A case for "jobs stimulus" in the U.S. that subsidizes American consumers and producers of customized education, and American providers of associated online markets
As seen above, this site recommends a particular kind of “jobs stimulus.” Findings of top researchers indicate that this stimulus is the U.S. government’s best bet to catalyze the creation of many jobs in America.
To learn about these findings, visit the Many Jobs page.
This site adapts and expands on a business plan praised [1] by analysts at
(To close this section, click again on ‘[1]‘.)
From emails sent to Frank Ruscica, author of the business plan and this site:
“I just spent about an hour surfing around [the business plan] with a bit of amazement.
…I guess I’m mostly just fascinated that we’ve been working a very similar vein to the one you describe, without having a solid name for it (we call it ‘the age of the amateur’ or ‘networks of shared experiences’ instead of CECS [i.e., customized education and career services], but believe me, we are talking about the same patterns and markets, if not in exactly the same way). Thanks for sharing what you have — its fascinating stuff.”
“Hi Frank, Thanks for your time today. If you would like to provide us with further information about [the business plan], we would be happy to review it in more detail.”
Tristen Langley
Draper Fisher Jurvetson
2004
“Frank, you are a good man. Have you thought about joining this team? Your only alternative,of course, is venture capital. But their usual models require getting rid of the ‘originator’ within the first eighteen months.”
Randy Hinrichs
Manager
Learning Sciences and Technology Group
Microsoft Research
1998
Where has the plan been since 2004?
I set out in 1984 to become a comedy writer, determined that I needed to develop a comic persona, and settled on an approach for doing so [1a]. The business plan
(To close this section, click again on ‘[1a]‘.)
My three-step plan for developing a comic persona:
identify the ethical cause that I most want to serve
serve that cause
mine the experience for comedy
The plan also features two corollaries:
the more pro-social my primary cause is, the more likable my comic persona will be
the more effective I am in the service of this cause, the more likable my persona will be
adapted at this site is a byproduct of my taking said approach [1b].
(To close this section, click again on ‘[1b]‘.)
I started work on my comic persona at the outset of my undergraduate tenure at Colgate University (again, 1984). During my freshman and sophomore years, I became increasingly aware that many people do not enjoy maximum opportunity to realize their potential. Toward improving on this, I concentrated in political science and economics. What I learned prepared me to recognize the Internet’s potential to expand educational and economic opportunity, which I did in 1992. Since then, I have immersed myself in the research and design work that gave rise to said business plan, which includes a marketing plan that centers on the Web rom-dramedy mentioned in [1]. (Along the way, I completed coursework at Stony Brook University commensurate with a B.S. in computer science; co-founded a medical software company, Medicine Rules, specializing in diagnosis support (for which the company received an Innovation Award from the National Institutes of Health); and served as the Director of Digital Services at Metropolitan Telecommunications.)
Summing up: corollary #2 of footnote [1a] is wherein lies the mother of all rubs for an aspiring comedy writer.
In 2005, I “froze” the business case for the kind of markets-maker described at this site, along with the software features of the 1.0 market. Primarily for marketing purposes, the plan calls for the production of a particular TV-ready Web rom-dramedy (the male lead is based on my now seriocomic persona). In 2005, there was MUCH more that I needed to research en route to developing the show’s premise, episode template, pilot episode, first-season arc, bible, etc. This research and design work has been my focus since then.
Why so many years?
The 2009 book Producing for TV and New Media contains an interview with Scott Williams, co-executive producer of Fox TV show Bones. From the interview:
In television there’s a saying: You’ve got to feed the monster every eight days. Every eight days you’ve got to have another great script ready to be shot. So I’m constantly conferring with [co-executive producers] Hart and Stephen: “What do you think about this or that story?”…When we’ve got episode 10 about to shoot, we’ve got to be coming up with episodes 11, 12 and 13…The focus for me is to just always keep the writers’ room going and make sure that new stories are constantly being generated.
From a profile of David Simon, creator of acclaimed HBO series The Wire, that appeared in the March 21, 2010 edition of the New York Times:
By spring 2008, two and a half years after the pilot [for "Treme," Simon's new HBO series] was ordered, they [i.e., Simon and his co-writer] agreed on a draft that they would take to HBO.
