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December 17, 2003
Political Machine in a Box
Last Sunday, Everett Ehrlich asked "What will happen when a national political machine can fit on a laptop?" The piece echos some of the information I've posted recently on connected democracy. The article plays off an interesting theory by economist Ronald Coase: "The cost of gathering information determines the size of organizations." Of course in the Internet age, the cost of gathering information has shrunk dramatically.
For all Dean's talk about wanting to represent the truly "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," the paradox is that he is essentially a third-party candidate using modern technology to achieve a takeover of the Democratic Party. Other candidates -- John Kerry, John Edwards, Wesley Clark -- are competing to take control of the party's fundraising, organizational and media operations. But Dean is not interested in taking control of those depreciating assets. He is creating his own party, his own lists, his own money, his own organization. What he wants are the Democratic brand name and legacy, the party's last remaining assets of value, as part of his marketing strategy. Perhaps that's why former vice president Al Gore's endorsement of Dean last week felt so strange -- less like the traditional benediction of a fellow member of the party "club" than a senior executive welcoming the successful leveraged buyout specialist. And if Dean can do it this time around, so can others in future campaigns.From washingtonpost.com: Q: What will happen when a national political machine can fit on a laptop? A: See below
Referenced Wed Dec 17 2003 17:20:03 GMT-0700
The Internet has given Dean a way to recreate assets that in the past could only be built by a large organization. Dean has done a one-off, but its not so far fetched to image a "political machine in a box" that you fire up and start using with very little effort. It could even be run as a service for a monthly fee---maybe a premium if the candidate wins. Who needs a party except for the brand.
Well, the Post article talks about a number of groups that don't need the brand so much as they want to mold the brand in their own image.
Here are some predictions. First, if Dean loses the nomination, he will preserve his organizational advantage and reemerge as a third-party force four years from now. He has done with technology what Ross Perot could not do with money alone. Second, the evangelical right will become a separate political party in the near future, and will hold its own conventions and primaries. Like the Conservative Party in New York state, it will usually endorse Republican candidates. But evangelicals will use their inherent party-ness to make the Republican candidate stand in front of them and give a separate acceptance speech. And finally, in the next six or eight presidential elections, a third-party candidate will win the presidency. Issues -- most likely the coming fiscal debacle and the inescapable abrogation of promises made on Social Security and Medicare -- will give the third-party candidate an opening. But technology will give him, or her, the means.From washingtonpost.com: Q: What will happen when a national political machine can fit on a laptop? A: See below
Referenced Wed Dec 17 2003 17:25:33 GMT-0700
I think there's a real possibility that technology will allow a third party candidate to build a platform by shopping the various semi-independent groups to form a candidacy that cuts across traditional party lines and includes positions that have traditionally been seen as inseparable from the two primary parties.
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Fake Property
I had dinner last night with Phil Zimmermann. We got to lamenting the "intellectual property" (known as ideas, code, and other thoughts to those who are not lawyers) that we'd both created that now lay buried in some dead corporation's filing cabinet's somewhere. When I think about all the ideas that have been lost to this common occurrence, it makes me want to cry.
This is one of the uncounted costs of "intellectual property." Congress hears all sorts of testimony about the money that will be lost to estates and others if the copyright period isn't extended, but there's never any way to measure the opportunity cost of lost or locked-up ideas that run-amok "intellectual property" laws cause. I''m sure that other's have made these points before, but as Phil and I talked, I realized two things about "intellectual property" that cause this problem.
- "Intellectual property" isn't like real property precisely because it can be put in a filing cabinet and forgotten. People rarely forget they own 100 acres over in Spanish Fork. If they do, the property is in plain view for all to see and there are public land records that they can use to track down the owner and make an offer.
- That leads to the second point. "Intellectual property" is not fungible in the same way that real property is. If I put some ground up for sale, chances are very good that there's someone else who will want to buy it. Maybe many others. There are maybe two people in the world who would be interested in buying some of the "intellectual property" of the old iMALL (I'm one of them). It just doesn't make sense to go to much effort to put something up for sale when there's not much chance that someone will buy.
All this says is that "intellectual property" is very different from property as most folks think about it. This means that making any analogies from real property to fake property is dangerous and should be avoided. A quick look at the pronouncements of many in Congress will show you that they don't understand that.