america isn’t free.

Freedom isn’t free is more catchy, but misses my broader point.

America isn’t free. But we like to pretend that it is. We hate to even approach the premise, but here goes.

1) Having a republic requires an informed electorate. While an autocracy (like China) gets results much, much, much quicker, a democratic republic is supposed to be better long-term. It serves the greater good and prevents “absolute power from corrupting absolutely.” As a tradeoff for this advantage, we get more mess and it requires voters to pay attention. That’s the cost: we’re supposed to pay with our attention, so we can have informed judgements that we vote with. Reflecting how badly we’ve failed in this regard, are our terrible soundbite-driven, billion dollar elections. That’s what my book is all about.

2) We tax like a small government, and spend like a large government*. Think back to the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq. Or the prescription drug benefit for Medicare. Or, now, our sky high budget deficits. We have the lowest total tax rate in the world of all developed nations, yet spend massively on our military and all kinds of other programs. Do we complain? Yup. Do anything about it? Nope.

3) Some gave all. All gave some. I saw this phrase a lot during my campaign around Veteran events. It felt especially incongruous then, as it does today. Less than 1% of Americans serve in the military today, we don’t share the financial burden through higher taxes when our nation is at war, we’re “spared” from graphic wartime photos, and the media barely covers injuries and deaths. We’re sheltered from all of it. Yet, it might be easier than any other point in history for a president to send Americans to war. Might this be because it impacts so few of us?

The idea of America as an exceptional nation is sacrosanct. We’re like all other nations, except we’re a cut above. Yet we demand this as fact, without wanting to pay any kind of price. The irony is that this flies in the face of the most American idea of all: the egalitarian idea that it’s only our sacrifice and hard work that yields us results. You earn it. It’s this that has incensed me. How we can remember this concept individually, but forget that it also has to apply collectively as a nation? It’s why I literally spent 5 years thinking of this book, and finally spit it out over 2 months. America isn’t free. And if she’s going to stay special, we’ve got a whole lot of work to do.

Happy Election Day!

*I cribbed this perfect turn of phrase from the Economist presidential endorsement.

the brilliance of the thiel fellowship.

A pretty cool documentary airs tonight on CNBC, 20 under 20: Transforming Tomorrow that follows the selection process for the inaugural class of the “Theil Fellows”. I got to see a preview of it last week and was definitely impressed. The documentary is edited together almost like a reality tv show (including a completely unsympathetic character that, even as a “victim” of reality TV editing, I find hard to believe is purely because of editing) but delivers substance w/the splash.

As background, Peter Thiel, the cofounder of PayPal, started a fellowship program that grants $100K over a 2 year period to selected young adults under the age of 20 to do whatever they want. While the fellowship is not just about getting kids to skip/drop out of college, that is ostensibly the driving force. The kids are really phenomenal and its worth tuning in just to get a look at them.

In addition to pimping out the show, I also wanted to highlight something that I haven’t heard discussed enough. Which is the Continue reading »

square and starbucks.

What’s in it for Starbucks?

That’s what I’m left with after I’ve digested the big news from last night that Square signed a deal with Starbucks to power their payments. I won’t explain it, because if you haven’t read about it already, you sure don’t care about this post.

At first, I was just surprised at Howard Schultz’s level of involvement in the deal – joining the Square BOD – given that he had just recently left Groupon’s board. Some people don’t see Square and Groupon as competitors. I’m not one of those people. Groupon aims, in the next few years, to be the ecosystem for local businesses. That most decidedly includes payments, loyalty programs, POS, and obviously deals. Those deals will likely evolve to be targeted based on what you actually buy and also be delivered in different ways, including, potentially, real-time.

Groupon aspires to be a lot more than just an email deal company.

Square, too, has much larger aspirations. Opening up their card case app and their POS systems you quickly see that w/this level of integration Square will own the data on where you shop and what you buy. All of this will be used to get you to try new places, to come back more to existing favorites, and to buy more.

Square aspires to be a lot more than just a dongle-based payments company.

Just wanted to establish why I see the overlap between Square & Groupon.

Today, I’m just not seeing what’s in it for Starbucks. Clearly they get the software and the resulting experience. Some think it’s a great experience on its own and that’s why Sbux did this deal. I find that hard to believe because I’ve been using the Sbux card (& app) for the past few years pretty religiously. It’s awesome and quick. I can see my balance, quickly pay, and see how close I am to my reward. I find it hard to believe that Sbux couldn’t just add the geofencing functionality for pay by name. They’re also not adopting Square CardCase has any kind of scale — Square’s hope is that this deal gives them that scale and adoption. Outside of SF, my friends have never even heard of CardCase and based on everything I’ve read, this is true across the country and CC hasn’t caught yet.

