shipperx | I Never Agree With Everything

Anyone else have that... well, it's not really a problem, is it? I suppose it's independent thought and forming one's own opinions. Still it's very rare that I read something and agree entirely. This is no exception. There are plenty of areas where I do not agree, lean towards disagreeing, and/or agree but not completely. That said, there were parts of this article that I liked. Quotes:

Faced with these problems, we need a president who can harness the best and brightest our country has to offer, a president who is conversant with, and comfortable with, the power of technology to assist in solving these problems, a president who is good at listening, studying, and devising solutions based on the best insight available, rather than on narrow ideology. We need a president who can forge consensus, not just among the partisans in our own fractured democracy but around the world. We need a president who can inspire our citizens and our global partners to forgo narrow self interest and embrace the possibilities that we can achieve if we work together to build a better future.

Well, that's a pretty tall order. No pressure or anything. ;)

However, I agree with the writer about many of the problems we face and, yeah, agree with the endorsement as well.

The Financial Crisis

The financial crisis we face today is a damning indictment of a philosophy that insists that the market is always right, that government only gets in the way, and that unfettered capitalism is the best system. Left to themselves over the past eight years, Wall Street bankers have feathered their own pockets at the expense of customers, shareholders, and the public. Meanwhile, investments in the real economy have faltered, been diverted to artificial wealth creation using obscure financial instruments that, in retrospect, turned our banks into willing participants in a giant Ponzi scheme. {...} I also know that markets, like games, depend on clear rules of fair play. It's not going to be easy for anyone to unwind the enormous mess that has been created as a result of the mismanagement of the economy. It will take great insight, intelligence, and an about-face in our attitudes towards regulation. {...} making the right decisions, coming up with the right regulations, will take insight into the nature of networks, the nature of markets, that can be profoundly informed by what we've learned from the internet over the past decade {...} It will take a president and presidential advisors with enormous technological sophistication to understand, let alone design the regulatory regimes we will need for increasingly automated markets...

Oil

...it's clear that investment in green technology will provide an enormous boon for our economy and a long term strategic benefit for our country. If global warming doesn't get us, oil depletion will. It's easy to forget that the US was once the world's biggest oil producer. Our oil fields are now mostly gone, providing only 3% of the world's supply and only 10% of our own needs. It takes someone very short-sighted not to realize that the same fundamentals that marginalized our domestic oil industry will one day do the same to other nations whose oil supplies we depend on today. {...} the need to secure oil supplies around the world will hold our economy hostage to the whims of countries who have no love for us.

Given how long it takes for new forms of energy production to come onstream, we need to make investments today {...} But once again, this crisis provides huge opportunity. Reinventing the energy economy will require enormous technological innovation {...} If we do not invest in these technologies, we face the real danger of becoming a second class nation, as those nations that do make the investments reap the rewards. {...} Given a free rein by the hands-off attitude at the highest levels of government, oil companies have reaped record profits while making only token investments in alternative energy, independence from foreign oil, and the strategic interests of our country. {...} I'm not saying that any multi-national company is likely to put national interests ahead of self-interest, but it's clear that it is a foolish ideology that opens the sheepfold to management by wolves.

Internet Neutrality

I love the internet. It's been one of the most fertile grounds for technological innovation, wealth creation, and social change that our country has seen in my lifetime. I believe passionately in the "small pieces loosely joined" model that allows anyone to invent a compelling new service, find other people to use it, and grow a business without having to ask anyone's permission. It's essential that we preserve the architecture of the internet. Under the guise of free market experimentation, big companies with monopoly positions in local markets are asking us to change the fundamental rules that have served the internet so well {...} Barack Obama supports net neutrality;

A Connected and Transparent Government

Web 2.0 has shown the power of what I've elsewhere called harnessing collective intelligence. Despite the claims of critics like Nick Carr and Andrew Keen, Google does make us smarter. So does Wikipedia, and Amazon, YouTube, Facebook, the blogosphere, and Twitter. Our access to information today is unprecedented; the ability of individual citizens to discover and share important new ideas is greater than it has ever been in our history; important ideas are able to bubble up and become visible to those who need to know them. Barack Obama understands this. His campaign has demonstrated his ability to harness the internet not only for fundraising, but also his comfort with its decentralized nature. my.barackobama.com is not a one-way fundraising machine, but a platform that has enabled his supporters to act independently, while coordinating their decentralized, bottom-up activities in a way that adds to their effectiveness. What's more, it is a platform that has allowed supporters to disagree with him, and so to shape his policies - a far cry from the current administration's belief that disagreement is equivalent to disloyalty...

Anyway, while I don't agree with everything this guy has written on his blog, I did find things of interest in his article and points with which I agree.