Re: Lest ye get too complacent

rick baird <rick.baird@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>This is not a black and white issue, and I'm not going to pretend I
>have a well formulated opinion on it all, because I surely don't.  I
>do have a few random and scattered thoughts about it (you knew I
>would).  most of them will sound to many like I'm straddling the
>fence, but I would argue not.
>

<snip much that I agree with>

>The adaptation could be boycotting the walmarts and the microsofts of
>the world, but we'll pay for that in higher prices across the board. 
>we can raise temporary walls to stem the tide, but we can't stop the
>tsunami.  Adaptation eventually comes down to finding what we do
>better, and doing it better.

I'm going to repeat that last sentence because it goes the the heart of the 
future:

>  Adaptation eventually comes down to finding what we do
>better, and doing it better.

Rick and I have debated opposite sides of a lot of issues in CPF0000 (and I 
wish I had time to get back in there), but this one seems to be pretty common 
ground and is important enough to comment on.

I've long been disturbed that we cannot develop a decent national policy for 
the future. I'm sure if we tried, it'd end up being longer than the Iraqi 
Constitution where it ought to be fewer than, say, a hundred words or so.

By setting such policy, there could be more agreement on how jobs were created 
and/or made available. There could also be some personal planning on career 
paths to prepare for.

My concept would include only a couple focus points that begin precisely with 
"finding what we do better, and doing it better":

1. We're very good at knowledge creation.
2. We're very good at growing food.

>From that, we would use government to assist in both areas by way of tax 
>policies, government grants, etc.

Knowledge creation is essentially fundamental science. If we can continually 
stay in front of the rest of the world, knowledge can be licensed to top 
bidders.

Food is critical regardless of knowledge. If we can make food available for the 
rest of the world (and sell it), we'll be assured a future. IBM and Microsoft 
are good examples -- patents and licensing are important to both.

By combining the two focus points, we could assure that we're the best food 
providers for a long time to come.

Significant control of food is a great self-defense: Damage the U.S. and you 
damage world food supply. Control of knowledge is control of allies among other 
things: Damage the U.S. and we'll send the ~more advanced~ knowledge to "the 
other guys". (And knowledge helps everywhere else as well, including actual 
self-defense.)

A good, clear national policy that could be stated in a few paragraphs would go 
a long way towards resolving many of our jobs issues.

Too bad we can't achieve it.

Tom Liotta


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