Panic is donating 100% of today’s sales to relief efforts in Japan:

You might be sick of it — being told to donate to a charity. If you’re like me, donating to a charity is an abstract, disconnected affair. So, we thought we’d make it a little more tangible, allowing you to help Japan directly while getting Panic software with one swift click.

Panic will donate 100% of today’s proceeds directly to the Japanese relief effort.

If you’ve been thinking about buying one of Panic’s great applications—like Coda or Transmit—today would be a great day to do it.

China is considered by many to be the defining example of state-run capitalism, but the Economist reports that not only are most companies majority privately-owned, but they are driving China’s economic growth:

China’s state-controlled entities are not particularly profitable. A study by Qiao Liu, a professor at the University of Hong Kong, concludes that the average return on equity for companies wholly or partly owned by the state is barely 4%, despite the benefit of cheap leverage provided by government-controlled banks. According to a recently published paper by Mr Liu and a colleague, Alan Siu, the returns of unlisted private firms are no less than ten percentage points higher.

That’s rather incredible, because it’s very difficult for private businesses to get loans through official channels. Operating outside the law is a significant risk for them:

Nevertheless, this form of business has inherent limits. To the extent that firms operate outside the law, they are vulnerable to shakedowns from local officials and mood-swings in Beijing. Although success brings praise, too much of it can invite envy and scrutiny. Each new list compiled of China’s greatest tycoons is often accompanied by stories about those on earlier lists who later fell foul of the law. In his remarks last year Mr Zheng, the provincial party official, said that the significance of private business was not understood: businessmen were often criticised (perhaps a veiled reference to being jailed) without good reason and if continually squeezed, would emigrate, sapping China’s vitality. The prospect of expropriation undermines the willingness of these entrepreneurs to make the long-term investment needed to develop brands, novel products and capable middle-management.

Apple set up a page on iTunes so you can donate to the Red Cross for Japan using your iTunes account.

Seems telling the PRC is so afraid of thus far puny protests in China:

Near Shanghai’s People’s Square, uniformed police blew whistles nonstop and shouted at people to keep moving, though about 200 people – a combination of onlookers and quiet sympathizers who formed a larger crowd than a week ago – braved the shrill noise. In Beijing, trucks normally used to water the streets drove repeatedly up the busy commercial shopping district spraying water and keeping crowds pressed to the edges.

Foreign journalists met with tighter police controls. In Shanghai, authorities called foreign reporters Sunday indirectly warning them to stay away from the protest sites, while police in Beijing followed some reporters and blocked those with cameras from entering the Wangfujing shopping street where protests were called. Plainclothes police struck a Bloomberg News television reporter, who was then taken away for questioning.

Dictatorships, no matter how successful their means of control and economic policies are, are never completely stable. Something as simple and natural as the people publicly speaking their minds can cut through all the fear and strength they have projected to protect their regime in days.

The Arabs have shown the rest of the world just how much power the people have. If they choose, their repressive governments will fall.

Megan McArdle on why Iraq’s business environment isn’t getting better:

But for Iraq to generate a healthy economy–rather than just another semi-failed oil state, with most of its population limping along on the income from dwindling oil reserves–it needs much more than the absence of Saddam.  When I started writing this piece, most of the war supporters I spoke to assumed that the major obstacle to economic growth in Iraq was Saddam’s legacy–insufficient education, crumbling infrastructure.  Most of the war opponents assumed it was the violence.

But neither is the major problem now.  We’re fixing the infrastructure, and the violence is declining.  Instead, the major problem is creating political and social institutions that support a vibrant, entrepreneurial business culture.  And that’s not just absent now; it actively seems to be going in the wrong direction.  And the reason Iraq is going in the wrong direction is not that our violence begot violence, but that the freedom and democracy, which work so well in America, may actually be promoting more corruption and rent-seeking than a horrible dictatorship.  

That’s why I think, long-term, China is in a much better position to transition to a free society than any other country. For now, they suffer under a repressive government that denies them freedom, but the CCP’s slow embrace of free markets, and reticence to liberalize their political system, is effectively allowing Chinese society to adapt to more liberal norms without (all) of the harms that other nations, like Russia, faced when they liberalized their economy and political system simultaneously.