So maybe they added Square because more options is just better? That would be fine, if it wasn’t potentially so harmful to Sbux in the long-run. Why? Data. Square through CardCase will now have data on how often you go to Sbux and what you spend. If the integration ever goes all the way, they’d also know the kind of drinks you get, etc. This data is massively valuable in the future.

Example: I always get venti Chai’s from Starbucks. (If I’m feeling fancy, I go extra-hot, no water, & whole milk.) In a future CardCase world, it’d make sense for me to get offers from other shops to try their chai lattes. Or maybe since I always get a beverage on my way into the office, I only get offers between 7-7:30 AM because that’s exactly my purchase window. Or maybe it’s been 3 weeks and I haven’t been back, and so Starbucks itself sends me an offer to come in now to get a free drink to re-start my habit. Any of these, or some variation, are all powered by the data. And Starbucks is now sharing that data. As the gorilla with scale, Starbucks was in a position to master this game on its own – something it’s smaller rivals can’t do (but someone like Square/Groupon/Google/PayPal can help them do through aggregation and building scale). With this deal, Starbucks euthanizes that advantage.

Starbucks is a smart company. So let’s assume they thought this through. They don’t want Square using any of the data from any of their transactions to be used for any competitive targeting of any kind (no poaching!). Best case, they got this included in the deal. Though, assuming that Square/CardCase gets traction, they’re still helping to create a ridiculously powerful marketing program for every other coffee shop everywhere. Increasing trial, driving up repeat visits, encouraging referrals — are all the promise of what only Starbucks could create given its scale, but now will be available to all because Starbucks helped drive adoption of CardCase by consumers. So even w/an exclusion for its data, this puts them in a tougher competitive environment. They go from having a strong competitive advantage to a level playing field that they helped level.

It’s clear what’s in it for Square. If Starbucks puts their back into it, this is a grand slam for Square. It drives massive adoption of CardCase by consumers, which in turn will drive adoption by merchants, which drive more usage by consumers, and so on. The flywheel takes off.

For Starbucks? Here’s the best I could come up with:

- Starbucks thinks they won’t be able to create a consumer experience anywhere close to Square’s, so why not embrace the inevitable. (Find this hard to believe). Though as Owen points out, maybe this is a “stick to your knitting” strategy.

- Starbucks is desperate for “cool” and Square is very much that. (Schultz is too savvy for me to believe this)

- Starbucks got some kind of massive savings from Square on all the fees on the backend that makes this all worthwhile. This would mean Square is going to eat a ton of $ in fees in the coming years. (This seems to be the most likely, even if it doesn’t make much sense to me. At Sbux scale, this is a very serious amount of money for Square to eat indefinitely)

I could also just be giving Starbucks way too much credit:
- Starbucks got way caught up in the “magic” of the CardCase “experience” and made a deal without thinking through the long-term implications of what it was signing up for. From reading his books (which are very good), you clearly see how much Schultz cares for and values the magic of in-store experience.

I’ll end with a prediction. Though, really it’s a guess. I’m guessing that, shortly, internally at Starbucks there will be a ton of handwringing over this for the reasons I guess at above. I wouldn’t be surprised if Starbucks doesn’t promote this at all and this doesn’t get much adoption at all (but still another nice press bump for Square). Then again, Pay w/Square is a pretty awesome experience so maybe they’ll put their full weight behind it and it’s going to be huge. I just think that’ll be a big mistake for Starbucks. But huge for Square.

(ZERO EDITING. Please forgive misspellings, grammatical errors, typos, and everything else. Will remove this once I’ve read & edited. Thanks.)

our anchors.

Traveling was a great chance to get lost in my thoughts. Interestingly the bulk of the threads in my head were ideas that I’ve long thought about, but now got to pull on further.

For most of my trip I traveled alone. Though, in practice, this just meant that I was constantly surrounded by new single-serving friends in each new city. I’d meet them where I stayed, on tours, on lines, in bars at night — pretty much everywhere and at all times. Since I spent so much time with people, I also often got to see people at their best and worst. It brought me back to the concept of kindness and being gentle with each other that I wrote about a few months ago. But talking about my standard of kindness is not what I want to do; I wanted to quickly write up this post because of this great quote* I came across:

We all carry these things inside
That no one else can see
They hold us down like anchors,
They drown us out at sea.

