"More Government" is NOT the "Answer"

You think "more government" will solve the U.S. unemployment problem? Look at France--

Why France Has So Many 49-Employee Companies - Businessweek: ". . . Once a company has at least 50 employees inside France, management must create three worker councils, introduce profit sharing, and submit restructuring plans to the councils if the company decides to fire workers for economic reasons. French businesspeople often skirt these restraints by creating new companies rather than expanding existing ones. “I can’t tell you how many times when I was Minister I’d meet an entrepreneur who would tell me about his companies,” Thierry Breton, chief executive officer of consulting firm Atos and Minister of Finance from 2005 to 2007, said at a Paris conference on April 4. “I’d ask, ‘Why companies?’ He’d say, ‘Oh, I have several so that I can keep [the workforce] under 50.’ We have to review our labor code. . . . Companies say the biggest obstacle to hiring is the 102-year-old Code du Travail, a 3,200-page rule book that dictates everything from job classifications to the ability to fire workers. Many of these rules kick in after a company’s French payroll creeps beyond 49. . . . There are now 2.9 million people out of work in France, almost 10 percent of the workforce and the most in 12 years. . . . "

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Mary Meeker: Internet Trends Presentation

Well worth the time for a thorough review: Mary Meeker's presentation concerning internet trends including mobile. Meeker (a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers) presented the report at the All Things Digital conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.KPCB Internet Trends 2012




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UN to regulate the Internet? A VERY BAD IDEA

When I first read this I thought it was some kind of joke--

House to examine plan for United Nations to regulate the Internet - The Hill's Hillicon Valley: "House lawmakers will consider an international proposal next week to give the United Nations more control over the Internet. The proposal is backed by China, Russia, Brazil, India and other UN members, and would give the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) more control over the governance of the Internet. . . . The Internet is currently governed under a “multi-stakeholder” approach that gives power to a host of nonprofits, rather than governments. Strickling said that system brings more ideas and flexibility to Internet policymaking. “We lose that when we turn this over to a group of just governments,” Strickling said. In an op-ed earlier this year in The Wall Street Journal, McDowell warned that “a top-down, centralized, international regulatory overlay is antithetical to the architecture of the Net.” “Productivity, rising living standards and the spread of freedom everywhere, but especially in the developing world, would grind to a halt as engineering and business decisions become politically paralyzed within a global regulatory body,” McDowell wrote. He said some governments feel excluded from Internet policymaking and want more control over the process. “And let's face it, strong-arm regimes are threatened by popular outcries for political freedom that are empowered by unfettered Internet connectivity,” McDowell wrote."

The idea of giving control of the internet to the UN is A VERY BAD IDEA.  It would be the end of internet freedom.  The United Nations is not competent to administer the internet.  The internet should be free. Its management should continue as it has--under a “multi-stakeholder” approach that gives power to a host of nonprofits, rather than governments.

Web freedom faces greatest threat ever, warns Google's Sergey Brin | Technology | The Guardian: "The principles of openness and universal access that underpinned the creation of the internet three decades ago are under greater threat than ever, according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin. In an interview with the Guardian, Brin warned there were "very powerful forces that have lined up against the open internet on all sides and around the world". "I am more worried than I have been in the past," he said. "It's scary." The threat to the freedom of the internet comes, he claims, from a combination of governments increasingly trying to control access and communication by their citizens, the entertainment industry's attempts to crack down on piracy, and the rise of "restrictive" walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple, which tightly control what software can be released on their platforms."

Oh, I am sure every totalitarian government is lobbying for the "UN" to be given control of the internet. Why Congress is even considering this is unclear. If you care about internet freedom, tell your Senators and Congressman to vote "NO!"

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