero problem with an outed gay man playing the iconic Commander Spock in the new reboot, one has to wonder how the loyal fans will handle the same kind of scenes where Kirk and Spock were conquering the galaxy together. Even during the straight days of the two iconic galactic heroes, there was a spread of fandom fiction that postulated the possibilities of Kirk and Spock being gay lovers, and quite often such portrayals were seen with harsh indignation from other fans. The very idea that Kirk and Spock might have even been suspected of homosexuality filled pages and pages of fan blogs about the two characters, and quite often there was an immediate condemnation of the very nature of the idea.

So, how will fans handle this sort of a character going forward? Will they be able to separate the actor from the character, or will they feel an apprehension with Quinto as the iconic Spock? When they see Spock wooing Lieutenant Uhura, will there be a sense that something’s just not right, as it is very hard to see the character through the eyes of an actor who is perceived to be faking a romantic involvement (even though that’s what most actors are supposed to be doing anyway)? Much like the criticisms of Rock Hudson after it was discovered he died of AIDS and was secretly gay, are audiences capable of that suspension of disbelief, or will they spend their time over analyzing every scene, kind of like music critics over analyzed Melissa Etheridge’s lyrics after discovering she was a lesbian, believing that somehow that changed the very nature of any love ballad she may have composed?

Personally, I find Quinto to be a brilliant actor and look forward to the many roles he will continue to play, but at the same time I wonder how much criticism he will receive as the indominable Spock, now having to live up to the baggage that will now be added to the part.

Netflix drops Quikster but Duane really doesn’t care

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I received an email today from the CEO of Netflix. How nice. Not long ago, I received another email from him, indicating that he was raising the price of Netflix by a LOT. And then he sent me another email explaining that he was going to be splitting up Netflix into Netflix and Quikster, basically forcing me to have to use two different services to get the same service I get in one place previously. And then he went on the news and started talking to Netflix customers like a mother talking to a five year old kid who doesn’t understand why mommy and daddy are splitting up, and then decides to explain it by saying that daddy is leaving mommy because you were bad.

Anyway, so this latest email was explaining to me that he decided NOT to split up Netflix into two companies, but sorry about the price increase. That’s sticking because Netflix needs to make a profit, and I’ve been getting too good of a deal from Netflix. Well, he was right. But when he sent me those rude emails a few months back, I did what came naturally. I cut off Netflix for good and decided while it used to be a good deal, I kind of wanted to do business with companies that don’t make me feel like a five year old kid. Yeah, I threw a temper tantrum, like a five year old kid. And I left Netflix. Not coming back, so their CEO can send me all sorts of emails about how he’s changed and isn’t going to hit me any more, but our relationship is over.

I moved on. It’s not me. It’s you. Sorry. And please stop hitting mommy. The neighbors are getting tired of banging on the walls.

How Do You Steer a Rudderless Movement?

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When the Tea Party first emerged, one of the notable features of the gatherings was the simple fact that there appeared to be no leadership whatsoever. However, as time passed, a few people became the spokespeople for the movement, and now whenever the “organization” is discussed, people can point at a few politicians and say “that’s their leader”. However, at one point, there were no leaders, and when the news media was trying to get comments from the protesters, it was very interesting to see how they tried to manage the fact that there was no one to actually interview.

Fast-forward to today, and we have yet another movement taking place that has virtually no leadership whatsoever. Unlike the Tea Party movement, this “organization” tends to hail from the liberal side of the political spectrum, but like the Tea Party, it shares the one attribute of having more in common with anarchy than actual political representation. The movement I’m talking about, of course, is the Take Back Wall Street movement that is currently occupying a lot of the current news.

It is yet another fascinating moment in people politics because it has absolutely no organization and has more in common with flash mobs than it does in any previous type of organizing behavior. Most events tend to be sporadic, immediate and out of nowhere, but unlike a flash mob, these movements tend to be stationary once they actually occur, meaning they don’t appear and then go away a few minutes, or hours, later.

