Business Meets Personal: Next Pittsburgh As Mesh City

The Old School was pretty clear: business was business, and personal was personal. An interesting sociopolitical question was raised by this week's focus on Lyft-Uber and The Sharing Economy. Used to be (U2B) you were a Consumer or a Producer; now you're a Consumer and a Producer. Sometimes, mixing previously unmixable categories is too hard to think about, it's disturbing and even revolting. Maybe we're prosumers (thanks to C.Briem !)

The lines between business and personal seem to be collapsing, and with any change there's winners, losers, angst and noise.

Your car, which used to be a private vehicle, is now sometimes also a kinda-taxi (except it's not, wink-wink) but you do carry passengers for hire. A few quibbling points:

• Some people have CDLs (commercial drivers licenses), some don't
• there are difference insurance and inspection requirements for commercial vehicles
• there are different parking and zoning implications for personal vehicles
• in some cities, commercial vehicles can only use certain roadways
• commercial drivers face drug testing

You build a wonderful home theater in your basement. Big, big screen. Stadium seats for fifteen, tremendous sound system, serving table for food. You've had friends over for ballgames and movies for years. Now, you're having paying guests over for Netflix and Steelers games. You're doing the same thing as you used to do, but you're charging for it. Funny thing is, all the licenses for your content are strictly for not-for-revenue personal, non-commercial use. Fughedaboutit.

Zoning. In an attempt to structure our cities and counties in accordance with the public desire, we enact zoning laws that designate what kinds of development are permitted. Some places are zoned for personal residences, some places are zoned for business, some places are zoned joint use.

Hotels. I love hotels, I get the NYTimes and they've got a pool. But now there's AirBnB and my neighbor has transients traipsing in and out because he's sharing his guest bedroom. We're zoned for residential, but wow: brave new world.

Drones. You can go out and buy some really cool drones and quadricopters, and you can outfit them with some really cool cameras. You can fly them in a lot of places (but not around DC). The rules say you can only do this as a personal activity, you cannot do it for commercial use; you can't do it for compensation. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Taxes: Personal purchases pays sales tax; commercial use doesn't. That's not trivial; start messing with personal and commercial and the entire tax structure is in play. (Ask Al Capone about taxes) Note how states are now collecting Amazon taxes and cities are focusing on AirBnB scofflaws.

Finance: Personal banking, Business banking: very different things.

How did we come to have such clear schisms between personal use and business use? What are the truly essential safeguards that we need to convey into the future, to ensure public safety from malefactors? How much of the commercial legislation is defending incumbents and restricting competition and innovation, and how much is protecting the public from blackguards and the extremes of capitalism?

What are the implications of tearing down those (anachronistic) distinctions? Because the Mesh isn't going to wait for the old rules to change, it's going to unleash creative destruction and swamp the unprepared.

Locally, it seems like Pittsburgh is going to be a Mesh City, which could be #FunToWatch, what with winners and losers n'at.

One could assert that Pittsburgh is uniquely positioned for the business-personal amiguity, blessed with the mullet: business in the front, party in the back. In the end, everything comes full circle to Yinzers.

The Econalypse / Depression 2.0 Killed Broadband

Years from now, forensic economists will study terabytes of historic information trying to identify the tipping point of the Econalypse of 2009-2011; when did the economy start an irreversible slide? What single datapoint broke the camel's back? For the record: It's Maria's fault. Maria is a lady I work with. She caused Depression 2.0 ; it started with the best of intentions in October 2008.

A buddy of Maria's faxed her a list of stores still selling gift cards, even though they'd probably be closing soon. Some of the names surprised me. I made copies and passed them around; I didn't want anybody giving me no-good giftcards. Good thing I distributed that list widely.

Later that day I was reviewing my 401K and I thought, if all those businesses are folding, I should get that last bit of money out of the stock market. So I transferred my 401K money to savings bonds. I was talking with friends about what turned us to the Bear side and I think I can pretty accurately say: it was that list of Maria's.

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Unexpected things happen in economic tipping points.
Used to be, the railroads were the mainstay of the economy.
Used to be, Pittsburgh made steel.
Used to be, real estate couldn't go wrong.
Used to be is no guarantee of future performance.
What would be Unexpected 2.0?

