The Arab Spring of 2011 was a similar model: change was coming in the form of popular protests, furthered by social networks and the Internet, fought bitterly and fatally by the regimes in place, but to what end? Many dead and injured BUT CHANGE HAPPENED ANYWAY!

Many thought that after Napster, the music industry would stop being stupid and embrace the new music distribution models evolving. The Industry didn't, but the artists who did - like OAR, Dave Matthews Band and Pearl Jam (to name a few of my favorites) - have been hugely successful and profitable.

Why can't the rest of the Industry see that?

Radio is one way to listen to music, but let's face it, listening to the same 100 songs plus the syndicated DJ's is annoying. Because of consolidation in radio station ownership, the powers that be can only look at the bottom line. Wrong place to look. **Successful businesses think about Employees and Customers **(in that order). From that viewpoint can a successful business model is executed.

Albert Einstein said, "Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value." I take that to mean, "Give Value First and Foremost." All else flows from that.

With SOPA and ProtectIP, the RIAA and the MPAA hope to legislate morals nd protections. Why? Why not just give your customers what they want, the way they want it? Isn't that what a vendor is supposed to do?

After Napster, there were numerous other P2P sites like Limewire that popped up. Then a number of online radio sites, like Pandora, Grooveshark, Spotify, Rdio, and more. All have had some fight with the RIAA over licensing. Now we have Google Music, Amazon Cloud Player and Apple's iCloud, too. Do you see a pattern here? People want to listen to what they want, when they want, where they want, on the device of their choosing.

My buddy suggested that their be a website to donate directly to an artist. For example, you downloaded - legally or illegally - a song or album that you liked so much, you wanted to give some money to the artist. That's not a bad way to do it.

One comedian, Louis CK, who is maybe a B list-er, just made over $1 million in revenue on a comedy show, Live at the Beacon, that he produced and distributed himself online at $5 per copy.

The Internet works as a model for distribution. The content is key. CK proved that. So do many authors who self-produce on Lulu and Kindle. [Maybe the key is micro-payments, which I will define here as anything under $6.]

TechDirt is probably the one website that I read that is on top of the copyright-distribution-legislation issues. In a recent article, TechDirt kind of sums up the consumer thinking that WB (and others in the Netflix fight) don't understand: "It appears that WB is implicitly admitting that the strategy of delaying the rental period of a movie by 28 days has been a total failure, in the decision to increase the delay to 56 days. They're basically admitting that not enough people were "buying" in those 28 days... so they somehow think that doubling the wait will increase the purchases. It won't. If people really want to pay the extra money to buy the DVD, they're likely to do so pretty early on. It's not like they're waiting 50 days in and then saying "gee, I can't rent the movie, so I'll just pay a lot more money than necessary to own an obsolete piece of plastic." " BINGO!

People want to stream their content - video, music, TV, movies, etc. - through whatever device they have - blu-ray, xbox, PS3, Roku, GoogleTV, AppleTV, laptop, tablet, etc. [Same holds true for blogs, magazines, and books.]

TechDirt goes on to explain, "I do believe that [MPAA and RIAA] current strategies of alienating their best customers, relying on government protection, and pretending this is some sort of epic battle between good and evil aren't just doomed to fail, they're actively making things worse for themselves." [Sounds a lot like telco doesn't it?]

I'm not encouraging piracy. I actually despise it. We live in an immediate gratification culture. Vendors have to accept that.

We also live in an age where people expect a lot for free. Facebook is free, but people still bitch about it. So's this blog and same thing. Our Culture has a high expectation. It's about perceived value.

Content is really important. Government has to keep the masses entertained or they will revolt.

However, we have a spiraling problem: content costs a lot to make, while disposable income in America is declining. That combination is a disaster waiting to happen.

Let's look at the NFL. They just raised their fees to the TV channels that carry them by 60-70%! [Alan Quayle has a good piece on it.] So ESPN, which is already the most expensive TV channel for service providers to deal with, will be raising its rates to cover this cost. Even the extra $3.50 is just for one channel. What about all the other channels?

I have a rant about ESPN in general anyway. Are they really a sports channel??? Besides college bowl games and some college basketball, the only sport it televises is Monday Night Football, which had bad games all year. This creates a brand issue for them. PBA, Poker and other non-sport stuff is cheap to produce but it is just filler, since they can't run talk-shows and Sportscenter all day (just most of it). ESPN has the same issue as the music and movie industry: too much looking at profit, not enough good content to warrant the money.

We are seeing cord cutting, because the consumer dollars are decreasing -- and they would rather give up TV than cellphones. Cellphone bills average more than residential line bills used to. For a family of 4, it is easily 4 times what the home phone used to cost. Granted you can do more with it, but dollars are dollars. And with 16% of the population at poverty level start thinking what that means for the service economy engine - and all types of businesses.

