Google Going After Wikipedia with Knowledge Graph

When a commercial interest is providing educational material, what guarantee is there that the material will not be manipulated for the purpose of profit? Wikipedia has maintained a great reputation for providing knowledge and having clear rules for debating facts and guarding against commecial interferance. There will always be disagreements among people, but a different element is introduced when a commercial enterprise becomes the provider.

The new Google Knowledge Graph is clearly a threat to wikipedia. Starting first with basic facts, Google could become the "go to" place for information ahead of wikipedia. Will this "knowledge" then be distorted with ads? Often right now telling the difference between and ad and an organic link on Google. Do we want a corporation becoming the leading source for knowledge when it also serves up advertising? Could some information be changed to serve corporate interests?

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Jobs Comparison of Bush and Obama First Terms

Both Bush and Obama faced job losses during their first terms. Right now, more jobs have been added to private sector payrolls in Obama's first term than Bush, and there are more private sector jobs now than when Obama got into office. The main remaining difference is public sector (government) jobs increased significantly under Bush, but decreased significantly under Obama. Take a look at the charts below. Then feel free to leave comments.

Here is the Private Sector jobs comparison:

 

And here is the Public Sector jobs comparison:

 

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A word about taxes and capitalism

When taxes were higher in the 50's and 60's, we built the interstate highway system, invented the internet, sent rockets into orbit and a man to the moon, built schools that were the envy of the world, and so much more. As a country we chose to invest in these things, and it made people wealthy. Those wealthy people understood that is was through our investment that they were able to reach great heights, and were more than happy to pay their fair share. 

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Our Democracy is Not for Sale

Regardless of whether you are left, right, center, liberal, conservative, progressive, socialist, or libertarian, what we lack right now as a country is something we can all rally together about. Politics can be so frustrating to everyone to the point people just don't want to talk about it. One of the main reasons for this is our country is split more than ever. But what if there was an issue that we could all agree on? 

I think there is...

We need to send a clear message that our democracy is not for sale. There is a lot of money that wants to make sure the American people never come together on an issue like this. There are lobbyists who make a lot of money making sure we remain divided, thereby maintaining the status quo, and insuring that those people who have carved their niche in our society stay in power, at the expense of those who would strive to make our country great again. 

If you have a moment, take a look at United Republic. They are a group striving to bring this issue to more people's attention. What is cool about this group is there are people from both the left and the right that are involved in it. Here are a few examples:

Lawrence Lessig speaks at Google, Buddy Roemer from the Republican party makes a funny superPAC parody, Tom Davis from the Tea Party speaks about corporate giveaways

As we move toward elections, it is not going to matter so much who we elect until we start to send a clear message that our democracy is not for sale. I would love to see more people start to come forward and say they are no longer a member of any party but instead have chosen to do their part in making sure that our demecracy is our democracy, something that is so sacred that it cannot be bought and sold, but earned.

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Why Debt Keeps Increasing

If we are going to make sense of the current state of world economic affairs, we must first answer the difficult question of why debt keeps increasing. More and more debt is being accumulated and right now we are in a place where such debt would take decades to repay. Let's go over some reasons:

1. Because of past mistakes we are paying off old loans with new loans. All over the world there is an increasing amount of revolving credit that is not paid off, similar to how a consumer allows credit card balances to remain elevated, only to find they cannot keep up with the payments, so they go get another credit card. However, in the case of consumers credit is not available like it was in the past. Instead of consumers running up debt, it is banks and governments.

2. In order to "protect" banks from failing, governments are lending money through facilities like the fed discount window at a near zero interest rate in hope this will keep banks solvent, and even that banks will improve their balance sheets. Sadly, even at zero percent banks are continuing to increase their leverage.

3. Banks have been increasing their leverage through ever more complex financial products. Terms like Credit Default Swap and Re-hypothecation sound difficult to understand, and there is a reason for that. Banks do not want people to understand them. But to put it in simple terms, it used to be that banks lent out about 5 times more than they had help in deposits. Now they are lending out more like 30 times more than they have in deposits. Why would they do this?

4. Those running banks are paying out record bonuses for short term profits that are extremely damaging to long term fiscal viablity. By continuing to increase leverage (ex. from 5 to 1, to 30 to 1) they are essentially creating money out of thin air, and then finding ways to pay that money to leading stock holders and board members. How can they get away with this?

5. Governments know that if these mega-banks fail it will dismantle a large part of the financial system. In many ways allowing them to fail is worse than continuing to bail them out. So governments keep pumping money into them hoping they can get the banks fixed. The problem is these banks are massively lobbying the very people whose responsibility it is to regulate them.

So that gives a perspective. I'm not offering solutions, but hopefully as more people understand the dynamic, they will work together to solve these difficult problems.

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