Whither America's Technological Edge?

baldass_newbie asks: "Ben Stein wrote an editorial titled, 'How to Ruin American Enterprise'. To me, technological innovation is a big outward sign of a successful economy. Sometimes it appears like the U.S. is losing its edge in technology. Well, I was wondering what the Slashdot community at large thinks is wrong (or right) with the U.S. and technological innovation?" The article deals less with technology and more with the society on which said innovation is based, and the problems that may bring it down around our collective ears. Give the article a read, and share your thoughts on whether or not you think it's an accurate assessment on the current and future situation of America's technological advantage.

Comments

Since When Did America Have a Tech Edge?

[ras_b]

Every time some new, cool tech gadget comes out here, i talk to my friend from Tokyo and he tells me he had it a year ago.

Re:Since When Did America Have a Tech Edge?

[Simon Garlick]

- Who invented the transistor?
- Who started the computer industry?
- Who invented nuclear power?
- Who put human beings on the moon and then brought them back safely 6 times

Actually, now that I think about it...

Transistor, the team at Bell Labs. Score one for the USA.
Computer industry? I'd say the team led by England's Alan Turing.
Nuclear power? I'd say the team led by Italy's Enrico Fermi, or if you look back further, New Zealand's Ernest Rutherford.
Putting humans on the moon? I'd say the team led by Germany's Werner von Braun.

OK, that's one from four. Nothing to really brag about. And my comment about "in our lifetimes" still stands.

Re:Since When Did America Have a Tech Edge?

[DunbarTheInept]

The ability to attract foreigners to do tech research within a country is a part of that country's tech edge, and should be counted. Fermi was Italian, but Italy wasn't where he did his work. Von Braun was German, but the Apollo missions weren't based in Peenemunde. Turing gets major kudos for advances in computer science, but you cridited him for computer industry, which is something else entirely.

Re:Since When Did America Have a Tech Edge?

[jaoswald]

Two of your remaining four came to America to do their most influential work. Who cares if Fermi was born in Italy? The U.S. had the organization, the funding, and the non-fascist, non-anti-semitic political scene that let him build the first fission reactor in Chicago. Heisenberg, possibly as brilliant (though with hardly the experimental acumen), working in Nazi Germany, got nowhere. Likewise for von Braun--Nazi Germany had him developing penny-ante weapons, the U.S. had him boost people to the moon. (I suppose he helped the U.S. develop ICBMs, but hey, that's technology, too.) Even Einstein died an American.

If the U.S. is still the destination of choice for the best and brightest foreign-born minds, that's going to pay off BIG in the long run. The only challenge I see is Chinese-born professionals starting to feel that China offers enough freedom to make staying there pay off more than coming to the U.S. In order to do that, China has to focus on maintaining its own internal stability, probably liberalize its political system, and will have to take a very calm approach to international relations. That helps the U.S., too, so the downside of being the second-largest national economy won't be so bad.

Re:Since When Did America Have a Tech Edge?

[squiggleslash]

With respect, this is precisely the USA's problem: It's resting on laurels with a sense of misplaced smug technical superiority that'll get the better of it.

If you don't buck up, you'll end up like Britain, spending 50 years celebrating inventing half a dozen invention innovations from steam power through (via an immigrant Italian) radio, to the (mechanical) TV, before realising that Britain isn't really ahead of the rest of the world any more. There was a moment during the 80's that it became obvious, just as we were celebrating our home grown personal computer revolution, thanks to Sinclair and Acorn, and we suddenly realised nobody was taking any notice of the stuff we were putting out, because the rest of the world had raced ahead of us. Sir Clive Sinclair made some comment once that he'd invented the pocket calculator, but the Japanese had made it successful.

There are innovations going on in the US, but there's also an over heavy emphasis on ignoring technologies built outside. That attitude is guaranteed to get the better of the USA, especially if America's dominance as a world power is diminished, as the rise of a united Europe, a restructed former-Soviet Union, and a blue-in-tooth-and-claw Capitalist China, make all too possible.

Re:Since When Did America Have a Tech Edge?

[Zeinfeld]

the automobile

The internal combustion engine is usually attributed to Benz, a German. The american inventor was a patent fraud whose claim to have invented the engine was thrown out by the US courts in the Ford case.

the sowing machine

The first functional sewing machine was invented by the French tailor, Barthelemy Thimonnier, in 1830. There were about 6 previous patents for sewing machines of which the first US one came in at number 5...

electricity

Try Faraday, Royal Society, London

the light bulb

Swan invented the light bulb first and actually filed his patent first to boot. Edison only got a patent because at the time the USPTO did not recognise foreign inventions or prior art.

bar-b-que

I don't think you can count that since the Hawaiian islanders were having BBQ before the US was founded, before Westerners had discovered it even. I don't think you can count inventions aquired by conquest.

the vaccine

"In 1796 English country doctor Edward Jenner found that if a small amount of material was taken from a cow suffering from cowpox and injected into a healthy human child, that child would become immune to smallpox. " - incidentally the term vaccine comes from the Latin for cows.

Should I continue?

Well since that leaves you with only the atom bomb, the telephone, cotton gin and the laser I don't think you should. I'll disallow the Internet and the computer since the first computer design was British, the first practical computer was german (Konrad Zues Z1 and z2), the first electronic computer was british - the programmable enigma machines but was classified research, the Internet is not an invention it is an implementation of packet switching which was invented on both sides of the pond.

Re:Since When Did America Have a Tech Edge?

[Mac Degger]

Why are you even going down that trail? Talking about Von Brauns weapon reasearch in this context is dumb, especially as the entire "space race" was begun solely with the intention of getting ICBM's! You actually think getting to the moon was the goal here?

Plus, by going that route, you invite people to come up with the fact that Braun and Einsten where heftily harrassed by the FBI...be proud of that one (especially Einstein, a pacifist if I ever saw one). And lets not forget how impossible the US is making it to immigrate. It used to be harsh, but post 911 it's draconian. So don't be too proud.

Truthfully, this whole topic is rather distastefull to me: the one thing all those poeple have in common is that they're human! Who cares where they come from...for that matter, who cares if the US is losing it's technological edge (and judging by the number of people getting a degree, it is), as long as humanity itself keeps advancing.

Well, duh.

[Skyshadow]

C'mon, this is obvious:

How long can America keep pumping out students whose test scores are in the cellar for industrial nations and expect to maintain an edge in technology? As it stands, a lot of our brains are already imported from India and China.

I live in CA, which should stand as a dire warning to the rest of the country: They limit their property taxes, their schools go underfunded, and as a result California natives largely end up working to repair the cars and wash the floors of the well-educated from elsewhere.

The US needs to get serious about education, and fast. With the tech boom and the world shinking as it is, this is a really bad time to be stupid.

Re:Well, duh.

[MagikSlinger]

The US needs to get serious about education, and fast. With the tech boom and the world shinking as it is, this is a really bad time to be stupid.

It's not just the government. American parents pay lip service to education, but don't really set either a good example nor push their children to excel. I remember in school the classes always had a mix of real poor performers to really good students. The difference was not the teachers, but their home-life and parents. Parents get the kind of education system they want. If they don't care, don't expect the government to care either.

[Insert your favorite bash to blame for this here]

Re:Well, duh.

[Ryu2]

I do agree that education is the root cause, but test scores, etc. are only one part of the story. I'm an American, but I've spent a lot of time in many Asian countries, and have worked with many people over there. The educational system there emphasizes discipline, conformity, rote practice and drilling and unity, in accordance with societal values that traditionally pervase Asian societies.

This may sound good on paper, but there's a sad human side to it as well, in the form of students spending days and nights outside of class in outside of school courses, known as juku in Japan or hagwon in Korea, in a furious rat-race attempt to succeed. All emphasis is placed on getting into the top schools, to preserve the all-so-important face prevalent in Asian society. It's no coincidence that the suicide rate amongst teenagers in Asia is much higher than the general population over there.

Corporal punishment is practiced in classrooms. The curriculum is homogenous across all schools and teaching method is rote memorization and practice, practice, and more practice, which does not encourage the development of free thinking, and all this talked about "innovation" is generally spawned at the industrial rather than the academic level.

While Asia is indeed impressive, all this comes at a price, and blindly following their methods is. IMHO, not the way for the US to go.

Re:Well, duh.

[Skyshadow]

Your solution is to raise property taxes in an area where real estate is already prohibitively expensive? Discouraging people from buying isn't a good idea...

Bullshit.

What you're actually seeing is yet another example of my parents' generation (the boomers) once again thoughtlessly gorging themselves at the expense of their children.

They run up huge debt rather than pay higher taxes. They extend the pyramid scheme that is social security so they can benefit at their children's expense. And they underfund the educational system so they can live in a slightly larger house than they otherwise would.

The CA system only really benefits people who already own homes, not new home buyers. So, it's just another example of our parents living at our expense.

Re:Well, duh.

[FatRatBastard]

I live in CA, which should stand as a dire warning to the rest of the country: They limit their property taxes, their schools go underfunded...

