Virtually all high quality content on the web is written by either a full-time practitioner who is trying to build a reputation or gain some amount of recognition.
For example:
Entrepreneur and investor bloggers such as Paul Graham, Marc Andreessen, Brad Feld, Sam Altman, plus the dozens of founders who post their articles to Hacker News produce the best writing available on founding a business. They do this because if they provide good information, they build their own brand.*
The best posts on software engineering come from bloggers and Hacker News commenters who again, are trying to build their own brand.
The best posts economics or finance come from those actually working in the field, or from obsessed amateurs who spend hours each week studying the issues on their own.
The best posts on criminal justice issues comes from Peter Moskos, who was an actual Baltimore Cop, and is now a professor of criminal justice ( http://www.copinthehood.com/ ). Even if he charged micropayments for his posts, there is no way he is going to make money off of his site. Yet the information he provides is order of magnitude better than any journalist who has no domain knowledge of the subject matter.
Most beat reporters producing run-of-the-mill news are entirely dependent on their sources for information. If these beat reporters were simply paid by the sports team or institutions that they covered, and essentially worked as their communications office, it would be a more honest relationship and the quality of coverage would be no worse.
Basically, I don't see what the role in the world is for the professional, full-time "content" provider. There is simply no need for anyone to be an intermediary between the practitioner and the audience. If you are a professional practitioner, then the financial benefits in terms of building a brand dwarf any benefits from earning micropayments. Thus I don't think the existence of micropayments would result in any greater amount of high quality content.
* Note for the pedantic, this is not to imply that all content produced by people trying to improve their own reputation is good content. 98% of everything is crap.
"Encryption is one of many ways that an adversary, whether that's a criminal, a terrorist, a rogue nation, one of the many ways that they might use to hide their activities," former NSA Deputy Director Chris Inglis, told CNNMoney.
Did the NSA give CNN this story? If so, why? In order to retroactively justify its own attempts to route around encryption? In order to help generate support for some upcoming policy proposal or action?
Also for discussion -- how would you feel if you were the founder of Telegram, and this article is actually true? What would you do? I personally have had some ideas for secure email or chat services. But I really do not like the idea that it would be used by the worst-of-the-worst. I wonder if there is any way to reconcile the two goals of private and secure communication with avoiding being used as a tool of criminals.
A result is the suggestion of spontaneous speech and unadulterated emotion. The irony is that such presentations are highly rehearsed, with each caesura calculated and every syllable stressed in advance.
This is actually a major problem with the entire TV and radio age. People who seem awkward or fake in front of a camera are actually normal people. It is simply not natural to talk directly to a camera lens as if it is a person, it is not natural to speak in a folksy way to a generic audience that you cannot see. People who seem natural in front of a camera, are actually slick, well-practiced professionals. Thus in the modern era, all politicians and most public figures end up being essentially actors.
IIRC, back in the early 1900's, it was commonly known that tech companies should pay higher dividends than longstanding blue chip companies. Why? Because they were much more likely to have short lifespans. The newer the company, the more active the sector, the more turnover in the sector, the more likely the company will get replaced by something else. Somehow people seem to have forgotten this lesson. We now have tech companies like Sun or Groupon that go their entire lifecyle without paying out profits to investors.
That said, the strategy of not paying out profits makes sense for the investors and the founders. The founders will make more money by talking up how much long-term potential the company has, how it is going to be the next 100-year company. Then when they get the $10 billion valuation, the founder can take some money off the table. That is probably a better deal for the founder than getting a $1 billion valuation and just paying out dividends.
The question is, who will end up holding the bag. As much as I loved Dropbox when it came out, I switched off of it recently. I'm not sure what the future is for it in five, ten years. If you are techie, you want something with end-to-end encryption. If you are a normal user, you'll just go with whatever is bundled with your operating system or bundled with applications you use (iCloud, one drive, google drive).
Buses would be a lot better if cities had congestion pricing that could greatly reduce traffic delays. Buses would also be a lot better if there were more routes and better frequency.
But people oppose congestion pricing because it would make commutes much more expensive for the poor. But if you actually had it, then the bus would be a much more feasible form of transportation, because it would be quicker. And as it became quicker, more people would take it, and the frequency would increase. And that would altogether be much cheaper for the poor than commuting by car.
So we cannot have good bus transportation until we have congestion pricing. But we cannot have congestion pricing until busses are a much better way to get to work.
My school-appointed mentor, who graduated in 2004, paid $4,000 a year. I see this as unfair, not only in the sense that my generation has to take out extraordinary loans to access education, but also in the sense that I am forced to pay $100,000 just to participate in our justice system.
Abraham Lincoln could become a lawyer simply by studying books from the library and passing the bar exam. No tuition was needed. Virtually all professions should have entry based on passing tests and paid apprenticeship. There is zero reason why entry needs to be mediated through expensive academic institutions staffed by professors who are generally not practitioners. If people want to go to law school as a luxury, that is fine, but it should not be required to participate in the justice system.
As someone who is hoping to do some world travel in the next few months, I found this guide contains a lot of good, actionable tips. I traveled before with way too much weight, this seems like a much better way to go. Thought this might be helpful for the digital nomads and other travelers out there.
Have you read any history? Riots such as these happened all during the late 1960's in response to much worse oppression during the time period. Virtually all these riots made the black community worse off. Their own business districts were destroyed, anyone with any money fled the city, the tax base collapsed, crime got even more out of control.
If the black community in Baltimore want to solve police oppression, here is a positive way they can do it: 1) form a neighborhood association with a neighborhood police force to handle issues of crime. These police officers would be elected and controlled by the community. 2) Tell the center city police that they no longer have to police the black neighborhoods, which the police would like, it is not a fun job. When a case of police brutality breaks out, tell the police to stay of the hood from now on or face reprisals. 3) Tell their elected officials - (who are black, the majority of the voters are black in Baltimore) to disband the police.
For example:
Entrepreneur and investor bloggers such as Paul Graham, Marc Andreessen, Brad Feld, Sam Altman, plus the dozens of founders who post their articles to Hacker News produce the best writing available on founding a business. They do this because if they provide good information, they build their own brand.*
The best posts on software engineering come from bloggers and Hacker News commenters who again, are trying to build their own brand.
The best posts economics or finance come from those actually working in the field, or from obsessed amateurs who spend hours each week studying the issues on their own.
The best posts on criminal justice issues comes from Peter Moskos, who was an actual Baltimore Cop, and is now a professor of criminal justice ( http://www.copinthehood.com/ ). Even if he charged micropayments for his posts, there is no way he is going to make money off of his site. Yet the information he provides is order of magnitude better than any journalist who has no domain knowledge of the subject matter.
Most beat reporters producing run-of-the-mill news are entirely dependent on their sources for information. If these beat reporters were simply paid by the sports team or institutions that they covered, and essentially worked as their communications office, it would be a more honest relationship and the quality of coverage would be no worse.
Basically, I don't see what the role in the world is for the professional, full-time "content" provider. There is simply no need for anyone to be an intermediary between the practitioner and the audience. If you are a professional practitioner, then the financial benefits in terms of building a brand dwarf any benefits from earning micropayments. Thus I don't think the existence of micropayments would result in any greater amount of high quality content.
* Note for the pedantic, this is not to imply that all content produced by people trying to improve their own reputation is good content. 98% of everything is crap.