This November I'm Voting for Tech

http://nyuentrepreneur.org/2012/10/this-november-im-voting-for-tech/

by aclements18 • 14 years ago

19 52 14 years ago

lazyjones• 14 years ago

Surely at least people working in tech should know that there are more than 2 parties to vote for?

SethMurphy2• 14 years ago

I still (maybe ignorantly) vote for the candidate, not the party, which is why I couldn't see myself voting for that 3rd party that you are insinuating. Once they have a viable candidate, I may. I hope that day comes soon.

nnnnni• 14 years ago

A vote for a third party candidate ultimately goes to the "worst of the two" because otherwise, the vote would have been for the "not as bad of the two".

Of course, that ignores the fact that the electoral college vote (NOT the popular vote) decides the results.

rdl4• 14 years ago

If you live in a "safe" state (CA, WA, ...), where one of the two big candidates is effectively certain to win, you can vote for your first choice third-party candidate in a way which might help in the long run -- once e.g. the Libertarian Party gets 5% of the vote in an election, it gets federal matching funds, and will be a lot harder to exclude from the process.

In the long run, I think I'd take the worst of the D/R candidates over a string of 8 consecutive elections if the consequence is ending the two party stranglehold.

The way the system works, without proportional representation, you probably will ultimately end up with two parties, but I'd rather replace both current parties with new competent-but-ideologically-distinct parties (like, say, a Green/Socialist/Union/Interventionist/etc. party vs. a Libertarian/Free-Market/Business/Isolationist party).

planckscnst• 14 years ago

I consider voting for a third party to be more influential. When any third party gets any significant tracion, the two major parties start revising their platform to bring in those third party voters. Instead of pushing forward the status quo and giving the main parties more confidence in their stance, you're causing them to think more about what they might change.

mhurron• 14 years ago

Surely intelligent people working in tech should know that voting for a third party in the US is the same as not voting at all.

jhales• 14 years ago

Surely you are not so innumerate to think that your vote has a discernible impact whether voting for a major party or a third party.

hugh4life• 14 years ago

"For example, Romney feels that one of the best ways to inspire entrepreneurs is through tax reform. I’ve been to at least a hundred tech related events in NY over the last couple of years. Not one of them had tax management as the central topic of discussion. Clearly taxes are not the main obstacle that stands in the way of any aspiring entrepreneur executing an idea. Besides, most startups incur net losses for their first several years. What is the corporate tax rate on negative $500,000?"

Where the hell do you think most seed money comes from?

"Romney’s entire “best thing we can do is get out of your way” type of approach is not helpful to your average tech entrepreneur. "

The average tech entrepreneur needs to get over themselves.

rdl4• 14 years ago

Tax rates matter a lot more to "small business creation" than to tech startups, particularly if tech startups are externally financed C corps. Remember, there are two main meanings of entrepreneurship -- one is usually starting a local business (or even just a franchise, or a side business, or whatever), and the other is starting a tech or scalable startup.

Most small businesses are sole proprietorships or in some cases LLC/LLP taxed as partnership, or maybe an S corp, so individual tax rates apply. It's usually a person giving up the potential for a high W2 income (or 1099 income in some cases), taking high risk, in exchange for ongoing annual revenue after a few years.

Lower taxes (or pro-savings tax policies) allow enough capital accumulation for a plumber to set up his own plumbing business, and let a $200k/yr employee who gives up his salary to run a business and hire a few people build up capital from operating profit to expand. As a sole prop, he can't retain earnings, so he has to pay taxes on his profits every year. If he has "lumpy" income (big contract one year), this could be really difficult.

There are totally different kinds of businesses, but really, 95+% of people are going to start the self-funded (or maybe personal debt funded) operating business, not a scalable tech startup. 95% of the jobs are going to come from either tech/scalable startups or self-funded startups which become such runaway successes that they convert to scalable businesses (e.g. Walmart growing from a single store...). So, there's a good argument for tax structure to favor either type.

I also think fixing a few problems (health care, bankruptcy laws restored to pre-2005, reducing regulation/bureaucracy in hiring people, etc.) would encourage particularly the "small business" type even more than lower taxes. I don't think employers should have as much regulatory compliance requirement as they do now -- they shouldn't be collecting taxes, handling healthcare, or really anything other than focusing on their business and direct regulations in their industry (food safety for restaurants, reactor safety for nuclear plants...).

woodchuck64• 14 years ago

> Where the hell do you think most seed money comes from?

Romney just needs to write out a big fat check to every wealthy person in America and soon technology will be booming. It's so obvious!

jordanthoms• 14 years ago

You seem to be conflating giving people money, and letting people keep their own money.

SethMurphy2• 14 years ago

I see net neutrality as the single most important issue in my tech bubble. Giving entrenched tech companies even more of an advantage would be disastrous. The piracy issue is also woven into the thread of the net neutrality issue.