Bullshit. There's a lot wrong with California public education, but underfunding isn't one of them. California public schools spent $9,267.00 per student for the education of its kindergarten through high school. That's a LOT of money per kid (you can send your kid to a top flight private school for about half), and most of it is pissed away by the bureaucracy. You don't cure a shopaholic by giving them more money, and you don't solve the education funding "problem" by giving them more money either.

Re:Well, duh.

[leviramsey]

Those societal things are often why the various Asian nations tend not to make advances in science, medicine, and technology, though they may be the ones who best capitalize on it. Innovation, by definition, requires challenging the old order, the hierarchy. Confucian-type values make it very difficult to take this first step.

How many major, reasonably innovative (ie not a clone of Outlook) pieces of computer software (to take an example) are currently or were designed by an Asian (not an Asian American)? I can't think of one off the top of my head. Now how many are being coded by Asians (using design directives from non-Asians)?

This may sound horribly racist, but that is not the intent. If anything, it's pointing out a tension that exists between Confucianism and innovation. The fact that many persons "of Asian extraction" but who grew up in the West are great innovators indicates that it is not an issue of brain capacity; it is an issue of culturally-influenced psychology.

Re:Well, duh.

[FatRatBastard]

Taken from the 2002-03 Governor's Budget Summary (first paragraph):

Ensuring that the 6.1 million pupils enrolled in California's public schools receive a high quality education and are provided the tools to meet California's world-class standards, education remains this Administration's highest priority. Despite the fiscal challenge facing California, the 2002-03 Budget fully funds statutory growth and cost-of-living adjustments for K-12 programs. As indicated in Figure K12-1, approximately $53.9 billion will be devoted to California's 988 school districts and 58 county offices of education, resulting in estimated total per-pupil expenditures from all sources of $9,145 in fiscal year 2001-02 and $9,236 in fiscal year 2002-03.

Ooops.. off by about $130, but still a hell of a lot higher than the number you quoted.

Re:Well, duh.

[sbeitzel]

You're missing the best part about the California system. Now, it's true that what Proposition 13 did was make it so that the state can't reappraise the property until it is sold or improved (I'm fuzzy on this, but essentially it means that if you build a new room onto the back of your house, they can reappraise, but if you just knock out a wall in between kitchen and dining room, they can't), so this means that long-term property holders get the tax burden shifted away from them and onto new owners.

The brilliant part is that although this was sold to the electorate as protecting granny in her old house, the "people" it really protects are the business landlords. Most companies don't own their buildings, they lease them long term. So when a business relocates, the owner of the space hasn't changed and the property doesn't get reappraised. Does this rock or what?

This means that the business that's giving people two communities over jobs ('cause the people can't afford to live across the street from the office) isn't paying property taxes (via increased rent to the landlord) to the community whose infrastructure (roads, electrical & phone grid, sewers, water, etc.) it's impacting. Or at least, the taxes it is paying are adjusted to property values as of 30 years ago and not current values.

Some places responded to this with payroll taxes, but that's an even thornier issue than property taxes. What should happen is that the people who benefit from the infrastructure should pay to support it. But what is happening is that the people who pay for the infrastructure are mostly people who haven't yet had the opportunity to derive maximal benefit from it, while the long-term benefits are going to people who haven't been paying their fair share.

What?? Read the article first!?

[MagikSlinger]

Give the article a read, and share your thoughts

But that violates the /. tradition of posting your thoughts and never reading the article! Heck, some members don't even think about what they're posting.

School

[seanadams.com]

7) Encourage a mass culture that spits on intelligence and study and instead elevates drug use, coolness through sex and violence, and contempt for school.

This IMHO is the big one. I went to school in England until about age 12, and then came back to a private school in California. Overnight, I went from doing trig, chemistry, latin, greek, french, to gluing fucking popsicle sticks together. I kid you not, our schools are WAY behind the rest of the world.

If you're an American parent, PLEASE either ship your kids over to Europe, or home school them yourself. American society is way too fucked up to allow for anyone to get a decent education. You would not believe the social pressure - I remember it well, and I had to fight it tooth and nail in order to succeed.

Re:School

[IamTheRealMike]

trig, chemistry, latin, greek, french, to gluing fucking popsicle sticks together,

Wow. You must have gone to an old-skool school :) I'm proud to state that the school I went to is in the top 5% of all comprehensives - it's mixed, non selective and state run. We never did latin or greek, that's rather highbrow. We only learnt French because, well, we're right next door to them. Trig at age 12? Man, we didn't do that until we were 15 or 16 (gcses). I dunno how Brit schooling compares to American, but you're experience seems to have been a lot better than normal.

Oh, and for any Yanks wondering - such articles are regularly published in UK media too, and all the parents stress about lack of quality schooling and how India will kick our ass etc. I think it's a western thing, rather than American.

Re:School

[Knara]

When I was having thanksgiving dinner with my extended family, the wife of one of my cousins was complaining about her kid's schooling. In the same breath she complained about how the schooling was inadequate, and how they give the kids too much homework.

How could this be, I wondered. I added that from my experience (and the experience related by my friends who did not go to a private school like I did), kids needed *more* homework, not less.

Her reply? "Just wait until you have kids, and have to spend your time helping them with their homework."

And there, my friends, is why our educational system is in the crapper.

Re:School

[Anonymous Coward]

I work with schools all the time, and I can tell you the problem with education in the United States is not teachers. It's not even the politicians. It's the general population which seems to be schizophrenic about public education. There are referendums on school vouchers popping up all over the place. That means people are bailing out on public ed. We have to decide whether we want public schools or not and act accordingly.

As far as marketeers, lawyers, etc., those are the people who have always been successful in the United States. You can't claim that the captains of industry have been brilliant engineers or innovators. More often it seems they're simply people who are ruthless, unscrupulous, lucky, or some combination thereof.

I'm also a little tired of people bashing the education system without offering any constructive criticism. It's quite easy to scream about how bad the system is and stand silent when asked for potential solutions. In the States, we educate a more diverse and larger population than most people who claim to have better systems. There are individual states in the Union larger than entire EU nations. In fact, there are two or three districts in West Texas that are larger than sovereign European states. So don't tell me we're always comparing apples to apples.

In short, I think there's a lot of panic about a situation that would better be solved by reason and open discussion. Let's pay our teachers better, put administrative power over schools back at the local level, trim the bureaucratic fat at the state and federal levels, and demand more from our kids.

Forgive me...I've had way, way too much coffee.

Re:School

[KludgeGrrl]

True, I don't think anyone can seriously believe that the public school system in the States is not in deep trouble. We've all heard about the %11 of US students who cannot find *the US* on a map... But this neo-conservative plan for the future would hardly solve the problem.

Apropos of education Stein writes:

"Allow schools to fall into useless decay. Do not teach civics or history except to describe America as a hopelessly fascistic, reactionary pit. Do not expect students to know the basics of mathematics, chemistry and physics. Working closely with the teachers' unions, make sure that you dumb down standards so that children who make the most minimal effort still get by with flying colors. Destroy the knowledge base on which all of mankind's scientific progress has been built by guaranteeing that such learning is confined to only a few, and spread ignorance and complacency among the many."

But later (#10 for all you following at home) he argues against what he perceives to be unfair and heavy taxation. So the US is supposed to improve schools without raising money to do so? At its most simple level, there are two basid problems.

1) Teachers get paid shit in the US. In NYC the average salery for public school teachers is just under $32,000/year (before taxes), which makes it impossible to feed and house oneself in the city (unless there are some other funds coming in, trust fund, spouse, etc). Likewise, a university professor (tenure track) at San Fransico State makes abut $40,000/yr -- in San Francisco! A janitor in a Columbus Ohio high school, on the other hand, makes about $50,000/yr. What does this tell you about the value in which teachers are held?

There are some great dedicated teachers out there, but I have taught more than one, kind well-meaning, and utterly incompetent student who planned to teach high school (and went on to do so). Yes many teachers suck (although I think almost all must be pretty selfless to put up with a very hard job). Look at what we pay them.

Yet Stein is also against those evil teacher unions. I hate to break the news, but most teacher unions are not fighting to lower standards, they are fighting for decent working conditions. Sometimes this involves lowering the bar because standards cannot be held in the conditions in which they work. Bringing us to pt. 2...

2) Given the lack of financial support for education in the US, many schools are falling apart and grossly overcrowded (10% are trying to function at %125 capacity) necesitating teaching in gyms, halls, etc... and creating enormous classes that are impossible for the most dedicated teacher to manage.

So even if we had better teachers, they would have an impossible job to do. So we end up with a nation of illiterates (44 million I think), who don't know anything about the world around them, not to even mention technology or science.

It is all very well to say "Hey we should do a better job teaching our kids," of course we should! But to do that we must spend money. Not that throwing money at the problem will make it go away, but it's a fundamental ingredient for meaningful change -- an ingrediant that the rest of Stein's articles run in the face of.

(sorry for the dangling participle)

Yes, I differ with Stein in a number of ways, we are clearly on different ends of the political spectrum, but I leave it to others to address his other "points to change" in an intelligent fashion. I'm ranted out for the moment ;)

Re:School

[Gropo]

I absolutely concur! I was raised in British and American international schools in Europe until the 4th grade, at which point we moved back to the 'States and I attended Public schools. They began to teach us French in 1st frickin' grade!

