Thomas Friedman’s column in the New York Times, “Imbalances of Power,” is required reading for anyone who cares. It’s hard to read, because it isn’t a happy column. No platitudes about how great we are, and how we can use traditional American bluster to push out way out of our problems.
In fact, I have serious doubts that Friedman isn’t too optimistic in believing that the United States economy, if allowed to do its voodoo, will cure our problems. What problems?
If this huge transfer of wealth to the petro-authoritarians continues, power will follow. According to Congressional testimony Wednesday by the energy expert Gal Luft, with oil at $200 a barrel, OPEC could “potentially buy Bank of America in one month worth of production, Apple computers in a week and General Motors in just three days.”I suspect that he’s a step behind on this already. While Americans are busy fighting about silly issues, whether gays should marry or whether the government should kill people, former third world countries have been busily providing us with the stuff that we use everyday. Our gas money has gone to the Saudis. Our clothing money has gone to the Chinese. Our services money has gone to the Indians. And we’re worried about how to motivate Gen Y to put in a little effort before they are handed the obligatory BMW convertible.
Presidential campaigns are great sources of inspiration, based upon the brighter future, the promise of change, the strength of the American people. Except these words don’t actually do anything. They are just words, carefully crafted to make people feel good about the candidates and instill hope that their problem can be solved.
There is a certain truth to America’s strength, but few are willing to admit it. Our strength came from our work ethic and ingenuity, creating things, ideas, services that produced wealth from markets around the world. We tacitly believe that somebody will come up with the “next big thing” that will magically cure our ills and bail our sorry butt out of this state of affairs.
Bill Clinton was viewed as a hero of the economy. He’s attributed with saving us from the Bush I crash, creating a surplus and bringing in the days of milk and honey. But he really had nothing to do with it. We were saved by the explosion of internet commerce, this new magical economic landscape that offered unimagined promise. It would have happened regardless of who was president, and it pulled our chestnuts out of the fire.
Up to now, America has enjoyed these fortuitous events as the way to save us from ourselves. We have come to believe, truly believe, that this will continue. America will always have some new, unexpected miracle that changes everything. It’s like some sort of entitlement, some gift from God because we are the best, most worthy nation on earth. Don’t worry about all the bad things we do. Something will save us. It always does.
The failure of Mr. Bush to fully mobilize the most powerful innovation engine in the world — the U.S. economy — to produce a scalable alternative to oil has helped to fuel the rise of a collection of petro-authoritarian states — from Russia to Venezuela to Iran — that are reshaping global politics in their own image.
This is what Friedman talks about when he remains optimistic about encouraging the United States economy to perform its magic yet again. He believes in miracles. He believes that our captains of industry, our engineers, our scientists will come up with something, anything, to save the day if only we push them.
What if they don’t? There is no guarantee that another internet will come along just in the nick of time to save the day. Maybe we’ve used up our good fortune. Maybe the ride is over. You only get so much good luck before your luck runs dry.
Friedman may be right, that we still have some juice in the economy to pull us out of this jam. Perhaps “Mr. Fusion” is right around the corner, and the rest of the world will come running to us for their needs. But even so, can we count on another miracle to come along the next time? And as long as Americans continue to hide our heads in the sand, there will most assuredly be a next time.
Enjoy your fancy foreign car. But you may not have any gas to drive it. But it won’t really matter, as you won’t have the strength to drive when there’s no food to eat, or the health to drive it when you can’t afford the medicine to keep you healthy. Or job to drive to.
Discover more from Simple Justice
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The internet wasn’t precisely “luck”. It was a government program, based on government research which was released to the public in large part due to, yes, Al Gore, pushing for it to be released.
The next telecom revolution wanted to happen, but since the telecoms are an oligopoly and laws currently don’t allow the old style of open access that was required back when the internet ran on telephone lines, that hasn’t happened.
Note also that the internet, like most other great tech advances was paid for mostly with very old government research money and that money has largely dried up. Private companies, with rare exceptions like Bell Labs (which might as well have been government) don’t do that sort of long term research.
Luck had little to do with it, long term government policy and investment did. You “make” your own luck. America has increasingly chosen /not/ to make its own luck, but to protect prior winners at the expensive of the possibility of future progress.
Tim Berners-Lee :
He gave it to the world for free, which allowed the utility of the web for all, which gave birth to internet commerce, which saved the economy of the 1990s.
Had the internet been nothing but Gopher, the complexion of the world would be very different today. For the world, this was sheer luck that it happened at all and happened when it did. One tiny change in direction and the only people online would be universities and defense contractors.
the internet was a bit more than Gopher and without the internet, there’d have been no world wide web. Without the government mandating that telecom companies had to let independent ISPs onto their wires, there’d have been no explosion of new users in the 90’s.
And here’s something interesting about Tim. Where was he working when he thought up hypertext? Where was he working when he thought up the other protocols.
Both times, CERN. Which is funded by Eyuropean governments.
Here’s the deal with research and invention. Yes, it’s very random. But the more of it you do, the more likely it becomes that something will come up. The problem is that the odds for any particular item are very low — it’s almost impossible to pick winners. There’s a ton of literature on what a lousy idea the WWW is, and yet it worked, in large part because it is lousy. (Check your spam mail to see what I mean.)
That makes doing research hard for private enterprise, because they don’t know what’ll hit, they don’t know when, and if it does it may turn out to be something they can’t capitalize on (who first invented the GUI interface? Not Apple, not MS.)
Governments don’t need to know these things. All they need to know is that some of it will pay off, and because they tax the entire economy, they can be sure that they’ll get a share back of any inventions.
As a society, the more research we do, the more inventions we’ll get. Each individual one is luck, but en-masse they aren’t much luck, any more than it’s luck that someone wins the jackpot in the casino – it’s lucky for them – it’s expected by the casino. It /will/ happen and the Casino knows that.
But you’re still assuming that somebody, somewhere, is going to invent the next panacea for the economy at just the right moment to save us from impending disaster. This was a miracle, both in its creation and timing. That doesn’t mean that people and governments weren’t trying, but that there’s never a guarantee that the next miracle is just around the corner, waiting to save the world.
Belief in ingenuity of the marketplace is not a substitute for thoughtful planning, guiding ourselves appropriately and recognizing the consequences of our misbegotten behaviors. We can’t pollute the planet, secure in the knowledge that somebody will invent something to purify our air and water. Our belief that no matter what we do, no matter how irresponsible we are, somebody will save us from ourselves is a recipe for disaster. Other mighty empires have fallen because of this, and it could happen to us as well.
Yup, I’m assuming, if as a society we’ve done the work of creating a world where there’s enough research and an environment where that research can be used well that someone will invent something. I don’t think that’s in contradiction to what you’re saying. It’s like the formula for success – work hard and get lucky. But the harder you work, the far more likely you are to get lucky.
Riots in the Street
Oil up $10 a barrel.
Riots in the Street
Oil up $10 a barrel.
The Disinhibition of Debt
There was time when Americans would be ashamed of the fact that they couldn’t pay their bills.
The Disinhibition of Debt
There was time when Americans would be ashamed of the fact that they couldn’t pay their bills.