

Civic Tech Is Ready for Investment - freshkurt
http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/29/civic-tech-is-ready-for-investment/

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xnull6guest
The US Government understands that by funding the right NGOs and CSOs, it can
project power by laundering its intentions through the goodwill and civic
intentions of entrepeneurs, volunteers and activists. But it often takes this
too far and embarrasses itself (as was the case with the Cuban Twitter NGOs).

This isn't exactly illegal - but the use of NGOs and CSOs to foment
revolutions, weaken regimes, organize protests and replace governments around
the world is starting to get significant resistance from other states which
results in closed borders and fractured rather than unified global civil
interaction. Russia has fully obliterated all civil organizations from the
West because it was not able to differentiate which ones were puppets for the
CIA or State Department and due to frustration with both the political
upheaval they were organizing and the role they played in leading the
Euromaiden protests in Ukraine.

Understand that if your civil project is being invested in it is because it
magnifies US power. On its face that's not a bad thing - we probably want to
live and certainly benefit greatly from a powerful nation - it just means that
you should be aware about what you are getting yourself involved in.

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willholloway
As an American it's in my interests to have a powerful United States. Sadly
the ruling elite of the country have been fixated on military power. I would
much prefer policies that promoted soft power, or the ability to co-opt rather
than coerce.

Our global tech leadership would be enhanced if the NSA reoriented with a
focus much more on its defensive mission, rather than it's offensive
capability.

Freedom is our brand, and they are diluting the hell out of it.

Civilization IV is a great teacher of the concept of soft power, known as
culture in the game. When you're citizens are happy and your cities are the
envy of the world, other nations want to join with you.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_power](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_power)

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xnull6guest
Washington believes, and there's probably some truth to it, that the ability
to project soft power comes after, or at least in tandem with, hard power
guarantees.

The US utilizes soft power all the time and is and has been heavily invested
in soft power. But soft power taken too far looks like coups or staged
dissent, and America's soft power can sometimes be powerful enough to look
like - or actually be - this.

That is to say that the overuse of soft power, or perhaps just the clumsy
wielding of it, also dilutes the brand.

The recent investment in Nepal is a great example of soft power done right
(IMO).

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humanrebar
Yeah, when private citizens are needed to make government programs work
efficiently, it makes me wonder why the service is provided by the government
in the first place.

If "civic tech" is an attempt to move functions of the government (say, parts
of the DMV process) into the private sector, I'm really interested. If it's an
attempt to leverage the private sector to support outdated and/or bloated
government bureaucracy, I'm not so interested.

In other words, a lot of the technology problems government faces can be
solved by deciding to pivot -- change or restrict the scope of an agency or
program, make clear rules about how the "civic tech" folks can grow an
business or non-profit in the space that's being made.