It perfectly captures this idea that, as much as we think we know, those in our lives and those we interact with, there’s so so much that we don’t. I had a conversation with my friend David earlier in the year about how so much of others’ confounding behavior is typically rooted in that person’s past that we have no idea about. It doesn’t make sense to us, because they’re no longer that person, but it’s still there. We carry it around, no one else can see it, and unfortunately some of it holds us down, and in the worst case it can pull us away from the life we should be living.

As if I needed another reason to try a bit harder to be gentle with others, this quote perfectly captured it. We all have our own anchors. Our own weights that drag us around. That probably can’t be helped. But we can help each other.

*It’s actually not a quote, they’re lyrics from a really obscure, strange little sad song. I found the snippet of lyrics on Pinterest and then tracked down the song. I ended up finding a cover of the song, which I now prefer far more than the original. In fact, the song is totally stuck in my head. Give it a listen.

beauty vs the world.

For a long time, I assumed that like most things, there was a natural balance between the horrors and the beauty of the world. The yin and the yang that was part of the normal harmony of things. While this might still be true, I’ve learned that it’s wrong for me.

I’m in the middle of my escape. Some free-form time bouncing around Europe with no firm plans. Yesterday in Scotland I got to visit Culloden, the site of a historic and bloody battle with the English. As with any site of mass death, my mind went to the “horrors of the world” frame. Especially because of the juxtaposition with the beauty that has been everywhere around me. I’ve been awed by all around me — the sky, the clouds, the bodies of water, the lush landscape, the animals, the countryside, the monuments, … pretty much everything. My mind went to these as countervailing forces — the beauty vs the horrors.

This time though, my mind stopped. It felt wrong. That these aren’t two sides to the same coin. Yes, the beauty really is omnipresent. Naturally, though, there are imperfections. And that’s what’s changed. Now I view it as boundless beauty and natural imperfections. It’s us, humans, who turn these imperfections into horrors. Individually, I’ve often turned the imperfections around me into my own personal hell. Others have taken imperfections and used them to inflict horrors onto the world and create hell for others.

Upon reflection, I’ve realized that I’ve spent too much time on the darkness. I’ve at times fixated there. Or the derivatives of it – fear, worry, angst. But the beauty is in the trees, in the sky, in flowing water, in our families and friends, in a sunny day. It’s so abundant that it’s overwhelming once you finally open your eyes and your heart to it. I think it’s appreciating this — immersing oneself in the beauty, that prevents us from making the transition from the natural imperfections to full-blown horrors. Just appreciating and enjoying every day. Being really present has been building for a while. But it’s crescendoed on this trip. The cynic in me points out that it’s easy to appreciate when you’re on vacation and that in the grind this too will pass. I’ll bet no, but I guess only time will tell.

It really feels like a big break through for me. I’ve talked for a few years to friends about my theory of how we’re all broken inside, usually a result of stuff that happens to us early. I call them the “cracks” where life pressed on us too hard. It could be our parents, a traumatic event, pretty much anything — it leaves an imprint, and some of those imprints are so deep they create cracks. It’s these cracks throughout our lives that make us who we are. One of my cracks that has always run deepest was of never appreciating or letting myself indulge in the present. The self-flagellation over past mistakes which I’d obsess over – the result of internalizing others criticism early on. Then there’s the obsession in planning and worrying for the future – the result of seeing firsthand the consequences when one doesn’t do this well. So I’ve always been immersed in the past and/or the future — never the present. Until now.

I wrote, in a much more verbose way, the above in my journal a couple of days ago while on the bus heading back to Dublin. How about some wonderful serendipity? Yesterday, I came across Cory Booker’s Bard commencement address. I last wrote about Cory five years ago. He is literally the only politician I’d ever work for. Cory is a guy who I adore, respect, and every time I watch, read, listen to — humbles me completely. His speech is amazing. His theme is the “conspiracy of love.” A great many jokes, themes, and quotes are reused from his greatest hits over the past decade which is part of his authenticity and consistency. He touches basically on a similiar theme as above (and the similar graduation theme of remembering those who came before you and serving as this for others, that I built my 03 Rutgers speech around).

I hope everyone is able to spend a bit more time enjoying the boundless beauty. There’s some definite beauty in that speech — so watch it too!

infinite possibilities.

Every now and then I’ll read some thing that just instantly floors me. I get goosebumps and my mind can’t help but slow down and try and process what I’ve read.