I am getting mixed signals from both major parties though: http://www.dailytech.com/Democratic+Senators+Block+Republica...

http://www.businessinsider.com/conservative-legislators-are-...

aclements182• 14 years ago

Thanks Seth for pointing out both of these articles. Read the SOPA one, about to read the others. Would you mind adding that to the comments on the original post as well? Would like to show some other valuable points to consider.

carsongross• 14 years ago

How about, instead, you act morally, refuse to vote, and focus on making your startup successful via non-coercive means.

yummyfajitas9• 14 years ago

I'm a techie too. But unlike the author of this piece, I have a little bit of perspective.

For tech, Romney is probably marginally better than Obama. But I'm not even going to bother justifying this statement - it's irrelevant. Neither politician will have any significant effect on the tech community, and even if they did, it's a minor issue.

Lets focus on a major issue: >500k people just like me (drug users) are sitting in jail right now for no good reason. For those who are unfamiliar, sitting in jail is far worse than being unemployed or having marginally fewer pinterest clones.

Another major issue is the fact that millions of people from the poorest places on earth (I'm not talking about wealthy nations like Mexico here) could be lifted from poverty. The vast majority (i.e., >95%) of India lives in what would be considered dire poverty in the US. Upper class individuals in the poshest suburbs of Mumbai suffer living conditions comparable to the poorest housing projects in the US. All we need to do to lift them from poverty is allow them to enter the US and provide us cheap medical services, clean our houses and the like.

So yeah, one of the politicians is marginally better than the other on an issue that neither of them have much control over. Why do we even care?

angersock7• 14 years ago

We've got plenty of work to do here without worrying about fixing the rest of the world--consider parts of Appalachia, the homeless in our own cities, and so forth. And yes, this also means military adventures abroad need to stop.

Also, if I haven't misread your post, you seem to imply that we should be bringing in these folks as cheap labor to "elevate" them...there's something vaguely off-putting about that remark.

yummyfajitas9• 14 years ago

Also, if I haven't misread your post, you seem to imply that we should be bringing in these folks as cheap labor to "elevate" them...there's something vaguely off-putting about that remark.

That's because you are viewing it through the lens of status rather than economics. I'm not proposing to raise anyone's status, I'm simply proposing to give them the opportunity to earn for themselves 24/7 running water and electricity, decent housing, schools for their children (where the teachers actually show up), etc.

I'm also not proposing fixing the rest of the world. I'm proposing helping millions of people at a net benefit to ourselves.

Are you seriously arguing that making a few wealthy Appalachians even wealthier is a bigger issue than making millions of poor people wealthy and the rest of us even wealthier?

siculars• 14 years ago

So politicians have no control over domestic tech policy but can affect change in India by allowing their poor into the US to provide us cheap medical services? What sense does that make? You, sir, are clearly on drugs.

yummyfajitas9• 14 years ago

I don't expect US politicians to affect change in India at all. I expect them to change the lives of the individuals they allow into the US.

The Indian upper class (doctors, nurses, developers) are poor by US standards. They can become wealthy simply by allowing them to change location. This would benefit us too, as would allowing the poor to come over and sell us cheap house cleaning or dosa preparation services.

Another example: there are about 90k Somalians in the US, mostly refugees from Somalia's earlier troubles. Assuming they have a GDP per capita half the US average, Somalian Americans have a GDP of about $2B. That's about 1/3 the GDP of all of Somalia (approx $6B, pop 10M).

Do you really believe the JOBS Act (the only concrete action the OP attributes to Obama) even comes remotely close to having such an effect?

cletus2• 14 years ago

Disclaimer: I'm not a US citizen so I can't vote at all.

If your primary concern is the tech sector and entrepreneurs then the choices are pretty woeful.

The Obama administration is without doubt the most hostile to the tech sector through and the Internet its strong pro-IP stance between:

- staffing the DoJ with RIAA lawyers [1]

- appointing RIAA lobbyists as federal judges [2]

- having an anaemic stance on software patents ("don't blame us") [3] since the White House is by far the largest bully pulpit in the country they could act if they wanted to. It is within the power of Congress and the White House to reform the American Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit, which is responsible for a lot of software patent nonsense and, at this point, is arguably an example of regulatory capture

- only came out against SOPA/PIPA when public backlash had already basically killed them [4] [5]

- tried to negotiate and pass the original ACTA treaty in secret, which would have largely equated piracy with terrorism [6]

- used diplomatic pressure on foreign governments to tow the same hardline IP stance eg the AFACT downloading case against iiNet in Australia (which was ultimately lost) [7]

- enacted the America Invents Act, which gives patents to the first-to-file [8]

Romney has been essentially silent on the issue of software patents and, let's face it, he's the off-cycle dud candidate of this election. By this I mean look at the candidates that went up against the incumbent seeking reelection:

2004: John Kerry

1996: Bob Dole

1992: Clinton obviously won against Bush Sr but this was in large part to Ross Perot more than anything else (IMHO)

1984: Walter Mondale

Anyway, if the tech sector concerns you--and since you're reading HN it probably does--the choices are terrible this time around. Software patents threaten the entire tech sector [1]: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/obama-taps-fift/

[2] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/03/riaa-lobbyist-bec...

