My message to Pelosi (the second in the last week after writing asking her to vote for this amendment):
I want to express my complete disappointment in Rep. Pelosi's vote against Rep. Justin Amash's amendment to end the NSA's mass-surveillance program which targets all American citizens indiscriminately. Her vote represents a disdain for the civil liberties which ought to be held sacred in our country.
To this end, I am working diligently to inform all of my friends and family in California's 12th district of Rep. Pelosi's decision and why it's wrong. I will ensure that the knowledge of her ongoing campaign against privacy and the protection from unreasonable search and seizure is communicated to as many constituents as possible.
It should go without saying that Rep. Pelosi will receive no support from me for the remainder of her career in office. It is my hope that a challenger will emerge to take her seat in Congress and loudly deliver the message that San Franciscans will not tolerate further encroachment upon our civil liberties in the name of illusory security.
I'll add as an addendum that as long as companies are putting themselves in a bad position by treating their employees as replaceable parts, there will always be a place for the engineer who takes that pride in their work who can come in and save the day. And when companies start understanding the value of skilled, passionate engineers and do what it takes to keep fueling that passion, even better.
I'll add as an addendum that as long as there are companies putting themselves in a bad position by treating their employees as replaceable parts, there will be a place for highly skilled, passionate engineers to save the day. And if companies start seeing the value in such engineers and hiring them from the get-go and treating them with an environment that fuels that passion, even better.
I actually have started my own company. I enjoyed contracting and would keep doing it, but I ended up hooking onto something after a while that really worked. That was the whole plan from the get-go anyways; contract part-time while trying to turn a side project into a real business. It ended up working out and now I'm the engineering half of a revenue-positive startup, bootstrapped up until this point.
And I'll tell you what, once we do secure some funding and start hiring, I won't be bringing anyone on who doesn't take at least as much pride in the work as I do, who isn't passionate about their craft, and who considers themselves to be nothing more than a cog in a machine. Any company who does, whether the person is American or *-ian or from East Europe or who cares, they're doing it wrong. Such a person is prone to end up costing more than they're worth, and we'll end up spending even more money bringing in a ringer to save the day, just like Whatever Tech had to with me.
No, I'd rather bring in the "rock star" (I do hate that term) *before* the need arises and just save the damn money in the first place. If that means I'll need to bring in contractors rather than full-time, salaried employees, at least at first to get some top-notch talent working on our product, then so be it. Anything worth doing is worth doing right. And, in fact, we already have a consultancy of highly skilled engineers ready to tap; they put real love into their work, and they're already getting familiar with the product ahead of time. And if we need more, I'll probably contact 10x to see who else is available.
There are many companies out there who do see their engineers as replaceable cogs. I'm sorry if you work for one, but if it gives you stability at least then power to you. But I would argue that the company is wrong to have that attitude. If it's not apparent in the quality of the end product, then I would hypothesize that it is apparent in the extra money the company had to spend to make up for the work of employees who for whatever reason weren't inspired to do their best work. Making matters worse, I think that sort of environment only perpetuates further the false idea that it's okay to just phone it in. Happy employees who know their shit and actually want to do the work are the best kind of investment a company can make.
Having stability and having love for your craft are not mutually exclusive.
Desperation doesn't produce quality work. I've been hired on emergencies fixing problems for a company full of replaceable "-ian cogs" who simply could not deliver. They needed a ringer. I made sure my price was justified and pretty much saved their asses. And that's why they've hired me back since on further gigs which were not of such an urgent nature, even though I'm far more expensive than the massive cubicle farm of "-ian cogs" already under their employ.
I figured someone would make this claim. Sorry, you've got the wrong guy! I'm actually the CTO of an entirely different company: http://sweetstak.es/ As such I haven't had a whole lot of time for freelancing, so I haven't worked with 10x in a few months, but I do give my honest recommendation. I hope more talented engineers can make the leap to freelance work, which can be far more rewarding than working the wrong salaried position.