But there are no leaders. And because of that, it is very difficult to determine exactly what they want, or what it would take to make them satisfied. The consensus, if there is one, is that people are outraged, upset and not going to take it any more, but when it comes to defining what they’re outraged about, why they’re upset, or what exactly they’re not going to take any more, that’s a little less apparent. Taking it one step further, what they actually want to fulfill their movement’s charter, if there was one, is even less tangible.

Analyzing it, they appear to be upset that Wall Street, or the people who work on Wall Street, have their own interests in mind at the expense of the rest of the country, or world. The claim is often made that the 1% (those who profit off of Wall Street antics) are profiting at the expense of the rest of the 99% of the country (and world). So, the desire is to somehow convince the 1% that the 99% are not going to take it any longer, and if things don’t change, that 99% is going to do something. What exactly, I’m not sure. No one else appears to know either. But they’re pissed, and they’re going to do “something” if “something” isn’t done to change things.

With a charter like that, it appears very difficult to figure out what they’re going to want or need to appease their members. Even worse, there’s no way to figure out who their members are, or even if they would be satisfied if “something” was done to appease them in the first place. I’m reminded of Mancur Olson’s The Logic of Collective Action, in which he pointed out that people have a tendency to free ride their way through collective action, expecting to achieve results but aren’t willing to do much to achieve those results. There appears to be a lot of free rider activity going on here, as was noticed during a recent Chicago flash mob of the Take Back Wall Street variation, reported by the Wall Street Journal, in which an independent trader named Roger Brownworth points out that he was disappointed at the turnout (he had seen only about 20 protesters), but at the same time didn’t seem all that interested in joining it himself.

But Olson isn’t the only source that should be of interest here. I’m also reminded of Poor People’s Movements by Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward (a great book, I HIGHLY recommend), who remind us that when people get together and form major movements to benefit their own interests, they’re often appeased by very minor reforms or benefits and then don’t show up for future gatherings, convinced that because there was such great outpouring the first time, they won’t be expected to show up for the next one, kind of backing up Olson’s projection. The Chicago gathering is a direct example of Piven and Cloward’s argument.

But that’s the movement itself, which in Piven and Cloward’s book usually points at an organization that has some type of leadership. With the Take Back Wall Street movement, we have no apparent leader where everything seems to be organized a lot like a flock of birds all turning together at the same time as a part of a social being rather than a collaboration of like-minded individuals. During the Gulf War protests during the Bush Administration, many gatherings of protesters were similar to this flash mob mentality, but quite often they were derailed by one or two individuals doing something uniquely ridiculous, like Woody Harrelson trying to climb up the gratings of the Bay Bridge during a San Francisco protest. Other major demonstrations were often turned by one or two individuals who acted as spontaneous agitators, yelling out something like “let’s take City Hall” which would cause throngs of people to start running off in one direction, causing a riot where a peaceful gathering was taking place only moments before.

That’s probably the biggest fear we have right now as when you have a mob (the obvious physical make-up of a flash “mob”), there’s a very real possibility that an agitator or two, either spontaneously or surreptitiously placed, may cause a group of people to react in a way that they were not intending to do when they first gathered to protest over concerns they may have had about injustices and unfairness. How many major sport events have turned violent because one or two individuals started doing or saying something stupid that somehow riled up a group of people who were already excited by the happenings of the particular event they were attending? Quite a few actually. Malcolm Gladwell points out in his book Blink that one of the biggest problems with excitable events, like a police car chase, is the excitement of the chase itself, which often can lead to adrenalin requiring some kind of release, which would explain why so many car chases end up with a physical altercation that might not have happened if people hadn’t been overly excited by the chase in the first place. The same thing occurs at these major social gatherings, like sports events, or for the sake of this essay, a flash mob. People are excited, they are yelling, and quite often it only takes a nudge in one direction for a group of people to start doing things they might not normally have done if they weren’t already overly excited.

