Blayne Sucks

Below is a (hilarious) video about executing ideas that I saw thanks to Merlin Mann’s posting of it at the beginning of the year. Warning: this video is possibly not safe for work watching due to some language.

[Side note: If you've never heard of Ze Frank before, then I would recommend Ze Frank's TED talk.]

One of the things I would like to focus on is a quote from Ze Frank that Merlin highlighted as well. This quote from the middle of the video:

And the longer they wait, the more they convince themselves of how perfectly that idea should executed…But the bummer is most ideas kind of suck when you do them.

I love this quote and really the whole section in the video where Ze talks about ideas. There’s something both true and subtle in what he says. Think about everything you’ve ever seen, read, heard, or come across that made you think, “Wow, that’s clever.” You would never have felt that way without someone else executing their idea. Here’s the subtle part: How many ideas are just as clever, but were not executed upon by their thinker?

Good economists recognize the possible value in unrealized potential. Bastiat may have been the first to write about what is seen and what is not seen. Essentially, his argument boils down to this: Fixing a broken window may appear to be productive, but if that were really the case, then we should all break every window we can find to help improve the economy. In reality, the money spent on fixing the window could have been spent on something else that would have improved the world before the window was broken.

Although Bastiat was talking about the allocation of resources generally across industries, I think his argument applies equally well at the personal level. We need to allocate our resources on things that are actually productive and not just on things that appear to be productive. We need to stop convincing ourselves that our ideas are inherently valuable when they are actually not. If you convince yourself that you should hold off in executing on your idea until you’ve completely thought it through, then you will never realize the potential of the idea. It’s not enough to stop being actively unproductive; we have to force ourselves to continually produce.

Paul Graham has an excellent essay on ideas for startups that also touches on the value of an idea without execution. The hardest part of founding a successful startup is not generating the idea, it is executing the idea. In other words, there’s no such thing as a million dollar idea. Google was not a million dollar idea. Facebook was not a million dollar idea. Graham’s proof of this is dead simple:

Actually, startup ideas are not million dollar ideas, and here’s an experiment you can try to prove it: just try to sell one. Nothing evolves faster than markets. The fact that there’s no market for startup ideas suggests there’s no demand. Which means, in the narrow sense of the word, that startup ideas are worthless.

In other words, Google and Facebook are examples of million dollar execution, and I believe this concept is just as important at a personal level. Executing ideas is much harder than not executing them. There are all kinds of blogs out there that are devoted exclusively to dispensing advice on how to be more productive. It is easy to feel productive by reading them. It is easy to feel like you’re working on stuff. We humans are extraordinarily good at distracting ourselves or, as Ze Frank pointed out, convincing ourselves not to act, which is probably why executing ideas is so valuable.

The Cult of Done is the only example I can find that might (maybe) take executing ideas a step too far. They take an extreme position on doing things rather than thinking of things to do. (Here’s a good analysis on the Cult of Done.) We certainly need to emphasize actual execution of ideas since most people fall so far on the side of thinking and not even close to the side of doing. Perhaps adopting the spirit of The Cult of Done wouldn’t be a bad thing. After all, Ze’s right: most ideas really do suck when you do them, and the only way to find out is through execution.

John Stossel had another great special entitled “Bailouts and Bull” that takes on topics ranging from the recent spate of massive government bailouts to the current reality of the American dream. Other topics include medical marijuana, privatization of the highway system, universal pre-kindergarten education, and the US-Mexico border. Previously, I posted about his Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics, which focuses on similar themes. If you liked that, then you’ll absolutely love this show. Here’s a great (short) introduction to the show (and a more complete interview with Drew Carey):

Part 1 of the show:

Part 2 of the show:

Part 3 of the show:

Part 4 of the show:

Part 5 of the show:

Part 6 of the show:

Larry Lessig spoke at Google about his Change Congress movement on February 19th of this year. Although I respect Larry Lessig deeply for the incredible way that he articulates his concerns, I can’t agree with his approach to improving trust in the government and fighting corruption in Congress. Essentially, he believes that money engenders mistrust, even when it doesn’t actually affect policy decisions. He thinks we need to radically change the way funding for elections works in the government by making elections publicly funded. The goal of this is to reduce corruption in Congress by allowing the public to trust their politicians, or at least to eliminate a major barrier to trusting politicians. If you are interested, I have embedded the video below:

My primary problem with his view is best visible around the 49.5 minute mark, which is during the Q&A session after the presentation. The questioner asks about other forms of money influencing policy. Lessig’s response is essentially to say that other forms of money are acceptable so long as the direct tit-for-tat is eliminated. He claims that the change he desires isn’t as impossible as we might think. He is alright with money being spent to advocate for a political position so long as the money is not being used to bribe a particular politician. Essentially, he wants to remove any possibility that a politician will be paid for a political position.

This is an extraordinarily fine distinction to make simply because there are so many different forms of “payment.” He talks about politicians choosing a political position because a lobbiest would fund a swimming pool for them if they did. This is a relatively black and white case that almost everyone can agree is bad. However, what about a policy conference in Hawaii? Does the answer change if the conference is held in Lincoln, Nebraska? Certainly it should be legal for an organization to cover travel expenses to enable face-to-face discussions with legislators, but where do you draw the line? When does an important policy conference turn into a junket?

The problem is not just about trying to split hairs over what constitutes a direct payment to a candidate. There are so many other ways that money affects an election. Special interest groups can buy issue ads, which are effectively unregulated since all they have to do is pass the pathetic magic words test. Celebrities have a megaphone through which they can speak. How much money would it cost a random soccer mom from Iowa to match the impact of Oprah’s endorsement? Powerful CEOs, Union leaders, academics, and other non-politicians can sway an election by speaking, organizing rallies, putting together publicity events, and generally campaigning for their chosen politician. At what point does this “speech” count as “money?”

The money quote (pardon the pun) of his entire presentation is part of his answer to that same question (transcribed from his speech):

Until you focus on how this economy has changed in the last 12 years and realize that all we’re talking about is just getting us back to 40 years ago, like the balance of 40 years ago, then I think it’s not such an extraordinary, radical change.

Lawrence Lessig

Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States

Ahh, the balance of 40 years ago, when Richard Nixon had just been sworn into office. Truly, such is the picture of trust in the government. Perhaps I’m just taking advantage of a verbal miscue (though if you’ll listen to his talk, I don’t think I’m taking this out of context), but more broadly, has there ever been a time when any government was not, quite simply, just generally corrupt? These are human institutions with built-in human flaws.

Let me be clear, I agree with Lessig when he says that we can’t trust our politicians. I might even be convinced to support some form of public funding for elections. I simply disagree that public funding of elections will affect corruption in government in any revolutionary fashion. There are just too many ways that “money” can influence an election. I’ll paraphrase something I first heard years ago on an episode of The West Wing: “Money in politics is like water on cement; it finds every crack and crevice.”

I’m not saying anything new here. Perhaps Tim Lee said it best:

Lessig seems to think there once was, or someday can be, a pristine political process untainted by “money in politics.” But that represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what the political process is and how it works.

Timothy Lee

Government, not money, is the problem. The whole point of politics is to apply one rule to a group of people who disagree about what to do. Of course the process is going to be corrupt; that’s the only possible outcome. The political elite always get better outcomes than the average citizen. So what is a better solution? If you can’t eliminate corruption in government, then you should limit government as much as possible. Limited government is the best, the only, way to reduce corruption in government.

Last month, Jim Harper started an interesting discussion on regulation around the holidays. Although I was hiding from my computer in an attempt to take a vacation at the time I have finally caught up with the discussion. If you happen to have missed this as well, I think it’s well worth reading.