I recall my 3rd grade class play was a highly professional production with singing solos etc - I move back to the states and I'm the frickin' '3rd upper Molar on the right side' in some banal play about hygeine.

This country's public school system (shy the new 'charter' system) strikes me as Cro-Magnon survival skills in comparison...

Re:School

[jazman_777]

Her reply? "Just wait until you have kids, and have to spend your time helping them with their homework."

Tell you what, just wait until you have kids, and not only do they spend all day in school, you have to help them do their homework all evening so they can learn what they should have in eight hours at school. It's just easier to homeschool 'em.

Re:School

[Arandir]

I move back to the states and I'm the frickin' '3rd upper Molar on the right side' in some banal play about hygeine.

Which is why everyone is arguing that US schools need more funding. Do you know how much it costs to build a molar!

Re:School

[Fastball]

I agree up until the sixth grade.

I passionately hate math (ducking flames now). Any time I see an equation with coefficients and variables, I want to puke. I don't care about trains A and B: they'll get there when they get there. I might have understood Calculus better had my teachers spoken Old English instead. But I was and continue to be highly fluent in algebra, because my mother drilled me until I cried buckets.

I learned my multiplication tables in the second grade thanks to my mother's patience with a very loud, uncooperative brat, me. Our class would have a competition where a kid would stand up and go up and down the rows of desks and be challenged by each student. My teacher would hold up a card with a multiplication, e.g. 4x4, and the student who answered correctly first would continue down the row. My mother sat me down the night before and went over every multiplication from zero to twelve until I had it.

I mean burned in folks. The next day when the teacher held up the cards, I didn't see the multiplication, I saw the answer. 4x4 wasn't 4x4. It was 16. I was so quick that next day, I went around the classroom five times before my teacher asked me to sit down and give others a chance. I think he let me go on so long, because he couldn't believe it. I'll never forget that day. It was one of my proudest, most fulfilling days of my life. Mathematics of all things.

I graduated college with a B.A. in English. I write poetry chapbooks. Literature rocks my world. But I'm the guy that always adds up the scorecard correctly, tallies the stats, and runs the numbers for others.

Ironically, I was a terrible reader until the fifth grade. I never could put events in sequence correctly (remember?). But my fifth grade teacher, the best I ever had, never let up on me. He worked me, gave me a ton of things to read until I improved. I love to read so much now, I'm in dire need of bookshelves.

The point is, you have to drill kids when they're young. Parents and teachers alike. IMHO, you have until the sixth grade to educate a kid on the fundamentals: reading, writing, and arithmetic. After that, school is a social call. No high schooler cares more about metaphors or differentials than he does about his social standing. To this day, I don't remember what I studied let alone learned in the seventh and eighth grades, because I was too busy considering tits and cars.

We in the U.S. need two basic changes to our education system:

First, drill the absolute shit out of kids from first to sixth grades. Algebra, reading comprehension, and writing composition should be outstanding by the end of the sixth grade. If you think about adulthood, if you can add, subtract, multiply, divide, read, and write well, then you can take care of yourself. It all comes back to these fundamentals.

Second and just as important, completely reform high school and college curriculums to prepare people for jobs. I firmly believe that if you take two eighteen year old men and run one through a college curriculum and start the other in an apprenticeship or company, the kid outside of the college halls is going to be light years ahead of the collegian after his four years are gone. Colleges as institutions are more enterprising then educational, period. College curriculums are the combo value meals of understanding. I knew intimately that I could not hack it as an engineer or scientist due to my lack of interest/understanding of calculus. But I had to waste away for two semesters of calculus regardless. Same story with requirements completely irrelevant to my interests and strengths. Strip away these requirements and structure a series of classes that revolve around my interests and strengths, and I should have departed college no more than two years after starting.

I'll end with this important point. I'm afraid of the American job market and its limitations not on the sheer number of jobs but on what we Americans have to take up to earn a decent living. I am lucky enough to make some money writing in addition to my regular gig as a web programmer, but I would love to make a living in a skilled labor trade. Electrician, carpenter, etc. The way I see things--and my parents steered me this way for better or worse--you're gonna have to be a lawyer, manager, or doctor to get by in the years to come. Maybe I'm wrong. We manufacture almost nothing in the U.S. any more. Look around your apartment or house. MADE IN CHINA.

Our system of education is supposedly geared to turn out knowledgeable workers, but there's only so many of those jobs to go around, right? Not everybody can be a manager. I long for the day when the phrase reads, "The world needs CEOs too."

Re:School

[Mac Degger]

Don't underestimate the power of memorisation. While of course you need to be able to operate on the facts to do things, you do operate on facts. Knowing them instead of having to look them up is quite a timesaver, leading to increased efficiency. Not only that, but knowing a lot also leads to being able to put seemingly unrelated bits of data together, which is one basis for invention.

A good mix of thinking and knowing is crucial to get a good education.

Well, he seems largely correct...

[perry]

Ben Stein's comments seem to be reasonably accurate, if you read them. We do indeed live in a country with a crippled education system, general contempt for intellectual activity among the bulk of the population, etc. I don't agree with absolutely everything he said, but overall, it is hard to argue.

All the foul language and no-nothing replies I've seen here in response to his article are evidence for his contentions, by the way.

Re:Well, he seems largely correct...

[Spazholio]

All the foul language and no-nothing replies I've seen here in response to his article are evidence for his contentions, by the way.

And the delicious irony of it all is that the phrase is "know-nothing". Yes, I'm pedantic. =)

6a.

[RalphTWaP]

Blockquoth the poster evermore:

6) While you're at it, discourage respect for law in every possible way. This will dissolve the glue that holds the nation together, and dissuade any long-term thinking. Societies in which the law can be clearly seen to apply to some and not to others are doomed to decay, in terms of innovation and everything else.

And now for an addendum

6a. Specifically construct laws so riddled with inaccuracy of purpose, incomprehensibility of intent, impossibility of execution, immorality of effect, and plain lack of common sense, that everyone is criminalized equally, and proven innocent $ub$antially due to their per$onal $olvency. Particularly good results may be achieved if the laws in question are ignored as technicalities by the traditionally moral masses.

inspiration for this post, and the poster believes the original article, was gained largely through understanding the logical basis of the works of Ayn Rand, all credit as it is due

Religion

[1stflight]

Ever notice how much our technological edge gets dulled by the fear and power of the religous right? No cloning, stem cell research, animal organ transplant research, all because, "it goes against God's will." To which I say if God had wanted us to be illiterate, cave dwelling, dying at 30 idiots, then we'd all still have fur, and the skyscrapper would be a foriegn as the airplane. Religion has dulled America's edge and will continue to do so, so long as we fail to stop using it for a crutch.

Re:Religion

[rabidcow]

You identify the problem as "the religious right" and then claim that it is "religion." These are not the same thing.

This is like saying that there's an increase of violece due to insane video game players who are out of touch with reality, so video games are obviously to blame.

Religion ... a crutch.

I counter your insightful argument with "athiests are a bunch of poop-throwing monkeys."

w00t! 10 points!

Can I moderate Mr. Stein -1 Flamebait?

[Doktor Memory]

9) Develop a suicidal immigration policy that keeps out educated, hardworking men and women from friendly nations and, instead, takes in vast numbers of angry, uneducated immigrants from nations that hate us.

Uh huh.

Whatever you might happen to think about our current immigration policy (I don't like it much myself), there's no getting around the fact that this is hyperbolic bullshit. The vast majority of illegal aliens in the US are migrant workers from Mexico. (Following Mexico are El Salvador, Guatamala and Canada. You have to go all the way down to #17 before you find a country with any substantial terrorist activity: our "ally" Pakistan.) Say what you will about Mexico, but it is not exactly a hotbed of anti-American radicalism.

The rest of this article is exactly the sort of mixture of over-stressed common sense and batshit insanity that I would expect from a former Nixon toady.

Re:Can I moderate Mr. Stein -1 Flamebait?

[Doktor Memory]

The books, written in Spanish and including all academic subjects, teach that America "stole" the southwest from Mexico

I suppose it would be unsporting to point out that this is, technically, true?

Anyway, call me weird, but I'm just not that worried about the Mexican army storming into San Antonio, hell-bent on reclaiming Aztlan any time soon.

Re:Can I moderate Mr. Stein -1 Flamebait?

[StevenMaurer]

When I was dating my wife (who is Mexican), we were on a particularly beautiful vista overlooking the Bay Area in lights, and she mentioned this.

Her: All this used to be ours

Me: So you really want California run by the PRI?

Her: Eeerg.

Believe me when I say that Mexicans don't really covet the U.S. Hell, they'd be glad if they could just have a honest to goodness government running Mexico.

CA schools have money, they just waste it...

[aquarian]

The real problem with CA schools is bureaucratic inertia and waste. LA, for example, has approximately one administrator for each teacher on its payroll. And guess whose salary is higher?

