Ross Mayfield's Weblog

Health Reform: Taking the Wrong Risks

This week the NY Times explores how failing to pass health reform will have an impact on innovation -- and archetypal Silicon Valley startups.

In the cradle of American innovation, workers are making career choices based on co-payments, pre-existing conditions and other minutiae of health insurance. They are not necessarily making decisions based on what would be best for their careers and, in turn, for the American economy ― that is, “where their skills match and where they can grow the most,” as another Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Cyriac Roeding, says. Health insurance, Mr. Roeding adds, “is distorting the decision-making.”

...Only 46 percent of companies with three to nine employees offer health insurance, down from 56 percent a decade ago, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation...

Without health reform, entrepreneurs will continue to take the wrong risks. Starting a company is the art of making do without resources. This often means limiting your own compensation and forgoing health insurance at the start. When recruiting employees, its difficult in the early stages of a company to offer health benefits that are comparable let alone competitive with those of larger companies. This despite the fact that when a startup employee gets sick, it can have a broad impact on the productivity of the company overall.

As the economy is recovering there is no better time to start a new company. Silicon Valley is getting back to what it does best, we need Washington to do the same.

On this day

On this day, this most historic day, we celebrate what we all believed in. But we didn't hold our breath. Now breathless, we exhale, knowing that now it all begins.

I do not have words for what I feel about Barack Hussein Obama inaugurated today as the 44th President of the United States.  When Rick Klau started talking to me about the man he did his part for in his local district, in electing him to the Senate, I was captivated and felt hope.  For a rare moment, I feel that politics has progressed faster than technology.

My Firefox spellchecker prompts me to correct Barack Obama, but not Hussein.

And I feel hope again.  For my children.  For our global citizenship.  For who we want to be.  And how we could get there.

Obama cannot be successful for us without us.  He knows that, and the new whitehouse.gov reflects more than a progression from his campaign.  It now serves us and him towards entirely different goals.  Beyond engagement with civic life as us, I think it could change policy-making forever.

Washington used to work through lobbying, or institutional pluralism.  When that failed, Regan used the Bully Pulpit to get people to fax their congressmen, or individual pluralism.  These tools still work for advancing change.  And with the web they are amplified.  But my hope is we don't activate mass pressure, but smarter pressure.  Getting citizens together, to deliberate together, to form constituencies before not heard, to gauge multi-disciplinary approaches, and suggest better courses of action. Emergent pluralism may have its day.

Today I heard someone on the radio saying the FDR needed to the depression and Lyndon Johnson needed the civil rights movement and other presidents needed citizens demanding solutions to challenges to make them as great as they were.  This is but one thing for the coming administration, but how they engage us, beginning today, could be the greatest.

Throw Bunnys, Not Bombs

Via Dave Winer, more VP debate analysis:

"It's a giant changing of the subject," said Jenny Backus, a Democratic strategist. "The problem is the messenger. If you want to start throwing fire bombs, you don't send out the fluffy bunny to do it. I think people don't take Sarah Palin seriously."

I, for one, think you do send a fluffy bunny:

Then again, depends on the bunny.

Change Congress Call for Tags

Larry Lessig's Change-Congress.org seeks to reform the influence of money on politics by enabling emergent pluralism.  It calls for citizens and candidates to take a pledge.  Click on the badge to see mine.  The principles behind the pledges are:

1. No money from lobbyists or PACs

2. Vote to end earmarks

3. Support reform to increase Congressional transparency

4. Support publicly-financed campaigns

Lessig put out a call to action yesterday:

I'm asking you today to go to the site and first tag the candidates in your own district. When that's done, then please work on as many other districts as you can. You'll get points as you do this (we're not sure what those points will get you beyond whuffie among reformers). And please spread this please of mine around to as many others as you can. Blog it, spam with it, talk about it at parties: We need to complete this map as quickly as possible and it will only get done with your help. Here's the link to get started:

http://change-congress.org/tag/

I'm a California Voter for Obama and not a Super Delegate

When I cast my ballot for Barak Obama in California's primary election on Tuesday, my vote will count.  But not how you might expect and we may not have a winner until the Convention.  From Time Magazine:

Translated into English, Rule 13-B means that any candidate who gets more than 15% of the vote in any primary will win convention delegates in direct proportion to his or her percentage of the popular vote.