It's certainly analogous to a consulting firm, but not so much in the vein as a place like ThoughtWorks or Pivotal Labs. You're still very much a freelancer, and the work isn't guaranteed like at a consulting firm. You don't get a paycheck every two weeks; you get what you earn in billable hours until the gig is finished. The agency model certainly isn't new. I've worked with one before 10x which actually specialized more in representing designers and UX types, but a company they were working with had an emergency need for a fast front-end engineer and I got roped in by a friend who they represented. I would say that 10x is the first agency model I've seen myself which specializes in software development, but I'm sure others are out there.
Without getting too detailed, I'll say that they've negotiated rates for me which are above what I'd get on average representing myself, even after their cut. Considering that I didn't have to do any of the extra work of finding the gig, negotiating the contract (besides specifying what I will and won't do in general terms), handling the paperwork, or invoicing, it's been a very profitable arrangement for myself. If you've done a significant amount of freelance work, you'll well know that this extra overhead cuts significantly into your time.
I'm probably one of the guys who gets paid the big bucks to fix the code you write in the drudgery that you call your career. Seriously, if that's your attitude toward the craft, then you can't possibly be very good at it. I don't doubt for a second that it would be easy to replace you with anyone from any country ever. There are all kinds of problems with outsourcing development work, but they don't stack up to nearly the same problem as a developer putting code into production without a drop of passion or pride for his/her work.
I've done work with 10x Management in the past year, and I can attest that it is well worth it to have them as an extra pair of eyes looking out for your next gig. They also handle negotiation, mediation, and making sure your invoices are fulfilled as agreed. Definitely worth it. If you want to get in touch with them, let them know Chris V gave you the recommendation.:)
10x Management has found me gigs in the last year, after I'd been doing freelance Rails work for the year prior to that. I can tell you one thing for sure, there is a big difference between their agency and your typical headhunter. Ever try finding an actual short-term contract gig through a headhunter? It doesn't happen. Headhunters are not incentivized for that sort of thing. They want to get you into a full time position so they can score a percentage of your salary as a reward. So it follows that they aren't really looking out for the needs of freelancers.
10x Management, on the other hand, gets a cut of your hourly rate; they're setup for exactly what a freelancer needs. They do a great job of representing you in negotiations so you can earn as high a rate as possible, which of course increases their own cut as well. And they're always looking for new gigs for you so you don't have to. If you're not getting paid, neither are they, which makes for a much more rewarding long-term relationship compared with a headhunter who just wants to get you placed in some salary, take their cut, and move on. 10x also takes care of the dirty work that comes with freelancing, from invoicing and making sure you get paid as agreed to mediating if expectations are not met on either side of the relationship. I feel that eliminating the burden of the administrative drudgery that comes with freelancing is alone well worth their cut.
Overall, I understand your cynicism, especially since an agent and a headhunter look quite similar on a superficial level, and I certainly share your disdain for the vast majority of headhunters. But, in this particular case, I would say that cynicism is unwarranted. Headhunters and freelancers just don't mix. Speaking from experience, 10x has done a good job of filling that gap.
And how many countries with real universal health care also have a soda ban? Perhaps instead they have a working education system which successfully teaches kids to self-regulate from an early age, unlike Americans who can't seem to wrap their heads around the notion that they are not invincible junk consumers. Maybe the lack of such an education is partly why we can't seem to afford to provide our people with what every other industrialized nation can provide, even without draconian bans which you seem to think are an inevitable consequence of such.
It's only inevitable in a nation full of dumb asses whose primary mode of existence is that of consumer.
"You call bullshit, then you go on to freely state that you simply don't know."
I called bullshit on the idea that only middle- to upper-class white males are able to succeed, and then I presented evidence to back it up. Then I said that I can't possibly know what it's like to have disadvantages which are not the same as my own disadvantages. There is no contradiction between these two assertions. Yet somehow you got modded up for a response leading from the very start with a bald-faced false equivalency.
"Because, most people aren't like you."
Exactly. It doesn't matter what societal disadvantages one is born with so much as one's drive and perseverance. Maybe some are more driven than others, but don't just naively chalk it up to mere intelligence; on the contrary, intelligent people tend to be more easily discouraged in my experience.