Which means, there’s a good chance that one of these Take Back Wall Street events is going to turn violent if they continue to remain without leadership. However, if someone, or some people, arrives to take charge of this venue, there’s no promise that the presence of leadership is guaranteed to be in any way more positive. History is replete with examples of mob leaders who did some pretty horrific things once empowered with that ability to lead a group of people. And then there’s the equal fear that the emergence of leadership might doom the movement in the first place. Since the creation of “leaders” for the Tea Party movement, the spontaneous nature of that process has diminished greatly because a lot of the people who originally affiliated themselves with an unaffiliated organization never really fell in line with self-proclaimed wannabe leaders like Palin, Bachman, and the 70 or so Republican legislators who have claimed ties to the Tea Party foundations. Many of its members have actually gone underground, realizing that what they had to complain about was never solved by having people claim their throne in their name while never actually espousing their true beliefs.

The same problems may be seen for a Take Back Wall Street movement. The current crop of wannabe leaders already showing up are the likes of Michael Moore and other already entrenched in Washington political Democrats who see the movement as a way to shore up more support for their positions they already hold. There is also the tendency of the media to try to control the movement so it can be easier to report. CNN is already reporting How Occupy Wall Street Has Evolved, when CNN is still as clueless as the movement itself as to how it is changing, what it actually stands for, and what it actually intends to do.

What’s probably most significant is that a movement is underway, but no one knows where it is heading. It can become distruptive, like the Bolsheviks in Russia at the turn of the 20th century, it can be innovative like the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia in 1968, it can transform like the recent Arab Spring, or it may write its own chapter of unforseen future circumstances. Either way, it probably shouldn’t be ignored.

Reviewing “That Used to Be Us” by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum

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I picked up this book on whim, not sure if it would end up being partisan drivel, interesting or just a waste of time. Well, halfway through it, I decided on “interesting”. While reading it, I couldn’t help but be reminded of my experience when I was reading the book “Teachers Have It Easy” (don’t remember the three authors), a book that tells the brutal truth of what it’s like to be a teacher. I remember at the time of reading that book how some of their stories rivaled my own, and there were times when I just shook my  head because I knew that other people needed to be reading the book, but they never would (or will). So, I’d end up reading a book that reinforced what I already knew, and I’d constantly be berated by people who knew nothing of teaching, but would act like they knew everything because “my mom was a teacher” or “I know a teacher” or my favorite: “I don’t have to be a teacher to know how easy they have it.”

“That Used to Be Us” also talks about one of the platforms that needs to be embraced in order to make things better, and one of those platforms involves teachers. In order to make America strong again, we need to empower teachers, and that means asking a lot of people to do something that definitely won’t be in their best interest, and that’s the part their book never really addresses. You see, the majority of the critics against teachers outright hate teachers. They don’t know enough about them, but they know that they hate them, and they take every opportunity to cast ridicule upon them. I see it on message boards and newspaper letter sites all of the time. MLive.com is one of those that excels in this. What happens is a bunch of “good ole’ boys” start posting about how teachers have it so easy with their big paychecks, their miniscule hours and the fact that they get these HUGE vacations every year. And then they’ll drone on about unions and how teachers are lazy, overpaid, quite often stupid, and more often than not, the problem. Try to talk to them politely, and they flame you left and right. Try to engage them in argumentation, and they start making personal attacks that have no actual basis in reality, but are designed to hurt and throw mud all over the walls.

Friedman and Mandelbaum rightly believe that the solution needs to start with an empowering of teachers who will then embrace a Colorado style of educational reform, but at the same time don’t seem to offer any way of getting everyone else on the side of teachers to make it happen. What ends up happening almost every time that standards are increased is that they become punitive so that unions become defensive, and then you end up with no one actually trying to improve things for children but people are seen as targets rather than part of the solution. For most people, educational reform is a zero sum game where one side has to lose for the other side to win, rather than their approach which is for all sides to win. Unfortunately, that’s what always makes it completely incapable of achieving success.