Re:Well, let's see

[DAldredge]

Except for maybe AMD and Apple all the companies you listed are moving as much work as they can in Support/Design/Dev to India/China/Russia because the only have to pay $500 USD per month per worker.

A few more statistics...

[Doktor Memory]

Oh wait, you think he was talking about legal immigration? He wasn't, but the arguement isn't any better then: according to the most recent statistics provided by the INS, the top five sources of naturalized citizens are:

1. Mexico
2. Germany
3. Phillipines
4. Italy
5. Canada

Not exactly Al Qaeda's hordes there.

Sorry. You don't deserve karma.

[glrotate]

"Big business doesn't like innovation. They like the semblance (sp?) of innovation to encourage you to buy "new" things, but completely and truly new things cost money, take away from the bottom line, and transition periods are where big companies tend to get replaced."

IBM spent 5 billion dollars last year on R&D. Microsoft just announced a boost to 5.2 billion dollars for next year.

A company like Ford would do anything they could to develop a substantial innovation over GM and DB.

Big business is always looking for an edge just
like the next guy.

This has nothing to do with big business, it is about the leisure class gone amuck.

What America Exceeds At

[unfortunateson]

Unfortunately for Neal Stephenson's forecasting record, it may no longer be fast pizza delivery (Domino's got sued (see Stein comment #3)), or software (lots of the kewl open source stuff is, indeed overseas -- can you say linux? [I can't pronounce it right no matter how many times I try -- leenooks?]), but it's still entertainment.

1) Fun: We still produce more films than anyone but India, and not many people outside of the subcontinent watch those anyway. A substantial amount of the television shows (Emeril!) music, video games, theme parks, etc. still come from the good ol' US of A.

2) Pharmaceuticals -- now careful, I'm not lumping these with Entertainment. Prescription drugs are mostly innovated here.

3) Microprocessors -- sure they're manufactured where the labor is cheap, but Intel, Moto, IBM... they're developing the stuff here.

4) Industrial Design -- The shiny new cars that are manufactured by foreign companies use US design teams. Why do you think Daimler bought Chrysler?

What do you expect from a Nixon Speechwriter?

[cbuskirk]

Most of that article is rightwing propganda with a little on tech to gloss it over. Here is a list of ways we can do to help....

1. The duh answer of them all of course is increased school funding. I relize however, if everyone got a decent education, we would have very few people willing to join the military and those who did would join one loaded with officers, and no cannon fodder, I mean elisted men.

2. Not everyone needs to get a four year degree. There needs to be many more professional opportunities for people with 2 year degrees. It would increase tax revenue to have a better paid population, and reduce the burden on four year universities who can better use the money on people who need to spend the time in college.

3. Companies that spend a sigifigant portion (~75%) of thier R&D money in Univeristy based Labs would recive an huge tax break.

4. Medical Advancement: Place a 20 blackout on the production of generics and in return drug companies must reduce prices by 75%. New drug prices are high in this country because a company must recoup the billions it spent on R&D in the first 3 years to make any sort of profit, because after 5 it can be made by anyone dirt cheap.

This give companies much more capital and incentive to innovate instead of copy what the other guy did and sell it cheaper.

5. Government Funded Hard Science: If we rely only on corperations to fund research, then we are going to be limmited to innovations that will make a profit, and we will be worthless as a civilization.

Re:What do you expect from a Nixon Speechwriter?

[RealAlaskan]

1. The duh answer of them all of course is increased school funding. I relize however, if everyone got a decent education, we would have very few people willing to join the military and those who did would join one loaded with officers, and no cannon fodder, I mean elisted men.

There is a strong correlation between increasing expenditures and decreasing results, if you look at a time series for any random school district. There is no correlation between expenditures and results, if you look at panel data. As H.L. Menken (sp?) said, ``For every problem, there is an answer which is simple, attractive, and wrong.'' I think you've found it for this problem.

The answer here is for parents to demand more of their children, and more of their children's teachers. Given that most public schools are bureaucracies, they'll have to home school.

2. Not everyone needs to get a four year degree. There needs to be many more professional opportunities for people with 2 year degrees. It would increase tax revenue to have a better paid population, and reduce the burden on four year universities who can better use the money on people who need to spend the time in college.

You came so close on this one! Universities shouldn't be training construction managers (Purdue has a four-year program in that!). We need to encourage non-university, non-bachelors-degree education for crafts and trades.

The current system cheats everyone. The crafts and trades people, and the engineers, have to suffer through a lot of distribution requirements which preserve the illusion that they are getting a university education. This means that the classes must be dumbed down to be accessible to the unscholarly and uninterested (notice I didn't say stupid). The result is that the engineers don't get the in-depth techincal education they need, and the scholars don't get the education they need either.

3. Companies that spend a sigifigant portion (~75%) of thier R&D money in Univeristy based Labs would recive an huge tax break. 4. Medical Advancement: Place a 20 blackout on the production of generics and in return drug companies must reduce prices by 75%. New drug prices are high in this country because a company must recoup the billions it spent on R&D in the first 3 years to make any sort of profit, because after 5 it can be made by anyone dirt cheap. This give companies much more capital and incentive to innovate instead of copy what the other guy did and sell it cheaper. 5. Government Funded Hard Science: If we rely only on corperations to fund research, then we are going to be limmited to innovations that will make a profit, and we will be worthless as a civilization.

Are (3) and (5) contradictory? Probably not. On the other hand, given the amount of damage that corporate funding seems to be doing to academic research, your (3) might be counter productive. Finally, (4) is just a re-jiggering of the patent laws, and while it might be a good start, it isn't nearly far-reaching enough.

Furthermore, the US has been subsidising drug development and low drug prices in Canada and Europe by allowing high drug prices here to drive innovation. As long as we're chasing pie in the sky, let's force those socialist free riders to start paying their fair share!

Pointing at a problem is not offering a solution

[webster]

We see this all the time. People see terrible things going on and think that all they have to do is point at it while loudly raising alarm, and they have contributed to the solution. Well, it ain't true. Yeah, the education system sucks, but it isn't because those running it want it to suck. TV is a vast wasteland, and always has been, but what, if anything, can be done to improve it? Even offering a solution is dangerous enough, but fixing a social problem without a plan will certainly lead to disaster.

Utopians consistently excel in discovering faults, but those who actually try to fix them usually end up with a situation far worse than the one they were so alarmed about.

Re:Ben , ben ... who cares

[jgalun]

Poor Ben Stein.

Born and raised in privelage then appointed to work for Nixon as an economic advisor. Soon thereafter we had the worst economy since the depression.

I don't know if it's fair to blame the Nixon recession on conservative economics. LBJ had left Nixon with massive military spending on a war in Vietnam and new Great Society spending. And then the Arab nations began their oil boycott.

All three of these factors led to massive inflation (massive spending on the military; massive spending on domestic programs; more young people in Vietnam and fewer young people in the work force; and a rising price of oil, a key price factor in many products). In response, Nixon instituted price ceilings. NOTE: Price ceilings are not a conservative, free-market response to inflation. It is a response generally associated with the left-wing, in fact.

More specifically, blaming Ben Stein for the Nixon recession is foolish - Ben Stein was a speechwriter in the Nixon Administration, not an economic policy advisor.

Re:This is rich

[Washizu]

"the man who said mmorpg's should be illegal because his son was 'addicted' to them"

I never heard about this so I looked up some info on it:

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/news/sdetail1150 .h tml?story=1150&start=175

http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/showtell/stor y/ 0,24330,3406487,00.html

http://www.etonline.com/television/a12770.htm

He claims his son was worse off because of playing Everquest, but I couldn't find a single statement saying he thought online games should be illegal. Does anyone know if he really said this?

Re:Join fingers...let's code for America

[jkujawa]

What if he wants to be an artist? Why shouldn't he be a doctor?
Your son is not your property.

Things wrong with US Schools

[Codex The Sloth]

* Handing out laptops to everyone is not the answer -- most of those countries that beat US schools don't have access to current books, let alone laptops.

* The internet will not teach your children -- while it's true there is a fountain of knowledge at your fingertips, there's a ocean full of crap to sift though.

* Stop focussing so much money on organized sports when your school is graduating illiterates.

* Kids using Powerpoint is not the answer. Unless the question is -- How do we raise a nation of Marketing drones!

We still lead in one crucial area

[ruriruri]

We may have lost the technology race, but America still has the junk-food edge! From high-fat/low-nutrient chocolate bars to high-carbohydrate corn-syrup carbonated beverages, America clearly leads the world in the production and consumption of unbelievably shitty pseudo-foods! We must not allow the Soviets to close the junk-food gap.

Unfortunately, one area in which there appears to be no gap is the right-wing rhetoric arms race.

The rest of the way there

[st. augustine]

We're well on our way to hell in a handbasket. What would it take to get us the rest of the way there?

