Worldview Thought for the Day
As the drumbeat of government bailout continues, we march further away from bailing out the very people who are most likely to be able to end the current economic downturn and ensure future prosperity for us all. While we allow for government intervention in private markets and tax-payer funded buyouts of institutions whose long-term viability is in doubt even with tax money infusions, we ignore the people who have traditionally made American great and strong.
We are a nation of entrepreneurs and inventors. From Benjamin Franklin to Burt Rutan, we have always been a people full of curiosity and ideas. The list of modern technologies that Americans invented or perfected is mind boggling. There is very little technology in common use in the United States that did not begin in the United States.
Yet, instead of seeking out the current generation of entrepreneurs and inventors, we seek to prop up the last, dying vestiges of industries and institutions whose time has passed. Sure, ends of eras are traumatic as people who worked in one industry have to prepare themselves for the next, but right now we are not preparing for the next but holding on to the past.
The results of this idea that we must preserve what we have already lost is telling. The United States continues to lag behind in critical technological pursuits like the development of robotics and nanotechnology. We are critically dependent on foreign nations for our supplies of energy. A great deal of current advances in science and medicine occur in Europe and the East.
Meanwhile, we have real needs and challenges that we could meet with entrepreneurship and inventiveness here at home if we would just try. We could solve energy dependence. We could solve crumbling infrastructure. We could solve our problems with education. But, before we can, we need to invest in those solutions.
The answer, then, to our current economic woes is not to bail out failed institutions, but to invest in the creation of new ones. There are thousands, maybe even millions, of people in the United States with good ideas just waiting for a chance to make them great. All those ideas need is investment, probably investment at a fraction of what our failed institutions are demanding. All that it would take to change that investment to the right one is public outcry.
Where’s your voice?
-=DLH=-
Ford says they don’t need the money right now. Mayhap this is due due 23,000 personal, they sent packing a couple years ago.
Speaking of dying vestiges. What sad lack of innovations of the big 3 not paying attention to Honda. Thy can change their product line in 5 minutes. Ford paid a lot attention to Honda but it cost Americans 23,000 jobs.
I used to want a hot rod, Mustang but now an old Honda Civic would be tremendous. I still have an F-150 hog because the Ridgeline isn’t my idea of a truck. Tundras are nice but years have to go by to yank my wallet.
What we could solve, we didn’t. Too little, too late. Time for revolutionary, Boston Tea Parties.
Revolution is the right thought. We could put an end to this whole thing in 2010 by doing two things:
– First, refuse to vote for a mainstream candidate for Congress or any other political office.
– Second, petition your state to pass a resolution calling for a Constitutional convention so that we, the people, can enshrine in our most sacred document clearer instructions on what we want Congress and the President to be doing.
Why tha’s just short of tatooing the constitution on the front of every politicians nose or airbrushing it on the inside leses of their glasses. Great idea but are you sure about staving of the party lines?
I think, from my study of the early republic, the Founding Fathers intended the system to work by constant dissent–not assent or compromise. I think the idea enshrined in the Constitution is to keep the government as small and dysfunctional as possible by creating and environment wherein only the most necessary laws and executive powers were granted because no one could agree on anything that was less necessary.
After the Civil War, the system was broken by the ascendancy of the federal governments over the states–in fact, most of the amendments to the Constitution created broad federal powers and were passed between 1865 and 1965 when the aftermath of said war finally faded. Now, the system is further broken by a system of a few thousand autocrats who conveniently divide themselves into two caricature ideologies and call themselves parties of dissent, all the while lining theirs and their friends’ pockets with our money.
The bailout is going to cost me as much as $10 trillion right at the time when I will be ready to live somewhat off of my investments and savings. $10 trillion is 77 percent of the current GDP in debt in just ten years.
Now, imagine what would be happening in our government if just 10 percent of our Congressmen were neither Democrats or Republicans. What if 44 representatives were Libertarians or Socialists or Constitutionalists? What if 10 senators were independents? Imagine the chaos in Washington. That chaos would force Congress, and even the president, to work harder to make bills that actually benefit the American people.
I am at the point in my own political life where what my representative actually stands for matters less to me than derailing the “politics as usual” that infests our entire political system. If we are going to take our government back, then we first have to break the back of the government and the parties. We can do so peacefully because the Constitution still grants us that power. Let’s do it while there is still time.
The main reason, your, constant dissent, theory is dead in the water, today is out of convenience, a dirty word causing deevolution. In colonial times our work was more, third worldish.
If American folks had to go back to being horse drawn. The speed, ethic would be out the door. Imagine what that’d do to FedEx and every shipping business and auto and truck industry.
If you wanted a car. You’d have to build it yourself. If you wanted to fuel it. You’d have to mine the oil and refine it, yourself.
If you wanted electricity. You’d have to build your own, dynamo.
If you wanted gas heat. You’d have to tap the natural gas itself, deliver it and burn it efficiently. Nowadays fire light and heat seem fun. Imagine them as necessity.
We thought, we had all this stuff, about technology, down pat.
What about the food business? Last I checked, another cornfield’s become a housing addition or a Wal-Mart parking lot. Don’t, we have enough homes, people can’t afford?
Americans are not willing to part with their M-TV, so to speak. They just want to sit on their duffs, watch TV and not be directly involved with their leadership and complain about it.
If you want a government to work for its people, advertise that it’s a good idea and send them their first set of change of instructions, because the average American has lost his/her, minuteman appeal. Haven’t they?