The real factor has nothing to do with economic class, color of skin, gender, religion, etc. I don't know where it comes from, but I do know that a good drive can overcome any unfairness life throws its way, and that such a drive can be found amongst people whom some would thoughtlessly label as hopelessly victimized or ill-equipped. And how wrong they are.
Everyone is disadvantaged in some way, and some more so than others. But some people turn their disadvantages into their identities, while others accept life's unfairness and refuse to cage themselves within the limits placed on them by others.
Bullshit. I grew up in a single-wide trailer in Kansas. When the season came around, everyone in the trailer park and their dogs and babies had to huddle up in an underground tornado shelter which lacked drainage and would steadily fill with water under the torrential rain. Last time I was in there, the water was damn near my waist by the time we were cleared to go home. I'm not saying it wasn't nice to at least have that shelter, but the fact is, I'd seen enough to know without a doubt that my family was living in poverty.
Now I have an office in SOMA in San Francisco as the co-founder of a bootstrapped startup. It wasn't entirely easy getting here, but I can't say it was all that hard either. It just felt natural the whole time. All I did was work on my interests until I could build something I could be proud of; doing that helped me to build an impressive resumé without so much as a 2-year college degree.
Would it have been easier had I been born into a middle- or upper-class family? Honestly it's hard to say. I think being poor taught me to be resourceful with what I have, which could actually be a great advantage. Would it have been harder had I been born black or a woman (or a black lesbian woman)? Well that's just impossible for me to answer.
What I will say is this: Whatever the magnitude of discrimination there actually is out there, for every person putting their energy into shouting loudly about how their attributes make their life harder, there's someone else out there with the exact same attributes furthering their education, skills, and careers, working steadily toward a position where they can have an infinitely greater impact on the condition of their group within society.
Good point, but ubiquitous services become just that: ubiquitous. There was a time when electricity was optional. It still is, but good luck participating in society without it. If Google starts offering personal chips and they make it cheap and useful enough for anyone to do it, everyone will eventually do it, and Google will become Big Brother in much the same way as government would have. Sure, it's "optional", but your choice is to either get chipped or be marginalized, which is damn close to having no choice at all.
I've seen this comparison with code being made before, and someone had an excellent response. The gist was, as a programmer, I don't get compensated with royalties for decades after I've written my code. Rather, I get a bi-weekly paycheck to keep writing code. That's a pretty big difference between the typical programmer and the content industry.
At its core, copyright infringement may be a crime carrying some sort of liability, but it is not theft in the any sense, and should not be treated as such. The industry has earned the animosity against it by asking for insane damages for a crime which even many smart people can't wrap their heads around, and now they want to give the Federal government the power to censor websites at their bequest. Meanwhile, last time I was in LA, it seemed to me that Beverly Hills was as bloated with riches as its ever been. If you ask me, the mass production of junk music and junk movies is killing our culture far more quickly than some perceived lack of financial incentive to produce content.
All the while, we don't even have a reliable way to calculate the actual damages caused by copyright infringement. What are the actual damages of a lostpotential sale? Does an unauthorized copy of a song or movie necessarily constitute a lost potential sale? These are important questions that Big Content has zero incentive to actually ask, because they already wield immense power over the issue and have shown their willingness to use it.
Anyways, here, download some of my music, which I have produced and released despite no real means nor motivation to profit from it: http://soundcloud.com/dris
It seems to me that this would be a great way for Google to appear innocent of cooking their search results to favor their own products and services, as implicated by Senators calling for an anti-trust investigation of the company. By making this "mistake", they appear as though they are neutral to their own algorithms and must employ the same efforts as any other company to optimize their placement in their own search results, whether this is genuinely true or not. It seems to me that this self-imposed punishment will cost them a whole lot less than an anti-trust battle or any court orders resulting from one.
"Oh yeah? So now there's an official website of this leaderless organization, eh? Who put THEM in charge?"
My understanding is that a democratically elected and audited committee formed within Occupy is in charge of the website. It's been around for quite a while. There isn't a single "leader of the website", but the members of the committee in charge of it can be voted out and replaced.
