It is crucially important to have something to fight for instead of just resisting. Having a long term goal is what keeps us motivated and resilient in light of near term setbacks. Sadly American politics is utterly bereft of a bold vision at the moment (the recent book Abundance falls comically short of its title). A great inspiration for a positive vision of the US today can be found in the original Star Trek from the late 1960s. We are still a long way from some of the extreme technologica...

At a dinner at DLD we were discussing the issue of libel and I was surprised to find one participant defending the UK law that allows Lord McAlpine to sue individuals who (re)tweeted an allegation against him. Apparently the amounts asked for depend on follower count. This approach seems to run counter our views of the importance of free speech which makes libel suits very difficult in the US. But as I started to think more about it I do believe we have a problem that may need some kind of so...

The proposed PROTECT IP act is an improvement on COICA, but still makes the wrong trade-offs between protecting copyright holders and defending the integrity of the Internet. There are several major modifications from the COICA draft. The key ones are first that only the DOJ can initiate procedures against foreign web sites that would result in exclusion of these sites from DNS and second that for domestic websites the only type of injunctive relief available is financial (no advertising supp...

I still follow German politics a bit, if for no other reason than talking to my parents and friends who live there. But right now there are interesting things happening there that are relevant to US politics. Germany has federal elections coming up on September 27 and had state elections in three states last week. The state elections showed a fascinating split with two smaller parties, “The Left” (“Die Linke” and the “Free Democratic Party” (“FDP”), scoring major gains. The Left is a combinat...

I just ran across an article titled “Skilled Immigrants on Why They are Leaving the U.S.” in BusinessWeek (via Techmeme). It is not surprising to find diminished job prospects in the U.S. as a key reason, but I was shocked to read that the wait time for a Green Card for Indian and Chinese citizens is now 10 years (that’s a decade!). That is a very long time for anybody to wait and live with the uncertainties faced by visa holders. Just entering the country when you are here on a visa can be a...

When I first came here as an exchange student at age 16, I fell in love with the US. Compared to my native Germany, I felt a wonderful sense of possibility. That is still the case today for many of the businesses we look at and invest in, but I worry about the future of the US. There appears to be a parallel between the US today and Great Britain at the end of the colonial period in the 20th Century. Great Britain expended its resources on ruling a large empire. Those resources were not avail...