Marina Keegan had just graduated Yale when she died in a car accident. Her last column in the Yale Daily News is magical in that it captures so eloquently the feeling of infinite possibility that should come with young adulthood. See:

Of course, there are things we wished we did: our readings, that boy across the hall. We’re our own hardest critics and it’s easy to let ourselves down. Sleeping too late. Procrastinating. Cutting corners. More than once I’ve looked back on my High School self and thought: how did I do that? How did I work so hard? Our private insecurities follow us and will always follow us.

But the thing is, we’re all like that. Nobody wakes up when they want to. Nobody did all of their reading (except maybe the crazy people who win the prizes…) We have these impossibly high standards and we’ll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves. But I feel like that’s okay.

We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lay alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out – that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it’s too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement.

Those are feelings I can certainly relate to. The fear of not measuring up, not living up to my potential, of falling behind, and then the eventual calm when I realize that there is infinite possibility. I could never ever have predicted the course of events that has come in my life to date. The times when I was most bleak, most self-critical, self-loathing, when I feared that I had blown my “one chance” was usually right before a turning point that opened a fantastic door. You never know. As Marina said, “it’s never too late.”

It was pitch perfect with this quote from Benjamin Button that I’ve always absolutely loved. That resonates so well that I worship it:

it’s never too late…to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.

 The quote is just so right to me. So amazing.

It, of course, strikes me as harsh that someone with so much talent, so young, beautiful, and smart would have her life ended so prematurely. It insults this notion of a plan — why national disasters that kills tens of thousands don’t unsettle or move us as much as a terrorist attack — this stuff isn’t supposed to happen. If it could happen to them, couldn’t it happen to me? For Marina, I sense that she lived life to her fullest with each of the too short days that she did have. That comes through in her writing. To those who knew her, it likely did in her daily life. That’s more, unfortunately, than a great many who have lived twice as long can say. That’s a lot.

Let’s remember. It’s never too late. To start. To dwell in infinite possibilities. It’s never too late, because we don’t know how long we have, or what’s in store. So let’s “begin a beginning.”

the less discussed, other sinister plot at groupon.

I love Silicon Valley. Love almost everything about the technology ecosystem. I grew up in New Jersey watching with extreme envy and wonderment as the ‘95-01 boom-bust played out. Like most, I also share a certain reverence for Steve Jobs. Unfortunately, the Valley tends to indulge in one of the less enviable Jobsian traits: the shithead/hero rollercoaster. People and companies are always one or the other. We glorify when it’s smooth sailing and bash mercilessly during turbulence.

Groupon has taken the entire ride. From wonder boy CEO and “fastest growing company ever” to becoming the evil company out to defraud merchants/investors. Now that I’m no longer directly affiliated with the company (other than being a locked-up shareholder), I thought it would be nice to provide a little balance. There’s plenty that’s been said on the negative side of the ledger — no doubt inspired by a righteous desire to protect the little-guy merchant and investor and not at all fueled by a desire for twitter followers or endless TV appearances.

Outside of karmic balance, Continue reading »

the best luxury.

While the broader economy struggles, Silicon Valley sits apart. Things are red-hot. With Facebook’s impending IPO, the crop from 2011, and the current venture climate: money is rampantly in the air. Lots of talk of buying condos, building homes, new cars, and awesome global trips are everywhere. It’s been interesting to see how people treat newfound wealth and the luxuries they choose to indulge in. As a (very, very) small beneficiary of this macro-windfall, this also applies to me thinking too much about about what (very) small indulgences that I now take part in.

As is visible in my last post, I’ve been spending a lot of time in my head. It’s probably a good thing. Thinking about what matters and the “why’s” of various stuff. A few weeks ago, John Lilly shared a link of this video of Mo Cheeks, the then coach of the Blazers coming to the aid of a young girl who had stumbled, and then had trouble getting out the words to the national anthem. It’s a pretty remarkable video and it really hits me. At 1:56 in, that look of gratitude and appreciation is amazingly, amazingly powerful. I get choked up every time I see the video, and at 1:56, it’s absolutely overwhelming.

Kindness. It’s what Mo Cheeks showed. And, as I’ve been reflecting on this new decade of my life and what matters, and what I’ve learned, it’s one of the things that I’ve kept coming back to. I don’t know much, but I do know that kindess has been one of the best luxuries in my life. It’s incredibly powerful. It’s potentially one of the most important things about our humanity.

