Crowding the US Supreme Court for a cause – US Healthcare Reforms

 Healthcare Reforms legal battle begins with people sleeping on the sidewalk for 3 days for a glimpse of the 3 day legal marathon to take place at the United States Supreme Court starting Monday, 26^th March, 2012.  The craze to get a seat into the Supreme Court oral arguments on healthcare reforms has no parallel in recent times.  The line for the limited seats, open to public, started forming on Friday 23^rd for the 3 day oral arguments that begin Monday. US Supreme Court hasn’t seen such a polarized case in many decades.  In addition to the line-standers vying for a seat in the audience, the stakeholders have already established their camps in outside the US Supreme Court.  The oral arguments start Monday 26^th and continue until Wednesday 28^th.

The nation’s highest seat of judicial power can accommodate only about 400 people in the courtroom.  Majority of the seats are reserved for law makers and the legal community.  The big shot lawyers and politicians have been scrambling for entry to these historical sessions. The court has set aside only about 60 seats for members of the public, and that’s the reason people have lined up with their backpacks and sleeping bags for 3 days to compete for one of those 60 seats.

    On Friday afternoon, the first three people in line to hear the Supreme Court’s oral arguments on the health reform law chat with a Supreme Court police officer. (Photo credit: www.washingtonpost.com  at http://wapo.st/H345vu) 

If emotions are running so high even before the Supreme Court starts hearing the case, can’t imagine what happens when the judgment is delivered sometime in June just ahead of the next Democratic and Republican presidential nomination conventions.  One thing isn’t going to change though.  Whoever prevails, the astronomical US healthcare costs aren’t coming down anytime soon.

CROWDOCRACY

"Shut up and take my money!" – The crowdfunding insanity!

“Shut up and take my money.” Well I didn’t say that. That’s exactly what a gaming fan (Eurogamer reader Arcam  http://kck.st/zHkxwF ) told  a game developer who is turning out to be the next big success on Kickstarter after Double Fine’s $3.3 million haul. The best part is, in the campaign video, Brian Fargo, the man behind the Wasteland 2 crowdfunding campaign, told the audience, how miserably he failed to convince the gaming investors/publishers to fund his project. In essence, confessing  the audience that no traditional gaming industry insider of present time would touch his project with a ten foot pole. Conventional wisdom told me that his confession would deter me from putting my 2 cents in his project turned down by the established video game sponsors. Yet, the crowd went gung-ho over his Wasteland 2 idea. Within just 48 hours of the campaign, they gave him more than he wanted. And, the money keeps pouring in as we speak.

So what is the moral of the story? As much as it is scientifically established that much of human behavior is predictable, one would expect the crowd to be a cumulative aggregate of that prediction. Wrong!! The crowd psyche is unpredictable. As it stands today, crowd economy is heading northward; just impossible to predict the extent of its economic impact on entrepreneurship with any certainty. At least, it’s beyond me.

Crowdfunding – A New Gold Rush For Entrepreneurs?

Crowd sourced funding finally had its day on March 13, 2012 when over $3.3 million was raised in just over a month without a business plan, without borrowing money and without even giving away equity!!! Is it scaring the Venture Capital industry?

Well, crowdsourcing is changing the way entrepreneurs raise seed capital, a lot faster than anyone could have imagined. One gaming company did that in just 34 days. Double Fine, a bay area game developer garnered support from a whooping 87,142 backers and the money kept pouring until the last hour on March 13th at 8.00PM EST. The Crowdfunding revolution is not stopping at that. Stepping in the Double Fine’s footstep is another west coast game developer InXile already creating ripples with over 16,000 backers racing the campaign to its $900,000 goal within the first two days.



So far it’s been mostly individuals who have been backed by the crowd. The real revolution would be ventures developed by the crowd itself. That’s where the real social impact will come from – ventures of the crowd, for the crowd, by the crowd.

Where all this is heading, may be of concern to the venture capital industry and equity regulators. Well, the revolution has already set in. Now it is beyond regulators and stakeholders to stop it. But what the heck, isn’t a free market economy driven by the market itself rather than the controllers of the market?

Crowdocracy