1. Blame all problems with the educational system on greedy teachers' unions. Do not provide sufficient funding for building upkeep and course materials, let alone enough to attract a wider range of more highly qualified teachers. Count on philanthropic parents in rich neighborhoods to chip in to keep their kids' schools going, and let schools in poor neighborhoods go to hell.
2. Allow large corporations to buy unlimited influence in government. Have any legislation that affects a particular industry be written by the lobbyists for that industry's entrenched players. Assume that anyone currently making a profit has a God-given right to their business model, and structure the intellectual property laws appropriately. Claim marketing expenses as R&D.
3. Support a company's right to falsify evidence in favor of their products and suppress evidence against them. If the evidence that a company's products or processes do more harm than good has finally become too overwhelming for them to cover up, shoehorn loopholes into unrelated laws to protect them.
4. Treat CEOs as celebrities, even when all they've done is preside over tanking companies and collect golden parachutes. Confuse blind luck with well-deserved rewards and ruthlessness with business sense. Pretend that we live in a society with equal opportunity, and salute those whose successes have been handed to them on a silver platter as though they'd earned them.
5. Encourage companies to avoid taxes by creating shell offices in Bahamanian PO boxes. Reward them with open-ended government contracts with no cost auditing.
6. Do your best to keep 50% of your productive population out of the workplace. Continue to pretend that a single-income family is viable in today's economy. Provide no support for working parents. Discourage women from intellectual, innovative, or creative pursuits.
7. Discourage cultural and social diversity as much as possible. When immigrants absolutely can't be kept out, do whatever you can to make them, and their citizen children, feel unwelcome and unvalued. (Consider bringing back the educational and religious policies of forced assimilation that worked so well with Native Americans.) Presume in the face of all historical evidence that the children of uneducated immigrants will be unable to contribute to society. Assume that America has nothing to learn from the rest of the world, and do your best to make sure it doesn't.
8. Enact a tax system that encourages the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. Shift as much of the tax burden as possible onto the middle class. Make sure that the wealthy have plenty of ways to exclude their income from taxation, and that the less wealthy have as little access to capital as possible. Encourage them to go into debt, and allow consumer lending companies to set themselves up for a fall approaching the one the Japanese banking system's going through.
9. Take as a given that nothing that works (or doesn't work) in the rest of the world could possibly have applicability to America, unless of course it agrees with your preconceived notion of the direction America should be going. If anyone tries to suggest that something the Europeans or Japanese are doing might be a good idea, accuse them of being socialist or communist. Where possible, try to confuse France with the USSR.
10. Pretend that a health care system that leaves tens of millions of citizens uninsured is "socialized". (Use "socialized" as a dirty word to describe any system that might actually cover all Americans.) Skew what medical care there is toward prolonging the agonies of the terminally ill. Discourage preventative medicine and expect all medical problems to be solved with pharmaceutical "silver bullets".

My list need not end here but I got tired of typing. And anyway, I even agree with one or two of Mr. Stein's points. But just as Mr. Stein did I realized that my list was already the program of many of our elected officials. (Hmm.)

And yet 11% of US citizens 18-24...

[gatesh8r]

Can't even point out where the US is on a world map.

The educational system needs stronger standards. It also has to let students fail and repeat. I went through school (in a "smart" state, Wisconsin) unchallenged and graduated with minimal effort because it was too easy. The sad part is I graduated a 3.0 cummulative GPA, and I was a slacker!

This shit shouldn't happen. I know of some people in my class that should of never passed.

It's education stupid

[LoRider]

One of the reasons my fare country, the United States of America, sucks is because of education. Our education system is eroding more and more every year.

Why?

That's actually quite obvious. There are people, probably all neo-cons, that want privatization of our schools. They are vehemently against anything resembling socialism and will fight to the death to privatize everything.

Capitalism can only succeed if we have a mix between private corporations and some socialist programs. Schools should be available to everyone without the contamination of corporations, libraries should available to all, health care to everyone.

So the plan is let the public school system crumble to the ground, show the success of school vouchers for private schools, make public schools private. It's so freaking obvious it's not even worth debating. The Republicans want everything to be driven by capitalism and will stop at nothing to achieve it. The Democrats are too scared to do anything about it for fear of not getting re-elected. The average American doesn't have the time to worry about it because they are working 50-60 hours a week with 1 week vacation and trying to figure out how to afford sending their kids to college.

I hate to say it but we are fucked. We are going to be fucked for quite some time, until the average dumbass figures out he's working harder than his dad did and making less money and paying more taxes while corporations don't pay shit in taxes. It's only a matter of time before the shit hits the fan but I am afraid it will be a few years before the dumbasses realize the situation and a few more years to get it fixed.

Re:Hear, hear!

[.sig]

This is kinda scary, but I actually find myself agreeing with an AC. I must be one of the few people in the US who went to a good school before getting to college.
I didn't have to go Europe to take french, trig, beginning C programming, and some elementary biology and chemistry before getting to high school. (i.e., around 12-13 years old) I've tried to maintain this throughout high school, and even though I got a little lazy in college, I still pushed pretty hard. And what for? I can honestly say I know at least a little about just about everything, but what good does it do? I probably would have been much happier goofing off and enjoying life, especially since I would still probably be just as qualified for my current monkey-coding job.....

My Take

[DaytonCIM]

Allow schools to fall into useless decay.

Let's first address the physical decay facing our nation's schools. The current conditions facing most students and teachers are appalling. We spend more money decorating the White House for annual holidays than most school districts budget for building maintenance.

Do not expect students to know the basics of mathematics, chemistry and physics. Working closely with the teachers' unions, make sure that you dumb down standards so that children who make the most minimal effort still get by with flying colors.

Standardized testing and federal guidelines must challenge our nation's students. In the last 15 years, federal regulations and state authorities have enacted a wave of PC rules that force schools to combine students of varying learning abilities into one large class. In that class, is expected that a student with a reading ability of an 8th grader to complete the same work as a student with a reading ability of a 12th grader.

What happened to Remedial and Honors classes?

Encourage the making of laws and rules by trial lawyers and sympathetic judges, especially through class actions. Bypass the legislative mechanisms that involve elected representatives and a president. This will stop--or at least greatly slow down--innovation, as corporations and individuals hesitate to explore new ideas for fear of getting punished (or regulated to death) by litigation for any misstep, no matter how slight, in the creation of new products and services. Make sure that lawsuits against drugmakers are especially encouraged so that the companies are afraid to develop new lifesaving drugs, lest they be sued for sums that will bankrupt them. Make trial lawyers and judges, not scientists, responsible for the flow of new products and services.

There is no question that this country needs to address Tort reform. In addition, we as a nation need to recognize that regulation is not what the founding fathers had in mind when writing the Constitution. I don't need the FCC protecting my children or me from televised orgies; I am most capable of regulating my children and myself. I don't need lawmakers asking what is popular with the country. I need lawmakers that are not afraid to do what is right, even if it is not what is popular.

Create a culture that blames the other guy for everything and discourages any form of individual self-restraint or self-control. Promote litigation to punish tobacco companies on the theory that they compel innocent people to smoke. Make it second nature for someone who is overweight to blame the restaurant that served him fries.

We must encourage and teach our children to take responsibility for their actions. Simple as that. If you drink and drive it is not the responsibility of the bartender, it is your responsibility.

Sneer at hard work and thrift. Encourage the belief that all true wealth comes from skillful manipulation and cunning, or from sudden, brilliant and lucky strokes that leave the plodding, ordinary worker and saver in the dust. Make sure that society's idols are men and women who got rich from being sexy in public or through gambling or playing tricks, not from hard work or patience. Make the citizenry permanently envious and bewildered about where real success comes from.

Continue making music videos that display a non-reality. For example, Jay-Z does not make 10 figures a year and selling 10 millions albums does not make you rich: ask TLC. In addition, be honest and open about the .com millionaires and the damage wrought by that economic boom.

Hold the managers of corporations to extremely lax standards of conduct and allow them to get off with a slap on the wrist when they betray the trust of shareholders. This will discourage thrift and investment and ensure that Americans will have far less capital to work with than other societies, while simultaneously developing that contempt for law and social standards that is the hallmark of failing nations. Hold the management of labor unions to no ethical standards.

Halliburton. WorldCom. Enron. United Airlines. But why are we upset? Why are we surprised? This is not the first time that CEOs have raped us. Oil companies did it in the 70s. Savings and Loans did it in 80s.

While you're at it, discourage respect for law in every possible way. This will dissolve the glue that holds the nation together, and dissuade any long-term thinking. Societies in which the law can be clearly seen to apply to some and not to others are doomed to decay, in terms of innovation and everything else.

I don't imagine that a 31 year-old black woman who shoplifts $5100 in merchandise from Macys would receive probation and community service. I don't imagine that anyone but a star baseball player would be charged and convicted of DUI, possession, and assault 4 different times before seeing the inside of a jail cell. I don't imagine that anyone but a star basketball player could physical assault their coach/boss, and then be offered a 7 figure yearly income with another team/job.

Encourage a mass culture that spits on intelligence and study and instead elevates drug use, coolness through sex and violence, and contempt for school. As children learn to be stupid instead of smart, the national intelligence base needed for innovation will simply vanish into MTV-land.

It is sad when video games outsell books. It is deplorable that most teenage boys can spew more slang for a woman's genital region, than he can name past Presidents.

