This Independence Day I find myself actually feeling patriotic and thinking back to those scrappy Englishmen that dared defy their king.  Then I think of all the other brave immigrants like my own great grandparents that boldly sought out a better future in an unfamiliar land that claimed to be free.  Land of the free, home of the brave.  A day to declare independence.

To be sure, we are not the same Americans that wrenched this land from the British monarchy and demanded a Bill of Rights be added to our Constitution.  I don’t mean in the Homeric sense that we are lesser beings, though that may well be true.  I mean our situation is dramatically different.  This is a settled land with hundreds of years of momentum behind the current government.  This is not that wild place at he far edge of the civilized world where Enlightenment ideals of freedom and equality could take hold far from the oppressive monarchs of old Europe.

So I have no right to be disappointed in my fellow fat, comfortable Americans who are failing to rise up and demand the immediate repeal of the Patriot Acts and restoration of the Bill of Rights.  I shouldn’t be infuriated that our president is framing this issue as a balance between freedom and security.  We are a rich nation now, we have too much to lose.  We don’t have the backbone to stick with old Ben Franklin and point out that those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither.

Ah well, what can we do?  It’s a shame because this old system of ours has such good bones.  The whole balance of power thing between the judicial, executive, and legislative branches.  Quite clever, really. There are allowances for decisive action, which as any observer of decision-by-committe knows, only an individual actor can undertake. There is a Congress to voice the diverse views of the people and harvest whatever wisdom the crowds may possess, and finally the courts to keep the entire thing grounded on the rule of law.  I would even suggest that Yudkowsky try to bake these ideas into his CEV when he builds the Godlike AI that will rule the universe.

But it seems clear that monied interests have captured our political process.  I am with Lessig on this, drastic campaign reform might be the only way to salvage this democracy.*  His Rootstrikers group has joined with Demand Progress.  I do believe that some of the folks who take a look at this post do have backbones and intelligence.  I encourage those of you who don’t happen to be bootlickers to rouse yourselves somewhat and see what you can do to help rectify this declining state of ours.  Every empire must fall, I don’t deny that, but this one might have a few more miles left on it.  Transparency, rule of law, and individual freedom are some of the ideas that led to the ascendence of the West.  I suspect that we discard them at our peril.

* The mechanism by which this occurs is annoying. Money seems to buy policy via campaign donations. Which suggests that whoever has the most money will win an election (Though I haven’t seen the data on this, I should look it up.). If most of the money is spent on advertising, then rich people are basically controlling the mindspace of voters. I guess this is always true of various forms of advertising and mass media in general really, but it makes me resolved to more completely unplug from the mind control device. Also, someone clearly needs to develop a virus to deliver whatever genetic mutation is required to make the general public into critical thinkers capable of discerning which ads are garbage. Get George Church on the phone.

You know, maybe I was too hard on Lanier‘s idea that people should get paid for the use of their personal data.  Sure, it seems far-fetched right now, but it would pose an interesting solution to this NSA PRISM privacy scandal.  At one point in ‘Who Owns the Future” Lanier suggests that citizens could set a price on their data.  So whoever wanted a copy of it, would need to actually pay the citizen who created that data directly.  Lanier even considers the consequences of criminals trying to game the system:

A criminal who sets a high price on his data to avoid being tracked while committing a crime will find himself owing that amount if law enforcement has to get a warrant to track him in order to gain a conviction. On the other hand, if law enforcement doesn’t get a conviction, the price of the data will be taken out of a department’s budget. This balance of power can be tweaked to find a reasonable sweet spot generally balancing police effectiveness and civil liberties protection. Maybe the police would only owe up to a fixed limit, unlike civilian actors. However, a reasonable, intermediate solution to the quandary of access to digital information would come about without requiring constant reinterpretation.

Lanier, Jaron (2013-05-07). Who Owns the Future? (p. 304). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

He’s really proposing a market based solution here, which should theoretically appeal to libertarians and other capitalists.  Of course my main gripe is that it’s hard to build a market from scratch.  Also, the NSA aren’t really law enforcement people.  It actually seems less incendiary for the FBI to be snooping on us since they theoretically are steeped in due process and rule of law.  The NSA are more like military guys.  They don’t need no stinkin’ badges.  Though I guess the recent spying is actually A-OK from a legal point of view due to the Patriot Act.  Good luck getting that monstrosity declared unconstitutional with the current Supreme Court lineup.

But suppose that anyone who wanted access to your data actually played by Lanier’s rules and paid you some amount for it.  This would be a pretty decent solution.  The NSA would need to wedge another line item onto their top-secret budget, and in theory, this would force them to be somewhat more discriminating about who they wanted to snoop on.  Also, we would all get a nano payment and some notification that we were being watched and by whom.  This is a far better scenario than the current one and it does have the virtues of being market based and scalable.  Such a good idea, but really, really hard to see how it gets instantiated.  Think on this you smart people who care about privacy!

I watched Elon Musk‘s recent interview at “All Things Digital” (D11) and found it inspiring.  Musk got his start by sort of co-founding PayPal, then he went on to found SpaceX and later he co-founded Tesla motors.  That is fairly ridiculous as it stands, but then SpaceX has had unprecedented success and Tesla’s Model S is getting rave reviews.  So he is a formidable business man, but what I admire most about Musk is the vision.  He sees the obvious fact that we need to stop using gas powered cars at some point and so he goes and builds one (the best one).  He recognizes that life on earth is fragile and wants humans to be a space faring species.  So he goes and starts dramatically reducing the cost of space travel with SpaceX.   I have a buddy over at SpaceX who posted that they are working on a “Mars Colonial Transporter.”  Who else gets to work on such cool stuff?

It’s interesting that he is connected to Peter Thiel.  Thiel is always talking about how the internet boom hasn’t lead to many physical innovations.  He particularly carps about transportation not being faster.  I guess he has Musk’s work in mind when makes these comments.  Musk is all about transportation: space, car, and now a possible alternative to high-speed rail?!  I want to jump into some sort of pod in SF and get to LA in 30 minutes.  That would be awesome.

I also found it interesting that Musk recommends that young bright people forgo Silicon Valley. He says there is enough money and talent exploring digital space.  Musk suggests taking those tech skills out into the world and disrupting markets where innovation has stagnated which are dominated by just a few major players.  I guess that’s what he did in the aerospace and auto industries.  This seems reasonable.  Innovation in Silicon Valley has started to look a bit peaked.  Yeah, social, mobile, local, whatever.  I heard George Packer on the radio tonight pumping his new book and talking about how these startups are all about reducing friction in everyday life and that the Valley in general is out of touch with middle America.  I don’t doubt that is true.  Maybe the kids should heed Musk and go forth to conquer other worlds once they have learned the agile way of iterative improvement.