I don't know about you, but I'm very thankful that we have a president that can understand and intelligently talk about these issues (rather than thinking it's all just black magic).
I'm curious...which President are you saying thought it was "all just black magic"? Let's also remember that Obama is the man that unapologetically expanded covert/illegal surveillance programs to an unprecedented scale, directly costing American technology companies billions of dollars in sales. I'd say his actions reflect neither intelligence nor understanding of the tech industry.
One of the two major candidates for president responds to tech focused questions with some ramblings about 'the cyber part of security' being impossible and how good his ten year old son is with a computer. That's quite the contrast against someone like Obama.
... and the other sets up her own email private server which got hacked by a [taxi driver](https://www.rt.com/news/362417-hacker-guccifer-clinton-roman...). As intelligent as he can be, if he was able to get in, it's easy to imagine that any world government had access to all information that came her way.
RT is state-supported, but it is only one of a number of sources that all reported pretty much the same thing. Guccifer, who was an unemployed taxi driver when arrested, led to the disclosure of HRC's server, and claims to have hacked it "like, twice."
He left office 8 years ago, things have changed in that time. I also refer to the internet as the internets sometimes too. Why would the most powerful person in the world need to use email anyway?
Actually, yes, he did single-handedly do that. The authorization came straight from Obama, and then when it came to light, he basically didn't even bother apologizing. He lied to his base about being against this kind of thing, and then went and did exactly what he wanted to do.
he was pretty clear about his views that power corrupts, that he would expand mil presence in Afghanistan, and that he believed in a living constitution.
some people voted for him for those reasons, presumably others voted for his opponent(s?).
sometimes i just feel like the punchline to all of this will be something like:
"it's the patriarchy, stupid"
It was a lot of waffle, with the odd buzzword interspersed. I don't mind Obama, but I do mind when people attribute understanding to him when he talks at an extremely thin level about topics.
Except that's not what happened. There was a lot of speculation that it would, but then he appointed a bunch of politicians to the cabinet, as is tradition.
His Secretaries of Energy were scientists, including a Nobel prize winner. Rather than being an example of a President ignoring technology, Chu's appointment seems like a pretty good example of how little difference paying attention to this stuff at the cabinet level really makes when Congress is still populated by a bunch of troglodytes.
Could've, would've, should've. Let's look at the one area where he had almost total discretion, foreign policy and national security. There's not much to speak of in terms of success there. Not only did he fail to advance the interests of the US, he also failed to deliver on progressive promises of scaling back the surveillance state.
The recent shenanigans with Russia are incredibly telling. Perhaps you remember in 2012 how Obama and his surrogates viciously mocked Romney for claiming that Russia was the biggest geopolitical threat faced by the US. Obama was caught on tape telling the Russians he could be "more flexible after the election". They took his flexibility and marched right into Ukraine with it. They took Obama's cancellation of a European missile defense shield, and reciprocated by positioning nukes on the border. They saw Obama's incoherent Middle East strategy, and took the Iranian-Syrian-Russian bloc to new heights. Now, they're apparently hacking our election infrastructure and have released incredibly embarrassing emails about the corrupt machinery of Obama's chosen successor. The humiliation is total. Obama owes Mitt Romney an apology.
There's another recent President who faced a hostile Congress, Bill Clinton. He was able to achieve a lot by being willing to compromise.
My point is that I don't buy the excuses. Obama is a good tactician, his masterful campaign and propaganda machine are proof of that, but he's clearly not an effective strategic leader.
We could have had Al Gore, but for Floridians, I mean the guy created the information superhighway --that's up there with the Tim Berners-Lee kind of stratum.
On the other hand, had he won, Obama would not have become president because we would not have had to "react" to the Bush years.
"We could have had Al Gore, but for Floridians, I mean the guy created the information superhighway --that's up there with the Tim Berners-Lee kind of stratum." Please tell me this is a joke.
This is covered on that Wikipedia page, but for those maybe too young to remember, Al Gore's supposed claim to have invented the internet was widely joked about in the late 90s. From the article:
"After this interview, Gore became the subject of controversy and ridicule when his statement "I took the initiative in creating the Internet"[53] was widely quoted out of context. It was often misquoted by comedians and figures in American popular media who framed this statement as a claim that Gore believed he had personally invented the Internet.[54] Gore's actual words, however, were widely reaffirmed by notable Internet pioneers, such as Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, who stated, "No one in public life has been more intellectually engaged in helping to create the climate for a thriving Internet than the Vice President.""