"I said I haven't heard anyone talking about the disparity of opportunity."
I hear it all the time. Just for one example, one of the biggest issues of disparity is the steadily rising cost of tuition for higher education, both private and state-funded, throughout the country. If you want a higher education and like the vast majority of Americans can't pay the insane tuition yourself, you have to go into substantial debt and then possibly face a dismal job market after you graduate, leaving you with no hope of paying off said debt. If you haven't heard people talking about that then I really can't help you from here, except perhaps to recommend meeting people outside your own socioeconomic bubble.
And how's this for disparity of opportunity? If you're a multinational corporation influencing our national elections with billions of dollars of campaign donations, well that's freedom of speech. But if you peacefully assemble in a park to denounce the takeover of our democracy by such monied interests, well that's terrorism (already in the UK, and I'm sure it won't be long here in the US too).
These are just two issues I've seen repeatedly taken up by the Occupy protestors, both online and on the streets, and they share the common thread: 99% of us are getting a sour deal. The few wealthiest people and corporations at the top of America's economic pyramid more and more have free reign over our government and our daily lives, which they are using to get richer while everyone else gets poorer. And this is allowed to happen because our politicians are bought out; they either fail to enact needed regulations or enact regulations written by the very companies being regulated (often with the aim of further securing the status quo of the industry while making smaller competitors easier to weed out).
I would argue that Occupy has brought these and similar issues into the forefront, whereas before, most people, especially younger people now recovering from the plague of apathy, just complacently accepted the situation as unchangeable. Not anymore. I can name a handful of my own friends who never cared about politics before suddenly forming opinions and joining the dialogue, sparked by Occupy's presence in the news. This is a good thing.
Meanwhile, I can't find anything on their website explicitly asking for handouts or an even distribution of wealth. I've also been to an Occupy protest, and I didn't run into a single Communist. So tell me again, who is projecting on the protestors, you or me? Who is falling into what trap?
The real trap is participating in the campaign of intentionally misleading others about the message. First you claimed that they just want handouts and wealth redistribution, and now you're claiming that they don't know what they want at all. Obviously it can't be both, so which is it?
One of the oft-repeated falsities used to discredit Occupy is that they're just a bunch of socialists looking for handouts and an even distribution of wealth. That's simply untrue; 99% of the protesters are capitalists who never want to see another bailout (socialism for "Too Big to Fail" banks) and want the Glass Steagall act reimplemented. That act, by the way, was an opportunity we did/not/ miss in 1932, but which had its teeth taken out in 1999.
There are valid arguments to be made against Occupy. The argument that they just want Communism or an even distribution of wealth is not one of them.
The national dialogue has shifted considerably since the protests started. I haven't heard so many regular people talking about the processes of the financial system in/ever/. It put the spotlight on the biggest profiteers of the last decade of war and declining middle class. I've seen people on the left and the right start to express the cynicism toward their elected representatives that is rightly deserved.
"2. People are getting bored."
People were already bored. On the contrary, I've seen people who have never had an iota of interest in politics suddenly start to form opinions. It's a populist movement, and even your friend who has never cared about politics outside football at least has/something/ to say about Occupy and its issues. In this age of apathy, I see that as progress.
"3. With California using tear gas to dispel the protests, and the police in London declaring Occupy protesters a terrorist movement, it looks like the authorities are starting to tire of the embarassment and will put an end to things by force as soon as the media interest has faded sufficiently."
The arguable excessive use of police force against the protests have only amplified valid concerns about our government's protection of the Bill of Rights. The UN itself has called into question the defense of human rights in the United States, largely due to the excess use of police force against protesters in this country. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/02/occupy-wall-street-un-envoy_n_1125860.html]
I seriously doubt that Occupy is going to bring real change...on its own. I see it more as a beginning spark. The conversations happening now rightly focus around the disparity of opportunity in this country, to an extent that we haven't seen in decades, maybe even this century. The impact has already taken place and the shockwave will be lasting. No matter who gets elected President and fails us yet again, the message of Occupy (and yes, the Tea Party) will continue to reverberate in the minds of conservatives and liberals alike, until we see real change.
