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McCain vs. Obama on Tech Issues
eldavojohn writes "Ars is running a brief article that looks at stances from Chuck Fish of McCain's campaign and Daniel Weitzner from Obama's in regards to technical issues that may cause us geeks to vote one way or the other. From openness vs. bandwidth in the net neutrality issue to those pesky National Security Letters, there's some key differences that just might play at least a small part in your vote. You may also remember our discussions on who is best for geeks."
Jack Johnson: It's time someone had the courage to stand up and say: "I'm against those things that everybody hates".
John Jackson: Now I respect my opponent. I think he's a good man but, quite frankly, I agree with everything he just said!
Fry: These are the candidates? They sound like clones. [He looks a little harder.] Wait a minute. They are clones!
Leela: Don't let their identical DNA fool you. They differ on some key issues.
Jack Johnson: I say your three cent titanium tax goes too far.
John Jackson: And I say your three cent titanium tax doesn't go too far enough!
Fry: If I were registered to vote, I'd send these clowns a message by staying home on election day and dressing up like a clown.
My work here is dung.
One candidate has a lawyer/media executive as technical adviser, the other has a MIT computer scientist. Guess which is which
If you have time there are some interesting points here:
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/
I can't speak for McCain, but go watch Obama at Google and tell me that he has no passion for tech issues. Half of his broader economic plan boils down to putting our faith in science and technology again -- we'll never be competitive with China at building toys out of injection-molded plastic -- we can be competitive in the technological arena.
Half the reason I started following him back before it was popular was because he was one of the few candidates that I heard that even acknowledges the war on science and all the ill effects that we've suffered as a result.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Barak Obama consistently evaluates situations and sets goals in a dynamic and networked way. This is how his campaign has generated such a huge response from mostly small donors. John McCain has been labeled a maverick, but has closely associated himself with conservative players and the mindset that an authoritative leader can best set goals for others.
Virginia Postrel explores the differences between these approaches in detail in The Future and Its Enemies. Al Gore, for example, appears to be future oriented because of the many apparently progressive stands he takes on issues, but Al Gore uses a top-down evaluation strategy that locks in a particular view with little input before or after. As such the future is at odds with Al Gore, and will tend always to surprise him and chafe at the positions he takes which are based on a mostly static model of the world and the options for progress it presents us.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Why Bother With An Election?
by Egregious Charles
Firehand of Irons in the Fire, one of my regular reads, got this great
email from a friend.
Sometimes, the Danes seem to have more sense than we.
Technically, neither party has an official candidate, and won't until they nominate one at their respective conventions. But when it comes to counting up the delegate votes, the fat lady has sung. Hillary Clinton still thinks she can scrounge up a majority, but she'd have to get all those delegates from the unsanctioned primaries in Michigan and Florida admitted and convince most of the uncommitted superdelegates to ignore the primary vote. Almost everybody who doesn't actually work for her agrees that's pretty unlikely.
"I have no idea what Chuck Fish's interests are but if you want to change the market, it might be best to do it with someone who knows the market--or even has the ability to change it from the inside"
The fact he's an ex-exec from a business that is a prime player in some of the most suppressive, anti-progress, anti-freedom and anti-privacy organisations, organisations which consistently try to criminalise vast swathes of people and totally miss the point on technological issues.... Well that puts him on my blacklist.
Whatever your "it" is, his presence ought to set off some BIG alarm bells.
As I said in my original post - I'm not USian and have no affiliation to either party. I have a preference for democrats but their "family friendly" policies make me sick - but a Time Warner exec as a tech advisor? Seriously, don't vote for this guy.
Politics can get pretty shallow, but there's more to it than being a bitch for the polls. I think this little Q&A is a case in point. Not the answers themselves, but the people chosen to deliver them. McCain chose a lawyer with strong connections to a major media conglomerate that many of us have reason to loathe. Obama chose a computer scientist with connections to a university that played a big role in creating the Internet. That, by itself, should tell you where there respective priorities are.
In a country with over 300 million people, a more than $13 trillion dollar economy, worlds largest military, and many global interests and programs, there are simply too many important issues for the candidates to have a nuanced knowledge of all of them. Realistically, they must all rely on advisors, so I would take the views of their advisers fairly seriously. You can also get at least a sense of a candidate's general leanings, which suggests which advisors they are likely to listen to. It's also useful to look at the opinions of people who you respect on these issues that have actually talked to the candidates, e.g., Lessig's endorsement of Obama.
Now, let me add that, while a candidate must rely on advisors for detailed positions, he must know something about the issues himself, otherwise he cannot reasonably assess whose advice to take. We have in recent years seen a stark object lesson in the disastrous consequences when the decision maker really doesn't know anything at all and is simply led by whichever advisors are the loudest, most persistent, or the most clever at politicking.
The last point worth making is that the biggest problem on tech issues is that money talks. Lobbist access, fundraising, and political ads by large corporations have a tendency to drown out the public interest. I do think that on at least one of these points Obama has a clear advantage: His fundraising is based much more in small donations from ordinary people, so he is less beholden to these corporate interests and has less obligation to spend time listening to their lobbyists at fundraisers. I think this may make a bigger difference in the end than people realize.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
With regards to Senator Obama, do you have a citation for that? Everything that I've seen suggests that he is open to the idea of decriminalization. Every quote that I've heard suggests that he realizes the folly of putting people behind bars for non-violent drug offenses.
Obviously that's not as good as Gravel or Paul's positions on the issue, but I'm not going to base my vote on the single issue of pot smoking. Not when we have an ongoing war, climate change, a failing economy, nuclear proliferation and the rise of China, India and Russia to deal with. And yes, I am a regular pot smoker.
