Somehow, this column is called "It’s P.Q. and C.Q. as Much as I.Q." It's some lingo that replaces entrepreneurship and individualism:
The winners won’t just be those with more I.Q. It will also be those with more P.Q. (passion quotient) and C.Q. (curiosity quotient) to leverage all the new digital tools to not just find a job, but to invent one or reinvent one, and to not just learn but to relearn for a lifetime. Government can and must help, but the president needs to explain that this won’t just be an era of “Yes We Can.” It will also be an era of “Yes You Can” and “Yes You Must.”
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73 comments:
High BQ. (Bullshit quotient.)
None of the above.
Friedman wants to be cool and cutting-edge by using new stupid jargon to describe what small business people have been fucking doing their entire lives!!!
GQ = gay curious.
BIQ = Bi curious.
EQ = entrepreneur curious.
Friedman should have just voted for Romney then.
A big-government Elephant with entrepreneurial bonafides .. .win win!
Went with 2, but it sort of begs the question EMD asks.
Consumer confidence in down GDP is about 1% and Dictator Zero is rating lower than Nixon at a comparable period in his Administration.
Could it be the Gray Lady is beginning to realize Barry's at good at saving the economy as he was at organizing Altgeld Gardens?
C.Q.D. In the old Marconi maritime days, that meant "seek you, distress"
Friedman telegraphs an S.O.S.
Friedman" "Government can and must help, but the president needs to explain that this won’t just be an era of 'Yes We Can.' It will also be an era of 'Yes You Can' and 'Yes You Must.'
Maureen Dowd is off today."
That says it all. Translation: don't be such a socialist.
But for Obama, private sector PC and QC is a YP, not an MP.
"It's some lingo that replaces entrepreneurship and individualism:"
I didn't see the word "bootstraps," either.
Probably an oversight.
None of the above.
The private side of economics is a foreign top Obama as a drill press is to you.
Something to look at with curiosity all the while wondering at its purpose.
Government helps the most by getting the hell out of the way.
If you look at all the entrepreneurs of the last couple of decades the money was made in those industries with the least regulations.
You want government to help an industry? Do what DARPA does. Offer prizes and let the participants spend their own money on R&D.
"Why did Friedman use the terms P.Q. and C.Q.?"
None of the above.
Or, more to the point, you missed the obvious answer.
Friedman is a poseur.
So too are his readers.
Well, those who take Friedman seriously.
Gosh, I hope a gang of knife-wielding "yoofs" who look like "Obama's sons" don't rampage through the New York Times's offices, hacking its evil little staff to pieces.
That would be just plain awful.
Burn, Zimmerman, burn!
/sarcasm.
Meanwhile in the real world..
From Instapundent:
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): GDP Actually Shrunk in Fourth Quarter of 2012. Funny, as I recall the news reports it seemed like we were in an Obama-driven economic boom. . . .
Now ain't that a gas.
"things the president rarely speaks about."
Um, because he knows absolutely nothing about these topics, perhaps???
Look, in theory, I'm as much in favor of free markets as anybody.
Where does it exist?
As I think most voters do, I look at the bipartisan Ponzi scam that was the subprime mortgage scandal, and the bailouts that followed... and I've basically decided that the free market stuff is just bullshit for chumps.
This is an area where I can agree with Obama voters. Those who were in on the deal got theirs. Why shouldn't everybody?
Free markets are for the losers.
I'd say he used P.Q. and C.Q because the Bamster doesn't have much I.Q.
Explanation for my "none of the above" vote: "Friedman is an idiot" was not a choice.
Jay said...
Um, because he knows absolutely nothing about these topics, perhaps???
Oh, he knows lots about these topics. The problem is the things he knows are not true.
What did Friedman ever start up? I mean with passion, creativity, or originality? He is of the rent-seeking class, not the inventing class.
None of the above.
If you use the old words, then everyone will think you are a rube.
Isn't harping on passion and curiousity rich white people code for "I have warm feelings as regards women and minorities?"
This whole editorial is predicated on a false assumption about Obama. If one believes that all wealth creation comes from the government (as it appears Obama does) then the concept of private entrepreneurship is generally a non sequitur to you.
They can talk about it all they want, but they aren't going to get much in innovation, and, indeed, have made the environment quite a bit worse for such. We all know about the effects that the recent tax hikes will negatively have on innovation, but the Obama Administration has had a probably larger negative impact on the patent system.