Mock and belittle the family. Provide financial incentives to people willing to live an isolated existence, vulnerable and frightened. This guarantees that men and women of sufficient character to bring about innovation will be psychologically stifled from an early age.

Why do my wife and I pay a higher percentage of our income in taxes than single people?

Enact a tax system that encourages class antagonism and punishes saving, while rewarding indebtedness, frivolity and consumption. Tax the fruits of labor many times:

First tax it as income.
Then tax it as real or personal property.
Then tax it as capital gains.
Then tax it again, at a staggeringly high level, at death.

This way, Americans are taught that only fools save, and that it is entirely proper for us to have the lowest savings rate in the developed world. This will deprive us of much-needed capital for new investment, for innovation and our own personal aspirations. It will compel us to ask foreigners for ever more capital and allow them to own more of America. It will also promote an attitude of carelessness about the future and, once again, encourage disrespect for law.

There isn't anything I can add here. Ben Stein is dead on. As a young couple and making over $100K a year, my wife and I still don't know how we are going to afford a house, retirement, etc... It sounds far-fetched, but given taxes and more taxes, there is very little that we can save.

Have a socialized medical system that scrimps on badly needed drugs and procedures, resorts to only the cheapest practices and discourages drug companies from developing new drugs by not paying them enough to cover their costs of experimentation, trial and error.

If you don't think we have socialized medicine in the US, then explain to me what an HMO is.

Elevate mysticism, tribalism, shamanism and fundamentalism--and be sure to exclude educated, hardworking men and women--to an equal status with technology in the public mind. Make sure that, in order to pay proper (and politically correct) respect to all different ethnic groups in America, you act as if science were on an equal footing with voodoo and history with ethnic fable.

Because it is important that we return school prayer. Forget that schools cannot afford textbooks and some children cannot afford lunch, we have to work together to return school prayer. School prayer will make everything better.

And make sure that we give equal time to Darwin and the Book of Genesis when discussing the origins of the Universe.

But I stopped at a dozen because I realized that this is already, in large measure, the program of so many of our elected representatives. The debauchery of our tort system is already in place, and the rest of the agenda is under way.

Enough said. Out.

Constructive Criticism

[Strange Ranger]

Somebody want solutions to the education problem? A few humble suggestions, not easy ones:

1. Require national standard minimum skills tests for EVERY ACCREDITED MAJOR before a degree is granted. Get professors and top hiring managers to design the test. This helps keep our universities from graduating every single person they possible can. Really, where else can we find a financial incentive for our universities to flunk more people and graduate less of them? Degrees should not be a dime a dozen.

2. Make grade school HARD. If it takes little Johnny an extra 3 years to graduate, so be it. Holding back brighter kids so the less able ones don't feel bad has to stop. I honestly want my second grader learning Intro Chinese, Solar System basics, Ecology (where litter goes), math that isn't memorization, etc. etc. No more whole days spent on Red+Blue=Purple.

3. Simple one: Make it VERY HARD to become a teacher. This is what the AMA did for doctors. This gives us better teachers who we know are motivated. It shrinks the teacher pool so we are forced to start paying more for teachers. Sure, it hurts initially when class sizes grow, but it pays off in the long run, and still 40 kids to one great teacher is far better than 10 kids to one lousy teacher.

These 3 steps could be implemented without spending much taxpayer money, and the benefits would be easy to see after a few years.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Trade Secrets, Copyright & The Erosion Of Pate

[Mittermeyer]

One of the biggest problems from my perspective is that the entire purpose of patent law has been undermined by the expansion beyond the original intent of trade secrets and copyrights.

Trade secrets has allowed companies to essentially patent the unpatentable and protect concepts and ideas far past the patent limit.

Copyrights are even worse in that they have allowed companies to publish software and legally protect it without actually publishing the source code.

Consider Microsoft's successful squashing of any 'unauthorized' books regarding API calls. To me Microsoft would be truly covered if all the API calls were actually published and therefore copyrighted, but they are not. So what is covered is not actually known to the public or described in any public way, yet Microsoft can continue to have them and be legally protected by just copyrighting the distribution of the executables.

This is an abomination of the entire point of having a patent or a copyright system- to encourage innovation by giving the user exclusive use and rights legally protected for a time in exchange for having the body of knowledge published publically.

Why bother to patent when trade secrets or copyright can protect you longer with no public release of knowledge or concepts?

We have drastically erred on the side of use and rights without the fair exchange of public knowledge. Until we fix this part our innovative tech base will continue to suffer.

Technical edge is not enough.

[renoX]

I'm a foreigner (French), so of course my external POV is biased but I disagree on several points on the article:
- point 3. Promote litigation to punish tobacco companies on the theory that they compel innocent people to smoke.

Sorry, but this is very bad exemple, while I agree that in the US there are too many litigations, I also believe that tobacco companies do try to compel innocent people to smoke by running ads targetted to young teen.
In France, after a long battle, the problem has been solved in a radical way: any advertisement for tobacco is forbidden in any media.

- point 12. Uh? I've always seen American people as being in general higly religious which apparently haven't prevented the US from being the richest nation.
I don't really thinks that the nature of the religion is important wether it is catholicism, mysticim, or other things (except sects of course)

But I'm an atheist, so I'm not very knowledgeable into religions and I don't care, to be honest.

Also the article somehow insists too much on the technical side of the affair: US has not have the best student or best researchers for a long time, still the US is still the first nation on a big number of field, why?
Because the transformation of new idea into industries which sells works very well in the US whereas in the other country usually it doesn't work so well.

And another thing: the article didn't list the patents as a highly dangourous thing: they could slow down inovation very much..

You Gets What You Pays For

[Mittermeyer]

Any society will respond to what is valued either through the marketplace or socially. Ours is no exception.

We do not value little smart gadgets like the Japanese do, so we do not make them as well or as consistently. The Japanese do not have per capita square footage like we do, so anything that gives them more capability in a small space is prized. Electronics are also a very profitable item to ship, so it was an excellent arena for the Japanese to specialize in.

Being behind in consumer electronics is not new. Our broadcast standards have been absolutely behind most of the world for decades, for instance. But a clear picture wasn't as important to us and so we have lagged until HDTV.

On the other hand we feel a need to have a strong military. So we put our money into all sorts of hideous toys that are so far ahead of everyone else's that Pax Americana is an absolute fact. No matter how much Japan or France or Russia or China may want to, they simply cannot build an F-22 for a long time to come.

Unfortunately F-22s do not readily translate into consumer products, but items like BOMARC and B-52s translated into the 747, still a world-beater product.

I'm not suggesting that the military-industrial complex is our technical salvation, but since we prioritize and pay for it we get that kind of technical edge. If we want innovation in other sectors of our economy, we will need to prioritize that, either as a government initiative or the natural course of market desire.

And we need to stop whining if we don't absolutely dominate every global industrial endeavor. As long as we can offload the commoditization to Japan or the Little Dragons and keep the innovation in-house, who cares if we all have Playstations instead of Ataris?

Re:Pointing at a problem is not offering a solutio

[Cyno]

I'm a utopian... Anyway, there are solutions to solve all our problems. Most of them developed over the last 5 years.

Pointing out the problems so loudly that you can no longer deny them is the first step in building a discussion, which is necessary in finding the proper solution. Without discussion, which our current political system discourages, we end up debating the same issues for decades and get nowhere. Why wasn't our school system a hot issue for debate at the last election? Because we're too concerned with money. And I believe if you look at all these problems people keep pointing out you will find that all of them are related by 1 thing, money. People sell out and take the get-rich-quick scheme because that is the goal of American life. If we weren't persuaded by money, if we didn't cater to money or care about money we wouldn't be posting on this article and our school system would be designed properly for our kids. Unfortunately I think the only way to get our minds off of money is to do away with it completely and instead use computers, databases and networks to manage our resources efficiently.

Schools intentionally make people stupid!

[benzapp]

C'mon, this is obvious:

How long can America keep pumping out students whose test scores are in the cellar for industrial nations and expect to maintain an edge in technology? As it stands, a lot of our brains are already imported from India and China.

I live in CA, which should stand as a dire warning to the rest of the country: They limit their property taxes, their schools go underfunded, and as a result California natives largely end up working to repair the cars and wash the floors of the well-educated from elsewhere.

The US needs to get serious about education, and fast. With the tech boom and the world shinking as it is, this is a really bad time to be stupid.

I hear this stuff all the time, and used to believe it myself on occasion. Its simply not true. The educational system was NEVER intended to make people smart, it was intended to make the intelligent human masses comfortable working in factories doing boring, repetitive work and acquiesing to the demands of leaders. Education as we know it, is a system which originated in fascist germany as a way to school better, more obedient and selfless soldiers.

Make no mistake. Schools are doing EXACTLY what they were designed to do. Think about it. Have you ever gone to a neighboorhood in the US which was constructed in the 19th century? How is it houses were constructed to be not only durable, but beautiful as well? The parks, museums, sculptures... All built long before public schools. Have you ever read civil war letters? The average 15 year old infantryman in the civil war writes far better than 99% of the people who post on slashdot. Could you imagine any book by Charles Dickens being on the bestseller list today? Why are so many schools named after the industrial magnates of yesteryear, like Carnegie, Colgate... Why were so many colleges funded by the industrial elite?