I grabbed lunch with my brother today. I wasn’t especially hungry and since I only nibbled at my food, I had this huge takeaway container. On my way home, off a side street, there was an (apparently) homeless man, sitting on his sleeping bag, hunched over eating some Fritos. I saw him, and as I’m apt to do, I quickly looked away and kept walking. Then I registered that I was holding food. I thought about it for a second and then doubled back and asked him if the kind of food I had was OK/if he wanted the leftovers. He was very gracious and thanked me. As I gave him the food we looked at each other in the eye. I saw this weary, weathered look and the tired gratitude in his face. As I walked away, I found myself with a bit of the same overwhelmed feeling I mentioned above. I felt incredible. Not because I’m some great person for giving away something as trivial as leftovers (in fact, I’m actually pretty callous towards the poverty I see, and resent myself a bit for it). But because I was lucky enough to be able to show a tiny, minuscule act of kindness to someone, I felt so unbelievably unlucky. I was filled with a certain love for that guy. Maybe love isn’t the right word – was it compassion or empathy? Either way, it reminded that *that* feeling is among the happiest that I ever am. That feeling is an absolute high.

When I’ve thought about this, it reminds of the even simpler kindnesses. Just smiling at a stranger. I think that’s a kindness. It’s being gentle with each other. Holding a door open. Helping someone pick up something they spill. Stopping to ask if someone needs directions. Helping a stranger park their car when they’re struggling to back in. Carrying groceries. Or again, even just the simplest of all, smiling at a stranger. I think the world can be a ruthless, rough place sometimes. Or even quite often. We’ve all got so much going on. So many pressures. Obligations. Fears. Hopes. Just so much. And that simple act of smiling, or these other kindnesses, is that incredibly powerful way of being gentle with each other.

So many things in my life go back to my mom. I wonder if this is one of those too. I remember once long ago, my brother said to me that our mom has this face, or this way about her, that makes people want to help her. Now this could just be that everyone thinks that their mom has this his inordinately kind face and demeanor, and if so, add me to the list. But I think my mother is one my personal best examples of that softness and kindness in how you can carry yourself.

Grace is one of my favorite concepts and attributes. I’m sort of obsessed with it. There’s this beautiful grace in kindness.

So there it is. Kindness. The best, most valuable, luxury there is. I hope to indulge a lot more in 2012. I encourage you to do the same.

with age.

I’ve long thought about what changes. As I get older, how I change. My tastes. How I make decisions. How I interact with the world. What I value. How I spend my time. What I worry about. What makes me happy. All that stuff. Recently I’ve found that my random thoughts on this have sort of cohered a bit.

What’s different now that I’m in my (nascent) 30′s? I think it’s a certain comfort.

There are a bunch of things that over the last 10 years caused me a ton of churn and tumult. Continue reading »

the deal with manufacturing.

A few years ago I was obsessed with manufacturing. While I’m not an expert, I have read thousands of pages on the topic and hundreds of articles. In my campaign for Congress, I tried to make jobs, and as a result, manufacturing a cornerstone. All that to say, that this is something I find interesting and care deeply about.

In the past few days I came across two must-read articles on the topic.

1) The NY Times dives into the topic through the lens of Apple and the iPhone. How the US lost out on iPhone work; Apple, America and a squeezed middle class. Must Read.

2) The Atlantic Monthly absolutely blows the doors off with a great dissection at the high-level of American manufacturing and weaving in the human face. Making It in America. Phenomenal.

I recommend starting there. There are a slew of topics that every citizen should understand. Manufacturing is one of them. It drives the wealth and stability of nations and the type of society you have. At least until now it has. It was clearly one of the building blocks of a prosperous and triumphant America. Our mercantilist policies and inherent natural advantages largely contributed to the sole superpower position we held.

I want to lay out 3 important things about manufacturing that are not well understood or known. I’ll do a separate post on why manufacturing matters — but the fact that has historically been a primary source of work for the masses should be enough for now. (That shouldn’t be controversial.)

1) Automation. Robert Reich is the one who first drew my attention to this in 2009. Essentially, global competition or not, technology was rapidly cutting into the humans you needed for production. This trend has only accelerated, as robotics and software improve at scale, the costs of automating repetitive tasks are going to continue to sharply decline. We’ll see more automation everywhere in the world. It will literally take a shortage of the natural resources (a whole other post) to cease this inevitability. So, net, automation has cost a good chunk of American jobs. This is also true for Chinese, German, Japanese, South Korean, et al jobs.