Jim started the discussion with an excellent blog post over on Cato@Liberty about ‘real’ regulation. If you haven’t read it, here’s a juicy tidbit:

What Burnett meant when she called for a “real” regulator, of course, was “the regulator I can imagine.” The regulators people imagine are foresighted, interested only in the public good, they’re resistant to lobbying, and they run efficient organizations. But these characteristics are simply imaginary.

Tim Lee followed this up with a post on the Technology Liberation Front extending the discussion to regulation of technology. Again, if you haven’t read it, here’s a juicy tidbit:

Too many advocates of regulation seem to have never considered the possibility that the FCC bureaucrats in charge of making these decisions at any point in time might be lazy, incompetent, technically confused, or biased in favor of industry incumbents. That’s often what “real regulators” are like, and it’s important that when policy makers are crafting regulatory scheme, they assume that some of the people administering the law will have these kinds of flaws, rather than imagining that the rules they right will be applied by infallible philosopher-kings.

The FCC is designed to ensure (theoretically) that these bureaucrats are independent, but if you take a look at what is actually happening, then it becomes clear that independence is in many ways imaginary. The FCC’s website describes the organization of the Commissioners as follows:

The FCC is directed by five Commissioners appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate for 5-year terms, except when filling an unexpired term. The President designates one of the Commissioners to serve as Chairperson. Only three Commissioners may be members of the same political party. None of them can have a financial interest in any Commission-related business.

News today that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin will resign on Inauguration Day makes the FCC an even more interesting topic for discussion. With this resignation, Obama will have nominated all five of the serving FCC Commissioners by this summer. Also, it goes without saying that the FCC will be regulating some important aspects of our society, including the Digital TV transition that’s slated for February.

Obama’s choice for FCC Chairman is Julius Genachowski. Wikipedia describes him as “an American business executive with experience in telecommunication and technology issues.” This ideal of not having a financial interest in Commission-related business isn’t starting off well. Of course, that’s Wikipedia, so maybe it’s not trustworthy. Let’s look at Reuters’ description:

Genachowski was chief counsel for Reed Hundt, an FCC chairman under former President Bill Clinton. He also held various positions at Internet search and media company IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI.O) and several firms investing in technology, including Rock Creek Ventures and LaunchBox Digital.

Again, it sorta feels like this is a man with financial interests in technology. Business Week even lauds his “business sense” as a key benefit that he brings to the table. But let’s take a step back from this individual appointment. I really don’t know much about Genachowski other than what’s been reported in the news, and I certainly don’t want to pick on him as an individual that’s emblematic of the larger problem with “real” regulation.

My point is simply to consider this: Is it really possible to find anyone who has the knowledge needed to help run a regulatory organization like the FCC that doesn’t have a financial interest in Commission-related business? If it isn’t outright provably impossible, then at the very least I think there’s a strong argument to be made that it is impossible. Sure we may wish that it weren’t so, but if wishes were fishes, we’d all be casting our nets. Of course, I’m open to your thoughts in the comments.

Before we get too far into 2009, I wanted to post something that I probably should have posted before 2008 came to a close. I chose not to write about the passing of Randy Pausch when it happened (He died on July 25, 2008 at the age of 47.) because I felt that I needed time to reflect on everything that I’ve learned from him. I was never a student of his in any class that he taught, but I certainly learned a lot from him.

Long time readers of this blog know that I’ve covered Randy Pausch’s work several times. I wrote about his now-famous “Last Lecture” back before the video deservedly became a huge sensation. I wrote about his excellent Time Management talk twice to cover both versions. I wrote about his growing press coverage and the book version of his Last Lecture when it came out.

Despite all of that, I wasn’t really sure what to write about his passing when it happened. Time Magazine covered his passing rather well at the time. Although it has been half a year since, I’m still not entirely sure what to say. Certainly, there’s a lot that could be said of him. Carnegie Mellon has a memorial site up with excellent coverage of his work. ABC News considers his story to be one of the best stories of 2008. He was named the “Most Inspiring Person of 2008” by the online Beliefnet community. His Last Lecture book is one of Amazon.com’s best books of the year.