I've read about scenario planning and the way they use it at Royal Dutch/Shell. One of their techniques is to consider these questions: What's a current market assumption about something that's either plentiful/cheap or scarce/expensive? What would happen if the assumption turned out to be false?

So: what relatively recent trend is so firmly embedded in our assumptions that we can't imagine it going poof? What's new, popular, widely adopted, and we can't imagine doing without it? I suggest: high speed web access. Continual growth of high-speed web access underlies almost everybody's business strategy, The web is always becoming faster, cheaper, and more ubiquitous. It's an accepted article of faith. What would happen if that changed?

How could Depression 2.0 affect growth of domestic broadband? Suppose we have a four-year economic downturn and 13% of the country is unemployed. Suppose 30% of the country cancels their high-speed web access because it's an unwarranted luxury when next month's paycheck is uncertain?

How would the cable companies, with significant fixed costs and few variable costs, respond? They'd consolidate through M&A, raise rates, and allow cable to go dark. The ubiquitous web might be gone, and we'd be back in 1996. The people unaffected by the Econalypse will be online, but there'll be a broadband ghetto.

The pure-play businesses will suffer. The clicks-and-bricks will struggle. The bricks-and-mortars will do better. Newspapers and magazines, or any industry betting on the web for their salvation, will probably fold.

How will children do their papers without high-speed internet? Hello, public library with web access! Congratulations, banks that maintained branch offices!

All the businesses that shifted to the web-based version of customer relationships will suffer when their relationships move offline. Companies that moved their HR posture to self-serve, or that moved their information systems to the cloud, will have remote employees who can't access their key systems.

I'm just saying.

Syntax of Sin Tax and the Goverment-Military-Industrial Complex

This is a rant, way off my normal beat (Bikes, Bytes, Burgh), but and I hope it works. I've been noodling for a while about the current trend of public revenue sources, and a recent post at Pgh is a City prompted me to take up the keyboard.

Once upon a time, some behaviors were recognized as inconsistent with the public good, and at various times we have made them illegal (which is what we do with such things). These activities have included pornography, prostitution, gambling, loan sharking, drinking, and Sunday shopping. Used to be, there were rules against these things.

Funny things happen over time. "New normals" evolve, and when too much strife is going on there's a tendency to "define deviancy down". (I miss DP Moynihan.)

Sunday used to be a different day than the rest of the week. Blue laws closed clothing and liquor stores. No beer at convenience stores. No shooting at the range before noon. Sunday was a day for Church and Family. (This was back before Sunday was a day for Custody and Visitation.)

Stores wanted to open on Sunday. The new shopping centers wanted the money; the malls got waivers, and then the mom-and-pops felt the pinch. The money reached out to the politicians, and the rules were changed. Now if you work in a store, you're working Sundays and you're not in church or with your family. Does anybody believe that the total amount of money spent in the mall increased by 1/6th when they went from six days to seven days? But We've given Sundays away, we'll never put Humpty Dumpty together again, and I'm at a loss to say how we've benefited. If a group advocated closing stores on Sunday, pundits would wag "oh no, can't do that, if we lose the tax receipts we'd have to change seniors more for their prescriptions, and Aunt Mary will be eating catfood and cutting her pills in half". Hoisted on our own petard.

Drinking isn't a total evil; see the famous "If by whiskey" speech for the two sides of that coin. There's a lot of bad things that come from drinking: alcoholics, drunk driving, domestic violence, paychecks spent at the bar. There's money to be made, though; it's rare to see a bar or a distillery go out of business. There's an industry that has a stake in legal drinking, and they're not going to let the law mess with it. Prohibition tried once, but but the industry won in the end. And goverment makes money on it, especially in Allegheny County with the Onorato drink tax; we can't campaign against public drunkedness on the South Side, we need the tax receipts to keep the 35A bus from running out to Century Three Mall, even if they won't let the bus into the parking lot.

Cigarettes. Is there possibly any reason why these are legal, other than the money and the industry's influence? It kills our people, they die nasty extended deaths, the industry takes the profits and society pays for the hospitals and hospices, and we bemoan the tragedy of cancer without looking at root causes. Government taxes cigarettes heavily, which has the initial positive effect of making smoking somewhat more expensive, but while the long term effect is that government is dependent on tax receipts from smoking. We let this industry market death to our children because they let us put tax stamps on the cartons.