Part of the solution would be a simple paradigm shift in respect towards educators, which doesn’t happen too often in this country. I saw it when I went to Korea and was traveling home through China. I was stopped at the Beijing Airport, and I was being questioned about the medication that I was carrying with me (I had stupidly forgot to pack the prescription information with it, and Korean pharmacies have a tendency to just package pharmaceuticals in individual bags with no markings on them). I was in a seven hour layover, so I wasn’t in any hurry, but it didn’t look like I was going to be getting through customs any time soon. However, about fifteen minutes or so into it, one of the customs guards asked me my occupation, and I said I was a teacher, that I taught little kids (which is what I had done in Korea). His eyes opened, and he immediately took off to track down his supervisor, who had been in and out of dealing with me about the whole “drug” issue. The supervisor came back with another customs guard, a young woman. They both stood there for a second and just stared at me. Then the first guard started talking to them with animation, pantomiming the whole “little kids” action I had done when describing my job. Then both the supervisor and the other customs woman smiled, thanked me for my time and packed up all of my Korean bags of pharmaceuticals into my bag and released me to the waiting area untl my plane arrived.

Right then and there, you could see how much respect they had for someone who actually taught children. It didn’t matter that I was an American, and that the children I taught were Korean. I was a teacher, and it mattered to them.

We don’t get that sense of pride in this country. Ever. And that’s why it is so hard to find quality teachers who really care about their job. It obviously isn’t the money that keeps them in the profession, no matter how much political spin people want to put into it. For someone who has a master’s degree, the pay for the work isn’t worth it. The drama, the politics, the hassles and the unrealistic expectations with the lack of care of parents for the proficiency of their children…just doesn’t make it worth it. So it has to be something that keeps teachers in the business, and quite often it’s the few successes they do get from the struggles we go through.

Unfortunately, as long as the people in this country treat teachers as they always treat teachers, don’t expect things to get any better. And as for the book, much like the previous book I mentioned, I don’t expect anyone to read it who needs to read it. It will be read by people who already have an idea of what the book is expected to say, and only by them. I’ve actually be surprised at a lot of the information contained in the book, and I am one of the people who tends to read this kind of book. Unfortunately, the people who need to read it…well, they won’t.

Why I Dumped the White House LinkedIn Group

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The other day, the President of the United States participated in a forum on the social networking site, LinkedIn. Having been a member of the White House LinkedIn group for a long time now, I observed the spectacle and didn’t think much of it. But then I posted another article to the White House group, which was subsequently ignored by the moderators and passed over as more “communication insiders” had theirs approved, asking the usual questions like “Is Obama Great or Just Wonderful” and other ridiculous tripe that is so one-sided it’s ridiculous. The article I posted was about the poor and political attention, which wasn’t partisan by any stretch of the imagination. But again, the impossibility of getting anyone to pay attention to a common person, like me, showed through.

So I finally decided I want nothing more to do with the White House or the President. As a matter of fact, I want nothing more to do with any politician who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about his or her constituents, except when it comes to getting their votes. I’m really sick of it. There are so many of us who are quite educated, with multiple ideas on how to fix the ails of this country, and getting heard is impossible. Basically, if you don’t have a lot of money to throw at a politician, no one wants to hear you.

So, from now on, no more memberships in groups that serve only to serve specific individuals who care pretty much only for themselves and pretend to care for the rest of us. This isn’t an anti-Obama thing, but an anti-politicians-who-don’t-give-a-crap-about-the-rest-of-us thing.

I left their group today, realizing I’d never make an impact anyway, considering the fact that even common comments are moderated and not included, so I thought I’d explain why. I figure no one cares, as was made clear in the fact that they never cared what I had to say before. However, don’t expect me to be a spokesperson, or a broadcast funnel for their ideas either.

Comparing the Ipad 2, the Kindle Fire and a block of wood

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I know everyone has been wondering about the similarities and comparisons of these three media devices, so I’ve decided to devote a column to examining just that. Now that Apple has had its Ipad 2 out for some time, Amazon announced its Kindle Fire to be released in November, and Home Depot has chopped up a block of wood into the size of a cube, I figured it was time to see how they differ from each other.

The Ipad 2: It’s a lot like a Star Trek data pad, and it runs on some kind of processor that may or may not have powered the space shuttle. It has been known to make really geeky guys very popular with hot supermodels, and the first time I turned it on, it made my IQ go up a whole 25 points.

