
You Stopped SOPA. Now Let’s Startup America - llambda
http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/31/you-stopped-sopa-now-lets-startup-america/
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jerf
It's so cute all the people who think they can steer this bandwagon. SOPA was
an acute threat and a flash mob formed, did its thing, and moved on. The flash
mob doesn't have an independent existence from SOPA and there is no actual
(virtual) mob of people milling around, wondering what they should do next.
There's no bandwagon to steer here, folks. That's not how flash mobs work.
You're still going to have to build a consensus the old fashioned way.

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jballanc
Before the Tea Act led to the Boston Tea Party, there were the Sugar Act, the
Currency Act, Quarterings Act, Stamp Act, Declaratory Act, and Townshend Acts,
all of which caused brief outrages and "flash mob" reactions. One of these
days one of these "flash mobs" might just turn into something more...

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jerf
Completely orthogonal to my point. I am not saying flash mobs are useless. I'm
saying they can't be _steered_. The issue belongs to the mob, the mob doesn't
belong to the issue.

~~~
jballanc
No, that was my point. Flash mobs can't be steered until it's the _last_ flash
mob that ends up being steered into a revolution. You can't fault anyone for
trying to steer...only the last one will be successful.

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alexqgb
Why the shift in focus? ACTA is still alive and evil, and it's even more
overtly anti-democratic than SOPA/PIPA. Also, it's being run through the
Executive branch in near-total secrecy, making it that much harder to fight.

Startup America is great, but given that the fundamental integrity of the
internet is still very much at stake, it's hardly priority #1.

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trustfundbaby
Very nice, I do have a quibble though, it would be nice to see them do more on
the immigration front.

Yeah they're going to remove EB3/EB2 country caps, but how about expediting
the process so it doesn't take 5 years to get a green card while you're stuck
in the same position, at the same company, who's taking you from behind in
terms of salary during that time.

In Canada, you can get your green card within 1 year of graduating college and
working fulltime for a company, then 3 years after that, become a Canadian
citizen. why not do something like that for engineers and scientists from
accredited US universities? Or people who are working fulltime in those sorts
of capacities?

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anamax
> why not do something like that for engineers and scientists from accredited
> US universities? Or people who are working fulltime in those sorts of
> capacities?

The folks advocating for that have tied such proposals to open borders for
low-skills folk.

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nirvana
Reading Steve Case's summary, most of this is good stuff-- very much like the
crowd funding legalization. I think its absolutely absurd I can bet $50,000 or
$100,000 on options in the stock market, but can't put $10,000 into a local
startup. (I do well in the stock market, but I think the local startup is a
better bet, given my experience working for startups for a couple decades, and
other reasons.)

I'm not sure about the $1B in spending, whether that will go somewhere or not.
I'd prefer this bill didn't increase the federal budget deficit, even if it is
probably one of the vanishingly few economically useful places for the
government to put money, at the end of the day, that money had to come out of
the economy (it doesn't really grow on trees) via inflation or taxation, and
thus risks making things worse if it isn't spent wisely.

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3pt14159
Maybe one of the reasons it's one of the vanishingly few economically useful
places for the government to put money in is that it is one of the vanishingly
few economic places that the government doesn't put money in.

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bradharper
"You've rejecting sipping on one glass of poison, now let's all join in and
chug another one!" Sigh...