Of course, all of these things strike me as things that Dr. Pausch wouldn’t have said himself. He continually credited those around him because he realized that we – none of us – aren’t capable of this sort of success alone. Everything worth accomplishing in life requires teamwork. When he got tenure, he rewarded his entire research lab with a trip to Disney World. When his Alice Project received well-deserved praise, he deflected all of the credit to those around him.

There are times in life that I wish I were a poet. I would love to be able to write a proper requiem for this teacher. But I am not a poet. I barely know the first thing about poetry. I am a dreamer. Sure it sounds silly or corny, but there’s nothing wrong with being silly or corny from time to time. I thought I knew a lot about dreaming before I heard Dr. Pausch’s lecture. I thought it was something people did for fun, or something that had little bearing on reality. I was wrong. It doesn’t have to be that way. Our dreams and aspirations can affect the way we live, and as a result they can affect reality for everyone.

Maybe the best tribute is to continue to dream big every day and not worry about sounding silly. It sounds simple enough, but doing anything consistently every single day is extremely hard. It’s hard because most days are pretty bland. We get caught up in one mundane thing after another, and pretty soon the day’s over. One day bleeds into the next and it turns into a lifetime.

If you’re already feeling bogged down by a return to normal life after the enervation of the New Year, I would encourage you not to forget whatever audacious New Year’s resolution you may have made, regardless of how far behind you may already be. Take some time to watch the lecture again. And get back on that horse. You don’t have wait another 11.5 months to try that resolution again.

Although I haven’t blogged much about sports on this site recently, I feel I compelled to post my thoughts on Tony Dungy’s retirement as Head Coach of the Indianapolis Colts. You can read the text of his retirement speech here.

Coach Dungy’s record speaks for itself. Tony Dungy retires with an overall record of 92-33 at Indianapolis, including the playoffs, which makes him the winningest head coach in Colts franchise history. The Colts made the playoffs every year under Dungy, and the Colts have won 12 games each of the last six years, which is an NFL record. In the seven years that he’s been there, the Colts have won 85 regular season games, which is just 1 game short of New England over that same time period.

Tony Dungy is also the winningest head coach in Tampa Bay franchise history with 54 wins. Starting from his position as head coach in Tampa Bay, he is the only coach since the AFL / NFL merger to take a team to the post season 10 straight years. He is the first head coach to defeat all 32 teams in the NFL, the first African American head coach to win a Superbowl, and only the third person to win Superbowls both as a player and as a head coach.

Those are just some of his football accomplishments, but anyone who has followed the Colts knows there’s much more to him than football. Coach Dungy has never been afraid to talk about his faith as a Christian. He has been active in prison ministries and in working with troubled youths. Dungy is well-known for having written Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices, & Priorities of a Winning Life, which was a New York Times Best Seller. Quiet Strength describes how he became an elite head coach in a cutthroat league without compromising his ethics. It also dealt with his perseverance in the face of grief over his son James’ suicide in the fall of 2005.

In fact, the success of Quiet Strength may have contributed to his decision to retire at the age of 53. A big part of his reason for stepping down is his desire to make more of an impact off the field, much of which will likely be documented on his website. He has another book, titled Uncommon: Finding Your Path to Significance set to be released in February of this year. In his retirement speech, he eluded to his desire to spend more time with his family, which certainly also contributed to his decision. His son Eric is a junior in high school and will be visiting college campuses this fall, which has been postulated as another reason for his decision to retire.

Of course, for the Colts, the question remains: what next? The simple answer is that Jim Caldwell, who was announced as the next in line after the season last year, will be the new head coach. Bob Kravitz, who coves the Colts for the Indianapolis Star, believes that it was time for Dungy to go. I’m not sure I can quite get on board with that. I certainly support Dungy in his decision because it really is just that: his decision, but I simply can’t say that I would say the Colts are better off without him.