I too hope that this is a joke, '...created the information superhighway'.
I blame the education system for this kind of thinking. It is so heavily influenced by big government to the point that many people have come to believe that demagogues actually have a role in the advancement of civilization.
These folks (demagogues) really should get real jobs. They are mostly good at production of words instead of production of goods & services or like Hans-Herman Hoppe likes to say, "Government specializes in the production of 'bads'". I'd like to recommend his book - Democracy, The god that failed.
See below and the wiki article for context, but I wouldn't be so quick to downplay the critical role funding takes.
Or, in Gore's own words, "That's how it has worked in America. Government has supplied the initial flicker -- and individuals and companies have provided the creativity and innovation that kindled that spark into a blaze of progress and productivity that's the envy of the world."
>"That's how it has worked in America. Government has supplied the initial flicker"
That's not how it worked when America had the most growth. In the late 19th century, when there was less government intervention, America saw the most rapid rate of economic growth. I don't want to get into a debate about who led to the emergence of the great depression but I strongly believe that it was due to government involvement in the economic affairs of America.
That aside, when you talk about funding, there are two things that emerge;
1. You believe that that is the only way to get funding for revolutionary projects. Government is not the only way to do this. Read on IBMs/GEs research labs and you'll see what private research labs can accomplish.
2. That government has money. Government has no money. They only have money in so far as you and I allow them to take our hard earned money in form of taxes. You have to get out of the mindset that demagogues and bureaucrats actually do valuable work. They only get in the way of productive people in a bid to placate non-producers thereby granting themselves power and undue privilege once in office.
As a side note;
The 20th century was the most murderous period that humanity has gone through. Why? Governments comprised of demagogues made terrible decisions after convincing the demos that they can make the best decisions on their behalf.
At least during the aristocratic periods, it was well known that wars were the affairs of Kings and that the common folk were not going to tolerate anyone who would force war upon them. Moreover, you couldn't be conscripted; the only people who went to war were the soldiers paid by the King out of his pocket. You may say that king still taxed people but at least it was just one parasite who had very low taxes as opposed to today when it is many many corrupt parasites with very high taxes.
> They only get in the way of productive people in a bid to placate non-producers thereby granting themselves power and undue privilege once in office.
Oh boy. Anti-government extremists like yourself love to grandstand about the merits of unfettered capitalism without understanding that government creates the conditions for market capitalism to exist.
There would be no property rights without the police, legal contracts without the courts, no medium of exchange without the Treasury. Governments provide minimal standards of worker safety, public health, and public education - all of which are necessary for a productive workforce.
Additionally, government is one of the only entities that can correct negative externalities (i.e., side effects of business, the classic example being air pollution).
Your position is ignorant of both economics and history.
Do you value your liberty? I bet you do and you just don't realize you've been slowly but surely losing it.
I would venture that the only extremism, so to speak, that exists is in how government has increased in both its size and ineffectiveness. When you have a combination of the two aforementioned features, then things inevitably get worse.
> Oh boy. Anti-government extremists like yourself love to grandstand about the merits of unfettered capitalism without understanding that government creates the conditions for market capitalism to exist.
> There would be no property rights without the police, legal contracts without the courts, no medium of exchange without the Treasury. Governments provide minimal standards of worker safety, public health, and public education - all of which are necessary for a productive workforce.
Just because monkeys can ride bikes doesn't mean that only monkeys can ride bikes. Due to government's inherent inefficiencies and its tendency to grow and encompass ever more aspects of life, two things happen; you lose your liberty and it becomes very expensive to sustain government.
I really don't see how you can't see that government really is bad for you and that there's always a better way. I don't like the fact that as the human race we've resigned ourselves to thinking that we can innovate/disrupt most other things except for governance. When I hear statements like, 'democracy is the worst form of government except for all others', I cringe. Here's an idea, how about less or where possible, no government. These demagogues and bureaucrats really aren't as important as you think they are.
Let John Galt be. Let the markets be. Obama and the rest of them have no place dictating how innovation and businesses should be run.
You have some valid points in critiquing government, but you're doing them a severe disservice by the way you present them. Context-appropriate facts, not rhetoric.
> In the late 19th century, when there was less government intervention, America saw the most rapid rate of economic growth.