If you really think about it, it just doesn't add up. Schools make you DUMB, this is what they were supposed to do. It makes a people easier to control, and less prone to nasty rebellions. Humans are innately intelligent, it is only warping their minds through years of social conditioning they became mad, lost, and inhuman. Carnegie, JP Morgan, Frick, all of them sat around and thought about how to make free men content to work in their god foresaken factories, and like it. They made it so, and now we are living with that legacy.

The forced educational system must come to an end, it is time for this system of class control to collapse and for the average american to recapture the American dream that was stolen from him by the fascist powers of a century ago. We sit here and rip on the US educational system, even though the educational system is the single largest industry in the United States, both in capital expenditures and employment percentages. How is it people in India and China can do as well as us, even in the midst of an anarchy which can barely pave roads let alone build schools. They are better because they are NOT schooled.

To all who are interested, I highly suggest you read the online version of a book entitled The Underground History of American Education by one John Taylor Gatto. The book gives a well written account of exactly how the free minds of the United States were perverted into the drones we have today. It is rare I read a book that is truly eye opening, but this book will make it all make sense.

USA is going down the drain frankly.

[miffo.swe]

With the emerging protectionism of some predatory companies on the expence of newstarters the innovation regarding to computers have almost grinded to a halt. Damn, our computers is still based on 1950 technoloygy when better ways exists but no one seems willing to take a chance and implement it with such entrenched companies as Intel and Microsoft at the helm. The USA needs aggressive enforcement of antitrust, oligopol and kill the DMCA in its cradle. The DMCA pretty much cements certain oligopols and monopolies by law.

All these stupid decisions gives the ball to other countries to play with. I think the USA can very well go the same way as Japan did in the 90's. With current leadership in the states that is dangerous as hell. Bad economy? Start a war and focus the citizens on another direction.

It happens right now!

Re:Well, let's see

[ergo98]

It's foolish to think that any buiding in foreign lands somehow indicates the imminent demise of Western civilization (as people do classic, and as ignorant as always, linear extrapolation of trends). Firstly, if there are smart people in India, or China, or wherever, and if they represent a well education population with a stable society, then why can't they contribute in the world economy? I'd set up shop there too simply because it makes sense to have regional suppliers: The Asian area accounts for a hearty percentage of the Earth's population, so you probably should be ready to cater to them. Secondly once these shops move in a funny thing starts to happen: The wealth and wages of the people rise, they start buying the goods that they're buiding spreading the wealth, and it's a better economy for everyone. Already I've heard that a good Indian programmer costs about $22,000US/year: That's a far cry from the slave labour prices in the nasceant days of the Indian tech sector, and it makes it a lot more of a toss up if it's really worth it locating over there, but at the same time when it is it imbues the people with the wealth to turn around and buy those chips and switches and software.

Re: School teaches you to learn, not absorb facts

[Fastball]

Good points. I see three things we're working on here:

1) The process of learning
2) Specialized curriculums
3) Education-Employment relationship(s)

1) The process of learning. There's no doubt in my mind that rote, absorbing learning at a young age is key. E.g., children are better at picking up foreign languages than adults. Why? It helps that they aren't worried about credit card debt or a girlfriend missing her period, I'm sure. No, a young mind is just so beautifully uncluttered. You know, like a blank whiteboard, shiny and pure. There's no better time to fill it with facts and ideas, before responsibilities and anxieties poison it.

However, getting in high school and college, so much more of what we learn comes from social interaction. This time is better spent keeping the hell out of the kids' ways. College is two things to every college student: his GPA and his dick (or the female's erogenous zones, her vagina, tits, and ass--God it's not fair you ladies have three zones!). The world wants his GPA, and he wants the world to have his dick. It's just a paradox that every kid goes through. Thank God for Cliff's Notes; if it weren't for Cliff, I wouldn't have had time to discover my dick. I would have been bogged down with Bronte's Wuthering Heights or some other fscking coming of age drivel.

2) Specialized curriculums. I don't know about you, but I have read and written exponentially more since I finished college. Many more subjects and genres too. We may be having an agreement here. I too am a fan of a broadening one's knowledge of more subjects. However, I don't think regimented syllabi, attendance, and essay exams (*shiver*) stimulate a person's desire to understand the subject. Maintain a GPA maybe, but not understand the subject. I always felt the quicker I get away from college the more time I would have to think. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but think about... :)

3) The education-employment relationship(s). I agree that many folks end up in a line of work they don't conceive themselves taking up or has little to do with what they studied in college, but is that necessarily good? Are they happy? Do they pine for something more or different? College curricula exacerbates this problem, because so previous little material covers real-world processes and situations. Of course, looking at this from the outside in, most jobs in America require very little specialized, trained, enhanced thinking or skills. My personality dictates that I anger at ceremonial requirements like learning Dijkstra's algorithm and Hamming code when all I want to do is register a domain, set up a DNS server, and build a web site. I don't like doing things, because everyone else is doing them.

Here's how I look at it. With so much of what I do for a living learned on my own time, I cannot justify the tens of thousand of dollars required to take up cross-cultural requirements and other sixteen week death marches. I agree with you, writertype, that honing one's ability to learn and reason are important. Experiencing unpleasant (read: stupid) things can be educational and enriching. I fumed during the first two weeks of a required pre-1800 English literature course. It turned out to be one of the more interesting genres of literature (Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels reached me despite the longwinded prose). But these pleasant revelations were sparse compared to the "just get through it" courses I suffered. When a 30% on a physics exam scales to an A, understanding evaporates.

And for the record, I started college as a business finance major. Struggled through the freshman requirements, then got a 98% on my first accounting exam. Got bored with the rest of the sophomore classes' filler material and nearly flunked out in spectacular fashion. Switched to CS the next year and labored through logic gates and big O notation in class while building a 486 and discovering the nuances of Linux at home. I had a reputation as an ace essay writer in my fraternity house (another story altogether though I have a tattoo to show for it), and after earning an A for a friend's twenty-five page grad school history paper, I switched to English. And the rest is history...

BTW, don't worry about dating me, because I've got one foot out of MLB's door. If they reinstate Pete Rose, I quit. That coming from a kid who wore his number in grade school and saw him break Cobb's record with 4192 in Riverfront Stadium. Really. MLB is a fucking disgrace, and letting a known tax cheat, hot dog of the first order, a man who charges fans large lumps of $ for his autograph despite riding an overwhelming wave of their support, and a man who explicitly put the earnest competition of a major league sport into question by gambling on his own team constitutes an absolute withdrawal from honest sporting competition. Not that MLB has given a damn about that for over a decade now by allowing a Dixie cup strike zone, turning a blind eye to rampant performance enhancing chemistry, marginalizing the playoffs with the wildcard, and doing anything else for the Almighty Buck. I intend to spend every spare minute this Summer enjoying everything else but major league baseball.

Phew. I'm sweating now...

Re:What?? Read the article first!?

[Drakonian]

Funny coz it's true.

I think something is broken with the system when it's all the earliest posts that get the most karma - from the exact users that don't read the article!

Confession time: I couldn't figure out why my posts were never modded up, time and time again. Then I started posting early, most often without reading the article. Booya - I was up to excellent karma in no time at all. Does anyone else see a problem with this? What if we tried something like no moderation allowed for the first 15 minutes after a story was posted? Well, I guess we'd have a lot of trolls. How about no positive moderation? Just food for thought.

Our technological edge

[jgardn]

Businesses accept a certain level of risk when they invest their money in things to grow their business.

Technology is one of the most dangerous risks to take. Not only are you pouring money into something that has never been done before, but you are doing it for a product that has never been created before. Usually, the results of your investment will not be seen for several years or more.

Ben Stein is right on the money. Those things that liberals want to do -- uproot our society, change the way everyone lives over night, and throw away everything we built our country on -- means that the future is unpredictable.

Conservatives have had it right all along. We should be building on the past, not tearing it down and starting from scratch.

The REAL reason this country's going to hell...

[dr.badass]

Quoth the article :
(Story continues after advertisement)

-DoctorB

Ben Stein, luser

[alizard]

We're well on our way to squelching what gives this country an edge. What would it take to kill innovation altogether?

Following Ben Stein's implied prescription as to the cure to what ails America would do it once and for all. If he'd ever done anything constructive with technology for a living, he might be clued enough to make his perceptions about what makes technological innovation of value. Reading his article makes him wonder what planet he moved to after his job with Nixon quit him. As well as why he returned and why Forbes decided to give him a public forum.

As a casual observer of what makes this country work and what stops it cold, I hereby offer a few suggestions on how we can ruin American competitiveness and innovation in the course of this century.

His suggestions might be worth something if he'd ever gotten closer to real technologists than any article in the financial press could have taken him.

I think the reader will agree with me that we are already far down the road on many of them:

1) Allow schools to fall into useless decay. Do not teach civics or history except to describe America as a hopelessly fascistic, reactionary pit.

