Presidential Debate

I just got done watching the first presidential debate of 2012. It was pretty much a disaster but I think it was the format of the debate that was at fault, not the candidates. I tried to think of a different format that might meet the needs of the American people more adequately and this is what I came up with.

I think it would be more beneficial if the debate were to take place in writing rather than on television. Both candidates could be in the same room and have a moderator pose a question that the candidates could respond to in writing (given a predetermined word count) without consulting their campaign staff for proofreading or ideas. Writing is a better medium for communicating and explaining ideas and would showcase a candidates political philosophy rather than their stage presence. The reason writing is a better medium for sophisticated discourse is because it allows time for critical thinking about the topic and writing and editing a response until it communicates exactly what a candidate wants to express whereas, giving two minutes to respond to a question a candidate didn't know was going to be asked is prone to produce miscommunication and gaffes. After the initial responses have been turned in the candidates would have the opportunity to read their opponents submission and pick it apart with another session of writing. After this round each candidate could read the others criticism and produce a closing argument for their ideas.

This process could be repeated for each topic that the moderator has chosen for the debate. A written format is sure to be more time consuming (for the candidates) than a traditional debate but it would at least give us more useful information to work with. As it is we are left trying to decipher political philosophies through a barrage of comedic one liners (ZING), emotional attacks and frequent interruptions from a moderator who expects the candidates to explain their position on healthcare and why it's better than their opponents in the span of two minutes.

Once completed the debate could be delivered to the public in a variety of ways. E-reader, PDF or print are a few that come to mind. As someone who enjoys reading, I'd love to see the candidates deliver their messages this way. And a quick disclaimer: Although I don't know if he ever advocated a written debate format I got a lot of the ideas in this blog post from Neil Postman in his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.

Thanks for reading.

Facebook IPO

I can't wrap my head around the value placed on Facebook. I read an article from the AP that made the following statements.

>By the afternoon, the stock was trading flat at around $38. That means Facebook is worth about $104 billion, more than Amazon.com, McDonalds and storied Silicon Valley icons Hewlett-Packard and Cisco.

>In all of 2011, it earned $1 billion.

>It had net income of $205 million in the first three months of 2012, on revenue of $1.06 billion


So last year the company made $1 billion and they are now valued at $104 billion. That's more than 100X what they made last year. That means that if a person bought the entire company and it continued earning the amount of money that it's earning now they would make less than a 1% return on their investment. My credit union pays me a higher interest rate than that on money in my savings account.

The only way to "justify" a price like that is if you are basing the value on a speculation of what the company is going to be worth in the future. In my opinion that is not a good way to make sound investments. A good investment makes a purchase at the current value for something that you think is going to increase in value in the future. If you buy it at its speculated future value then even if it performs to your expectations it will only be worth what you paid for it and you will have made nothing. At that point you can do one of two things; You can try to sell it to someone else and hope that they are willing to pay an even higher speculative price or you can hold onto it, hope it increases further still and make a profit from there on out. However, from the time of your purchase until the point where the asset increases in value to be worth what you paid for it you will have made nothing. Why would you do that? The answer is that you wouldn't unless you don't know much about investing. For that reason, I think Facebook is going to go down in value in the future. I think the value of the company is way overpriced at this point because of the popularity of the company and the willingness of unseasoned investors to purchase shares. I think once that novelty wears thin the trading price of the stock is going to nosedive.

Companies just aren't worth 100X what they make in a year, period.