Occupy isn't the end, nor is it the means; it's a warning.
Slashdot Mirror
My message to Pelosi (the second in the last week after writing asking her to vote for this amendment):
If you're in San Francisco, feel free to copy the message to her here: http://pelosi.house.gov/contact/
So will other countries be paying Norway to deal with their garbage, or will Norway be paying other countries for supplying them with fuel?
I'll add as an addendum that as long as companies are putting themselves in a bad position by treating their employees as replaceable parts, there will always be a place for the engineer who takes that pride in their work who can come in and save the day. And when companies start understanding the value of skilled, passionate engineers and do what it takes to keep fueling that passion, even better.
I'll add as an addendum that as long as there are companies putting themselves in a bad position by treating their employees as replaceable parts, there will be a place for highly skilled, passionate engineers to save the day. And if companies start seeing the value in such engineers and hiring them from the get-go and treating them with an environment that fuels that passion, even better.
I actually have started my own company. I enjoyed contracting and would keep doing it, but I ended up hooking onto something after a while that really worked. That was the whole plan from the get-go anyways; contract part-time while trying to turn a side project into a real business. It ended up working out and now I'm the engineering half of a revenue-positive startup, bootstrapped up until this point.
And I'll tell you what, once we do secure some funding and start hiring, I won't be bringing anyone on who doesn't take at least as much pride in the work as I do, who isn't passionate about their craft, and who considers themselves to be nothing more than a cog in a machine. Any company who does, whether the person is American or *-ian or from East Europe or who cares, they're doing it wrong. Such a person is prone to end up costing more than they're worth, and we'll end up spending even more money bringing in a ringer to save the day, just like Whatever Tech had to with me.
No, I'd rather bring in the "rock star" (I do hate that term) *before* the need arises and just save the damn money in the first place. If that means I'll need to bring in contractors rather than full-time, salaried employees, at least at first to get some top-notch talent working on our product, then so be it. Anything worth doing is worth doing right. And, in fact, we already have a consultancy of highly skilled engineers ready to tap; they put real love into their work, and they're already getting familiar with the product ahead of time. And if we need more, I'll probably contact 10x to see who else is available.
There are many companies out there who do see their engineers as replaceable cogs. I'm sorry if you work for one, but if it gives you stability at least then power to you. But I would argue that the company is wrong to have that attitude. If it's not apparent in the quality of the end product, then I would hypothesize that it is apparent in the extra money the company had to spend to make up for the work of employees who for whatever reason weren't inspired to do their best work. Making matters worse, I think that sort of environment only perpetuates further the false idea that it's okay to just phone it in. Happy employees who know their shit and actually want to do the work are the best kind of investment a company can make.
Having stability and having love for your craft are not mutually exclusive.
It's 15%. So if you get a rate of $150/hr, they get $22.50 of that, leaving you with $127.50/hr.
Desperation doesn't produce quality work. I've been hired on emergencies fixing problems for a company full of replaceable "-ian cogs" who simply could not deliver. They needed a ringer. I made sure my price was justified and pretty much saved their asses. And that's why they've hired me back since on further gigs which were not of such an urgent nature, even though I'm far more expensive than the massive cubicle farm of "-ian cogs" already under their employ.
How does that fit into your perspective?
I figured someone would make this claim. Sorry, you've got the wrong guy! I'm actually the CTO of an entirely different company: http://sweetstak.es/ As such I haven't had a whole lot of time for freelancing, so I haven't worked with 10x in a few months, but I do give my honest recommendation. I hope more talented engineers can make the leap to freelance work, which can be far more rewarding than working the wrong salaried position.
It's certainly analogous to a consulting firm, but not so much in the vein as a place like ThoughtWorks or Pivotal Labs. You're still very much a freelancer, and the work isn't guaranteed like at a consulting firm. You don't get a paycheck every two weeks; you get what you earn in billable hours until the gig is finished. The agency model certainly isn't new. I've worked with one before 10x which actually specialized more in representing designers and UX types, but a company they were working with had an emergency need for a fast front-end engineer and I got roped in by a friend who they represented. I would say that 10x is the first agency model I've seen myself which specializes in software development, but I'm sure others are out there.