Gambling? Look at the state falling all over itself trying to figure out where to place the casinos. No community has benefited from casinos, which leach money out of the local population. But we don't want our people to go to Ohio or West Virginia, we want to abuse them right here because we want the tax receipts. There's a lot of money; casinos don't go out of business. Complete this sentence: The house always __________. The industry touches the politicians, and anybody who objects is a priggish moralist. We permit a once-illegal activity because of the money, justified by the artificial rhetoric of competition and tax receipts.

Prostitution? Too far out? Inconceivable, you say?? Illyrias' recent post describing a future Gov. Rendell legalizing and taxing NorthSide hookers North Shore sex workers is what prompted me to start writing this; it's the inevitable incremental step. Why are Burghers going to Vegas? What can they get there that they can't get here? Can't have them going to Morgantown for cash business, can we?

I thought about this topic, and I said to myself, this is a great evergreen story - I can jot this down on my list of things to blog about, and it's safe to let it sit for a few weeks until I get around to it, it's a timeless story that isn't going to be overcome by events (OBE'd). Then I read about the New York pornography tax crisis, and I realized that Illyrias' prediction was spot on.

New York has a funding crisis, and Governor Patterson proposes a tax on movie downloads - and not just the Sound of Music, mind you, but also Debbie Does Dallas. Porn industry spokesmen (just think about the existence of that phrase) complain that porn is part of the essence of New York, that tourists come to Times Square to buy these DVDs, and that taxing pornography is an attack upon the essence of New York. This unbelievable story makes Illerias' prediction seem all too inevitable.

Here's what I see: we've embraced things that were once unacceptable because of the tax receipts, and now we've got a vested interest in their survival, if not their success.

• I believe there are funding sources that are always unacceptable. Don't whore your mother.
• I think Thoreau would agree: what you tax, ends up owning you.
• If government (ie, us) wasn't paying for the cancer deaths, the blighted neighborhoods, and the corporate bailouts, and if industry wasn't taking huge amounts out of the population, we wouldn't have the expenses we're paying for, and we'd have more money to pursue the right priorities.
• I don't want to live in Las Vegas, New Orleans, or Amsterdam, and I don't mind missing their tax receipts.
• Here we go Steelers, here we...

I am reminded of the government-military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about in his swansong speech.


Ike was right that the government-military-industrial complex is a powerful force in the federal system, but I think it's a sign of how far we've gone that the goverment-industry complex is also a persistent force in local government.

I will strive to avoid writing anything moralistic for the next ninety days.

Tour of California Lance, Floyd, Levi, and George

In one week (February 14th), the Tour of California kicks off. It's a bicycle race on public roads, contested by teams of bicyclists.

Bicycle racing by itself is a funny kind of sport in the way that Wrestling or Arena Football are funny - there's athletes, scandal, hokey drama, but usually there's enough apparently virtuous contenders to make you want to believe it's plausible.

When bicycle racing happens with teams of riders, crammed into a pack (the peloton) of elbows and knees, the sport gains all the strategy and purity of Roller Derby. The costumes are pretty similar, too.

There are big names among the riders, and big-money companies sponsoring teams in hopes of burning their logos into the national consciousness. The main sponsor of the event is Amgen, a biopharmaceutical company. One of Amgen's products is EPO, which is the blood-doping agent most often seen in cycling scandals, and Amgen is sponsoring the ride, proving that somebody at Corporate has a sense of humor.

Each day, these jerseys will be awarded:

Points Leader	Most Courageous	King of the Mountains	Best Sprinter	Best Young Rider

One key bit of drama will be Team Astana. Johan Bruyneel is the Director, and the riders include Lance Armstrong, Alberto Contador, Andreas Klöden and Levi Leipheimer. Levi Leipheimer is a favorite of mine, he seems a quiet guy that works at it, the ToC is in his backyard, and he's never failed a drug test. Lance's return will provide a spectacle, especially with his former Postal teammates now on opposing teams.

Team Columbia Highroad features George Hincapie, Lance's former domestique (subordinate). Always the bridesmaid rarely the bride, George is getting long in the tooth.