Kravitz’s argument boils down to two basic points: poor playoff performance and a “coddling, enabling, everything-is-all-right culture,” fostered by the Colts from top to bottom. To the first, I say that any winning record in the playoffs is a good record. Under Dungy, the Colts are 7 and 6 in the playoffs with one Superbowl. There are about 27 other teams in the league that would love to have a record like that. To the second, I say that Kravitz just doesn’t get it. The Colts culture isn’t a coddling or enabling culture at all. It’s just not the insane, thoughtless, cutthroat culture that can be found virtually everywhere else in the NFL. The Colts aren’t just about winning; they are about winning the right way.

Malcom Gladwell’s recent New Yorker article compares “the quarterback problem” to the challenge of finding a good teacher. It’s an interesting article, but it is, perhaps, too narrow in its focus.

For those who don’t know, the quarterback problem is defined as the extremely difficult task of selecting a quarterback to play in the NFL from the pool of college football quarterbacks. It’s deceptively challenging to do this because there’s so much data available and so many ways to rank college football quarterbacks. However, the college football game is so different from the NFL game that success at the college level seems to have very little correlation, or perhaps no correlation, to success at the professional level.

One of the best examples of this is the comparison of Peyton Manning and Ryan Leaf, who were both extremely successful college quarterbacks drafted first and second in the 1998 NFL draft. Most experts thought it was a toss-up as to which of these two would have a better career. Of course, it’s clear to everyone now that Peyton Manning is a lock for the Hall of Fame while Ryan Leaf is famous for being a complete bust in the NFL.

The key element of the quarterback problem is that past results simply aren’t useful in predicting future success. Gladwell argues that this is also true of selecting good teachers. He claims that the usual metrics used to measure hiring and promotions for teachers, such as master’s degrees, teaching certifications, and other cognitive standards, are just as useless in attempting to determine a good teacher as college football statistics are in trying to determine a successful NFL quarterback.

Another important element of the quarterback problem is that the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ is extremely large, potentially several orders of magnitude. There are very few ‘good’ quarterbacks in the NFL. There aren’t even very many quarterbacks decent enough to serve as an emergency backup. The quarterback position in the NFL may be the single toughest position to play in all of professional sports. Gladwell argues that the same is true of teachers:

Suppose that Mrs. Brown and Mr. Smith both teach a classroom of third graders who score at the fiftieth percentile on math and reading tests on the first day of school, in September. When the students are retested, in June, Mrs. Brown’s class scores at the seventieth percentile, while Mr. Smith’s students have fallen to the fortieth percentile. That change in the students’ rankings, value-added theory says, is a meaningful indicator of how much more effective Mrs. Brown is as a teacher than Mr. Smith.

It’s only a crude measure, of course. A teacher is not solely responsible for how much is learned in a classroom, and not everything of value that a teacher imparts to his or her students can be captured on a standardized test. Nonetheless, if you follow Brown and Smith for three or four years, their effect on their students’ test scores starts to become predictable: with enough data, it is possible to identify who the very good teachers are and who the very poor teachers are. What’s more—and this is the finding that has galvanized the educational world—the difference between good teachers and poor teachers turns out to be vast.

It follows that if you want a school system filled with good teachers, then you have to be willing to identify the poor teachers and get rid of them. This is the only solution to the quarterback problem. It’s a brutal process for both the teachers and the administration. Time Magazine recently had a cover story on Michelle Rhee’s unusual approach to improving schools in the nation’s capital, which is attempting to implement this brutal process.

Rhee wants to solve the quarterback problem the only way possible: by mitigating its effects. Simply put, if you can’t identify good teachers without seeing how they perform in the classroom, then you have to hire a bunch of teachers, watch their classroom performance, identify those that are succeeding, and reward them. Similarly, you have to identify teachers that are failing and eliminate them. Time’s article does a good job explaining why doing these two things is extraordinarily complicated in the teaching industry.

