Normal disclaimers apply: I try not to make this a political space. I'm not an economist, but I've studied it both in academia and in real life.

Fundamentally, I believe that a basic understanding of it is required to have any significant success... well, for the common man. If you happen to be one of the elite - or otherwise be unconnected with real life - it's not quite as necessary. As demonstrated here by Senator Clinton about Alan Greenspan

"Not only that, but the Fed didn't act while he was there. But he has a calming influence still to this day on Wall Street -- don't ask me why because I never understand what he's saying -- but nevertheless people respond to that Delphic oracle approach. I think it would be wise to include him. And recently he's come out and vert smartly so [sic] that we have to deal with housing and maybe we need to have some kind of buyout mechanism for mortgages. So he's moved on his understanding and depth of the problem -- but you know you could pick three others.

Maybe it's a part of the DC culture or maybe it's the overall direction that things are going - I don't know - what I do know is that there's one question that seems to be coming up repeatedly in a variety of circles:

How can we use technology for good?

Personally, I consider that there are two different "goods" out there:

First, there are the Little Goods. Helping out a friend, meeting a customer's needs, and holding a door for someone are all little things that just about anyone can do to make things better for someone. If you do them enough, I think you can change the world one person at a time.

But on a different level, there are Big Goods. These are things that require action from larger groups of people and they affect larger groups of people. The outpouring of support for the US after 9-11, the huge amount of private contributions to accountable organizations to help other people, and just about every blood drive I've ever seen.

I generally try to stay out of politics in this space, but the rhetoric and discussion in the past few weeks have really ticked me off. For the record, I don't support any candidate on either side at the moment. I am opposed to a couple of them - one actively - but have otherwise not been involved... the thing that concerns me now is the latest anti-profit kick from a couple of the current leaders in the US Presidential race.

I've come to expect this to expect this from Senator Clinton. For as long as I can remember, she's ranted talked about the "windfall profits" of Big Oil/Pharmaceutical/Insurance/everyone else. More than anything, it seems to come from the assumption that everyone who has been successful has lied, cheated, and stolen to make it to where they are. Yes, a few have (Enron, MCI, etc), but I believe their names/companies come to mind because there are so few.

About eight months ago in this space, I was encouraged by Tony Targonski to write some predictions involving the future of blogging in 2007. In case you're not one of my three regulars, here was my original quote:

Various governments will get involved... and not in good ways.

Yes, we've had free reign for a long time. Generally, the "blogosphere" has policed itself and ridiculed the liars and frauds into nothing... unfortunately, we all know that when something is working, the government has to step in to break it:

Guaranteed: Watch for the US Federal Election Commission (FEC) to step in and look at the usage of blogs in political races and come up with rules to make our lives more difficult.

Guaranteed: Watch for the Courts and various Law Enforcement Organizations to step in and continue to fight out the definition of "journalist" and related issues.

I hate being wrong, but I have to admit that I was horribly wrong on this one.