Nearing a year and a half ago (9/16/11) the President signed the Leahey-Smith America (Dis)invents Act (AIA) into law. This was the biggest change in U.S. patent law for the last maybe century and a half, and none of those charges are good for innovation. The biggest is the move from First-to-Invent to First-to-File (they argue First-Inventor-to-File, but ignore that the provisions for inventorship were also removed). The one year grace period was mostly removed and disclosure rules are now worldwide. So, technically, you can lose your right to a U.S. patent now if a man discloses essentially your invention to his wife over dinner in India the day before you file in the U.S. Making things worse, the new derivation proceedings have strict statutes of limitation and timing requirements driven off of patent prosecution, and not when you discover the theft of your ideas. Compounding this, it is still possible to delay publication of applications until they issue.
The apparent reason for the AIA is to make patents weaker, and thus much easier to invalidate in litigation. And, this was driven by the very large companies that are the most likely to get sued for infringement by independent inventors and small companies, led by IBM, but also including such companies as Intel, Microsoft, etc.
We spent maybe five years fighting the legislation as a high tech volunteer organization with a lot of members. We would go up on the hill, and the legislators would listen to us, thank us, etc., and then nothing much happened, until after the 2010 elections. And, then, the issue exploded. And, in 2011, it is estimated that well over $100 million was expended by those big companies in the first 3 quarters, with there being at one point more lobbyists up on the Hill in favor of the legislation than members of Congress. It passed, with a lot of talk about how it would increase innovation (apparently based on its name), with the lead holdout being Rep. Sensenbrenner of WI).
How was the Obama Administration involved? They appointed David Kappos Director of the USPTO and the Asst. (Deputy?) Secretary of innovation. His previous position had been chief patent counsel for IBM, where he was one of the chief pushers of this legislation. So, he went one day up to the Hill to lobby for it for IBM, then a couple weeks later back to lobby for it for the Obama Administration. Not supposed to have happened under the Obama transparency rules, but obviously did.
This reminds of when a bunch of highly educated legal minds are standing around discussing some deep nuance of the law, and the dirty guy scrubbing the floor nearby pipes in with his opinion on the subject, which is clearly uninformed, but he's sure he's bringing in some new wisdom.
Oh, wait. That's me on occasion. Never mind.
Explain more than one but not all: NY Times readers/editors need to be coddled - I voted for a combination of reasons 1 and 2
Explain more than one but not all: NY Times readers/editors need to be coddled - I voted for a combination of reasons 1 and 2
Heheh, Obama must exhort the workers to be more productive! Yeah that'll do the trick
NOTA for reasons immediately stated above.
For the last five years I've been the problem.
Now I'm the solution.
Yay.
Christ, what BS. Friedman is the classic liberal who makes believe he's smart, but is an idiot. Zero and his minions have done everything possible to stop his passion and curiosity, and advocate punishing those who show same.
Our sales are up 300% in 3 years, and expecting another 20% this year. We have doubled our payroll in that time. Nobody ever calls me from D.C. or the NYT. Maybe if we plan to go bankrupt, we'll get a call.
Wikipedia: Friedman has won the Pulitzer Prize three times:
1983: for his coverage of the war in Lebanon. A distinguished example of international reporting;
1988: for coverage of Israel: a distinguished example of reporting on international affairs;
2002: for his commentary illuminating the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat.
In addition, in 2005 he was elected as a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board.
American Journalist, author and former civil rights litigator Glenn Greenwald wrote in Salon July 25, 2012 "His status among American elites is the single most potent fact for understanding the nation's imperial decline."
Friedman's status is the most potent fact for understanding America's decline. And here I thought it was video games!
Who said "You didn't build that?"
Hmmm...
So far everything Obama has done indicates he's purely a political opportunist with a deep seated dislike of certain groups of people. He doesn't seem to have any real economic thinking (beyond the generic, simplistic zero sum beliefs that most progressives hold) and is perfectly happy to defer to others for the fine details in crafting policy. He'd only be interested in encouraging individual entrepreneurship in so far as he saw a political end to it, that is, if he could do so in such a way that it would continue to punish and demagogue his opponents and the groups he hates.
(why do people keep double posting?)
To answer the question why Friedman uses these terms: because he's an idiot who is convinced he's a genius and he wants to show how clever he can be.
American elites
I despise this language. It is antithetical to the American experience.
Democrats and liberals own businesses and invest too. Most of them are not rent-seekers.
At some point, they will smack business-hating liberals who control the party in the electoral teeth.
However, their threshold of accepting economic pain for Obama is much higher then that of the average person.
Acronyms and little boxes on a chart are a form of marketing for an idea, catering to the way some think ideas need to be packaged in order to attract attention and, eventually, sell. So I went with what TF, as a best seller, had to do advance his brand..
It all reminds me of trendy stuff like Edward de Bono's buzz -- Lateral Thinking, Parallel Thinking, Rhomboid Thinking, all of which often ends up as Circular Thinking. There are those who swoon over it. Just not me.
What EMD said at the beginning of the thread. Late in the day for this.