2) Training. I blame politicians (shocker) for why this is so little understood. Since Bill Clinton, I feel like this has become one of those safe ubiquitous lines everyone agrees. “Move up the value chain. Education is the key. etc, etc” These lines have been parroted and led us to the “sacred truth” that everyone needed to just go to college and they’d be well on their way. I think this is (and was) total bullshit, though all the reasons why this is true is another post. (Google Thiel “Higher Education Bubble” for an excellent background on the counter to this “truth”). In reality, educated workforce meant a very complex, diverse truth. It meant a great liberal arts education for some, a rigorous math, science/engineering education for others, and the missing one — was a highly valued vocational training. Germany has long known the importance of this and has a variety of vocational training. Both articles linked to above touch on the need for this. Over the past decade we have all but given up on this kind of training. While part of a more complex point, I believe that we should aggressively be retooling our community colleges to focus on this kind of vocational training.

3) Industrial Policy. Automation aside, the Apple story talks about government having targeted industries that they wished to build up and this resulting in an unbeatable combination. This is what’s called industrial policy and is something that is rarely talked about in America. Countries that have heavily used industrial policy? Japan, China, Germany, South Korea. It’s a whose who list of the powerful, triumphant manufacturers of the world. America too once had a very muscular industrial policy starting largely in the 1800′s going through World War II. With Europe in shambles and our industrial and economic might seemingly infinite, foreign policy and political concerns dominated any kind of industrial policy. The result has been that slowly but consistently (with a surge this past decade) built up industrial capability overseas that has led to Ross Perot’s sucking sound of jobs going overseas. Industrial policy can be a combination of tax benefits, cash and natural resource subsidies, calculated currency manipulation, and protectionist trade restrictions to protect a burgeoning industry. While there are examples of America focusing here (agricultural primarily) we’ve sat out this game. Industrial policy matters and while it has its skeptics (can the government really pick the right industries that matter?) — the rise of most of China, Japan, etc is ridiculous proof for a thinking person to ignore.

There are a lot of other important things to join this discussion. The importance of building a cost infrastructure that supports manufacturing vs consumption. On a scale of 1 to 10 — China is a 10 towards supporting jobs (manufacturing, etc). The US is close to a 1 — we have focused on consumerism and the amassing of more and more crap. By the way, lately that crap has been debt. There’s also a philosophical question about what an ideal, fair, and practical society looks like. I find that you have to not think on a national scale to do this exercise, but go back to that of a small village. Unfortunately we’re neither having an abstracted conversation about where we’re headed, what we’ve been doing, and where want to go nor discussing the actual real impact on American’s lives. Both the NYT piece and The Atlantic do both of these things on some level. It’s much needed.

I’ll end by saying that while I loved the articles, I found Davidson’s closing line in The Atlantic to be a bit disingenuous:

For most of U.S. history, most people had a slow and steady wind at their back, a combination of economic forces that didn’t make life easy but gave many of us little pushes forward that allowed us to earn a bit more every year. Over a lifetime, it all added up to a better sort of life than the one we were born into. That wind seems to be dying for a lot of Americans. What the country will be like without it is not quite clear.

It’s become fairly clear. In fact, that’s why his article was so great. He lays out the clear arc:
1) People like Maggie who the article opens with are actually quite rare. A great very many “Maggie’s” across the country don’t even have the opportunity that she has.
2) And even for her, the basic ideal of a middle class life barely escapes her reach on a salary of sub-$30K.
3) And then finally, the writing is on the wall that with automation, even what the lucky one, like Maggie has is likely to be gone in the forseeable future.

The “very lucky” in this story, Luke, is shown as a clear anomaly. In fact the NY Times story on Apple presented the other side of Luke, in the well-trained Eric Sargoza an engineer who can’t find a job and has been replaced by someone in Shenzen who makes nearly what he did.

From Davidson’s own article, the future, by connecting the dots, is even more dark. The variable here is that we live in increasingly chaotic times. You can’t make predictions in times like this because there are too many variables. You’re bound to be wrong if you do. In the absence of that, you have to at least connect the dots and prepare. Because that’s the best you can do. Sadly, the dots have clearly been there since I was born (30+ years). We’ve chosen mostly to ignore them and, I fear, the chickens are coming home to roost.

**This article was written stream of consciousness and is unedited. I’ll remove this once I’ve edited it** Also, a future post will be what I think we need to do now. At a ridiculously high level, it’s this: http://votechili.com/7/#manufacturing