Month: December 2009

AmericaLand in bad decline

Re: this and this prior post, Fake Steve Jobs reports on the chat he had with AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson. Here’s some highlights:

Now, the thing about [“Meet the Beatles”] was, on the day [the album] hit the U.S. the whole world changed. Like, before that day, the world was one way, music was one way, culture was one way — and then after that day the world was never the same ever again, and as soon as you heard that album you knew that, and even if you were only nine years old, which I was, you just knew. You knew. Sales were crazy.

[…] there was a lot of demand for that record — so much that the plant that printed the records could not keep up. Now here’s the lesson. Do you think the guys who were running Capitol Records said, Gee whiz, the kids are buying up this record at such a crazy pace that our printing plant can’t keep up — we’d better find a way to slow things down. Maybe we can create an incentive that would discourage people from buying the record. Do you think they said that? No, they did not. What they did was, they went out and found another printing plant. And another one and another one, until they could make as many records as people wanted.

Absolutely goddamned right. AT&T’s metaphorical Meet the Beatles response to the iPhone data-deluge seems to be:

“we need to figure out a way to keep people out of record stores. Prevent them from entering, dissuade them from buying the records if they’re already in there. That is the winning formula.”

Which is precisely the reaction that puts AT&T out of business. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon (and for a long time). Back to (fake) Steve:

Yes, 3% of your users are taking up 40% of your bandwidth. You see this as a bad thing. It’s not. It’s a good thing. It’s a blessing. It’s an indication that people love what we’re doing, which means you now have a reason to go out and double or triple or quadruple your damn network capacity. Jesus! I can’t believe I’m explaining this to you. You’re in the business of selling bandwidth. That pipe is what you sell. Right now what the market is telling you is that you can sell even more! Lots more! Good Lord. The world is changing, and you’re right in the sweet spot.

Indeed they are. Reaction? Let’s piss it away for some modest, short-term gains. The model, you’ll recall, is to sell crippled phones that, since people can’t actually use, don’t tax our network at all. AT&T simply doesn’t understand that the world has turned and left them there, in the past, with a shitty flip phones business while everyone else is up here, in the “future,” waiting on good pipes. Praying someone will take their money for those (still mythical) good pipes. That AT&T doesn’t see it that way is mostly because of the sentence to which I added emphasis: AT&T doesn’t want to believe that they are only selling pipe. They think they are selling something else entirely. I’m quite sure they can’t vocalize exactly what that thing is, but they inevitably deny the notion that they are, in fact, already a dumb-pipes company, though a very bad one. And this is why they fail. They think their subscribers care who is providing them with the dumb pipes instead of how well the dumb pipes work. And it is on this point that (fake) Steve really, really gets going:

Guys like you took over the phone company and all you cared about was milking profit and paying off assholes in Congress to fuck over anyone who came along with a better idea, because even though it might be great for consumers it would  mean you and your lazy pals would have to get off your asses and start working again in order to keep up.

[…] everyone focused on just getting what they can in the short run and who cares what kind of piece of shit product we’re putting out […and…] it was all about taking all this great shit that our predecessors had built and “unlocking value” which really meant finding ways to leech out whatever bit of money they could get in the short run and let the future be damned. It was all just one big swindle, and the only kind of engineering that matters anymore is financial engineering.

Empahsis added to point out (fake) Steve likely recapitulating the secret mission statement of AT&T. They sell pipes, for chrissakes. And yet they think it is in their interest to restrict and deny people access to those pipes, which said people feel they have contracted for access to and have every right to access. Worse, AT&T seems to feel this is a winning strategy. And maybe it is. For 2009, and even some of 2010. But 2011? Not so much. I guess Randall and his lot will have vested and retired to Nantucket by then.

That this sort of shit seems to be the organizing concept of American industry for the past half-century or so is, uh, totally unrelated and nothing to worry about, I’m sure. Fake Steve sums it up:

I had this vision of the future — a ruined empire, run by number crunchers, squalid and stupid and puffed up with phony patriotism, settling for a long slow decline.

Nate Silver on the Public Option

squashed notes “They’re good thoughts” in reference to this article. I’d call them indispensible. Particularly this:

1) The energy by progressive activists on behalf of the public option has done more good than harm, and by a wide margin.

2a) Nevertheless, the public option is/was a relatively minor part of the health care bill, at least once it became clear that it (i) wouldn’t be pegged to Medicare rates, and (ii) would only be available to a small fraction of the population.

2b) To claim that a health care bill without a public option is anything other than a huge achievement for progressives is, frankly, bullshit.

Absolutely right. It hurts to hear it, I know, but this is 100% the case. Sorry.