Of course, it might not work out that way. There’s an argument to be made that the CCP is pioneering a new system, authoritarian capitalism, only adopting the elements of liberal countries they need to uphold the only mandate they have to their people, economic growth, and that this model will spread across the world, just like people assumed Soviet-style socialism would. Or, slightly less dramatically, the CCP could just prove adept at providing economic growth and go on in their current position.

I don’t think that’s how it will play out, though. the PRC’s stability is directly dependent on continued high levels of growth, which provide jobs and rising standards of living for the people, keeping a lid on frustration. This strategy has worked thus far; the CCP’s success thus far with generating economic growth has provided them legitimacy and respect among the greater population.

It is incredibly unlikely, however, that they will be able to continue with 7+ percent growth year after year. China’s growth to date is due almost entirely to infrastructure and export developments, and they are approaching the limits of this approach. Soon, they will have to move toward a more balanced economy, with a larger consumer market. This won’t be an easy transition. There will be a year, likely in the next decade, when China’s growth falters. And if China faces persistent economic trouble, there will be dramatic frustration, and all of it will be directed toward the CCP.

That’s the problem for dictatorships: when something terrible happens, and people are angry, there isn’t a way of dissipating that anger. It is bottled up until it finally explodes, and the regime in power receives the full brunt of it.

Democracy, though, provides a blow-off valve for this kind of anger. People can protest in the streets, write angry opinions, speak to others, and ultimately, vote out whoever is in office, whether they are responsible or not. The CCP may need to adopt democratic reform to survive. If it is in absolute control when the economy falters, the party, and the government, may not survive; but if there are other parties the people can elect in anger, the government will survive, and the CCP will be able to come back in future elections. It may turn out that the CCP’s own desire to survive will push them toward democratic reform.

As part of our START treaty with Russia, the U.S. agreed to provide Russia with the serial numbers of Trident missiles we supply to Britain.

A special relationship, indeed.

Marina Nemat:

Ms. Eltahawy writes that demands for freedom and dignity fuel the protests in Egypt. The people of Iran demanded the same in 1979. She speaks about the success of the movement in Tunisia and the fleeing of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the Tunisian dictator. After the shah fled Iran, the country had something that almost resembled democracy for about a year, until the new regime established itself and the crackdowns and arrests of dissidents began

Nicholas Kristof thinks the White House should fully support the protests in Egypt:

All of this presents the White House with a conundrum. It’s difficult to abandon a longtime ally like Mr. Mubarak, even if he has been corrupt and oppressive. But our messaging isn’t working, and many Egyptian pro-democracy advocates said they feel betrayed that Americans are obsessing on what might go wrong for the price of oil, for Israel, for the Suez Canal — instead of focusing on the prospect of freedom and democracy for the Egyptian people.

Maybe I’m too caught up in the giddiness of Tahrir Square, but I think the protesters have a point. Our equivocation isn’t working. It’s increasingly clear that stability will come to Egypt only after Mr. Mubarak steps down. It’s in our interest, as well as Egypt’s, that he resign and leave the country. And we also owe it to the brave men and women of Tahrir Square — and to our own history and values — to make one thing very clear: We stand with the peaceful throngs pleading for democracy, not with those who menace them.

At this point, I think that’s right. I wrote earlier that up until Saturday, hedging our position was the right choice. But after Saturday, that changed; the protests did not weaken and they have strengthened since.

It’s clear Egypt will see significant change soon. It’s time for us to fully swing our support to the people fighting for democracy.

It isn’t a simple issue; the next government could, even if not radically Islamist, nullify Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, which could lead to significant instability in the region. That’s not to be taken lightly. But what else is important is there is a real, organic movement for freedom and democracy in Egypt, one that looks like it will topple a dictatorship, and we would be remiss as a country of liberty not to support them.

Marc Lynch thinks Obama has handled the evolving situation in Egypt fairly well:

I completely understand why activists and those who desperately want the protestors to succeed would be frustrated — anything short of Obama gripping the podium and shouting “Down With Mubarak!” probably would have disappointed them. But that wasn’t going to happen, and shouldn’t have. If Obama had abandoned a major ally of the United States such as Hosni Mubarak without even making a phone call, it would have been irresponsible and would have sent a very dangerous message to every other U.S. ally. That doesn’t mean, as some would have it, that Obama has to stick with Mubarak over the long term — or even the weekend — but he simply had to make a show of trying to give a long-term ally one last chance to change.