Without getting too detailed, I'll say that they've negotiated rates for me which are above what I'd get on average representing myself, even after their cut. Considering that I didn't have to do any of the extra work of finding the gig, negotiating the contract (besides specifying what I will and won't do in general terms), handling the paperwork, or invoicing, it's been a very profitable arrangement for myself. If you've done a significant amount of freelance work, you'll well know that this extra overhead cuts significantly into your time.
I'm probably one of the guys who gets paid the big bucks to fix the code you write in the drudgery that you call your career. Seriously, if that's your attitude toward the craft, then you can't possibly be very good at it. I don't doubt for a second that it would be easy to replace you with anyone from any country ever. There are all kinds of problems with outsourcing development work, but they don't stack up to nearly the same problem as a developer putting code into production without a drop of passion or pride for his/her work.
I've done work with 10x Management in the past year, and I can attest that it is well worth it to have them as an extra pair of eyes looking out for your next gig. They also handle negotiation, mediation, and making sure your invoices are fulfilled as agreed. Definitely worth it. If you want to get in touch with them, let them know Chris V gave you the recommendation. :)
10x Management has found me gigs in the last year, after I'd been doing freelance Rails work for the year prior to that. I can tell you one thing for sure, there is a big difference between their agency and your typical headhunter. Ever try finding an actual short-term contract gig through a headhunter? It doesn't happen. Headhunters are not incentivized for that sort of thing. They want to get you into a full time position so they can score a percentage of your salary as a reward. So it follows that they aren't really looking out for the needs of freelancers.
10x Management, on the other hand, gets a cut of your hourly rate; they're setup for exactly what a freelancer needs. They do a great job of representing you in negotiations so you can earn as high a rate as possible, which of course increases their own cut as well. And they're always looking for new gigs for you so you don't have to. If you're not getting paid, neither are they, which makes for a much more rewarding long-term relationship compared with a headhunter who just wants to get you placed in some salary, take their cut, and move on. 10x also takes care of the dirty work that comes with freelancing, from invoicing and making sure you get paid as agreed to mediating if expectations are not met on either side of the relationship. I feel that eliminating the burden of the administrative drudgery that comes with freelancing is alone well worth their cut.
Overall, I understand your cynicism, especially since an agent and a headhunter look quite similar on a superficial level, and I certainly share your disdain for the vast majority of headhunters. But, in this particular case, I would say that cynicism is unwarranted. Headhunters and freelancers just don't mix. Speaking from experience, 10x has done a good job of filling that gap.
Too soon.
And how many countries with real universal health care also have a soda ban? Perhaps instead they have a working education system which successfully teaches kids to self-regulate from an early age, unlike Americans who can't seem to wrap their heads around the notion that they are not invincible junk consumers. Maybe the lack of such an education is partly why we can't seem to afford to provide our people with what every other industrialized nation can provide, even without draconian bans which you seem to think are an inevitable consequence of such.
It's only inevitable in a nation full of dumb asses whose primary mode of existence is that of consumer.
"You call bullshit, then you go on to freely state that you simply don't know."
I called bullshit on the idea that only middle- to upper-class white males are able to succeed, and then I presented evidence to back it up. Then I said that I can't possibly know what it's like to have disadvantages which are not the same as my own disadvantages. There is no contradiction between these two assertions. Yet somehow you got modded up for a response leading from the very start with a bald-faced false equivalency.
"Because, most people aren't like you."
Exactly. It doesn't matter what societal disadvantages one is born with so much as one's drive and perseverance. Maybe some are more driven than others, but don't just naively chalk it up to mere intelligence; on the contrary, intelligent people tend to be more easily discouraged in my experience.
The real factor has nothing to do with economic class, color of skin, gender, religion, etc. I don't know where it comes from, but I do know that a good drive can overcome any unfairness life throws its way, and that such a drive can be found amongst people whom some would thoughtlessly label as hopelessly victimized or ill-equipped. And how wrong they are.