The late 19th century of American history featured a large number of one-time-only economic improvements and wholescale pillaging of large amounts of natural resources.
The completion of a transcontinental railroad (completed 1869 with government sponsorship via the Pacific Railroad Acts), Pennsylvania oil rush (1870s), the settling and harvesting of the West (1850-1900), and implementation of manufacturing economies of scale on the back of the new rail system.
Additionally, unrestrained consolidation of competition into cooperative trusts gave rise to monopolies that Theodore Roosevelt spent considerable political capital resolving in the early 20th century via lawsuits under the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890). See Northern Securities Co. v. United States (1903) and Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States (1911).
>You have some valid points in critiquing government, but you're doing them a severe disservice by the way you present them. Context-appropriate facts, not rhetoric.
I think you just don't like that I'm right about this. If I'm making a valid argument, should it matter that I'm presenting it in a manner that is inconsistent with some form of political correctness?
>Additionally, unrestrained consolidation of competition into cooperative trusts gave rise to monopolies that Theodore Roosevelt spent considerable political capital resolving in the early 20th century via lawsuits under the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890). See Northern Securities Co. v. United States (1903) and Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States (1911).
No one is saying that monopolies are good. In fact, one could argue that they aren't very capitalistic (capitalism requires that there's voluntary exchange and when you as a consumer have only one option to choose a basic necessity from, then that looks more like the very opposite of voluntary exchange).
As a side note, it is however curious that when you bring up these facts that sort of demonize the likes of Morgan, the fact that he single-handedly led the financing of the bail out of America during the economic crises of 1907 and 1893 never comes up. In 1893, the then President, Cleveland, borrowed $65 million in gold from J.P. Morgan to support the gold standard thus ending the panic.
My stance is that this a nature/nurture kind of debate, to argue either extreme is ridiculous, there are clearly elements of both sides that are true.
No positive/negative turn in the economy can be isolated to a single cause, so neither side will ever be convinced by the others arguments.
A third point, which I think is often lost in these arguments, is that governments have interests that are beyond improving the financial standing of its citizens. A pure market capitalist probably wouldn't think subsidizing farming or shipbuilding a particularly good idea, but the government might be willing to accept some market inefficiency in exchange for food security or having an established ship building industry for times of war. Similarly, high income inequalities may cause high social unrest, it's in the governments own interest to prevent this, so it may be willing to accept lower total nation wealth in exchange for more evenly distributed wealth among its citizens by imposing progressive taxes and creating welfare programs.
Everybody agrees that markets work, the main questions are: are they optimizing for the thing you want? and are there cultural/political externalities that the market doesn't care about but a government might?
This is just hollow legacy-chasing. Just like how he crippled the space program during his 8 years in office, only to discover a passion for it in the last few days.
I agree 100% with the hollow legacy-chasing you're talking about. Please do elaborate more on how he's crippled the space program. If you were to ask me, I'd recommend not having government involvement in such things anyway.
I do think that there is a long-term security interest for the human race in populating other planets with self-sufficient colonies that could survive natural disasters on Earth. But I'm not really informed enough of the economics of space exploration to have a firm opinion about what the government's role is, though I agree that it should be as small as possible.
What I do know is that he's suddenly talking a big game about public/private partnerships for Mars when he undermined the previous public program, and with very convenient timing so that he won't be responsible for any of the tough decisions. It's also seems like he's trying to steal some headlines away from SpaceX and Boeing and make sure that the public sector, which he idolizes so much, doesn't look impotent by comparison.
I think it might have had something to do with the recession. Now that the economy is improving, it is a better time for such things, imo. I applaud your long term thinking, but the short term is important, especially for those worried about their jobs.
Maybe I'm overly cynical, but I feel like a lot of the tech talks Obama gives are heavily scripted and he doesn't understand everything he's saying. He once made a joke about sorting algorithms, and I find it super hard to believe that someone who's never programmed before (outside of publicity stunts) would be capable of doing that.
However, I guess props are due for the effort even if he doesn't personally understand all of it.
What's "the subject"? I'm not sure if you are being sarcatic, but:
“ITO: I feel like this is the year that artificial intelligence becomes more than just a computer science problem. [...] the question is, how do we build societal values into AI?”
The point is that the subject is far broader than the CS department. If you think Obama doesn't have relevant expertise, your view of the subject is too narrow.
