I think Facebook is going to make it.\u00a0 They will not be a flash-in-the-pan like Friendster or MySpace.\u00a0 They are in it for the long haul.\u00a0 And I don’t think it is because of any purposeful brilliance of their business plan.<\/p>\n\t
Let’s walk through the logic:<\/p>\n\t
When I was growing up I thought the government had a file on everyone.\u00a0 I thought they knew everything about us. \u00a0 I did not know about transaction costs at that time.\u00a0 After working in corporate America for a while I realized it would take almost as many people as there are in the US to do the work to keep a file on everyone in the US.\u00a0 In short, it would be an administrative nightmare….and that is just keeping the files updated, not parsing all\/any of that data.\u00a0 That is also assuming people wouldn’t have a privacy\/civil liberties fit that the government knew pretty much everything about them.<\/p>\n\t
No doubt the government would like to know everything about you and no doubt such information is exceedingly difficult\/sensitive to maintain:\u00a0 Enter Facebook.<\/strong><\/p>\n\t We are doing it for them, complete with correspondence, our friends and their contact information, attached pictures, our location (if using Facebook on a mobile device), what we are doing in real-time, etc.\u00a0 This is the greatest intelligence database the world has ever known. <\/strong> It would take an army of CIA agents working around the clock to know this much about me…just one person.\u00a0 We are voluntarily handing over information the government would never be able to collect on its own.<\/p>\n\t Granted I bet terrorists don’t use Facebook (probably no @terrorism feed update “About to bomb something! LOL! TTYL!”), but their friends\/family might.\u00a0 Or at least the government would like them too. And there is lots of other information the government might want that would be on Facebook:\u00a0 like people reporting zero income but going to Vegas every weekend; people on SS Disability mowing their lawn, etc.<\/p>\n\t And that is why the government will promote the use of and support the business of Facebook.\u00a0 And Facebook will cooperate<\/strong> (government has direct access to everyone on Facebook, whether or not you have friended the government), because there is no better business plan than being a government necessity <\/strong>(ask Amtrack, automakers and the airline industry).\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I think Facebook is going to make it.\u00a0 They will not be a flash-in-the-pan like Friendster or MySpace.\u00a0 They are in it for the long haul.\u00a0 And I don’t think it is because of any purposeful brilliance of their business plan. Let’s walk through the logic: When I was growing up I thought the government […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3IMYj-72","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":612,"url":"http:\/\/chasingeden.com\/?p=612","url_meta":{"origin":436,"position":0},"title":"I still think pensions are a good idea (Part II)","author":"kellio","date":"May 30, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"A friend of mine, whose opinion I respect, commented on my last post about why I like pensions: \"I think your post opens you up to some pretty serious critique, though. I mean, essentially what you are saying is, \"Why should I have to be responsible for my own future\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"economics\"","block_context":{"text":"economics","link":"http:\/\/chasingeden.com\/?tag=economics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":634,"url":"http:\/\/chasingeden.com\/?p=634","url_meta":{"origin":436,"position":1},"title":"The government is spying on us? Does that make everyone a potential terrorist?","author":"kellio","date":"June 12, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"This PRISM spying thing is interesting for me because so many factors are at play (listed below in no particular order): 1.\u00a0What motivates a whistleblower? Edward Snowden is the new Bradley Manning (and we see how that ended). \u00a0The motivation behind leaking this kind of information and the trouble it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Inside My Head"","block_context":{"text":"Inside My Head","link":"http:\/\/chasingeden.com\/?cat=9"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":121,"url":"http:\/\/chasingeden.com\/?p=121","url_meta":{"origin":436,"position":2},"title":"My old blog","author":"kellio","date":"January 9, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Many of you....actually some (perhaps few) of you, know that I had a blog at chasingeden.com for about 5 years; then I \"archived\" those entries for various reasons.\u00a0 I've put the old entries back up here. On another note, I never really ride the wave of great new websites, since\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"http:\/\/chasingeden.com\/?p=121#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":457,"url":"http:\/\/chasingeden.com\/?p=457","url_meta":{"origin":436,"position":3},"title":"Can we pay for Social Security?","author":"kellio","date":"August 7, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Let me explain the real problem with social security, and I'll give you a hint:\u00a0 Paying for it is the easy part. 1) Social Security is currently a profit center (not that that is an issue, as I will explain later).\u00a0 It takes in more than it pays out.\u00a0 The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"economics\"","block_context":{"text":"economics","link":"http:\/\/chasingeden.com\/?tag=economics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":728,"url":"http:\/\/chasingeden.com\/?p=728","url_meta":{"origin":436,"position":4},"title":"Why Ayn Rand was wrong","author":"kellio","date":"May 27, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I've read a lot of her books: Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, Anthem, We The Living, and also a few of the non-fiction works. \u00a0I found them inspiring and they've had an influence on my life. \u00a0And...I think she is mostly wrong regarding what our relationship should be with other people (which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Stories\/Observations"","block_context":{"text":"Stories\/Observations","link":"http:\/\/chasingeden.com\/?cat=11"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":62,"url":"http:\/\/chasingeden.com\/?p=62","url_meta":{"origin":436,"position":5},"title":"Inflation, the Printing Press, Theft and the Jedi Mind Trick of Fiat Money","author":"kellio","date":"March 28, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"My two geek hobbies are happiness research and economics. I post about them often. Today I'll talk a about economics and money as it relates to the big, bad looming\/imminent debt crisis. I've written before about Fiat money. Fiat money is money with no intrinsic value, backed by nothing of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Interesting Tidbits"","block_context":{"text":"Interesting Tidbits","link":"http:\/\/chasingeden.com\/?cat=8"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.financialsense.com\/fsu\/editorials\/2007\/images\/1-Dow.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.financialsense.com\/fsu\/editorials\/2007\/images\/1-Dow.png?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.financialsense.com\/fsu\/editorials\/2007\/images\/1-Dow.png?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chasingeden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chasingeden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chasingeden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chasingeden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chasingeden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=436"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/chasingeden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":439,"href":"http:\/\/chasingeden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions\/439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chasingeden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chasingeden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chasingeden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}