I think he’s right in that regard. The U.S. had little choice but to, at the minimum, not undermine Mubarak in the beginning of what is increasingly looking like outright revolt by calling for him to step down. Mubarak is certainly a dictator, who’s refused to eliminate emergency powers for decades and to allow for democratic rule, but he’s also been a force for stability and moderation in the region. While it is debatable whether the U.S. should have put more pressure on him before to move toward democracy, I don’t think it’s up for discussion whether working with him, and pushing him to implement democracy, was the right strategy. It was, and immediately abandoning him at the first sight of opposition in the streets isn’t a good message to send to other allies.

The Obama administration has attempted to walk a rhetorical tight rope; they haven’t called for Mubarak to step aside, but they have said he must implement real political and economic reforms that give Egyptians liberty. They have tried to give Mubarak a chance to implement reforms before losing their support, and I think that was the right decision to make. One more reason this was the right choice to make before Saturday was that it gave the U.S. flexibility—while on the one hand they could say they were supporting the opposition movement’s desire for freedom if Mubarak were to fall, they also didn’t destroy their relationship with him if he didn’t. That’s a smart position to take in a very fluid situation.

President Hosni Mubarak ordered his government to resign:

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt appeared on television late Friday night and ordered his government to resign, but backed his security forces’ attempts to contain the surging unrest around the country that has shaken his 28-year authoritarian rule.

He did not offer to step down himself and spent much of the short speech explaining the need for stability, saying that while he was “on the side of freedom,” his job was to protect the nation from chaos.

This will only anger protestors more, because it wasn’t even an attempt to respond to their desires. Mubarak basically said he will wait them out and won’t make any material changes.

Mubarak faces a choice, though. He can either order the military to crush protests, like the Iranians did during the summer, or he can relent and submit substantive political reforms. This is his fundamental choice; thus far, he has refused to decide, betting that he can wait for protestors to exhaust themselves.

If protests continue on this scale tomorrow, he will have to decide. Both decisions are unattractive; even if he proposes serious reforms—say, ending decades of emergency powers for the police, real and legitimate elections, and an attempt to eliminate endemic corruption—protestors may not accept it, because it doesn’t involve him stepping down.

Ordering the military to crush the protests is an even worse option. He may be able to take control of the situation in the short-term, but doing so would likely shift public opinion entirely against him and de-legitimize him as head of state. Or, even worse, the military could refuse his orders and side with protestors, which would mean an immediate end to his regime.

The PRC has inserted a large statue of Confucius in Tiananmen Square:

A mammoth sculpture of the ancient philosopher Confucius was unveiled this week off one side of the vast plaza. It’s a jarring juxtaposition for a square the ruling Communist Party treats as politically hallowed ground: a mausoleum holding revolutionary leader Mao Zedong’s body sits in the middle and his giant portrait hangs at one end.

Placing the statue at China’s political heart is the authoritarian government’s most visible endorsement yet of the 2,500-year-old sage and, selectively, his teachings.

That’s important. Mao attempted to destroy China’s connection to its past and Confucianism was a large target.

Due to China’s adoption of socialism and Maoism, the Cultural Revolution, and finally China’s breakneck economic growth (and requisite social upheaval), China has little historical legacy to inform itself of what it is and to guide its growth. The only idea the PRC has offered for what it means to be Chinese is to grow quickly.

This is an attempt by the CCP to fix that and to secure itself. The CCP is connecting its values to Confucianism’s, and thus to China’s long history. In other words, the CCP is, at least by appearances, trying to model itself not as a break from China’s past, but as merely a continuation of it.

The best story of human kindness I’ve read in a while:

But you know who came to my rescue all three times? Immigrants. Mexican immigrants. None of them spoke a lick of the language. But one of those dudes had a profound affect on me.

(Via Jason Kottke.)

Read the whole thing. What a wonderful story.

Marcelo Somers, in response to my post from last week that passionate people are the important ones now, writes that:

My primary concern with this is that you can’t train people to be passionate – a college degree won’t get you that.

Exactly right: graduating from high school and college won’t mean that you’re basically set anymore. It’s a piece, at best.

What people need more than anything is some understanding within themselves of what they love and what they want to achieve. That passion is what gives meaning to our work and direction to our studies and careers.

School, though, doesn’t create this passion. It can aid people in finding it, but there isn’t a class that takes in directionless students and pumps out people that know exactly what they love doing.