Translated once more ― and, this time, into harder-headed politics ― it means that if they can stay in the race, both Obama and Clinton will continue to rack up convention delegates through the spring, regardless of who comes in first in each state. A second-place finish still gets you delegates. Which means that for either candidate to secure the 2,025 delegates needed to capture the nomination could take much longer than either campaign has bargained for.

Under Rule 13-B, it is possible that Clinton and Obama (and Edwards if he can stay competitive) simply carve Super Tuesday's nearly 1,700 delegates up three ways. With delegate-rich states such as California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois up for grabs, that is easy to imagine. Or Clinton and Obama could split the delegate haul in roughly equal fashion. If either of those things happen, the unprecedented national primary unfolding on February 5 won't determine much of anything at all. Except that the race will go on. And every delegate up for grabs after that becomes even more valuable to all sides.

Sounds like Florida all over again.  But perhaps more interesting.

Of the 4,000 delegates to the Democratic National Convention, 20% are "unpledged" with the ability vote for anyone regardless of the popular vote.  These Super Delegates constitute a swing vote that hasn't been tested before.

Rick Klau set up a wiki for open research on Super Delegates, to help people understand the issue and gauge preferences going into the convention.

My Dinner with Andrus

Friday night I had dinner with the Prime Minister of Estonia, Andrus Ansnip.  He was in town to open a "tech embassy" in San Jose, part of Enterprise Estonia.  While most of the world knows Estonia for Skype, there is a little more to it, as I've blogged before.

• 57% of the 1.3M population use the internet, and a Tiger's Leap program provided internet access to all schools
• The IT sector has developed particular core competencies in identity, security, mobility, p2p, voip, ebanking, egovernment, egambling, ecommerce.
• Web based services by the government as well as the private sector for doing business in Estonia are widespread with 98 percent of banking transactions made electronically.
• More than 80 percent of income tax filings by individual citizens of Estonia were filed electronically in 2006 and 65 percent of the population uses chip-based ID cards (this may be 80% now, see below)
• In 2005 they became the first to have legally binding internet voting
• Bay Area Estonian connections include: Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), a Silicon Valley based VC, and one of the first investors into Skype. BlueRun Ventures (VC) with investment into FusionOne (development team in Estonia). Egeen International - a biotech company in Mountain View that has been involved in Estonian Genome Project.
• They are the first to withstand a cyberwar

The setting of the dinner was too noisy for real conversation, which is unfortunate because these are such interesting times.  Wage growth and inflation are a concern and Eurozone entry is at risk.  Lacking monetary controls as stimulus, and maintaining a tight fiscal policy, GDP has slowed.  Even the fundamentals of the housing growth are changing with the credit markets. 

As I suggested to the last Prime Minister and the last President, a significant opportunity exists in relaxing immigration controls, particularly for technology skilled workers.  This is politically difficult given that 25% of the population are Russians who came as occupiers, and policies aimed at protecting Estonia's language and culture.  If it was as attractive and welcoming to work there as it is to invest there (no capital gains tax, etc.), it could be a significant form of economic stimulus.  And with the IT sector actually being small, with Skype, Playtech and banks employing most of them, it is critical to attract more employees for future growth.  A H-1B visa program, without limiting quotas, to fast track technology and research immigrants could be one solution.

Before dinner I of course Twittered for questions, and got lots of fun ones:

• trishussey   @Ross Would he give addresses as podcasts?   07:14 PM November 29, 2007
• factoryjoe   @ross Ask him how the OpenID tied to identity cards is working out!   07:20 PM November 29, 2007
• rainer   @Ross: on which websites does @AndrusAnsip use his OpenId?   04:15 AM November 30, 2007
• briancaldwell   @Ross "How has your country recovered from and protected against future cyber warfare attacks?"   07:30 PM November 29, 2007
• geraldb28   @ross The obvious... update on cyberattacks would be interesting.   09:14 PM November 29, 2007
• Pistachio   @ross ask him to seesmic with you?   10:12 PM November 29, 2007
• ramsey   @Ross: "Mr. Prime Minister, does that make you a holy man? Being a minister and all?" 10:28 PM November 29, 2007
• jstorerj   @ross you could ask if he supports the Estonian start-up that's building social networks for dogs & cats (http://tinyurl.com/28meos). ;-)   11:15 PM November 29, 2007 (editor: no, he probably supports Dogster)