Specs: It has a color screen, it has some funky icons on the screen that don’t make a lot of sense, but you can touch them and they do all sorts of weird things. Sometimes, when you’re not paying attention, it plays music, sometimes even from your own music library. One person who worked at the Apple Store referred to it aptly as “magical”, and that’s about all the information I have on it.

The Kindle Fire, of which I don’t have an actual picture because it hasn’t appeared in flesh yet, is a lot like the earlier Kindle, except more expensive and it does more stuff. It is also in color and from the picture seen, beautiful women have them on the beach, pretending to read them while they really sit there looking pretty, knowing that I’m watching and they’re not going to talk to me no matter what sort of line I come up with, like “Hey, Baby, I saw you over here, and I was over there, so now that I’m over here and, um, well, I, uh….” yeah, that’s how most of my pick up lines end up. Yeah, I’m not really proud of that.

Specs: Like the Ipad 2, it’s magical. It has little gnomes inside it that retrieve information for you from the Internet, and if you feed them well, they get you more information that you can use at a later time.

 

A Block of Wood. Surprisingly, this doesn’t compare well to the Ipad 2 or the Kindle Fire. It’s only value is the fact that it’s been around a very long time, and you can make things with it, like wooden Ipad 2’s and wooden Kindle Fires. But it doesn’t retrieve information from the Internet. It just sits there, doing nothing, like a stupid block of wood.

I really hate it. I wish I never bought it. Stupid salesmen and their Mad Men approach to selling crap I don’t need!

Will the Amazon Kindle Fire Defeat the Powerful Apple Ipad 2?

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I’m reading a lot of blogging that is exactly this subject: Will the Amazon Kindle Fire defeat the powerful Apple Ipad 2? I’m going to go out on a limb and just say no. It won’t. But instead of treating this as an either/or situation, I’m going to talk about why the question shouldn’t be asked in the first place.

You see, the Apple Ipad is in a class of its own, a class to which no tablet has come close yet. The Motorola Xoom was released as the potential “Ipad killer” but it did no such thing. As a matter of fact, shortly after releasing the Motorola Xoom, the Motorola Xoom became the Motorola Xoom killer. It was decently constructed, had no apps made for it and relied on an app market that is woefully inadequate. To this day, I have a Xoom but I don’t use it for anything other than checking email at night (while my Ipad charges). Even when you found an app that might work for it, quite often it didn’t, and instead you ended up having to uninstall something you paid for (and couldn’t get paid back for if it didn’t work).

For months now, the talk has been all about the new tablet that was going to be released by Amazon. And it looks like it’s about to be released. Here are some of the particulars:

It has only wifi, it’s in color, and it has some apps it can run but they come mainly from Amazon’s online app store. It only has 8 gigs of RAM, and they’re not planning to up that on this particular model (although they might on subsequent versions of the model to be released later). Like I said, it has wifi only, so there’s no 3G, like you get for the main Kindle. And it will cost about $199.

Thoughts? The price is great. It serves as a great replacement for a Kindle if you already have one. It will do a few more things than a Kindle can do, like check email, and maybe play some music and videos (not sure on that last one yet, although details seem to point in that direction). What I really like about it is that now I can read books on a Kindle that has color (whereas I was reading my Kindle books on a Kindle app on my Ipad, because it was the only way to see color on a Kindle-bought book).

It’s not a replacement for the Ipad because it’s not as powerful as an Ipad, doesn’t do as much as an Ipad, and well, it’s just not an Ipad. It’s another Kindle, which will do what normal Kindles do, but be more like a Barnes & Noble Nook Color but not as dysfunctional as that product.

I’ll probably buy one. Do I need one? No. Not really. But I have a Kindle, and I like my Kindle. This will be a Kindle capable of doing more things than my current day Kindle, and I sort of like that. But it won’t replace my Ipad, which is still the one device I carry with me everywhere.