…One September morning, the writers convened around a table in the “Treme” production offices in the Lower Garden District to make some decisions about one of their key characters…Stationed at the table’s flanks were the members of the writing staff: Mills, Pelecanos and two New Orleans-based writers as variedly accomplished in their fields as they are new to writing television: Lolis Eric Elie, whose family has lived for generations in New Orleans, is a former columnist for The Times-Picayune, author of “Smokestack Lightning,” a book on the culture of barbecue, and maker of “Faubourg Treme,” a documentary on the neighborhood where he lives; and a New Orleans transplant and longtime resident, Tom Piazza, a writer of nine books, including the post-Katrina nonfiction call-to-arms “Why New Orleans Matters” and the Katrina novel “City of Refuge.” With “The Wire,” Simon had two decades as a reporter and resident to draw upon, but both he and Overmyer, despite many years of experience with New Orleans, knew they couldn’t begin to approximate the intimacy of locals in a city where, as Simon has put it, “even the nuances have nuances.”
From 2009 book Creativity 101:
Gardner (1993) proposed that a creator may take a second 10 years to create his or her second great piece of art. Could there be a similar 10-year rule that advances the creator from mere goodness to greatness? S.B. Kaufmann and J.C. Kaufmann (2007) present evidence for such a rule. They studied 215 contemporary fiction writers. Writers took an average of 10.6 years between their first publication and their best publication.
Microsoft, Amazon.com and top venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (one-page executive summary). In particular, this site shares much of the plan’s blueprint for establishing a popular online “workflow market” [2] for CE.
(To close this section, click again on ‘[2]‘.)
A workflow market facilitates the provisioning of customized, just-in-time supply chains.
From 2007 book Competing In A Flat World:
[In his book The World Is Flat, author] Thomas Friedman identified three primary periods of globalization…Today we have arrived at the third era…the emergence of the flat world…Friedman identified a third, less visible driver of the flattening world: workflow software. These software programs allow individuals to collaborate on projects anywhere in the world.
From 2010 book The Power of Pull:
Li & Fung…operates a global network of more than 10,000 business partners to configure customized supply networks for customers.
From 2007 book Competing In A Flat World:
Li & Fung does not own a single factory…It is…the orchestrator of a network of more than 8,300 suppliers…The company indirectly provides employment for more than two million people…but only less than half a percent of these are on Li & Fung’s payroll. With this lean structure, each of the company’s own employee’s generates about US $1 million in sales, earning a return on equity of more than 38 percent per year.
Prominent among the first steps of this blueprint: introducing online markets that provide new and improved ways to showcase and earn money from expertise. The expectation is that dynamics in these markets will output prices and other information that will be key inputs to the process of popularizing a CE market.
The page of this site titled 2 Steps describes two quick steps you can take to increase the likelihood that Congress and the president enact a variant of the “jobs stimulus” contemplated here.
Fair warning: if you are a (future) parent, or otherwise care about children, resistance to taking these steps may be futile.
To learn why, visit the pages titled Benefits for Children and Children-Friendly Politics.
An excerpt from Benefits for Children:
From NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children, a 2009 book that appeared on the New York Times bestseller list for two months:
“When a child gets to choose, they presumably choose activities they’re motivated to do [says Dr. Silvia Bunge, a neuroscientist at the University of California at Berkeley]. Motivation is crucial. Motivation is experienced in the brain as the release of dopamine. It’s not released like other neurotransmitters, into the synapses, but rather it’s sort of spritzed onto large areas of the brain, which enhances the signaling of neurons.” The motivated brain, literally, operates better, signals faster.
From Saving Schools, a forthcoming 2010 book by Harvard professor of government Paul E. Peterson:
Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham provides an explanation for the power of customized learning. “Working on problems that are the right level of difficulty is rewarding, but working on problems that are too easy or too difficult is unpleasant,” he notes.
Other pages of this site — Many Jobs, Jobs Quickly and U.S. Advantages — present a case that, respectively:
popular CE markets can be expected to catalyze the creation of many jobs
many CE jobs are likely to be created quickly in the U.S., particularly if government partners with industry
America is ideally suited to become the Silicon Valley of the global market for CE
Hmmm…
Well, maybe said pages preview a case, more than present one — but each page does feature key data and skeletal logic for a case…
Sooo…thanks in advance for your generous award of partial credit.