Everyone is disadvantaged in some way, and some more so than others. But some people turn their disadvantages into their identities, while others accept life's unfairness and refuse to cage themselves within the limits placed on them by others.
Bullshit. I grew up in a single-wide trailer in Kansas. When the season came around, everyone in the trailer park and their dogs and babies had to huddle up in an underground tornado shelter which lacked drainage and would steadily fill with water under the torrential rain. Last time I was in there, the water was damn near my waist by the time we were cleared to go home. I'm not saying it wasn't nice to at least have that shelter, but the fact is, I'd seen enough to know without a doubt that my family was living in poverty.
Now I have an office in SOMA in San Francisco as the co-founder of a bootstrapped startup. It wasn't entirely easy getting here, but I can't say it was all that hard either. It just felt natural the whole time. All I did was work on my interests until I could build something I could be proud of; doing that helped me to build an impressive resumé without so much as a 2-year college degree.
Would it have been easier had I been born into a middle- or upper-class family? Honestly it's hard to say. I think being poor taught me to be resourceful with what I have, which could actually be a great advantage. Would it have been harder had I been born black or a woman (or a black lesbian woman)? Well that's just impossible for me to answer.
What I will say is this: Whatever the magnitude of discrimination there actually is out there, for every person putting their energy into shouting loudly about how their attributes make their life harder, there's someone else out there with the exact same attributes furthering their education, skills, and careers, working steadily toward a position where they can have an infinitely greater impact on the condition of their group within society.
Good point, but ubiquitous services become just that: ubiquitous. There was a time when electricity was optional. It still is, but good luck participating in society without it. If Google starts offering personal chips and they make it cheap and useful enough for anyone to do it, everyone will eventually do it, and Google will become Big Brother in much the same way as government would have. Sure, it's "optional", but your choice is to either get chipped or be marginalized, which is damn close to having no choice at all.
Someone made an intriguing animation:
http://vimeo.com/37751380
I've seen this comparison with code being made before, and someone had an excellent response. The gist was, as a programmer, I don't get compensated with royalties for decades after I've written my code. Rather, I get a bi-weekly paycheck to keep writing code. That's a pretty big difference between the typical programmer and the content industry.
At its core, copyright infringement may be a crime carrying some sort of liability, but it is not theft in the any sense, and should not be treated as such. The industry has earned the animosity against it by asking for insane damages for a crime which even many smart people can't wrap their heads around, and now they want to give the Federal government the power to censor websites at their bequest. Meanwhile, last time I was in LA, it seemed to me that Beverly Hills was as bloated with riches as its ever been. If you ask me, the mass production of junk music and junk movies is killing our culture far more quickly than some perceived lack of financial incentive to produce content.
All the while, we don't even have a reliable way to calculate the actual damages caused by copyright infringement. What are the actual damages of a lostpotential sale? Does an unauthorized copy of a song or movie necessarily constitute a lost potential sale? These are important questions that Big Content has zero incentive to actually ask, because they already wield immense power over the issue and have shown their willingness to use it.
Anyways, here, download some of my music, which I have produced and released despite no real means nor motivation to profit from it:
http://soundcloud.com/dris
It seems to me that this would be a great way for Google to appear innocent of cooking their search results to favor their own products and services, as implicated by Senators calling for an anti-trust investigation of the company. By making this "mistake", they appear as though they are neutral to their own algorithms and must employ the same efforts as any other company to optimize their placement in their own search results, whether this is genuinely true or not. It seems to me that this self-imposed punishment will cost them a whole lot less than an anti-trust battle or any court orders resulting from one.
"Oh yeah? So now there's an official website of this leaderless organization, eh? Who put THEM in charge?"
My understanding is that a democratically elected and audited committee formed within Occupy is in charge of the website. It's been around for quite a while. There isn't a single "leader of the website", but the members of the committee in charge of it can be voted out and replaced.
"I said I haven't heard anyone talking about the disparity of opportunity."