There is a sample bias here, but Chris Messina's question led me to an interesting thought, because there are over 1 million smart card-based OpenIDs in Estonia:

• Every Estonian eID holder (around 80% of Estonian population) has an unique OpenID with the format open.id.ee/[firstname].[lastname](.number) Example: open.id.ee/martin.paljak
• No registration, no passwords, hardware tokens only - most secure OpenID provider to date where no phishing is possible (using traditional smart cards and soon GSM SIM cards over GSM network)
• Your online identity can never be stolen because your OpenID is attached to your real identity. You can always replace your stolen eID card and reclaim your online identity.
• All OpenID enabled sites across the world instantly benefit from the security provided by eID-s without the knowledge of eID-s even existing!

Estonia has long promoted the investment opportunity of using Estonia as a small test market for new products.  I believe there is a real opportunity as a test market for new identity services.  The infrastructure and consumer preferences of the future are in place there today.

So here's a dangerous question.  What further step could the legislature take to foster development of forward looking identity services?  At Defrag, Esther Dyson suggested the need for personalized disclosure messages from marketeers.  Having an e-commerce site disclose in human readable terms what they know about you and why they are recommending an item is an ideal identity driven service. While powerful in concept, and would lead to new innovative solutions, it would be difficult to gain adoption from buyers.  Although she presented the idea to the FTC, she hoped it wouldn't have to be regulated. 

But perhaps it should, and at least consider the concept of regulating disclosures as an example, because security and privacy policy could provide a creative constraint to foster the innovation of identity services.  Identity is inherently within the political domain.  Developing forward looking policies may begin with a simple declaration of who should own your identity (you).  And for every right granted in Estonia, you may find a new identity service developed locally that serves a desired, ethical and modern form of human right, globally.

Image credit: BBC, picture of Linnar Viik's card

Wiki Deliberation Passes Bill in Legislature

On Friday, the Utah House of Representatives passed the first Universal School Voucher bill in the nation.  The bill is destined to become law according John Fund in the Wall Street Journal and was also the first real test of wikifying the legislative process. 

Mr. Urquhart was so confident of his math that he started an interactive Web site modeled after the interactive encyclopedia Wikipedia. He posted his bill on it and invited comments. Thousands of people logged on to www.politicopia.com and participated. "If anyone can show evidence (not just alarmist rhetoric) that public education does not come out financially ahead with this bill, post your arguments and data in the comment section," Mr. Urquhart challenged his readers. No one was able to effectively rebut him.

In an email, Representative Steve Urquhart noted to me:

"For six years we've been chasing our tail on this bill, and today the bill passed in very large part because of Politicopia.  When private dialogue was made public, the main area of criticism was publicly revealed to be fictitious.  Only that kind of sunlight forced critics to abandon a criticism they knew to be false. When the debate turned to actual policy and actual issues, the bill advanced."

I personally haven't been a supporter of school vouchers, but have learned a lot from watching this debate.  I also vote Democrat, but am a toolmaker that believes that even if Socialtext is used by the other side -- not only do both sides win, but the constituents they serve.  I got into this business to change the world, and I think helping put a bill into law through deliberation is one step forward.

So, you can help me with my particular passion for opening the legislative process.  I'm looking for suggestions and connections to other legislative bodies that should implement this solution.

Politicopia: A Wiki for Open Government

As far as we know, this is the first time that an elected official has initiated a political wiki; a sea change in the relationship between representatives and voters is clearly underway. -- PDF

Utah State Representative Steve Urquhart, Chairman of the Rules Committee that decides what legislation goes to the floor, launched Politicopia -- a Socialtext wiki for open government.  It is off to a great start:

One week into the experiment, Politicopia is working. Citizens are participating and citizens are being heard. Legislators are talking to me about things they’ve read on Politicopia. Because of input I received, I have changed a position I've held for years. Already, citizens are using Politicopia to shape the debate. As a matter of fact, a reporter emailed me, to ask why Politicopia wasn't linking to her article. That has never happened in the two-plus years I’ve been blogging.

