Change.gov
change.gov
change.gov
Does this scare anyone else? I can't articulate exactly why this scares me, but it seems rather... un-free. If workers are free to unionize, shouldn't employers be free to choose who they employ and when?
The UAW keeps trying to unionize postdocs at the University of California. They do this by coming around to their offices, one-on-one, pulling them out to the corridor, and pressuring them to sign a card which they say is "to get more information" or something. Many people (and remember, an awful lot of postdocs can barely speak English) just sign the card to get them to go away, without realizing that they've just officially voted for unionization.
If there were a one-sided restriction on employers like you sort of make it out to be, yes it would scare me. But it isn't. Unions are not allowed to conduct secondary-strikes for instance. This tremendously weakens their power, and to make up for it we wind up with a cycle of more unnecessary regulation for both sides.
I agree we need less regulation of it overall--but it is crazy to pretend there isn't significant regulation stifling the union side of things.
It's a tactic most often used just to be assholes.
Kinda unfair to my boss, who won't ever be able to replace me, but hey! One of the small costs of creating a worker's paradise, right?
Either side taken to the extreme is slightly scary. Absolute freedom could easily lead to very evil corporations. No freedom leads to Atlas Shrugged. Some place in the middle, where we learn from things that go wrong and try to make a good equilibrium, is potentially the best for both sides.
It's true that "absolute freedom" and "no freedom" are polar opposites. It's a non-sequiter that their oppositeness prevents either of them from being true, somehow forcing us to find some utilitarian compromise.
There are well-written defenses of both lasseiz-faire and marxist economics (although I think the former is vastly more defendable than the latter). I've yet to read a thorough, consistent defense of some "middle way".
(from http://change.gov/americaserves)
Compulsory volunteerism?
100 hours of community service in college every year? That'd really sucks. It may not seem like a lot, but it is if they're spent on drudgery...
But I can't help but feel you aren't being creative enough or looking hard enough. I mean I'm sure homeless shelter's need volunteers, as do toy donations for under privileged children, political campaigns need volunteers (see Louie Mantia's contribution to the Obama campaign here: http://louiemantia.com/blog/?p=31), and so do Boys & Girls clubs.
Not to mention taking 1-2 weeks off and helping people in other countries.
However, I'm one of the lucky few here. :) I'll manage to get the community service hours by being a sysop for my school, i.e. managing the Ubuntu server that runs a significant part of the school technology infrastructure.
I also don't think its necessarily the best thing to do... perhaps he should give incentives to school districts that implement such a system but make the school districts responsible for it.
I think you're doomed to be repeatedly disappointed over the coming years as we all remember that government incompetence isn't some weird temporary anomaly, it's just the way things are.
I'm not disagreeing with you, just reminding everyone of something very similar.
"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your own sorry ass."
I've got no interest in getting into a particularly deep and codependent relationship with my country. I'll pay my taxes, they can enforce the laws, and we'll leave it at that.
Obviously compulsory volunteerism won't actually be mandated. This is America.
As I said earlier in the thread somewhere, it already is in some places at least. In my county you need 75 hours of community service (fluffed 'Social Service Learning Hours') to graduate high school. I'm not whining, because you have 7 years to do it, but I'm just saying: "This is America" won't get you that far.
Seriously though, it's not actually _forced_, it's just encouraged via one of those offers-you-can't-refuse.
It really does make me very uneasy though. Why did people wait until after the election to start discussing the more worrying aspects of Obama's policy platform?
And how long before people start discussing Obama's triple goals of giving tax cuts to 95% of the population while balancing the budget and starting up many expensive new federal programs?
http://www.qwantz.com/archive/001339.html
His "tax cuts" to 95% of tax-filers is even more interesting when only about 60% of tax filers actually pay taxes.
Well, it took Nixon to go to China.
But I'll believe in Obama's labor service when I see kids picking up trash, and no sooner.
As much as I don't like volunteer work, I think it's a reasonable trade. If you don't want to do the work, you go to a private school.
However, the government organizes those schools, for better or for worse, and so my point is that it's within the government's rights to set up a system like the one Obama's proposing, so long as the system exists only for public schools.
Sweden requires compulsory military service, and I don't actually know, but I bet they can choose community service instead.
the mandatory part, that is.
Does this mean incubators like yc? Obviously it isn't limited to hightech, but is that the sort of thing they speak of?
I wonder if there will be news.change.gov for entrepreneurs to post links and hang out.
...unless massive subsidies were involved :).
...unless they tax you to death
...unless they regulate your industry
...unless they make misguided statements in press conferences
Actually, they got you by the balls. It is up to them to not crush them.
"Because I don't want to be victimized by its foreign policy."
Heh.
You win.
What we will get is more available investment money in cities that need it. It is certainly arguable whether this is good for the overall entrepreneurship environment. I take the position that it is good.
