The old adage tells us that to understand our adversaries, we must first understand ourselves, but a new Northwestern University, Illinois study may turn that saying on its ear.  In an Economist.com story entitled Inside a deal, it pays to get inside your opponents' heads rather than in their hearts, we are show that it may be advantageous to take the perspective of our opponents to reach a better outcome:

“The main tip is to gain bargaining power by understanding the person on the other side of the table. But what exactly does a negotiator need to know about his antagonist? In a series of experiments a team of researchers have come up with some intriguing answers in a report just published in Psychological Science . … Analysis showed that when the buyer in particular had a perspective-taking ability it could predict a successful outcome.”

If this study holds true across a wide variety of situations, perhaps the techniques discovered may one day be used to help solidify the natural tri-partisan coalition that existed before the current trend of polar-politics?  Anything is possible...

Sign in to post your comments below.

In the late 20^th century, a popular anecdotal story described the farm boy who came to the city and marveled at the wonders he had once only read about.  Today, that story has transformed into a tale of the youngster who visits relatives in the big city and is more impressed with the speed at which he or she can download music than with the brick and mortar monuments to an aging society.

Do you remember dial-up?  The Model-T of Internet connections is still around, but in many areas of the country, it has been (thankfully) replaced by broadband.  The world is now a much smaller place for those who enjoy high-speed Internet services offered via telephone, cable, and wireless providers, and our lives will never be the same.

That is, unless you happen to live in “the digital divide.”  Places in America where populations are small, homes are few and far between, and it is technologically difficult or financially prohibitive to offer anything more than a dial-up connection are far more abundant than necessary and has become a viable political issue these days.  In a story entitled “Candidates’ Plans for Broadband Could Provide a Boost,” we find a marvelous opportunity for politicians and individuals to put rhetoric on hold and use incentives to bring the rest of America into the digital age.  

Broadband Internet has become a hot topic for debate among the U.S. presidential candidates. Many believe that broadband is one of the key components needed to maintain competitive advantage over other nations.

The obstacle seems to be in which technology the government should place its support, and the debate on who should receive the handout from government rages on as well.  The left wants to subsidize consumers (Internet welfare) while the right wants to subsidize businesses (corporate welfare).  In both cases, the sides agree that incentives should be offered, and could be brought together by changing the word “subsidize” to “incentivize” in this quote:

The presidential candidates have yet to outline very specific ways in which they will work to improve broadband penetration. One potential way is to subsidize cable development into these areas in order to extend the reach of their services. Another way may be to subsidize consumers directly to purchase more expensive forms of satellite Internet and be connected.

It is unlikely that either of those options are viable for the entire country.  The nice lady in the DirecTV ad tells us “all you need is a clear view of the Southern sky” and the broadband dream can be yours.  Unfortunately, satellite has not always been as fast or reliable as Internet delivered via cable, and probably isn’t the solution for everyone.  DSL solutions require customers to be within 18,500 line feet of a central office, bringing the cost of upgrading rural infrastructure in line with that of cable when being extended into areas where it may be 18,500 feet between homes.  Obviously, one solution isn’t going to solve every problem.

That’s where incentives come in.  Incentives aren’t political, and they don’t come with limitations or red tape.  There is neither government subsidy for a particular strategy, nor support for one technology over another.  The incentive would be offered to companies that provide a broadband solution to areas that do not currently enjoy broadband access, in exchange for a monetary prize and/or tax incentive for getting the job done.  That would foster a competitive environment that would bring to bear the innovative spirit this nation is so well known for.  Incentives are the common sense solution to this, and many other problems we face. Do you agree?

Earmarks in the federal budget -- the infamous "pork" -- have been a target of criticism for many Americans across the political spectrum.  The lack of transparency with this discretionary spending has been fueling unethical behavior by many Congressional members for years.

Now Google Earth, the online interactive world map, has implemented a new feature to help track this spending:

The Sunlight Foundation on Tuesday released a downloadable Google Earth layer that plots what it says are some 1,500 earmarks attached to a proposed U.S. House of Representatives defense spending bill. The Washington-based group describes its mission as promoting political transparency through use of Internet technologies.

Once activated, each project shows up on the layer in the form of a yellow push pin.