Note: this site does not present detailed formulations of would-be public policy. Ideally, enough folks taking said two steps will motivate policy entrepreneurs to develop such formulations.
Two obvious suggestions for said entrepreneurs:
CE vouchers for American consumers (e.g., schoolchildren, unemployed workers)
investments [3], on favorable terms, in American CE producers and
(To close this section, click again on ‘[3]‘.)
From a 2009 book by Josh Lerner, a professor at Harvard Business School:
When we look at the regions of the world that are, or are emerging as, the great hubs of entrepreneurial activity – places such as Silicon Valley, Singapore, Tel Aviv, Bangalore, and Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces – the stamp of the public sector is unmistakable. Enlightened government intervention played a key role in creating each of these regions.
…It might be obvious to the reader why governments would want to promote entrepreneurship, but why also the frequent emphasis on venture funds as well? The answer lies in the challenges facing many start-up firms, which often require substantial capital. A firm’s founder may not have sufficient funds to finance projects alone, and therefore must seek outside financing. Entrepreneurial firms that are characterized by significant intangible assets, expect years of negative earnings, and have uncertain prospects are unlikely to receive bank loans or other debt financing. Venture capital – independently managed, dedicated pools of capital that focus on equity or equity-linked investments in privately held, high-growth companies – can help alleviate these problems.
operators of associated online markets
To make these investments, the government can establish a venture capital (VC) firm that is similar in form to In-Q-Tel, a VC firm funded solely by America’s Central Intelligence Agency. Imho, a portfolio of such investments is at least a very good bet to yield profits quickly [4].
(To close this section, click again on ‘[4]‘.)
From the Jobs Quickly page on this site:
Once these [U.S. media] conglomerates identify this markets-making opportunity, then, they can be expected to launch and/or acquire markets and complements.
See the page for more details.
To all:
Please email me if you have any questions, suggestions, etc.
Best regards,
Frank Ruscica
Frank at OpportuniTV dot com
(Have pics that fit this theme and feature babies who are Asian, Hispanic, Indian, etc.? Want, as I do, to see more diversity celebrated here? Please send to Frank at OpportuniTV dot com. Thanks kindly.)
Introduction
As seen above, this site recommends a particular kind of “jobs stimulus.” Findings of top researchers indicate that this stimulus is the U.S. government’s best bet to catalyze the creation of many jobs in America.
To learn about these findings, visit the Many Jobs page.
This site adapts and expands on a business plan praised [1] by analysts at
Microsoft, Amazon.com and top venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (one-page executive summary). In particular, this site shares much of the plan’s blueprint for establishing a popular online “workflow market” [2] for CE.
Prominent among the first steps of this blueprint: introducing online markets that provide new and improved ways to showcase and earn money from expertise. The expectation is that dynamics in these markets will output prices and other information that will be key inputs to the process of popularizing a CE market.
The page of this site titled 2 Steps describes two quick steps you can take to increase the likelihood that Congress and the president enact a variant of the “jobs stimulus” contemplated here.
Fair warning: if you are a (future) parent, or otherwise care about children, resistance to taking these steps may be futile.
To learn why, visit the pages titled Benefits for Children and Children-Friendly Politics.
An excerpt from Benefits for Children:
Other pages of this site — Many Jobs, Jobs Quickly and U.S. Advantages — present a case that, respectively:
Hmmm…
Well, maybe said pages preview a case, more than present one — but each page does feature key data and skeletal logic for a case…
Sooo…thanks in advance for your generous award of partial credit.
Note: this site does not present detailed formulations of would-be public policy. Ideally, enough folks taking said two steps will motivate policy entrepreneurs to develop such formulations.
Two obvious suggestions for said entrepreneurs:
operators of associated online markets
To make these investments, the government can establish a venture capital (VC) firm that is similar in form to In-Q-Tel, a VC firm funded solely by America’s Central Intelligence Agency. Imho, a portfolio of such investments is at least a very good bet to yield profits quickly [4].
To all:
Please email me if you have any questions, suggestions, etc.
Best regards,
Frank Ruscica
Frank at OpportuniTV dot com