On a tangent... "Obama and Biden will invest $250 million per year". That's $250 million of our dollars, not theirs. Maybe it's just me, but that type of behavior makes me extremely nervous. I did vote for him, but we should all be wary of him going forward.
I'd pesonally like to see the whitehouse take a hands-off approach to governing. At least one time.
Edit: I think we could cut 80% of the federal budget (over time) and keep 95% of I what I want but I don't see that happening. Let's cut the DoD to 100 billion a year and see if anything bad happens. (That should pay for around 500,000 people and a lot of tech.)
Also, a lot of technology comes as a by product of working on something for the long term.
Just my 2 cents.
http://www.energy.gov/about/timeline1971-1980.htm
Amusingly enough, the actual Manhattan Project did give us a clean source of energy. We just don't want to use it.
You mean, things like biofuel subsidies?
> Also, a lot of technology comes as a by product of working on something for the long term.
Yes, whether it's funded by the government or not.
Am I allowed to make Bene Gesserit jokes on HN?
Now most people in power tend to be older which may shorten their views but 100 years is not all that long when you start thinking the people that come after you.
But most VC companies won't invest in something for the long term. Do you think any VC company would have invested in a company trying to get into space in the 1960s?
I don't know the answer but I think they'd be related.
Example: Space exploration
NASA has had some great successes (the occasional huge success is pretty much unavoidable if you gather thousands of very smart people and billions of dollars) but as a poster child for government's ability to take a long-term view it's pretty dim.
Besides if its government run, it might have a strict form associated with getting funding. There will probably be a part of the application where you need to specify your revenue model. If you leave it blank, no funding. That might qualify as "better".
I don't know about you, but I don't think I ever paid $4000 in tax during college. I spent what little free time I had at part-time jobs, but didn't earn much money. Most of my taxes were returned to me by the government for being a poor student.
100 hours of mandated community service is a tremendous amount. If you don't work during school, the tax credit is useless and if you do work during school, it reduces the number of hours you can work.
That being said, I did other activities that might qualify as volunteer work under this plan: I helped out with a local high school's FIRST robotics team.
"Create the American Opportunity Tax Credit: Obama and Biden will make college affordable for all Americans by creating a new American Opportunity Tax Credit. This universal and _fully refundable_ credit will ensure that the first $4,000 of a college education is completely free for most Americans, and will cover two-thirds the cost of tuition at the average public college or university and make community college tuition completely free for most students. Recipients of the credit will be required to conduct 100 hours of community service."
That's a helluva lot of money to spend in the middle of a budget crisis on paying people to do work, the nature of which is so far undecided.
For my bar mitzvah, I spent a similar amount of time fixing up an old, old path in the woods. It used to be a hiking spot, but it fell into neglect. I walked along it, a group of girl scouts painted trail markers, and over the course of a year we had something new in a boring town.
College is a big problem. I'm in a public school, and tuition is rising rapidly. Something has to be done to fix things. And I like this plan a lot: it means that in exchange for $4,000 students are really expected to do a lot. A hundred hours of service means that a lot can be done. I doubt 10 million students would really take this offer - there are a lot of rich, lazy kids, and a lot of kids with scholarships - but if, hypothetically, 10 million kids each spent 100 hours doing community service, we'd have a billion hours a year being spent trying to fix up things around the country. That's a pretty incredible force.
And Obama hasn't delegated that money yet. He's proposed it, because he thinks it'll work. If you have another plan, one that you think will work better, there's a webform you can fill out to send your ideas. Who knows, it might be worth a shot.
Justifying one enormous waste of money by saying "Oh well, at least it's not as big a waste of money as that other waste of money" isn't a good way to run a budget.
Would you run your personal budget that way? "Aw geez, well I bought a $300,000 boat last month, so I guess it's okay to buy a $100,000 car now."
I agree, though, that big spending plans are things we should be very skeptical of. To be honest, I know some people who do run their personal budget like that.
(Best read in a cockney accent.)
/newsroom/blog/
/newsroom/events/
/newsroom/press/
/learn/inauguration
And, within a comment block labelled "comment out america serves":
/americaserves/plan ("Service Plan")
/americaserves/serve ("Find a Way to Serve")
Probably gonna need to get that new CTO to clamp down on accidental leaks by the IT staff. (Edited for formatting.)
and the "Plan" page needs content: http://change.gov/americaserves/plan ;-)
This guy did it. :)
Saw his name as Author in the Word HTML that used to be there ("Keith Thurston GSA"). Glad Word does that, so we know who to blame.
my ma grew up in communist russia. and when she hears obama speak all she can think of is the 1917 revolution and the Khrushchev speaking at the 20th congress of the communist party.
is she right, i dont know. did i grow up in a communist country, no. i was born and grew up in nyc. but i do know that every russian i've talked to thinks obamas 'change' sounds like the hammer and they all waitin for the sickle.
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/hey-the-president-elect-...