IPOcracy: USA Goes Public

IPOcracy: An IPO for the USA

"We want people to feel the rapture of selling out," says Peter Hirshberg, the co-creator of an elaborate, satirical Web site called www.IPOcracy.com. IPOcracy is based on the notion of "taking the country public" -- the dream of many a startup dot-com company. "Public financing [of elections] isn't the answer," adds Hirshberg, "a public offering is."

IPOcracy has established an "Influence Exchange" -- a phony stock ticker that lists the rising and falling "stock prices" of different political perks, like stays in the Lincoln bedroom and an Air Force One junket (currently trading at 72 3/8 under the symbol AIR).

The site also offers a Web page for every American who wants to run for President, alongside the slogan, "Of the People, By the People, For a Sustantial Profit." If you decide to run, the site will automatically build you a personalized campaign site within minutes, complete with commericals, press releases and campaign merchandise -- proving that with little time or thought, anyone can sell out enough to have a campaign site that rivals the major candidates.

Hirshberg and co-creator Michael Markman, two successful former Apple Executives, met Shadow Convention leader Arianna Huffington at a Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conference (an annual West Coast insidery event for future thinkers). According to Markman and Hirschberg, a chat there with Arianna produced the idea of having an alternative convention to discuss major issues being left out of the Democrat's priority list.

"We left the meeting and kind of forgot about it, until a few weeks later we got a call from Arianna," says Hirshberg. "Arianna said, 'Remember that idea we talked about? We'll, we're doing it and I need your help.'" The rest is Shadow Convention history.

Richard Saul Wurman, the guru of the TED meetings, is a strong advocate of access to information, with an obsession for presenting data in ways easy for the public to understand. The TED conference publishes an amazing book, called Understanding, which renders gobs of powerful data in beautiful and compelling ways. The Masher loves this book, which seems to only be available online, at either Amazon or Barnes & Nobles. Apparently much of the information is also available on the Web at www.ted.com.

Tom Hayden -- Man for All Seasons

Tom Hayden has been happily omnipresent in LA during this high-intensity week of the Democratic convention. Hayden was a leftie hero at the '68 Chicago convention, and in many ways is a hero of protesters in 2000. He's the through line, the touchstone, making the links between generations and reminding the younger protestors that many of their themes and experiences span the decades.

Never fundamentally veering from his radical politics -- unlike many of his former peers -- Hayden has been hugely supportive of this new generation of protestors. During the LA activities he's spoken to a wide array of groups at virtually every request, providing a piercing historical overview of Los Angeles and the storm troopers of the LAPD (Hayden's own son Troy was one of the protestors shot by police rubber pellets during the cop riot on Monday night).

But Hayden is insider, too. A state senator from a liberal LA district, Hayden is a Gore delegate who simply says, "Gore is better than Bush and let's leave it at that." But Hayden fights on the inside with the same vigor he applies to activism, leading a (probably futile) effort to move the tepid Democratic platform back to the left.

Hayden has struggled to remain politically relevant while still radical, a tricky political challenge. The Masher salutes this effort and considers Hayden a brilliant analyst of both our problems and the appropriate solutions. Hayden's efforts to push a larger vision, as when he mixes global trade with human and worker rights, have for the most part met deaf ears among the "pragmatic" Dems -- a stance he fears will make the Democrats irrelevant to a good chunk of the voters.