Of course, this is exactly how they solve the quarterback problem in the NFL. On-field performance is everything. Many of the best quarterbacks were identified as such by their play in real NFL games as backups for injured quarterbacks. Matt Cassel is a great example. In college, he never started a game and served as a backup for Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart. He was drafted into the NFL and played as a backup for Tom Brady, who suffered a season-ending injury in the first game of the 2008 season. Brady’s injury made Matt Cassel a starting quarterback for the first time since high school, which would undoubtedly determine his future in the NFL. If he played well, he would likely be rewarded with a starting role for another team during the off season. If he played poorly, he would fall into the nameless abyss of all the other failed NFL quarterbacks.

After reading Gladwell’s article, I had to wonder, how many other professions are like that? Surely the quarterback problem isn’t just limited to teachers and NFL quarterbacks. The first thing that came to my mind was a Paul Graham essay about great programmers, which is really a must-read for anyone in the software industry. In it, Graham talks about the nature of great programmers, and summarizes the problem of identifying them by saying, “The problem is, if you’re not a hacker, you can’t tell who the good hackers are.” Fred Brooks also talks about the vast difference between a great programmer and an average programmer in The Mytical Man-Month. Here’s Fred Brooks on great software designers:

The differences are not minor – it is rather like Salieri and Mozart. Study after study shows that the very best designers produce structures that are faster, smaller, simpler, cleaner, and produced with less effort. The differences between the great and the average approach an order of magnitude.

Clearly, selecting a software engineers fits the definition of the quarterback problem. It would be very interesting to study how the extreme challenge of creating a start-up company performs as a system for identifying great programmers.

Apparently, some people believe there’s a quarterback problem in selecting good lawyers. Although, I have no particular experience with this, I think the environment in which lawyers at big law firms operate is strikingly similar to the ideal solution to the quarterback problem. There’s an incredibly small percentages of lawyers who end up making partner at a big law firm, which indicates to me that there’s a quarterback problem in trying to hire a big law firm partner.

I’ve also seen the suggestion that selecting a mate is a version of the quarterback problem, but I personally think that’s taking things too far. I don’t think that people really have an objective idea of what a good mate is, let alone what metrics to use in measuring potential mates. Furthermore, the role of being a “mate” really isn’t the same thing as having a job.

I believe the quarterback problem is potentially much more prevalent than people currently recognize. I also think that the solution to the quarterback problem is clearly defined. The two important lessons to learn and apply from the quarterback problem:

• Don’t be afraid to give people a chance. They might surprise you.
• Don’t be afraid to make a change when things aren’t working out.

These two steps are the best known solution to the quarterback problem. What other fields could benefit from implementing them? If you have any suggestions for other areas where this problem seems to occur, please mention them in the comments.

If one were to take a national poll on the most important year in United States history, 1776 would easily be a top contender. Thomas Paine published Common Sense in January. Although not an American, Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, which had (and continues to have) extraordinary influence on American financial history. The Continental Congress signed the The Declaration of Independence that summer. Perhaps most importantly, George Washington held together the young and inexperienced “rabble” that was the Continental Army throughout the course of that entire year and eventually through the conclusion of the war in 1783. This is the story told by David McCullough’s novel 1776.

Although 1776 is the first book by David McCullough that I have ventured to read, I had most certainly heard of the author before I began reading it. McCullough is one of the most decorated living historians in America, and I would be astonished if more than a few American readers haven’t heard of him. He has twice won the Pulitzer Prize and twice won the National Book Award. He has also received the highest honor bestowed to American civilians: the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

As a result of the author’s fame and previous success, I had extremely high expectations for 1776 in several areas. First, McCullough is known as a fastidious researcher, so I was expecting the book to provide details on the inner workings of the fledgling American Revolution. Second, McCullough is often praised as an exemplary story teller, and with the material he has to work with in the American revolution, I was expecting something amazing. Third, McCullough used many of his notes originally compiled in writing his biography of John Adams, so I was expecting much of the book to deal with the political relationship Washington maintained with the Continental Congress.