Just Because I Signed Your Petition to Save Cute Little Bunnies Doesn’t Mean I Support Your Political Agenda Against Something Else

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After all, it's all for the bunnies

The other day, I signed an online petition to advocate authorizing the government to forgive student loans. As someone in serious debt to the government for financial aid loans (I think I may actually owe enough to buy two brand new aircraft carriers for the US Navy), I felt this was a GREAT cause. However, since then, this organization has been sending me messages, letting me know that through them “we” can now stop global warming, the “murder” of some guy on death row for killing a police officer, evil Republicans who are trying to destroy America by getting more Republican elected, and something involving a plan to use Katy Perry to somehow turn Madonna into a virgin again. I might have been off my medication when I read that last one, but it was still pretty confusing.

The point is: I don’t care about any of your other campaigns or issues. Just because I was behind that one issue doesn’t somehow make me a social advocate of all of your crazy, crackpot schemes to do whatever it is you think you’re going to do by somehow pretending to do it in my name. At what point does advocating for one issue somehow turn you into a blanket advocator of all other issues some group of crazy people actually believe in?

That’s the problem right there. An organization should be overwhelmly happy that it received attention one of its issues. But if it thinks it’s going to somehow build a comraderie with people who agreed with them once because THEY believe in something else, they’re going to lose any future support completely. It reminds me of when I signed up to receive information about Obama when he was first running for office. Somehow, because of that action, I receive all sorts of CRAP from his political action people who are convinced that my one-time interest in what he might have to say somehow equated to “drinking the Koolaid”. I don’t just blame Obama’s people for this. I also ran into the same thing when trying to find out what a particular Republican had to say, mainly cause I thought signing up for her information might actually get me some hot pictures of her, too. Oh boy, was that a mistake. Not that I would ever vote for her, but now that I receive her daily crazies, I’m scared to vote at all just because now I fear that she might be somewhere in the vicinity of the voting booth.

Look, I understand that grass roots campaigns are hard to build, but if you’re going to focus on one issue, focus on one issue and build your interest group that way. The second you go off on some crackpot scheme idea that is NOT the one that got people to sign up for your manifesto the first time, you’re going to destroy any support you ever hoped to have in the first place.

I say this, even though I know no one ever listens anyway. They just keep sending their crap to you, convinced that because you listened to them once, you’re now their friend for life. I had a girlfriend like that once. Took me six months to break up with her because she refused to believe that I was actually trying to break up with her. Then it took me a year and half to convince her to stop calling me. Now, I fear seeing anyone who even looks remotely like her, convinced it’s the evil ex, out to do whatever it is evil exes do. I was going to join a group that consisted of people who have lived through evil exes before, but then I realized once I signed up for their newsletter, they’d start sending me stuff about saving bunnies from the destruction of the ozone layer. And everyone knows how much I care about the bunnies.

I just have only so many issues I can focus on at one time.

Monopolies, Greed and Treating Your Customers Like Crap

Business, Economics, News, Social Networking, Television, , , , , , , , , , ,

This morning, I was about to leave my apartment building to head to work when I noticed an 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper taped to the exit door for everyone to read. It was a message from the apartment complex managers, indicating that anyone who was currently using the video services of U-Verse by AT&T must discontinue using it immediately because they are in violation of the apartment’s “contract” with some cable service called Suite Solutions. Not being a user of U-verse, I didn’t give it much concern, but then it had me thinking. What if I was a user of U-Verse and decided to get my television programming that way? What if I decided I didn’t like Suite Solutions (which I don’t) and chose to get my television programming through my phone line? What right does some housing complex or some cable operator have to choose how you get your television programming?

For the longest time, I’ve been receiving flyers in the mail from AT&T, promoting U-Verse as the answer to bad cable companies, and I just ignored the stuff because, to be honest, I don’t think television is all that worth subscribing to in the first place. While some people remained glued to their television screens every night they get home, I don’t think I’ve turned mine on to television programming in over 8 or 9 months, so to be honest, I’m not even sure I even have a television signal these days. And honestly, I don’t really care.