Read More

Business Week has an interesting piece on a new set on internet entrepreneurs-- those seeking to expand to space:

Internet Pioneers' Next Frontier
by Rachael King

"Vint Cerf, one of the founding fathers of the Internet, began working a decade ago on protocols for deep space communications, known as the Interplanetary Internet. Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon.com (AMZN), has started Blue Origin, which is working to develop a vehicle to transport a small number of astronauts into suborbital space.

Elon Musk, former CEO of PayPal (EBAY) and Zip2, has invested more than $100 million of his own money to start Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, a company that's building a family of launch vehicles. Jim Benson, who founded CompuSearch and invented modern full-text computer indexing and search, is creating a vehicle for space tourism at Benson Space that seeks to minimize the violent impact that spacecraft encounter on re-entry into the earth's atmosphere.

...

While Virgin Galactic is already taking reservations and deposits for $200,000 flights it hopes will start in 2009, and the Russian Space Agency has flown some civilians, tourism still amounted to less than 1% of the total space market in 2005. Still, the Space Foundation estimates that space tourism could produce $600 million to $700 million in revenue per year by 2014. "In the landscape of a $200 billion industry, it's not much. But it's a good start," says Elliott Pulham, CEO of the Space Foundation. "

We could measure NASA's progress in recent years versus the progress of private space entrepreneurs and possibly be surprised.  As Newt has said, should we offer a $20 billion prize to the first private firm that can send a rover to Mars- on the condition that we abolish NASA if this is done before its Mars program is complete- that we would save on the magnitude of $100 billion. 

Interestingly, a column a few days ago on CNET ask the question, "Do we need NASA?":

“[I]f private industry can reliably transport people and cargo to space, is it still necessary to funnel $17.6 billion a year to NASA? Or could that money be better spent on, say, tax breaks to encourage the development of a world-class private space industry?”

John Schwartz writes in the New York Times last week:

"The group whose $10 million prize spurred privately financed rocketeers to send a small piloted craft to the cusp of space in 2004 has issued a new challenge: an unmanned moon shot.

With the audacious new contest comes a much bigger prize: up to $25 million, paid for by Google, the ubiquitous Internet company.

The Google Lunar X Prize was announced yesterday in Los Angeles at the Wired magazine's NextFest. The contest calls for entrants to land a rover on the moon that will be able to travel at least 550 yards and send high-resolution video, still images and other data back home."

Google has certainly tapped into the entrepreneurial, "can-do" spirit of America.  As Newt has suggested on several occasions, the best way to get back into space is not through increasing the NASA budget, but through the creation of prizes to be given, for example, to the first team that sends a probe to Mars and back.  As he said in his June 8th speech at American Enterprise Institute:

"I would like to see us put up a $20 billion prize for the first team that gets to Mars and back.

The morning they get there and back, we quit the NASA Mars program.  Now if you took the amount of money that NASA plans to spend over the next twenty years to get to Mars, my guess is that that $20 billion prize will save you a minimum of $120 billion, because somebody will be there and back about 40 percent of the way into the NASA program."

Is this something radically new?  By no means.  A $25,000 prize was offered to the first person to fly across the Atlantic.  Charles Lindbergh collected it in 1927.

MSNBC recently profiled a man who can work from seemingly anywhere:

"Victor Cousins has a pretty good gig working for the human resources department at Sun Microsystems, but he doesn’t have an office, just a locker.

Don’t feel sorry for him. He’s not one of those types who measure his career success by the size of his office. In fact, he's proud to be office-less, and he’s the quintessential telecommuter. He works anywhere he wants – his home in Oakland, the local coffee shop, and at any Sun location throughout the country. When his mother had knee surgery in May he was able to spend time with her, working out of a Sun office in St. Louis."

The article continues, noting that already more than 12 million people telecommute 8 or more hours a day.  That number is expected to increase substantially in the next 10 years.  An interesting comparison would be to see how many members of the federal bureaucracy telecommute, or are even able to telecommute.  Given the many failings of the government to modernize, as demostrated in "Fed Ex vs. Federal Bureaucracy," the private sector is rapidly changing while the entrenched bureaucracies stay the same.  Only a transformation of government is capable of bringing the government into the 21st century.