Earlier today I wrote about the Repub roadmap for change for the United States which the Dems have aptly described as Social Darwinism. Little did I know as I wrote this piece that Mark Zuckerberg was writing a check for $1 billion in the cause of Tech Darwinism. The survival of the fittest. The cool little startup, Instagram, becomes a footnote in the food chain, with a very nice reward attached. Good for them! $1 billion buys a lot of In-and-Out burgers.

But this further clarifies the role of users in the Darwinian ecosystem. We are at the bottom of the food chain. We are, as has been described here so many times, mere hamsters spinning the wheels. The more hamsters and the more spinning means more dollars for the beings higher-up the food chain. Unless.

Unless -- we choose not to participate.

We're going to do more in the coming weeks and months to define what we mean by "choose not to participate." But just to begin, for vendors it means charging users a fair price for a service provided. And in return, a promise not to aggregate the users into a fine pink slime that can be reconstituted into billions of Facebook dollars. And for users, it means deciding that we're creating more than just little dots of pink slime on Zuck's social graph.

More to come!

 4/9/2012; 4:08:03 PM.

Krugman worries that low-information independent voters won't know who Darwin was, or what it means to call Repub policy Social Darwinism. It doesn't matter. They don't know who Saul Alinsky is either, or what it means when Repubs say the President is a socialist. Or what "shariah law" is. It sounds technical. Honestly, I think the take-away for many will be, if the President repeats it (which he should, many times) is that the Repubs are socialists too. After all, the first word is "social" and it ends with "ism." Whatever it means, it must be pretty close to socialism, and we know that's bad, yes?

The other thing that's great about Social Darwinism is that it does accurately describe the Repub roadmap. It's what they do. But who cares. It's not as if big lies have stopped the Repubs. They love big lies. Because they work. This big lie just happens to be true.

My major complaint about the President, and I suspect for many others who voted for him in 2008, aside from the continuing war in Afghanistan, and the insults against the Constitution, is that he lets the Repubs walk all over him. I don't think he realized they don't buy into his post-partisan dream until August of last year. He should have known it before he took office, and should have planned accordingly. His campaign in 2010 should have reflected the abuse the Repubs would (and have) heaped on the United States if they controlled even one house of Congress.

Recently someone said that the Repubs want the economy to be bad all the way through the election. It's totally obvious. Who cares if you can't prove it. Say it. Keep saying it. Let them deny it. Make them prove it. Let's do some stimulating of the economy before the election. The We Can't Wait line is good. Call the Republican bluff.

Axelrod wonders why we're ambivalent about Obama's candidacy. Here's why.

Our choice is between the Repubs who will rape and pillage the USA as they did during the Bush Years, although Romney might not be quite as bad. It's conceivable that Romney will tell the Ayn Rand wing of his party to stuff it, after he's elected. Unless we're sure that Obama can stand up to them, what hope do we have against the Repubs? Should we re-hire a dreamer who they screw, hard, while they're screwing the rest of us? I don't think so.

I can't imagine voting for Romney, but right now, unless the President runs a really aggressive gloves-off campaign, I can't see myself being very enthusiastic about his candidacy. The Repubs are no good. We know it. They know it. Run on that.

 4/9/2012; 9:29:13 AM.