[3] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/11/white-house-blame...

[4] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/18/sopa-obama-donors-h...

[5] http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi/2012/01/16/obama-sa...

[7] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/31/afact_subcontractor_...

[8] http://macdailynews.com/2011/09/16/obama-signs-first-to-file...

aclements182• 14 years ago

Actually, these are some really great articles. Thanks for sharing. I think the administration has been late on some or most issues but it appears that these issues aren't even on Romney's radar. I've been following the software patent issue and still believe Obama is better positioned to make the right long term decision.

Do you feel as though IP does not have any place in technology? Curious to here your take.

Dont know if I would agree with you about the of cycle dud candidate. I see your point, just seems like the polls show that this wont be a landslide. I think (thought?) Romney had a realistic chance at winning.

cletus2• 14 years ago

As for the off cycle dud candidate, its a mixed bag. Reagan was obviously strong in 1984. Clinton had certainly been through his battles by the 1996 election. The massive loss of the House in 1994 had left him wandering in the wilderness for awhile.

But Bush Jr was vulnerable in 2004. Hell he probably only won in 2000 because Gore himself was a dud candidate. Anyway, two things contributed to the 2004 reelection: John Kerry being an out-of-touch dandy and playboy and the gay marriage referenda (which were a call-to-arms to the religious right).

This time around Obama is vulnerable too. A lot of people are disenchanted him over, for example, Iraq (still going on). Look at the difference in rhetoric between Obama the candidate and Obama the president. World of difference.

My view is you need to understand that each party understands who their bases are.

The Republican base is the religious right, corporations and the wealthy.

The Democrat base is unions, the poor, African-Americans and... trial lawyers [1]. It's why you see the Democrats fight, for example, tort reform [2] [3] [4].

Lawyers love patents, which is why you'll never see patent reform from the Democratic Party. Things is, big corporations love them too so you'll never see it from the Republican Party either. But at least patents may hurt companies enough to notice at some point. A lot of tech companies are against software patents.

Personally, I am 100% against software patents in any form. The idea, to paraphrase John Carmack, that I can write a program and then someone else can independently write that same program and violate any number of my patents is horrifying. The fact that any given smartphone may contain and/or violate hundreds if not thousands of patents tells you the system is broken.

Patents are intended to protect innovation but it seems clear it does the opposite. Patents on aviation in the early 20th century left the US unable to build planes when it entered World War One, to the point that it had to buy them from France and Congress needed to intervene [5].

[1] http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202473540921&Tria...

[2] http://voices.yahoo.com/democrats-against-tort-reform-regard...

[3] http://citizenwells.wordpress.com/2012/07/30/obamacare-and-n...

[4] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230383020457744...

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wright_brothers_patent_war

tzs• 14 years ago

> enacted the America Invents Act, which gives patents to the first-to-file

That was not hostile to the tech sector. First to file vs. first to invent is neither favorable to nor unfavorable to the tech sector, and the AIA contains some strong anti-troll provisions which are quite favorable to the tech sector.

tptacek5• 14 years ago

In particular, as 'tzs has been at pains to point out on HN for years now: AIA first-to-file means that two competing claims to the same patent --- two people rushing to file the same patent on essentially the same idea at the same time --- can now be adjudicated a simple, predictable measure rather than by "first to constructive invention". It is probably not much of an exaggeration to suggest that the previous standard was, in effect, "the party with the best lawyer wins".

First-to-file only matters when you have two parties eligible for the same conflicting patentable idea. It does not create some new gold rush of patentability; it applies only in the tiny minority of cases where two people are filing conflicting patents simultaneously. It's possible that there hasn't been a single widely-known trolled patent that was obtained under these kinds of circumstances.

MEANWHILE: AIA also includes provisions that prevent trolls from joining together defendants in suits into a single case in the troll's jurisdiction. Since that was a major part of the litigation M.O. for patent trolls, it's hard to look at AIA as a win for trolls.

onetwothreefour• 14 years ago

As a "tech startup" (wtf does that even mean?) I'll take lower health insurance premiums for employees over any tax cuts proposed by either party.

I don't know what other people are paying, but it costs us up to $1500/m if an employee has a family to provide decent insurance in CA.

But... I don't really see that ever happening without a complete overhaul of the healthcare system.

AgathaTheWitch• 14 years ago

Single-issue voting is bad for democracy.

This November I'm Voting for Tech

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