Monthly Archives: August 2011

Bring on the Culture War

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The pundits are saying this week that progressives are experiencing “Perry Panic”.

Bullshit.

I say bring it on.

Bring on this culture war to end all culture wars. We need a real clear decision. Do we (all the people, not some of the people) want to move towards Rick Perry’s vision on the future or Barack Obama’s vision of the future. Down Perry’s road lies a world where gays stay in the closet, women are submissive, where Social Security is abandoned to the care of Wall Street (for a big fee), and where we keep trying to play the role of policeman of the world.

Pretty much the opposite would be what Obama believes. So let’s choose as a country

As Dana Milbank has pointed out, in another time, Rick Perry would be thought of as a nut case.

But we are not in a normal time, we are in an interregnum, “where the old is dying and the new cannot yet be born”. The only way to get out of the political quicksand we find ourselves in as a country is to have a knock down drag out election about the direction of America. It’s not like this hasn’t happened before. In 1800 with Jefferson’s Democratic victory over the Federalists, the lines for the American story were set, as the great historian Joseph Ellis noted.

“The main story line of American History, cast Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton in the lead roles of a dramatic contest between the forces of Democracy and the forces of Aristocracy.”

For most of our country’s history the Hamilton forces have won; money = power. But in the elections of 1828, 1860, 1896, 1932, 1960 the country underwent a complete political realignment with the forces of democracy breaking through and Capital losing control.

So I’m looking forward to the first Obama-Perry Debate because it will distill the choice for America. Do you want to go back to Rick Perry’s imaginary 1950′s world or do you want to take a chance on real future where American entrepreneurs can win around the world because we have our priorities straight.

We educate our citizens to world class standards, we create world class intellectual property, we support freedom movements in various ways in various regions, but we don’t consider ourselves the unpaid cop of the world.

I think Obama can deliver on those priorities and the mix of these three elements can create an innovation movement of extraordinary power. I understand there is a lot of cynicism around in the liberal community, but I have thought since I started this blog in December of 2007, that Obama was an extraordinary politician. Go with me here. Case in point.

Today Obama announces he wants to do a speech before Congress at the exact time of the Republican debate on MSNBC. He accomplishes two wonderful objectives in the same move.

  1. He brings attention to a Republican Debate that no independent was planning to watch. Now they may observe at first hand the Chamber of Horrors that is the Republican Field, all battling to get to the right of eachother. But Good Ole Rick is gonna win that battle because he’s put 234 people to death by injection since he has been governor.
  2. If the Republican’s Chicken out, (NBC is willing to move the Debate back an hour) then they will look like they don’t want a direct comparison with Obama’s speech to Congress. And if Obama accedes he looks like a reasonable man.

This is gonna be a fun election. For those of us who enjoyed 2008, 2012 is gonna be a blast.

JT

Steve Jobs and America

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I’m lucky in that I get to work pretty closely with Apple at the USC Annenberg innovation Lab. So if I have anything to add to the reams of copy written this morning about Steve Jobs’ decision to step down as CEO of Apple it is this: “Culture eats strategy for lunch, everyday.” That’s a saying you hear around Apple a lot and it is one that needs to be understood in the halls of Congress, in other executive suites and in the society in general. Apple is the most innovative organization in the world, not because it has a strategy of innovation, but because it has a culture of innovation.

From my vantage point that culture has two elements: reward risk and marry science to art. In the long succession of hit products in the last decade, it’s hard to remember that Steve Jobs had some epic failures early in his career. Anyone remember the Lisa or the Newton? Both were total flops, but the Lisa morphed into the Mac and one could argue that the dream of the Newton ultimately was realized in the I Pad. So the culture rewards both risk, failure and the lessons learned from both. And then there is the marriage of science and art, at which Steve Jobs and his team excelled beyond his competitors. There is a bad tendency in this country to think our “innovation deficit” lies in what policy makers call STEM (science,technology, engineering and math). But Jobs understands that the magic formula is STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math). It is the basis of what we teach at The innovation Lab and it is the core of the Apple brand. Steve’s obsessive belief in the role of the artist goes way beyond his early fascination with typography. What makes each of his products so thrilling is that they are aesthetically pleasing just to look at, never mind how cool they are to operate.

So here are my take aways from Steve’s departure. We better start building a culture of innovation all over this country. That means we have to let lots of experiments happen at the state and city level in order to start putting people back to work. Some of them will fail, but hopefully we will all find the best practices quickly. In congress, they better stop thinking about strategy every morning and start thinking about culture. And in our schools we better keep teaching the arts and not just concentrate on math and science. As to the continuing success of Apple, I have no doubt. Because innovation was never a top down strategy, but rather a bottom-up culture, Apple will thrive. Steve’s vision will be missed, but he embedded the culture throughout the organization.

