DISQUS

I don't know how your doublespeak took Wu's pro-free market op-ed and blurred it into tax and spend liberalism (personal grudge?). Deregulating and opening up the market to new business models should include community-based business models. Nonprofits and community groups often solve problems better than for profit companies, even on a municipal level. Perhaps this hasn't worked yet in the realm of broadband because we allow government subsidized private ownership of the lines instead of allowing the public to decide how to use the lines in their own best interest? Companies don't exist to solve problems, they exist to make money, which often (especially in the case of monopolistic broadband) requires solving problems in such a way as to minimize public good.

The problem is that if politicians are willing to be corrupted, and special interests are willing to spend resources to corrupt them, they’ll find ways to get it done.

From what I've heard from Lessig about his change congress movement, he believes that politicians do not want to be corrupted, but are good people who find themselves in a system where corruption is necessary to keep the job. I agree that willful corruption will always find loopholes. The point of the movement, as I see it, is to create more distance between decision making and campaign financing. If politicians can opt into creating that distance, they have a concrete way to show that they are good people in a bad system.

I have to disagree with you here. There is a limit to the amount that the nice lady at Nordstrom's can memorize about the four thousand people who come into her store, or even the two hundred people who come there regularly. There is a limit to the reliability of her information should a third party request it. Her information is not considered an "asset" to the Nordstrom's Corporation.

Nordstrom.com can memorize millions of people's buying habits in an entirely reliable manner. Those buying habits can be turned over to big brother without my knowledge (hi AT&T!). They can be subpoenaed in a legal case to indicate my moral character. Most importantly, digital buying habits can be sold, and indeed must be sold if the business possessing them dissolves with outstanding debt.

The ethics of salespeople (while questionable) are human. their ability to withhold or forget information is vast. The ethics of corporations are purely profit driven. They do not forget, and they are rarely incentivised to withhold.

I read that just after reading a chapter in Cory Doctorow's new book where they have a key-signing party to make a web-of-trust that will save the world. I was literally rolling on the floor laughing.