I hear it all the time. Just for one example, one of the biggest issues of disparity is the steadily rising cost of tuition for higher education, both private and state-funded, throughout the country. If you want a higher education and like the vast majority of Americans can't pay the insane tuition yourself, you have to go into substantial debt and then possibly face a dismal job market after you graduate, leaving you with no hope of paying off said debt. If you haven't heard people talking about that then I really can't help you from here, except perhaps to recommend meeting people outside your own socioeconomic bubble.
And how's this for disparity of opportunity? If you're a multinational corporation influencing our national elections with billions of dollars of campaign donations, well that's freedom of speech. But if you peacefully assemble in a park to denounce the takeover of our democracy by such monied interests, well that's terrorism (already in the UK, and I'm sure it won't be long here in the US too).
These are just two issues I've seen repeatedly taken up by the Occupy protestors, both online and on the streets, and they share the common thread: 99% of us are getting a sour deal. The few wealthiest people and corporations at the top of America's economic pyramid more and more have free reign over our government and our daily lives, which they are using to get richer while everyone else gets poorer. And this is allowed to happen because our politicians are bought out; they either fail to enact needed regulations or enact regulations written by the very companies being regulated (often with the aim of further securing the status quo of the industry while making smaller competitors easier to weed out).
I would argue that Occupy has brought these and similar issues into the forefront, whereas before, most people, especially younger people now recovering from the plague of apathy, just complacently accepted the situation as unchangeable. Not anymore. I can name a handful of my own friends who never cared about politics before suddenly forming opinions and joining the dialogue, sparked by Occupy's presence in the news. This is a good thing.
Here's a link on Occupy's official website explicitly endorsing bringing back Glass Steagall:
http://occupywallst.org/forum/break-up-the-banks-the-glass-steagall-act/
Meanwhile, I can't find anything on their website explicitly asking for handouts or an even distribution of wealth. I've also been to an Occupy protest, and I didn't run into a single Communist. So tell me again, who is projecting on the protestors, you or me? Who is falling into what trap?
The real trap is participating in the campaign of intentionally misleading others about the message. First you claimed that they just want handouts and wealth redistribution, and now you're claiming that they don't know what they want at all. Obviously it can't be both, so which is it?
One of the oft-repeated falsities used to discredit Occupy is that they're just a bunch of socialists looking for handouts and an even distribution of wealth. That's simply untrue; 99% of the protesters are capitalists who never want to see another bailout (socialism for "Too Big to Fail" banks) and want the Glass Steagall act reimplemented. That act, by the way, was an opportunity we did /not/ miss in 1932, but which had its teeth taken out in 1999.
There are valid arguments to be made against Occupy. The argument that they just want Communism or an even distribution of wealth is not one of them.
"1. It isn't working."
The national dialogue has shifted considerably since the protests started. I haven't heard so many regular people talking about the processes of the financial system in /ever/. It put the spotlight on the biggest profiteers of the last decade of war and declining middle class. I've seen people on the left and the right start to express the cynicism toward their elected representatives that is rightly deserved.
"2. People are getting bored."
People were already bored. On the contrary, I've seen people who have never had an iota of interest in politics suddenly start to form opinions. It's a populist movement, and even your friend who has never cared about politics outside football at least has /something/ to say about Occupy and its issues. In this age of apathy, I see that as progress.
"3. With California using tear gas to dispel the protests, and the police in London declaring Occupy protesters a terrorist movement, it looks like the authorities are starting to tire of the embarassment and will put an end to things by force as soon as the media interest has faded sufficiently."
The arguable excessive use of police force against the protests have only amplified valid concerns about our government's protection of the Bill of Rights. The UN itself has called into question the defense of human rights in the United States, largely due to the excess use of police force against protesters in this country. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/02/occupy-wall-street-un-envoy_n_1125860.html]
I seriously doubt that Occupy is going to bring real change...on its own. I see it more as a beginning spark. The conversations happening now rightly focus around the disparity of opportunity in this country, to an extent that we haven't seen in decades, maybe even this century. The impact has already taken place and the shockwave will be lasting. No matter who gets elected President and fails us yet again, the message of Occupy (and yes, the Tea Party) will continue to reverberate in the minds of conservatives and liberals alike, until we see real change.
Occupy isn't the end, nor is it the means; it's a warning.