I think he’s both right and wrong on this, though:

Liberals have tended to underestimate what a significant political achievement it would be for Democrats to pass such a major bill that has become rather unpopular with the public.

Agreed on underestimation. What he leaves aside, though, is that Democrats in Congress don’t seem to appreciate that they are going to own this legislation. They’d better make it to their liking and damned effective too…because they are going to be the only ones defending it on the hustings in 2010 and 2012. That said, improvement over the current mire shouldn’t be too hard to achieve. The problem is, you need a group of policy-minded individuals who are genuinely looking to improve the situation rather than scratch the back of their favorite interest groups. So we’re in trouble.

Nate Silver on the Public Option

The Mortal Majority

jimray:

“…although the end-of-life use of Medicare is a government problem that violates almost every philosophy [Republicans] espouse about the proper role of government—public sector over private; easily exploited by, rather than protected from, trial lawyers; a moral hazard, consequence-free billing system as opposed to rational, need-based spending; a program with rising outlays as opposed to slow or zero growth outlays—Medicare is instead the very program they are rallying behind. And why? For votes—specifically the votes of those angry, mostly-white seniors upon whom they are betting their electoral fortunes in 2010 and beyond. In short, the GOP has now become so wedded to its dying, white majority that it is willing to sacrifice not only good public policy and smart long-term budgeting, but its very own core principles.”

— Tom Schaller over at FiveThirtyEight on the Republican party’s identity crisis.

All I have to say to this is: absolutely goddamned right. And, worst of all, they seem to think this is a winning strategy going forward. And it may just appear to be so (briefly) come 2010. Bad bad bad for the country all the way around. Policy matters not, it’s simply a movement based on pure fear, uncertainty, and doubt. An economic rebound will help, but only somewhat. Until we’re largely through this demographic shift, I suspect the country will only become more and more ungovernable. Something has got to give.

Somewhere today, in the here and now, in the world as it is, a soldier sees he’s outgunned, but stands firm to keep the peace. Somewhere today, in this world, a young protestor awaits the brutality of her government, but has the courage to march on. Somewhere today, a mother facing punishing poverty still takes the time to teach her child, scrapes together what few coins she has to send that child to school – because she believes that a cruel world still has a place for that child’s dreams.

Let us live by their example. We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the intractability of deprivation, and still strive for dignity. Clear-eyed, we can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace. We can do that – for that is the story of human progress; that’s the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth.

Barack Obama, accepting the Peace Prize

Little Minds

Then: All you need to know is there are 1,990 pages,” griped House Minority Leader John Boehner about the House bill. “It is longer than War and Peace and not near as funny,” said Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX)
Now: “And we talk about 2,074 pages, which seem like a lot, and it would be for a normal bill that you could debate in a limited period of time, which is what we’re being asked to do. But 2,074 pages isn’t nearly enough to cover health care for America. So why is it only 2,074 pages?” Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY)

It has never been serviced or cleaned other than blowing out the dust with a service station hose. … I have typed on this typewriter every book I have written including three not published. Including all drafts and correspondence I would put this at about five million words over a period of 50 years.

Cormac McCarthy, on the Olivetti Lettera 32 he purchased at a pawn shop for $50 in 1963, which sold at auction for $254,500. Yes, he’s got another one.

(via Daring Fireball)

How it passes

ryking:

“This is so freakin’ obnoxious I can hardly stand it. We are about to get a turd of a “reform” package, potentially worse than the status quo. We have the insurance industry declaring victory, Republicans cackling with glee, and the administration is using that piece of shit to raise money? Obama spent all year enabling Max Baucus and Olympia Snowe, and he thinks we’re supposed to get excited about whatever end result we’re about to get, so much so that we’re going to fork over money? Well, it might work with some of you guys, but I’m certainly not biting. In fact, this is insulting, betraying a lack of understanding of just how pissed the base is at this so-called reform. The administration may be happy to declare victory with a mandate that enriches insurance companies, yet creates little incentive to control costs or change the very business practices that have screwed so many people. But I’ll pass.”

— Daily Kos founder Markos: Idiocy

This kind of idiocy is precisely how the bill is going to pass (this post has more context). Rest assured that without suitably believable whinging on the part of Kos and MoveOn (and etc…), the Liebermans of the world won’t for a second believe they have accomplished their goal of pissing off those same groups (and thus feeling confident that they have found the center-right path that is, of course, preferable to them regardless of (often in spite of) the resultant policy). So, 40 million new insurees can thank Markos. People over 55 able to buy into Medicare, and the ultimate expansion of that option (and all that that will mean) can also thank Markos. That we’ll be spared the ridiculous, non-functional nubbin of a public option that remained in the previous iteration of the bill: thank Markos.

Thanks, Markos.