People want to bash Friedman, but I'll give him credit for talking about the importance of such things, no matter what lame acronyms he uses.
Yes you must.
Scratch an anointed one and uncover the slavemaster within.
Governments do an abysmally bad job at innovation, but in the past, our private sector has been able to more than compensate. Interesting how many private inventions end up, for example, in the hands of our military - e.g. M-16 rifles, Sidewider heat seeking missiles, and Predator drones. There are a lot of articles out right now about the latter. Apparently, DOD/DARPA knew they had a need, but couldn't get one to work, no matter how much money they threw at the problem (See the Economist: The dronefather).
Governments are not good at innovation for a lot of reasons. One is that funding decisions are most often based on politics, and not worth, as we saw with the Obama DOE investment record in "Green Energy", starting with the failure of Solyndra, and continuing throughout most of its "investments". It is often who you know, or who bribed whom with campaign contributions, etc. that determines government funding.
Another problem is that government employees are highly risk adverse (which is often one reason they are government employees). That risk aversion shows up in a lot of different ways - and you can see several of them in action in that Economist article I linked to. I saw something the other day on how the Israelis are able to implement systems in 3-4 months that our DOD takes a decade to program. Thank goodness that our Shuttles are now grounded, so that we can finally get into space.
bagoh: Maybe if we start bundling for Obama, then plan to go bankrupt, we'll get a sweetheart loan guarantee.
There, fixed it for you.
Somebody tell Tom that Obama is not serious about individuals starting businesses. Obama demands the power to regulate all activity into a few large corporate hands that a fascist Dictator can drain and use under the guise of fair redistribution.
Top down fascism does not permit any start ups by passionate and curious people. Ask Tony Soprano how Obama does business.
All one needs to know about Friedman:
One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.
A 21st century Walter Duranty, and just as besotted with tyranny that informs his biases.
Other Choice: It is the current lingo on Friedman's cocktail circuit.
Obama speaks not of it 'cause he don't be-LIEVE in it.
YDBTQ: "You Didn't Build That" Quotient.
Shouting Thomas said...
Look, in theory, I'm as much in favor of free markets as anybody.
Where does it exist?
Look on the floor of the options exchange.
Go to a flea market.
Go to an absolute auction.
Craigslist.
None of the above. Friedman doesn't know shit from wild honey by taste or smell about what it takes to run a business or start a business.
From Beirut to Jerusalem is a good read, although a little dated now, kind of like a Cold War-era spy thriller.
Given time, Friedman's cheerleading for China will appear as misinformed as James Fallows' 1990s predictions of Japan's coming economic supremacy.
He doesn't seem to have any real economic thinking (beyond the generic, simplistic zero sum beliefs that most progressives hold) and is perfectly happy to defer to others for the fine details in crafting policy.
Compounding this, he had absolutely no experience in picking people to work for him, so the overall level of appointees was abysmally low, even for a President. I mentioned Dir. Kappos in a previous comment. His credentials look quite good on paper, and fit well into solving some longterm USPTO problems (and who better to appoint USPTO Director to solve computerization problems than the IBM patent counsel?) I have little doubt that IBM people donated enough money to get their guy serious consideration for the job (strong rumor was that that job could have been had with a $100k early bundle to Romney (about a year ago), if he had won - no doubt Obama's 2008 campaign would have sold the position for a comparable amount of early cash).
Often, when someone bundles a lot of cash for a candidate, and, esp. for a Presidential candidate, they want something out of it. Ambassadorships are nice and showy, and garner a lot of contributions, and the State Dept. regulars are skilled at keeping them out of trouble and out of the loop. But often, the parties contributing all those bundles of cash have something else in mind, some way that they can exploit the positions they buy. What was $100k or so to IBM, when 1000x that would be spent in 2011 lobbying for their pet cause - greatly weakening U.S. patents. We are talking less than the cost of one lobbyist, and in return, they got their guy being the chief technology guy and lobbyist for the federal government.
Point being that the Administration has shown scant ability to hire intelligently, and the President even less ability and interest in overseeing even his top level hires. They essentially sold fiefdoms to Dem interest groups, and then let them run amok.
As maybe a final note to the Dir. Kappos story - apparently all of the political appointees submit their resignations if the President is reelected, and most are refused (unless there are real reasons for such a request). Rumor, from multiple sources is that USPTO Dir. Kappos' resignation was accepted. Either someone else outbid IBM this time, or, more likely, the Obama people have figured out how they were played on Patent (de)Reform (AIA). It is now law, and, no surprise, the law is ugly, horribly written and likely to cost many jobs, many of them the type of high tech STEM jobs that we need the most. And, the Obama Administration, thanks to their hiring of Kappos, has egg all over their face because of it. We started hearing rumblings from the Commerce Dept. last fall (and, the SBA, cut out of the debate much earlier). But, the regret seems to have shifted into high gear with Obama's second term.