He introduced the wiki last week on the Personal Democracy Forum with The Revolution Will Be Wikified:

Politicopia joins the revolution to improve people's ability to understand and control their government. Politicopia starts with three simple notions.

1. People need more control over government.

2. Insiders have too much control over government.

3. The Internet will disintermediate government.

In politics, intermediaries tightly control information. Those intermediaries are (1) special interest groups, (2) the media, and (3) bureaucrats. There's nothing wrong with the fact that those three entities exist; they can be quite helpful in proper dosage. The problem is the overwhelming degree to which those intermediaries filter content and control political dialogue.

Citizens can elect representatives, lobby if their interests are special enough (institutional pluralism) or go public with campaigns that appeal to change (individual pluralism) with great effort and cost.  But citizens have had no role in sausage making, let alone transparency into the process of legislation.  When citizens collectively disintermediate politics, emergent democracy happens.

Urquhart further explains Politicopia:

The people must wrest control from the intermediaries. How? By (1) improving access to information and (2) improving the ability to organize.

Politicopia will improve people's access to information in my state, Utah, by presenting a wiki-based forum for the compilation and presentation of information on actual bills pending before the Legislature. If a citizen wants to learn about an issue and shape the dialogue, Politicopia will provide a quick and solid handle on the process -- without the intermediaries filter. And if a legislator wants to hear unfiltered suggestions from interested citizens -- instead of mainly hearing from organized special interests -- Politicopia will give him or her a new source of input.

Using a Socialtext wiki, Politicopia will list the bills, present a brief summary of the issue and the bills status, invite pro and con arguments and comments, and provide links to relevant sources. Users will provide and control the content. Adding a forum where commentary and links can be added to the great information already provided on the Legislative website, Politicopia should become a very useful source for quick, accurate information on issues that the peoples representatives are deciding in Utah. Please check it out and help supply content or start a site for your state, city or mosquito abatement district.

Citizens link to the bill, build pro and con arguments, track status, link in external references and deliberate. The issues may matter to you, even if you don't live in Utah, such as:

• Cell Phone Restrictions for Teen Drivers
• Drivers License -- Revocation for Dangerous Drivers
• Higher Speed Limit, Violation Amendments
• Vouchers for Private School Tuition
• All-day Kindergarten
• Payday Lending (Sen. Mayne's Bill)
• Fee Waiver Appropriation for School Districts
• Illegal Immigrants -- In-State College Tuition

For more on Politicopia, see Phil Windley, Doc Searls,  Brit Blaser, David Weinberger and Micah Sifry.  I'm encouraged to see social software employed in politics for more than campaigns and become a new valve for the heart of the legislative process.

Our Industry Doesn't Participate

Am I the only one to notice that the first day of Web 2.0 is Election Day?  Or am I just upset that I won't have time to get to the polls and am digging through junk mail to find my absentee ballot.

Are we too busy making money to even put it on the agenda?  Can you point to one campaign that made a difference leveraging Web 2.0?  In a nationalized election that could restore checks and balances, I'm sure something overcame the short-term profit motive. 

I know of some campaigns that used wikis within the organization.  Really I may just be faulting myself for not being involved enough this time.

Long Tail of Apathy

Let's admit that we are pathetically apathetic when it comes to politics.  Most of us don't vote, very few of us are civic participants, even some of us don't pay taxes.  Let's embrace the fact that we don't have time for politics, even when its electing representatives.  And by embracing our less than ideal civic state, we may change it.

But time with the right tools is on our side.  I just skimmed (because I've been participating in the blog conversations) a fresh copy of Chris Anderson's The Long Tail.  By now you may know this new economic for how the network changes business models for discovery and fulfillment.  Chris has also written about social production, distributed across The Long Tail.

Building upon the Power Law of Participation, I'd like to suggest a model for civic engagement that embraces apathy.

The horizontal axis is time committed, the vertical axis ranges from apathy to civic engagement.  Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics surveyed 9 categories of civic participation: voting, campaign work, campaign contributions, contacting an official, protests, informal community work, membership on a local board, affiliation with a political organization, and contribution to a political cause. This lead Thomas Ehrlich to opine: But unless voting is accompanied by the other political activities, it reduces citizenship to a superficial and relatively passive activity.