Even worse, from my experience, most schools don’t even help people find that passion—they work actively against it. High school students must complete a rigid curriculum, the same for everyone, and tend to treat knowledge as something solemn and staid, to be learned quietly and reverentially. Learning isn’t something exciting and world-opening, a key to understanding the world or doing all kinds of interesting and new things; learning is, in most high schools, all very serious and stuffy and irrelevant. Many students long ago decided that school and passion are two separate things, a world away. School is a burden to bear, something to suffer through but that must be done, while “passions” are fun diversions that serious people say is a waste of time.

As a result, students develop a split between what they’re passionate about—whether that’s music, sports, videogames, writing, whatever—and school, the serious part of their lives, and never shall the two meet. School, and after that, work, is a cross to bear to make a living, and “passions” are merely what you do in your spare time to make sure you don’t go crazy.

We can’t afford schools like this anymore. We need schools that, from the very beginning, encourage students to find something that they really love and allow them to run with it. It doesn’t particularly matter what it is that they’re obsessed with; merely having something that you’re obsessed with changes how people think. When you’re obsessed with something, and you have the tools to pursue it, you begin to own what you are doing and your education. You learn how to teach yourself, to proactively go out and learn.

That’s a very different approach. You’re taking responsibility for yourself, what you know and what you are doing with it. Learning is no longer the teacher’s job—it’s yours, and they’re just a resource. This breeds a different way of approaching work, too. Work isn’t just something for earning a paycheck, but something you own and that you can use to fulfill your goals.

This also changes the way you think. If learning is primarily your concern, then it—thinking—isn’t just something that’s done while in a classroom, and shut off while every where else. It’s something you can’t stop doing. Wherever you are, whatever you’re reading, you’re thinking about it, what it means, and how it’s connected to other things you know. That’s important: we need people who see connections between things that don’t seem to have any connection to each other.

We need an education that facilitates this. Early years of education should focus on developing obsessions with things and building that concept in kids, giving them some amount of freedom to tailor their education toward it. High school should, similarly, give students the freedom to connect their studies, and not treat them as separate silos. College, most importantly, must expand students’ ability to think. We need people completely focused on biology, engineering and other hard sciences, but we also need people who see connection between Chinese history, business and computer science. Students shouldn’t be discouraged from studying disparate fields; they should be lauded.

We’re now a decade into a new century and the U.S. is facing growing competition from the developing world. This competition will not level off and recede; China, Vietnam and Malaysia will not settle for being the world’s factory. They will move up the value chain and begin designing their own products and services. We can’t stop where we are.

The only way we are going to compete in the future with an expanded world is to think strategically, to see connections between things that no one else sees, and to bring the same passion to our work as an artist does theirs. Improving our education system is imperative for the continued success of our nation in this new century.

Brilliant essay by Clay Shirky on to whether and to what extent social media can be a force for democracy. His basic thesis is that a strong civil society, not communication, precedes the defeat of authoritarianism, but that communication is necessary to build it. Therefore, the U.S. should support social media generally in less-than-free nations, rather than just as an issue of freedom of speech:

But nearly every country in the world desires economic growth. Since governments jeopardize that growth when they ban technologies that can be used for both political and economic coordination, the United States should rely on countries’ economic incentives to allow widespread media use. In other words, the U.S. government should work for conditions that increase the conservative dilemma, appealing to states’ self-interest rather than the contentious virtue of freedom, as a way to create or strengthen countries’ public spheres.

Dianne Feinstein thinks Assange should be prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act:

The law Mr. Assange continues to violate is the Espionage Act of 1917. That law makes it a felony for an unauthorized person to possess or transmit “information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.”

The Espionage Act also makes it a felony to fail to return such materials to the U.S. government. Importantly, the courts have held that “information relating to the national defense” applies to both classified and unclassified material. Each violation is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

That’s a terribly dangerous road to go down. Feinstein characterizes Assange as an agitator whose intent is to damage the government, rather than a journalist, but his actions are not substantively much different than a whistleblower’s would be (or someone who publishes what a whistleblower leaks). If Assange is successfully prosecuted for his actions, why wouldn’t someone leaking documents showing, say, that the government is censoring some group, or doing something else equally noxious? For that matter, why wouldn’t the New York Times be prosecuted for publishing the documents Assange provided them?

Feinstein’s description of Assange is apt, but prosecuting him for espionage creates much larger problems for our democracy than what he’s done.