Are you buying a copy or a license?

Last night while struggling with a screwed up circadian clock, I came across this article on the tech blog Gizmodo. It got me thinking about what it means to own something. The article talks about a traveler who had his books deleted from his iPad when he traveled to Singapore. It seems that Google Books is not allowed to operate there so the books were removed automatically.
When you buy a book from Amazon or Google, you have purchased a license to access that text. When you buy a physical book from a store, you have purchased a copy of that text and you own that object (usually a codex with the text printed in it). It is much harder to track and remove a book from someone's bookcase than it is to remove it from someone's e-reader, and revoking a license is easier that repossessing a book.
This sparks a very terrifying scenario in my mind. It wasn't that long ago that the Nazi party ran around burning books and Stalin had books re-written to match his ideology. Not to leave out my own country that blacklisted books, authors, and artists to protect against the "communist threat." If a similar totalitarian government were to come to pass in the future, the removal of "objectionable" material would be much easier. In a world where books are controlled by major corporations and can be edited or deleted in real-time, the existence of those books is at the pleasure of those corporations and the governments within which they operate.
Before you calm me a paranoid alarmist, consider the rampant censorship of the internet that happens in China. Google actually took down google.cn and redirected traffic to google.com.hk over the restrictions the government was imposing, but that did not solve the problem as China has blocked Google in different ways for different reasons. Facebook is outright banned there.
I had a few friends over a couple of weeks ago and when one of them saw all the bookshelves covering am entire wall in my bedroom he commented "nice antique collection" and stated proudly that he has gone all digital. In a country that not long ago banned books and blacklisted authors and artists, in a world where you can have your license to a song or a book revoked without realizing to is happening, I am happy to hold on to my hundreds of antiques.

Occupy Wall Street

We are in a recession.
Economists have been trying to tell us that we are in a slow recovery but that is all spin. Now, after years of high unemployment and a shaky stock market, the american public is reaching it's limit. There are movements now to protest the irresponsibility of the big banks and the lax regulatory stance by the government that havef gotten us in to this mess.

I can't help but see this protest as somewhat ridiculous. The situation that caused this financial crisis is not a simple one and is not something that will be fixed by protests. The American public, for the most part, has no idea what happened to cause this and is reacting by throwing a tantrum.

The domestic crisis has its roots in good intentions. The government wanted to make it possible for the average person to own a house and so they created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two semi-governmental organizations who's purpose was to buy mortgages from banks so that the banks could then use the money that would otherwise be held up in the loan to make another loan to another home buyer. This allowed banks to make many more mortgages because they didn't have to wait for the old ones to be paid off before they could make new ones. This all went wrong when regulations were relaxed to the point that the banks realized that they could just make bad loans, collect the fees and pass off the responsibility to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. The government (who guaranteed the loans held by these corporations) was left with all the risk.

But wait, there's more! The banks, trying to get rid of these mortgage contracts faster, would package them together in a super-group of mortgages called a Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO) and then sell shares of it to investors. I know that is a lot to take in, so here's the skinny: They would make the loans trade-able so that people could buy them like they were stocks or bonds, and so that mutual funds could invest. The problem is that the CDOs had rotten bits in them and were destined to collapse. The people creating them didn't care because once they sold them as investments they no longer held the risk, just the money.

There is even more! I won't get too deep into this one because it is very complicated. Investment companies created another innovation. They created what is called a Credit Default Swap. This contract acted like insurance without the name (and without the regulation). It meant that one financial institution would pay another to take some of the risk if an investment (like a CDO) failed. This eventually got so out of control that these Credit Default Swaps were being made like bets by third parties who had nothing to do with the investments that they were for. You could literally buy insurance on an investment you thought was bad in the hopes that it would fail and you would get paid for that failure; and you didn't even have to own the investment.

That's all the background that I am going to get into here, now for the response.

 Where did all these bankers get all this money? It wasn't their money, if it had been then they would have been more responsible with it. WE gave it to them! we handed over bank deposits and 401k investments and just ignored what they were doing with our money. We as a society have decided that investments are too complicated and that we had better let someone else do it for us. There are countless retirement funds and college savings plans that have been decimated because of this fiasco but we are not faultless. We have allowed people to run amok with our money and now we are paying for it. 

I suggest to anyone who is willing to listen, that you take your money out of the bank and put it into a Credit Union. Stop investing in a 401k and move your money to an IRA that you manage yourself. Or do what one of my friends does and buy precious metals and micro-loans.  Deprive the people who would be irresponsible with your money of your money.

There are many more contributing factors to the current economic crisis like the housing bubble, government entitlements, and the euro-zone debt crisis but taking personal responsibility for our money is the biggest thing we can do for ourselves. The criminal fund managers, and unethical bankers don't care about protests, they are not elected officials that need our approval, but they need our money, lets take it back!

Writing

I have a story that I think I am going to write. The problem is that I don't know how to write. Well clearly I can write in blog or essay form but I'm talking dialogue here. I have only ever written three short stories and one of them was stream-of-consciousness type cheating. I am going to have to start small. Some very short prose probably posted here to warm me up. Lets see how I do.

Leadership

My brother and I have upgraded our memberships in our HapKiDo dojo to include the leadership program. This means that we have access to Wing Chung lessons, selected weapons training (currently eskrima), and actual leadership development that includes reading books on the subject. I have missed the two classes so far that have been held since I joined (because of work) but I bought the book and am reading it.

I have realized for a while now that leadership is a skill that is unparalleled. With good leadership skills you can leverage your knowledge and the skills of others to create something that neither could create individually. It is somewhat like investing, you find a good vehicle and put money into it and then the money grows. With leadership you find talented people, put ideas into them or link them with other talented people and you can build something very rewarding. I wish to develop this ability because I want to spend my life building things. I am also inclined to do challenging  things myself and ignore or procrastinate on the easy things.

My job is currently at a plateau. The company needs more work if it is going to survive and in the absence of work I am left doing things that are less than productive (like blogging). I am going to have to find work for us somehow, that is what a leader would do. I am going to take some advice from my friend Rob, and make an attempt to become more active in the post-production social scene, whatever that means. For now I am going to try reading and posting on boards, and getting the company name out there.

Personally, I have an idea that I want to bring across to reality. I know that I want to create a website for the various crafts that I do. I want it to be a reference, and a magazine. A place with how-tos, reviews, interviews, and studio tours. I think that if I was looking at doing this 15 years ago, I would be trying to put together a magazine but since we are firmly in the internet age I am going to try to make a more rounded and linked together website with a wiki, blog, video channel and whatever else I need to get the job done. I have some very talented friends and hope we can pull this thing together.