But what started to bother me was this anti-business message that was being pushed on potential customers by the people who manage the place where I live. It’s one thing if Suite Solutions was a good company, but let me tell you about my experience with that company. When I first moved into my apartment over two years ago, I chose that company to get my television and Internet service. At one point, I remember counting on a calendar to see whether or not it my service was down more often than it was actually up. I paid for the highest speed service, and when it worked, my download speeds were atrociously slow. I remember beating a download with my cell phone once (which ironically never actually succeeded with Suite Solutions because the Internet crashed during the download and didn’t come back up for another three days).

This was the company that my housing complex thinks that I should be emboldened to because they signed a contract with them somewhere in the past. Now, I don’t mind this being an option, but if they eliminate all of my other options, so that Suite Solutions is my ONLY choice, I think we have a horrible problem that really needs to be solved by the SEC, the FCC or maybe Elmo and the other characters of Sesame Street (they are notorious for advocating for consumer rights in the fantasies I have about Elmo and the gang).

Of course, no story about monopolies should be complete without a little bit of irony. I mean, we are talking about some unknown cable company using its monopoly to cut out the little guy, specifically a little guy named AT&T, who happens to be going through a little bit of monopoly trouble of its own these days. Now that the government has stepped in and told AT&T that it is creating an unfair monopoly by trying to buy T-Mobile, does anyone see the ridiculousness of some small cable provider shutting out AT&T through its contracted monopolies? I’m sure there are some people who are thinking this is a good thing because they just hate AT&T, but when AT&T becomes your alternative source to a crappy choice, something’s seriously wrong with this picture. I mean, I’m not exactly the poster child, greatest fan of all things AT&T. Just last week, AT&T refused to transfer my Internet service (not U-Verse) to my new apartment because of some flag that showed up with an old bill for $189 that HAD BEEN paid over two years ago; unfortunately, because it was so long ago, they couldn’t find a record of the situation, nor could they offer any way of alleviating the problem because the situation occurred too far back in the past to be solved by any simple transaction (like me just giving them $189 to make the problem go away). That’s the kind of problem you get from a monopolistic company that is so big that it can’t handle its own financial problems that emerge from its own lack of correct record keeping (you can always spot this problem when some customer service person tells you: “There’s nothing I can do about it. The problem seems to be coming from another area of the company that doesn’t exist anymore.”).

So, I ask, are monopolies good or bad for consumers? So far, my experience with them has been nothing but negative. You constantly hear economic pundits talking about how monopolies are good and how they drive innovation (or some other big proclaimed statement that has no basis in reality), but how do they really help us? Okay, there is one area, and that’s price, in that a company with a monopoly has the ability to lower the prices by handling all of the means of production and distribution, but how many times has that monopoly also gone the other direction, to where the only source of a product decides to raise its price because it realizes that no one else can fulfill the need? We’re kind of seeing that right now with Netflix, that erroneously thought that it was a solitary producer of content services so that it could pretty much do whatever it wanted to do by raising prices and splitting its company into two so it could eventually raise prices at its own leisure (possibly by raising it twice as much, as both companies can now raise prices as the same time, and thus, increase profits twice as fast). But what really happened was that Netflix realized too late that its customers WERE its product, not just the users of their product, and without customers, they have no income. I expect to see Netflix become the next Myspace in an era of Facebook.

For me, I have no real solution other than to boycott all of the products of companies that are hostile towards customers, which is why I gave up on Suite Solutions shortly after feeling like I was being cheated month after month. Fortunately, I am not a consumer of U-Verse, so I don’t have to worry about this proclamation from the emperor, but at the same time it also keeps me from ever wanting to do business with Suite Solutions again because instead of trying to compete with AT&T by providing a great customer experience and a good product, they decided to go the punitive route instead.

That companies never realize this strategy is a blueprint for failure is a footprint that forever haunts me. There’s a reason that message was tacked on our door like Luther’s 95 Theses. The company is failing to attract and keep customers, so it needed to crack down on anyone who decided to use alternative choices. Unfortunately, that strategy rarely brings in new customers or business. Instead, it leads you closer and closer to becoming obsolete. That this is 2011 and a company still doesn’t understand that is ridiculous. But why innovate when you can demand business? Need I say more?