Team Ouch (formerly HealthNet) features Floyd Landis' return to pro cycling. He won the inaugural 2006 ToC, and has had a new hip installed since his 2006 Tour de France win and debacle. Team Ouch is sponsored by Floyd's physician, and seems more like a vehicle for Floyd's reintroduction than a serious team.


Let us not forget that Lance made his name by winning the Thrift Drug Classic in Pittsburgh in 1992, '93, and '94. In the 1995 photo below, Andrea Peron (L) leads Lance Armstrong (R) across the crest of Mt. Washington. Ah, the things that used to be here.
(photo credit: Doug Pen)


The ToC will be on television via Versus.

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By the way, I'd like to rollout my favorite jersey, which I received as a Christmas gift and hope to get a lot of use out of in the spring: The Old Guys Who Get Fat In Winter team jersey.

What's Killing The Pittsburgh Bloggers?

What's Killing The Pittsburgh Bloggers? Five Gone in Five Months:

• In December 2008, The Burgh Report, a mostly local-political blog, shut down. In this posting, the author says "Maintaining my anonymity was too much stress to deal with".


• In November 2008, TheBurghBlog (Pittgirl) shut down. In this P-G article, she says "I don't know if I would be fired or forced out or what, and I'd like not to find out... I was anonymous for a good reason and when that was threatened, we pulled the trigger so to speak."


• October 2008, Pittsblog shut down due to time constraints.


• Sept 2008, The Conversation shut down due to time demands.


• August 2008, Teacher. Wordsmith. Madman. shut down.

This is not a tragedy on the scale of three Americans a day dying in Iraq/ Afganistan. Doesn't even come close. But it is a negative. A few inchoate mumblings:

If bloggers are supposed to be part of the new media, and bloggers shut down when they develop a beat/ niche/ groove, what does that mean for public discourse? What does it mean for democracy?

I've ruefully said before that Pittsburgh is a Used To Be town. Used to be steel mills, used to be jobs, used to be a mill-hunky work ethic, used to be an airport, used to be a baseball team. How will Pittsburgh become a "City 2.0" if even our blogs are all succumbing to used to be?

The pattern in the blog closings is (1) threat of identification and (2) time constraints. I get the time issue. But there's never been allegations of falsehood, inaccuracy, or slander. Why is good blogging risky? Is this a Burgh thing? Why are Burgh Bloggers in the closet?

College Tours and the Virtualization of the Computer Science Dept

Last weekend I endured enjoyed two college tours with a visit to the Computer Science departments. The thing that struck me as different (which reminded me that I'm a dinosaur) was the absence of the Holy Trophy System.

Used to be there was a Computer System, often in its own building, certainly had its own space, and it was a measure of the department's stature. Maybe they had an System 360, or a PDP-8.

The Holy trophy System was the lodestone of the program. The students couldn't touch it or interact with it directly, you'd drop off bundles of punchcards like offerings at a temple, the info-priests would introduce your offering to the Computer during clearly defined timeframes, and later you'd get your cards back, wrapped in green/white pages of line printer output, and you'd learn if you had succeeded or failed. Ah, the agony of batch processing. Used to be, a college tour to a computer science department included a respectful look at The Computer System.

Now computers are everywhere, and my cellphone has more processing power than a PDP-8. My palm pilot has more memory than the computers that took us to the Moon. In a world of embedded computing and the ubiquitious web, what's a computer science department got to show? Where's the there?

At both schools we saw a room full of networked monitors, and a box of Mindstorm bricks that show they've been used, and some screen shots. But there's no real "hardware" differentiation between the programs anymore. And I think that's a great thing, because in the "used to be", schools with the grants got the great machines, and the B-scalers got the timeshare with the local high school.

One impressive thing I saw was that the students were writing programs for a Zune MP3 player (and they were very excited about it). The key box is for sale at WalMart or Ebay. Things have changed.

The differentiation now is the people - the passion of the faculty, the interaction with business projects, the ability of upperclass students to describe their projects with confidence. In the now world, it seems like the point of the tour is to meet the people and hear their vision and command of the field, and if the department heads and seniors blow off the tour, then it's a moment of truth - because their box of Legos isn't any different. The demise of the Holy Trophy System isn't a bad thing, it's a very good thing - as always, excellence is about people, not boxes.