Besides which, even if you got Gravel or Paul in office what about the state laws against marijuana? Those are the ones that actually impact pot-smokers on a day to day basis. Other than the bullshit Federal raids against medical marijuana dispensaries I'm hard pressed to think of any meaningful impact that the Feds make against pot-smokers.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Obama and McCain want to put potsmokers in prison.
Obama has indicated a willingness to halt the DEA raids on dispensaries in California. He and Bob Barr (Libertarian) favor letting states handle the issue. Obama still wants the FDA involved somewhere; I'm not sure about Barr. McCain has waffled but apparently endorses the current Bush Administration policy. link
Actually, I work for one of the world's biggest tech firms.
"So I'm pretty mystified by how you see it as conceivable that "corporate interests" are opposed to "technical interests."
See DRM, the multiple court cases over DeCSS, the whole DMCA and its restrictions over discussion of security, the massive abuse of the patent system (effectively cutting out or severely crippling many of your "thousand tiny tech start-ups you won't hear about".
I'm pretty mystified that you could have missed out on these themes over the past few years.
"Or are you thinking you still live in some quaint 18th century world where the individual inventor can do it all himself, and there is no real need to form large cooperating teams of technical folks and provide them with good support staff and plenty of capital investment -- i.e. found "a corporation"?"
I'm sorry if my use of the word "corporation" set off your hippie and/or student radar. Neither is the case here and I'm quite capable of backing up my previous comments without resorting to impugning the intelligence of those I argue against. I suggest you try the same, nice ad hominem though.
As for "popular" interests: the "popular" interests are what the vast seething market of consumers want
In other words the people of the United States of America, those that the POTUS is supposed to represent and to serve, right?
they don't give a flying fsck about technical interests at all, because they're not techies.
Didn't say they were, I said the likes of the republican's apparent tech spokesperson was against their interests.
"They want their tech stuff to Just Work and be incredibly cheap, if not free. They're not the least bit interested in coolness, or advancing the art in amazing ways, or any of those other geeky kinds of goals you might find among people who seek each other out and associate into a corporation so that they can spend the productive part of their lives advancing those technical interests."
Do you live in a fantasy world? Tech advances are a means to an end for some companies, not all, and not the only means. Large companies exist to make money. In fact for public companies that's a legal requirement or the board can face charges. Yes, a lot of tech comes from large corps, they are good for that, but please don't pretend that corporate influence, especially on politicians, is always a good thing. Especially given this person's prior record.
In the arena of copyright law, the likes of Time Warner are clearly directly opposed to what the people of the country want and are arguably going well beyond what's best for society and business in general. They don't respect privacy, they engage in campaigns of scaring the population into compliance with their take on IP...
Sheesh, get a clue. Or a job. Find out how the world actually works instead of regurgitating mindless slogans from the 19th century.
Back at you. You've swallowed the "money is always" right line a little too far there. Tell me, in your world, do companies always act in the best interests of the whole population?
Or are there no incidences of monopolistic behaviour, unethical behaviour, exploitation of cheap foreign child labour etc etc?
As a white guy, I just want to vote for somebody who looks like me. Is that so hard to understand?
Dark Reflection
You mean like how Hillary sucked up to them by saying that FL and MI "won't count for anything"? Don't take my word for it -- it's her own quote.
Planning for short-term gains at the expense of the long-term is precisely a quality I DO NOT want in a president.Then I'd guess that you don't want the candidate who ignored the caucus states and whom assumed the coronation^Wrace would be over on Super Tuesday?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Sure no one has the patents to listen threw the whole serman and perhaps those words loose their power.
There has to be some kind of award for this one.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
Look, a candidate who can write code obviously may not have an edge over one who can't -- in fact, given the aptness of Philip Greenspun's comparison of pilots vs programmers (see here: http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/aviation ), it's entirely possible programming skill isn't a great test of broad intellectual ability. :)
But tech issues absolutely underly quite a few other issues of economics and liberty, and those are certainly have a weight equal to other big issues like foreign policy.
But I think there's an even bigger reason why tech workers *definitely* should be looking at how candidates understand and address issues they understand. Because this is the arena where *you* may actually know enough, as a professional, to really gauge a candidates policy acumen. I doubt most slashdotters are experts in military tactics or nation building. Most of us have a shallow grasp of economics -- yes, even most of you Austrian school autodidacts. Same goes for health care, education, criminology, etc -- Slashdot readers may be smart laymen, but that's all most of us are in those fields.
But lots of us are IT pros. And if a candidate seems to really get it in the area where you can tell buzzspeak and platitudes from real knowledge, that tells you quite a bit about their ability to reach into an issue, understand it, and formulate a plan to do something about it.
It's worth paying attention to.
Tweet, tweet.
civil-liberties and Obama went opposite directions when he started talking about mandating what temperature I keep my house, how much food I can eat
Source? That sounds like some ridiculous shit you'd read on a blog.
You realize there's a big difference between saying we eat too much and drive too much to saying that it's acceptable to legislate food and fuel rationing in non-emergency situations... right?
One of those is a civil liberties issue; the other one is just speaking the truth.
It's even worse than that -- don't forget GHW Bush was vice president for Reagan from 1980-88. Unless you're over 35, chances are you can't remember a country that didn't have a Bush or Clinton in the White House. And I agree, all other things being equal, I'll always vote against a political dynasty. Considering the next president could be in office for 8 years, Hillary would have to make an amazing argument for why only people considering early retirement should remember a non-bush/clinton America by the time she leaves office.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
1. It has been proven over and over again that reduced tax rates equal greater tax revenue. Less shackles equals more work.
2. Most of what McCain wants to do is keep the current tax rates the same.
3. Think progress is not an independent website.