Savage Capital II

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This morning it is deja vu all over again. In March of 2008, after having warned my readers for three months that a crash was coming, I wrote a piece about what I called Savage Capitalism. The short selling sharks had managed to crash Bear Stearns and now were swimming around with blood on their snouts looking for their next prey. It would be Lehman Bros. The whole notion that the great fortunes of the present day were made selling short, was a particularly dispiriting one.

I’m a boomer and I was raised in the 50′s with a healthy respect for the great companies and fortunes made from producing the goods America wanted. Whether General Electric, Ford Motor, AT&T, IBM, all were producing world class quality products. Even banks like Chase Manhattan and Bank Of America added great value to the American economy. But things are different now. The great fortunes get built betting on failure. John Paulson, who personally made $5 Billion in 2010, did it by shorting mortgage securities that he designed to fail. George Soros made $1Billion in 1992 shorting the British Pound.

At this very moment the school of short-selling sharks is circling the bonds of Portugal, Greece, Italy, Spain and Ireland. Their big score is if they can get one of those countries to default. Continue reading →

Why Now?

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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way.-opening sentences of Dickens’ “Tale of Two Cities”

When I first started talking about the notion that we were in an Interregnum–Gramsci’s notion that “The old is dying and the new cannot be born.  In this interregnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms”–I didn’t really suspect that it would get quite so morbid. A couple of days ago, a reporter, having read my Brave New World Redux post, called me up to ask about the reference to “Flash Robs” in the context of the London Riots. I made what I thought was a fairly uncontroversial remark about two facts. First, that in a world of increasing inequality, there is a group of unemployed young people who are totally untethered to the social norms. Second, those young people use social media for everything, including organizing vandalism and looting. Even though the reporter took a long discussion and boiled it down to one line, I still feel my comment was true. What I have seen since then is an onslaught of hate mail, much of it overtly racist, probably brought on by this blog post revealing me to be “an undisclosed new media leftist”. And here I thought I could return to my community and have a decent, civil conversation. Jeesh! Here’s an example of the kind of shit I read every morning. This one from one Dan Anthony.

Let’s tell it how it is.. These Mobs are Black Ghetto Welfare Slaves. Their parents and grandparents were also Welfare Slaves. A bunch of people caught in a cycle of no education, no ambition, and no morals. Stupid People breed Stupid People. If this was the best Economy in the history of the country , these people would still be doing this. The Economy up and downs do not effect Welfare Slaves. Maybe if people in this country told the truth without worrying about who’s feelings get hurt, we can move on and become a better society. Stay out in Cali with the rest of the elitest, leftwing nuts. You assholes out there are phooney, full of shit, Limo Liberals GO FUCK YOURSELF AND FUCK YOU JERK OFF.

I’m trying to figure out why my comments about the haves and the have nots has struck such a cord. Continue reading →

Brave New World, Redux

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After Thursday’s stock market crash, we find ourselves staring into the abyss of a potential double-dip recession. Republican’s, having ignored the history lesson of the business lobby 1937 Austerity Push, which managed to push America back into depression, seem to be clueless to the fate of most Americans. Of course, As the New York Times reports, their financial base is doing very well and luxury spending is reaching new highs. But America’s economy lives and dies on the confidence of the average consumer. In the go-go years of the late 1990’s the concept of “mass affluence” and “affordable luxury” dazzled marketers into believing that “aspirational marketing” was the path to the streets of gold in which the majority of citizens would have 60” inch flat screen TV’s running 500 channels of cable TV and 100 MBPS Broadband services, even if they had to hock their house to get it. But, as a new White Paper from Ad Age entitled, “The New Wave of Affluence” points out, “In 2011 however, in the wake of a massive reset, it appears that mass affluence may be a thing of the past.” Ad Age goes on to suggest that marketers concentrate their attention on the 3% of the American population earning more than $200,000 per year, “who account for almost 50% of consumer spending.” The esteemed Telecom analyst Craig Moffett, in a report titled “How the Other Half Lives” chose to look at the darker side of this picture. “After paying for food, shelter, and transportation, the average bottom-40% family is left with…. wait for it…. just $1,215 per year, or $100 a month, for everything else.  That’s $100 per month for all discretionary purchases, telecom services, cable or satellite TV, movies…  and everything else.  Indeed, after Healthcare, the number drops below zero.” A recent report on consumer discretionary spending from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows “this time is different.” Going back decades, such spending had never fallen more than 3 percent per capita in a recession. In this slump, it is down almost 7 percent, and still has not really begun to recover.” Continue reading →