Not that Ehrlich is wrong, but my point is this -- few of us have time or interest in politics, but there is a way for us all to have civic engagement within our means.  That way is though social software. As seen in the Power Law of Participation, effective communities can engage participants at their own level while functioning as an organization. 

This of course, is a theory based upon what we see in open source and Wikipedia as an organization, or the Wealth of Networks.  I was tempted to add in Asylum or Resignation as a high engagement activity, as it is the closest to the right to fork you find in these emergent models where checks and balances are more liquid.

If I have one request from readers, it is to suggest what order the categories should be, or to suggest new ones, as my views of time as money may be biased.  I added Taxes, Civil Service and Elected Office, another approach would be to leverage Robert Putnam's 12 categories.  For your remix (and while you are at it, help me draw a proper power law):

? Elected office -- representing the time and interest of a constituency.
? Civil service -- while a form of giving at the office, it's not an excuse, but a calling
? Campaign work -- this actually has multiple levels of engagement, but while paid staffers
? Membership on a local board -- the greatest opportunity for civic engagement most citizens don't realize
? Voting -- not enough, in my humble opinion, but our basic obligation for civic participation
? Contacting an official -- either directly or through petition
? Informal community work -- high social capital activities most significantly augmented by social software
? Protests -- political activism
? Affiliation with a political organization -- mass-membership organizations
? Contribution to a political cause -- issue or group specific spending as speech
? Campaign contributions -- directed towards vote, low engagement rank because of the campaign donation made accessible through the tax form
? Taxes -- you pay them, right?
? Death -- inevitable, yes, but also a proxy for doing nothing.  Didn't put it in the image.

When I napkined this model for Kevin Fong of the Mayfield Fund (no relation except trademark dispute ;-) over lunch at Brainstorm, he suggested that without apathy you have revolution.  I suggested that the 95% turnout for the first Ukrainian election, which was rather revolutionary, might support his theory.  I would like to think that political participation overlaid upon Maslow's hierarchy of needs may be a well-curve with one end sparking rebellion, and the other being, well, an ideal.

Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone surveyed the decline of social capital in twelve categories  One counter argument he acknowledges is the rise of mass-membership organizations like the Sierra Club or AARP. It should be noted that Affiliation with a Political Organization does not necessarily mean fostering social capital, as members can be only connected through proxy.  However, you could view a successful political organization as mass, with it's own Long Tail of Apathy.

Time columnist Joe Klein, author of Politics Lost, suggested at Brainstorm that his vote for the next President would be decided by how much she asked of the citizenry.  That's right -- don't ask for my vote, tell me how I should contribute.  The WW II generation shared a common sacrifice and understanding for what it meant to be American -- which made them good citizens and leaders.  Doing what you can for your country used to be a shared value.

But as the political season approaches, let's consider what has changed (as little in the political landscape has).  The cost for personal publishing has fallen to zero.  Its common for citizens to express a facet of their identity online.  The cost for group forming has fallen to zero.  Networked appeal has proven itself as a fundraising mechanism.  A broad conversational network and common sense repository supports collective sense making.  Today social software has gained use broad enough to support civic engagement.

During the last Presidential campaign we held hope that politics was changing.  First we thought we could get someone elected from the grassroots, but restoring topsoil takes greater effort.  Then we even hoped that political institutions could change how they engaged the public, but the elected culture isolated itself without precedent.  Quite frankly, this barely happened.  But this time around, groups are forming to take action.

One fascinating statistic thrown around at Brainstorm 2006 was that 10% of college students volunteered to join Americorps.  Unfortunately I can't find a source, although Americorps has 75,000 members, with a significant track record:

• 92 percent of AmeriCorps sponsoring organizations say members helped them increase the number of persons the groups served to a large or moderate extent.
• 72 percent of AmeriCorps members continue to volunteer in their communities after their term of service ends.
• 87 percent of former AmeriCorps members accepted public service employment (including governmental and nonprofit work) with three years after completing their AmeriCorps service.

It is encouraging to think that NetGens have a latent demand for civic engagement,  The children of the baby boom may not buy off on political messages, but they want to play a role, to give forth.  Let's admit there is hope together, each in our own way.