Over at TechCrunch, Michael Arrington discusses his disillusionment with politicians who seem determined to “help” high-tech entrepreneurship in ways virtually certain to hurt instead:
Silicon Valley has fueled much of the growth in our economy over the last few decades and has created amazing (and highly profitable) companies that are making the world a much better and more interesting place to live. All that happened while the government ignored us.
We don’t want handouts. We don’t want “public-private partnerships,” and we sure as hell don’t want legislation. Just let us do our thing and maybe say thanks to those companies that create jobs by the hundreds of thousands and send in those humongous corporate tax payments on profits. Because all you can do is screw up something beautiful. Really.
For the record, a few recent examples of well-intentioned, yet counterproductive meddling of late include the 1099 mandate from the Health Bill and some really awful provisions in the finance reform bill that will hurt angel investment and venture capital (which I haven’t had time to blog about yet).
Hans
Hans Schantz is CTO of The Q-Track Corporation, and a co-inventor of NFER® technology. His prior work experience includes stints with IBM, the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, The ElectroScience Lab of the Ohio State University, and Time Domain Corporation. Author of The Art and Science of Ultra-wideband Antennas (Artech House, 2005), his thirty-five U.S. patents include antennas, RF systems, RF-based location systems, and related inventions. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, and an amateur radio operator [KC5VLD]. Schantz earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Austin. He also holds degrees in Industrial Engineering and Physics from Purdue University. Dr. Schantz blogs at ÆtherCzar and is @ÆtherCzar on Twitter. His wife, Barbara, invented The Baby Dipper® Bowl. Hans and Barbara have two sets of twins: girls aged seven, and boys three years old. The views expressed are the author's and are not necessarily the views of his employer, clients, investors, sponsors, or customers.