You have economic and technological forces working to breakdown old school content systems. It will be interesting to see if any lessons are learned and applied in 2012. I highly doubt it because:

Every online sale takes away from brick-and-mortar business just as Wal-mart has run over mom-and-pop stores, each resulting in empty storefronts and unemployment. When we start automating basic jobs - like robots to make fast food burgers - we have to realize that the unemployed and the unemployable will grow. (There 's a great article in The Atlantic about what it's like to be unemployed for an extended time.

As more jobs become 1099 (contractor jobs), more and more will make less and less. Workers shifting from W-2 (an employee) to 1099 will experience anxiety over the loss of benefits and a steady paycheck. There's more to being a contractor than just performing the tasks in the contract. You have to market yourself for the next contract.

You can't blame the Administration for not creating jobs. It's not what any Administration is good at. And they are up against a lot of factors. Shovel ready jobs take months to move a mound of dirt. Politics get in the way by adding needless hurdles.

Seth Godin made the case in his book, Linchpin, that the free education system was designed to create consumers and factory workers. When the masses are out of credit, our consumer spending index crashes. And without factories our workers have no where to work. This is the foundation of today's problem.

The massive layoffs that we have seen in telecom from the synergies of the mergers have resulted in many unemployed. But also underemployed and unemployable. By that I mean, there are many that were earning 6 figures, who simply cannot find another position that pays that. Certainly, even as a consultant (the word many unemployed use instead of job-seeker) trying to grab a 6-figure salary is a challenge. Unemployable means that the worker does not have a skill set that is valuable in today's workplace.

[Blogger's note: I could make the case that most of these mergers have not resulted in any noticeable consumer benefit.]

For example, Florida's economy tanked because it has been (and continues to try to be) based on real estate development. So construction workers, real estate agents, mortgage brokers and title workers lost jobs. The new jobs are paralegals, bankruptcy and foreclosure lawyers and credit-repair specialist.

The start-up world in Tampa Bay needs designers, programmers, business minds and venture capital. Those are skills that are scarce in the job pool.

That's the unemployable issue. We have seen the under-employed issue before. In Florida, that issue is dragging on the housing market because without cash it's difficult to buy a condo - even a foreclosure. And as the larger employers - the governments, schools, telecom, real estate industry - layoff, the result is under or un-employment.

As we make more and more tools of productivity and couple that with a flat world where we do not value the worker, the American economy is going to have a huge Digital Divide. To heck with whether or not they all have broadband, what will they do with it? Other than buying stuff on Amazon or playing on Facebook (or Google+) or comparison shopping to save every dime, broadband may not make that much difference in the economy.

Broadband can offer benefits but it would need to be coupled with a desire to connect, a desire to learn, and the capacity for self-education. Plus, we all have to become marketers and salespeople - marketing our skills online and selling ourselves into 1099 projects. Most people do not have these skills. Hence, why jobs are put on a platform like eLance.com and the bidding process begins. [Blogger's note: I won't get into the price war on creative jobs in this post.]

For all the talk about Indeed.com and Monster, the desirable jobs are not online. They are available mainly through your network. Another skill for workers to learn (and master). Another time consuming task to be done, when we are already stretched for time and stressed out.

As we battle at every local government over education (and other spending), we may find that we are sliding into a third world. The divide grows between the haves and the have-nots. It's funny that the US is exporting the American Dream abroad, when it might not even be available at home to many, including those serving in the Armed Forces delivering the Dream abroad.

Immigrants seem to take to the American Dream better than many who were born here, especially those with roots a few generations old. How do we transfer that passion for success to inner city and poverty stricken areas?

I don't have the answers, but I do know that no one in DC has the answers either. I'm not even sure that anyone in DC knows what the problem is. When Senator McConnell states that the President owns the economy (and the insuing problems), I have to ask, "Why isn't it Everyone's problem?" I know the answer is politics, but this is America. Shouldn't we all be working to make it better instead of just working to make a buck? Who knew that America would become the Land of the Selfish Bastard.

In Tampa Bay, a group of us talk about the issue of growing start-ups often. Start-ups are the engine for job growth and economic prosperity, but take a lot of elements to grow (kind of like a farm). There are very few hotbeds for this incubation - Silicon Valley, NYC, Boston, Austin, and RTP. How do we make it spread?

UPDATE: Gary Kim writes that while the Wireless Industry is booming - revenues have grown 28% since 2006 - it's employment numbers are dropping by 20% -- even amid the 4G roll-out. "The disconnect between employment and industry growth reflects the broader head winds lashing the U.S. job market, as consolidation, outsourcing and productivity gains from new technology and business methods combine to undermine job growth," the Wall Street Journal says. BTW, it's mainly non-union workers that shrunk.

In another note: Rich Tehrani writes that 71% of Austin Companies Complain of Tech Worker Shortage. So Dice.com will be hosting a Job Fair at the ITEXPO in Austin in 2 months!