In regard to my first expectation, I was quite pleased with the details found throughout the novel. If anything, these details were the most redeeming aspect of the book to those who already know the story quite well. McCullough goes out of his way to drop some now-famous names of people who were at the time merely rising stars, including Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Aaron Burr. I was also quite pleased to see many misconceptions dispelled. For example, I grew up learning that the Hessians in the Battle of Trenton were drunk or hungover at the time of the attack. Of course, this has been dispelled in many accounts, as McCullough dispels it here, but it was through this book that I learned the truth of the matter stated plainly.

As to my second expectation, McCullough is certainly a master story teller. Even knowing this beforehand did not prepare me for the fluidity of the book. I was truly surprised at how easy to read it is. It flows so quickly and effortlessly that I found my self reading it in large chunks. One of the primary reasons that I even picked the book up was to find some respite from the large amount of technical reading I have been doing recently, and I am pleased to say that it did not disappoint in the least, even though I was already quite familiar with the major events of the year.

Lastly, I was expecting a focus on Washington’s political discourse with the Continental Congress over the course of the year. This expectation was simply not met. Although there is some discussion of this important relationship, it was certainly not a highlight of the book. Each discussion of the relationship feels unbalanced because the book does not introduce or develop most of the important characters in the Continental Congress. I was left wondering if that is due to the coverage it received in his biography of John Adams, which I will endeavor to read.

My one major disappointment with the book was the artificial framing of the subject. Although 1776 was an extremely important year, it was just one of eight years (1775-1783) that comprised the American Revolution. Quite a few important events are not covered by this book including the winter in Valley Forge, enlisting the aid of France, signing the Treaty of Paris, and George Washington stepping back into the role of a civilian. Perhaps feeling a bit cheated at the missing events was somewhat inevitable. The entirety of the American Revolution itself has been the subject of many books, so I can understand why McCullough would not want to plow the same field all over again. However, I have no doubt that his talents would have made the remaining years and events of the Revolution exceedingly enjoyable stories to read.

On the whole, I can heartily recommend 1776. Owing to its easily accessible nature, it is perhaps best geared towards the average American, but there are certainly details that may interest those more deeply involved in studying history.

ABC News has an article on the eavesdropping of Americans that answers any remaining questions regarding the FISA Amendments passed this past summer. Essentially, the article details the use of surveillance systems to spy on ordinary Americans. Here’s a quote from the article:

“These were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in our area of intercept and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones,” said Adrienne Kinne, a 31-year old US Army Reserves Arab linguist assigned to a special military program at the NSA’s Back Hall at Fort Gordon from November 2001 to 2003.

Kinne described the contents of the calls as “personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything to do with terrorism.”

The article goes on to describe the nature of some of the phone call as pillow talk or phone sex. Some of the individuals involved were from the US Military, the International Red Cross, and Doctors Without Borders. Naturally, the Senate is investigating. The article further states that some especially juicy clips were saved by employees of the NSA.

Unfortunately, abuse of surveillance systems by insiders is nothing new. Bruce Schneier has shown us that surveillance cameras are abused and ineffective. Six well-known security and privacy researchers have warned about this sort of abuse with telephone surveillance as well (pdf).

The only thing that is remotely surprising about this is that we have specific details from whistleblowers, who are risking their careers and livelihood to tell us about this abuse. In this case, it is even more surprising that not one, but two independent whistleblowers came forward simply because the agency involved was the notoriously secretive NSA.