I was taking lots of Economics courses at Brandeis while Tom Friedman was there. I never ran into him. I think that explains a lot.
EMD: I despise this language. [American elites.] It is antithetical to the American experience.
No, it's not. Any group of humans throws up an elite, one way or another, for good or ill. There is nothing inherently tyrannical about an "elite". The Founders were certainly elite, in talent and vision as well as wealth and status. What you don't want is an elite (if you ain't one of 'em) whose fortunes aren't allied to your own, or worse, who actively work against your interests, or worst, who are motivated by active malice toward you.
Which is what we've got now. They not only screw us, they rub it in by hiring clown-pundits like Friedman to bludgeon us with such a psychotic torrent of daft meaningless management clichés that any still-sane decent reader is dispossessed of his will to live.
Why take a risk when the government will take care of you?
Did our hostess link the Tom Friedman Op-Ed Column Generator before?
None of the above. Friedman doesn't know shit from wild honey by taste or smell about what it takes to run a business or start a business.
Not sure if I agree with the former, but definitely the later. I don't think that he would do horribly running a Fortune 500 company. Or, maybe just Fortune 50. He is a big picture guy, who does see big picture trends.
What he doesn't comprehend is how to start and run a small business, and to build it into a larger one. And, he doesn't understand the innovative process, and how that integrates with starting and building small companies. I think that he thinks that most important innovation comes out of the large companies that he loves to chronicle. And, it mostly doesn't - rather, what those big companies are good at is seeing good ideas, and then appropriating them. Can anyone here name one innovation first made by Microsoft? Dos? Word processing? Spreadsheets? Windows type operating systems? Web browsers? Search engines? etc. All invented by someone else, and appropriated by Microsoft. At least in Apple's case, Steve Jobs was a genius at industrial design.
Friedman is much more comfortable dealing with, and better understands, the big companies that seem to mostly innovate by seeing good ideas, duplicating them, and then crushing the competition through their massive cash advantages.
To paraphrase Prof. Reynolds, in today's business environment what really matters is one's JQ - Juice Quotient.
Thomas Friedman calls on Obama to stress "the private side..., a lot more entrepreneurship, a lot more start-ups and a lot more individual risk-taking..."
Like Tommy's beloved China?
As a matter of fact, little Tommy has nothing to fear but fear itself. With Obamacare in full force, most people would become "entrepreneur", a one-person-protean-corporation.
To the less enlightened, a part-time contractor who cannot sue her employer for anything other than a breach of contract, a worker who is on her own, paying twice as much FICA and Medicare, no paid vacations, no employer subsidized health insurance, no griping about her boss at the water cooler, not even a pink slip when her contract ends. But she will get "free" condoms if she could afford her insurance premiums.
Bruce: "I don't think that he would do horribly running a Fortune 500 company. Or, maybe just Fortune 50. He is a big picture guy, who does see big picture trends."
Base on what do you "think" he could run anything other than his big mouth?
Friedman is a talker, he never "works" a day in his life. He writes broadsheets, spiels what his employer wants him to spiel. He kisses Obama and other politicians' asses to get to where he is. He could twist words beautifully, and makes huge bundles for himself. He may be able to run his undocumented Hispanic maids and gardeners. He can talk about how to run a corporation, but has never even run a lemonade stand.
Friedman is using Newspeak for "hoarders and wreckers".
GDP-0.1%
It is worse than I predicted.
ST is a secret socialist even though he's making 6-figures.
I am amused that Thomas Friedman has finally come around to technological entrepreneurial thinking circa 1995.
Tom please also do not implore BHO to champion risk taking and entrepreneurship. Given the President's track record, my guess is that we would see a decline in risk based innovation and economic outcomes.
bagoh - you didn't make that.
Tom please also do not implore BHO to champion risk taking and entrepreneurship.
"Venture Socialism", aka "Solyndra".
"bagoh - you didn't make that."
Absolutely correct, but a lot people did, and the only contact from the government was for their 50%+ cut, in advance, in cash, in perpetuity. That's after the cut they take from everyone's paycheck, in cash, in advance. Yet we're the problem, because we don't appreciate what they do for us.
Thomas Friedman yada yada blah blah ZZZzzzzzzz......
"Maureen Dowd is off today."
For some reason the Times is really into pointing out the obvious.
Like most of Friedman's work, this is psycho-babbling baffle-gab. He sells a lot of books though, and has a nice house, so I guess that sort of thing sells.
""Maureen Dowd is off everyday."
FIFT.
I think it's the stress increasing factor. But can't identify whats this?
Why would a politburo Marxist like Urkel want to do or deal with entrepreneurship and start-ups for?
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