The obvious tragedy is that, while the US people have gotten richer and, in theory, more “enabled”, they have demanded more “free lunches” from the gov’t. Using Other People’s Money counts as free to them.

In the program, there’s probably too much on fund raising thru the internet, and not enough on transparancy, open access to gov’t contracts, gov’t laws, gov’t policies, gov’t opening hours.

A big “direct democracy” project would be this: as you fill out your 1040, you also fill out a one page budget allocation — where do you want your tax dollars to go, among the various gov’t departments. Letting taxpayers decide on more allocation would reduce the power of the politicians, as well as corruption.

But governments cannot simply innovate and leave some customers aside. It should serve all to some extent, or at least most. Of all the people in the nation, how many does Google actually serve well? All? Some? Those wealthy enough to cable modems and computers?

Your idea that there’s a new world now because of innovation in communication, that leads to networks and more, is a good one. It makes sense and has promise. But you keep pissing it away with these dopey one-liners. It’s like you’re stuck in TV Guide headline hell, making important notions catchy while kind of losing sight of the gravitas of the whole thing.

yeah, I know. Gravitas doesn’t sell papers.

bob wyman

It’s counter-intuitive, but as a race, humanity’s not ready for a government capable of designing and executing to plan as efficiently as Google is. (Citations should be made here, but I’m ill-connected as I write this …)

Even with the checks & balances of smart, capable folks in the ranks, the effective execution of plans from Executive Branch to reality would likely be disastrous.

If Dr. Schmidt, e.g., decided cracking and publishing credit databases was Good for us, under the rubric of “radical transparency,” his dictate would become reality in short order. Bad Things would ensue.

Until we evolve more fully into a species who accept Do No Evil at their core (i.e. Not Now – mankind is ill-prepared for such powerful efficiencies), we’ll have to be thankful for the ineptitude of the bureaucrats and politicians who run things now.

“Luckily,” they are quite efficient at blocking Progress, so we’re quite safe for some time …

S

And now that Hillary is officially out of this race and is throwing her full support behind Obama, are you getting behind him as well??? I apologize if you already announced it. I may have missed it, but I read your stuff religiously so I’m thinking not …