The GCHQ, which is the British equivalent of the NSA, recently dealt with its own whistleblower: Katherine Gun. In this case, Gun was a translator asked to favorably translate documents as evidence to garner support for the Iraq war. Her case was dropped at trial almost immediately. Speculatively, the decision to drop the case was due to the calculated decision that producing the evidence required to prosecute her would have been more embarrassing for the GCHQ than simply letting her go.

Many whistleblowers find the ethics of betraying their employer for the greater good an excruciating ethical dilemma. Check out this BBC News interview of Katherine Gun if you are interested in how she weighed the decision. (There’s a book about her if you are more ambitious.) For these reasons and many more, whistleblowers like Mark Klein in the AT&T case that prompted the FISA Amendments and now David Murfee Faulk and Adrienne Kinne in this more recent case with the NSA shouldn’t be our last line of defense.

Essentially, lesson from this ABC News article is simple: surveillance tools will be abused. It is human nature for power to corrupt. The Founding Fathers of the United States recognized this and tried to limit the power of the government explictly for this reason. They built checks and balances into our government because they knew that hoping for whistleblowers to highlight problems was not reliable. Why does the current US government not seem to comprehend this?  How many more whistleblowers and ABC News stories will it take for our government to catch on?

Once is an anomaly.  Twice is a coincidence.  Three times is a trend.  The US Government has not once, not twice, but three times bailed out a financial company that was facing the consequences of their risky business decisions.  The most recent incarnation of this is AIG, the world’s largest insurance company.  ABC has a great quote in their piece on the AIG bailout that pretty much sums up the core problem in all three of these bailouts:

“They called it insurance, but they were gambling,” said Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. “In a market economy, there has to be a sense of accountability. You can’t come running to the government every time you have a problem.”

This is pretty simple cause and effect.  In fitness, this is summarized by the catch phrase “No Pain, No Gain.”  In sports, there’s a common saying that “most games are won or lost before they are played.”  Another common saying, though I have had difficulty finding its origin, is this:

“Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell.”

— Frank Borman

I have seen this modified to “Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin” as well.

The point is that these bailouts are the most fundamental of errors.  Capitalism depends heavily on fair risk and rewards.  If someone takes a business risk that pays out, then those who didn’t take the risk shouldn’t be granted the benefit of regulations limiting the entrepeneurs who did.  If someone takes a business risk that crumples underneath them, then those who didn’t take the risk should be rewarded by not seeing the government swoop in and “save” the now-failing company that did.  The rules of the game shouldn’t change while it is being played.

Now having said that, there may be some circumstances where letting everything go would be worse than some government intervention.  The problem is identifying those circumstances is incredibly hard.  We were told that the Bear Stearns bailout was the mother of all bailouts.  We were told that the $29 bn we spent there would prevent a domino effect.  (Pretty effective, eh?)  Then we were told that the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac needed the world’s largest bailout.  They said that the $200 bn we spent there essential to our economy.  Now we are being told that AIG is too big to fail.  They are saying that the $85 bn we spend there will save a cornerstone of our economy.  How is this fair to “small” businesses like Lehman Brothers?  What key characteristics were missing in those circumstances?  These arbitrary interventions in the market are bad for all businesses.

Now I’m not an economist.  I don’t claim to be an expert in this area.  I do find it interesting that many of the companies that are failing now are doing so because of prior government intervention in the market.  Fannie and Freddie were a government sponsored duopoly in the market.  AIG was exercising a massive loophole created by the government.  Why aren’t politicians trying to solve these root causes?  Why are they so busy trying to wash away the effects?

Instead, the Bush administration wants to spend another $700 bn on bad debt in an effort to “save” our economy.  Add this to the $314 bn we’ve already spent on bailouts this year and we would break the $1,000,000,000,000 mark.  You can see the trend continuing.  It’s great to know that my tax dollars are violating the most basic principle of economics by purchasing a product known to be bad.  I want my money back.

Edited to add: Looks like the $700 bn deal could be even worse than I originally thought:

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Hat tip: Tim Lee.