He wants schools to leave the Nixon era out of history books? Not that I blame him, he's one of the guilty parties, he was on the Nixon staff. But he isn't important enough to be mentioned by name.

Do not expect students to know the basics of mathematics, chemistry and physics.

A couple of hours ago, I helped an average high school student in an average suburban high school make a model of the sodium atom. In large part, the science textbooks are finally becoming adequate and much better than the ones I used in high school (graduated at mid-term in 1972).

Working closely with the teachers' unions, make sure that you dumb down standards so that children who make the most minimal effort still get by with flying colors. Destroy the knowledge base on which all of mankind's scientific progress has been built by guaranteeing that such learning is confined to only a few, and spread ignorance and complacency among the many. Watch America lose its scientific and competitive edge to other nations that make a comprehensive knowledge base a rule of the society.

We're going to lose our competitive edge to the RIAA/MPAA cartel long before the educational system has time to do what he describes.

While public education is in serious disrepair, the problem (at least in California and other states which are finally enforcing some) isn't standards, it's structure and methods. The standards for high school graduation in a local California school district I reviewed are perfectly adequate. I'm at something of a loss as to how their educational methods are going to accomplish this, from what I've been able to see, the teachers are using homework not to reinforce the classroom instruction given during the school day, but to force parents to provide the instruction the teachers weren't able to provide. The money is probably adequate, but is dissipated in "administrative expenses" having little discernable relationship to classroom instruction.

2) Encourage the making of laws and rules by trial lawyers and sympathetic judges, especially through class actions. Bypass the legislative mechanisms that involve elected representatives and a president. This will stop--or at least greatly slow down--innovation, as corporations and individuals hesitate to explore new ideas for fear of getting punished (or regulated to death) by litigation for any misstep, no matter how slight, in the creation of new products and services. Make sure that lawsuits against drugmakers are especially encouraged so that the companies are afraid to develop new lifesaving drugs, lest they be sued for sums that will bankrupt them. Make trial lawyers and judges, not scientists, responsible for the flow of new products and services.

I'm a hell of a lot more concerned about the unrestrained influence of the lobbyists of the Hollywood content cartel than I am about tort law, which has largely already been reformed in the direction Mr. Stein asks for. The factors that restrain innovation in the pharmaceutical industry are more that companies have found that paying lawyers to build patent portfolios from previous work is more profitable than hiring scientists and engineers.

We're finding that entertainment industry executives are even less safe technology gatekeepers than trial lawyers ever were. If he wants to point a finger, he should look to his own employers.

3) Create a culture that blames the other guy for everything and discourages any form of individual self-restraint or self-control. Promote litigation to punish tobacco companies on the theory that they compel innocent people to smoke. Make it second nature for someone who is overweight to blame the restaurant that served him fries. Encourage a legal process that can kill a drug company for any mistakes in self-medication.

IIRC, the overweight person got his fat ass kicked in court, and he can't name any drug companies that have gone out of business over a patient's fuckups any more than you or I can. However, the evidence is simply inconclusive. I can cite examples where these cases got tossed out of court and cases where the plaintiffs won.

Make it a general rule that anyone with more money than a plaintiff is responsible for anything harmful that a plaintiff does. Promulgate the pitiful joke that Americans are hereby exempt from any responsibility for their own actions--so long as there are deep pockets around to be rifled.

4) Sneer at hard work and thrift. Encourage the belief that all true wealth comes from skillful manipulation and cunning, or from sudden, brilliant and lucky strokes that leave the plodding, ordinary worker and saver in the dust.

Does anyone know of any examples of people who've gotten seriously rich (say, over $100M) solely by hard work and thrift? It's rather telling that Ben doesn't know of any, either. We know this because he didn't cite examples. Hard work only counts when one is doing the right things, and thrift is only a good thing when one economizes on the right things... i.e. don't spend $1K of your investors' money per employee on office furniture in a high tech startup, and DON'T try squeezing nickels when it comes to picking server hardware when your site is already getting 1M hits a day.

Make sure that society's idols are men and women who got rich from being sexy in public

Presumably, he means entertainers. Hmmm... why are we using the badly informed remarks of an entertainer as a basis of public debate?

or through gambling or playing tricks, not from hard work or patience. Make the citizenry permanently envious and bewildered about where real success comes from.

Anybody sufficiently interested in finding out can discover where most individual fortunes came from, including the parts the founders of thse fortunes would really rather we didn't know about. Of course, knowing where wealth comes from doesn't necessarily imply that one can make it even if one has the knowledge and talent to create intellectual capital. Knowing who Ann Winblad is doesn't mean she'll give you the time of day, unless you encounter her through the right "insider" VC community channels.

Hint: If Bill Gates hadn't had substantial family money behind him, would we have ever heard of either him or Microsoft?

5) Hold the managers of corporations to extremely lax standards of conduct and allow them to get off with a slap on the wrist when they betray the trust of shareholders. This will discourage thrift and investment and ensure that Americans will have far less capital to work with than other societies, while simultaneously developing that contempt for law and social standards that is the hallmark of failing nations. Hold the management of labor unions to no ethical standards.

Odd that he got that one almost right. Now why did he personally invest in Enron and Worldcom to begin with?

If he's as well informed as he pretends to be, he'd know that the reason for the spectacular stock swindles perpetrated by Enron, Worldcom, and many other companies was reduced oversight by the SEC, which the Bush Administration insured by gutting the agency's funding. Corporate leaders will cheat if they can get away with it, that's why the SEC was invented in the 1930s. Why is he putting Ben Stein's money into funding the GOP if he really believes there's a problem?

6) While you're at it, discourage respect for law in every possible way. This will dissolve the glue that holds the nation together, and dissuade any long- term thinking. Societies in which the law can be clearly seen to apply to some and not to others are doomed to decay, in terms of innovation and everything else.

No argument here. However, he's a former scriptwriter for Richard Nixon, who left the White House barely in time to avoid public trial for "high crimes and misdemeanors". The GOP is the very center of the cultural imperative that says the law is for everyone except the wealthy. A good argument, but is he really the one to make it?

7) Encourage a mass culture that spits on intelligence and study and instead elevates drug use, coolness through sex and violence, and contempt for school. As children learn to be stupid instead of smart, the national intelligence base needed for innovation will simply vanish into MTV- land.

Still whining about youth culture after all these years. I guess he figures that he fooled the public during the Nixon era with this, (the 1972 Nixon campaign was basically an attack on youth culture) he can still get away with it. He will be happy to know that the current version of youth culture is just as likely to turn out amoral suits to provide the kind of "innovative" business leadership he seems to be looking for as any idealism out of the hippie era.

The PC he presumably typed these grave pronouncements on and the ones we're reading and writing this on are as much a product of the 1960s youth culture as acid rock and love beads. Those of you who are too young to remember this from being there can pick up the history from Hackers by Stephen Levy. Though looking at pictures of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak around when they started Apple should give you the idea. Those of you who are a bit older will remember when I say Whole Earth Catalogue gave Homebrew Computer Club its startup funding. And the world indeed changed as a result.

What will the current participants in the current revision of youth culture come up with in the way of technology? There are more young computer programmers around than in any time in previous history, and most of you are probably here. Isn't it sad that Ben Stein doesn't like your musical tastes?

8) Mock and belittle the family.

Last time I heard, The Osbournes are still the hottest show on TV... the family might not be the one that Ben Stein grew up with and Ozzy Osbourne isn't exactly Ozzie Nelson, but the family actually seems to work.

Provide financial incentives to people willing to live an isolated existence, vulnerable and frightened. This guarantees that men and women of sufficient character to bring about innovation will be psychologically stifled from an early age.

Let's be polite here and figure that he botched this one on the basis that he stopped doing his own income taxes as soon as he could afford to do so, probably in the early 1970s. The rest of us need only flip through our form 1040 booklets to figure out what tax breaks families get that singles aren't eligible for.

9) Develop a suicidal immigration policy that keeps out educated, hardworking men and women from friendly nations and, instead, takes in vast numbers of angry, uneducated immigrants from nations that hate us. This, too, leads to the shrinking of our knowledge base and the eventual disappearance of social cohesion.

He's never heard of H1B and we're supposed to take his pronouncements on how immigration law works seriously? Perhaps Forbes should have gotten Madonna or Eminem to write the article instead. I don't see how they could have done a worse job. Where the hell does he think the casual labor that keeps his yard in good shape comes from, under a cabbage patch?

10) Enact a tax system that encourages class antagonism and punishes saving, while rewarding indebtedness, frivolity and consumption. Tax the fruits of labor many times:

First tax it as income. Then tax it as real or personal property. Then tax it as capital gains. Then tax it again, at a staggeringly high level, at death. This way, Americans are taught that only fools save, and that it is entirely proper for us to have the lowest savings rate in the developed world.

We also have the lowest total tax rate in the developed world once all these layers are added up, and those who invest as companies in technological businesses can pick up an R&D tax credit. If he were qualified to speak on technological innovation, he'd know it.

This will deprive us of much-needed capital for new investment, for innovation and our own personal aspirations. It will compel us to ask foreigners for ever more capital and allow them to own more of America. It will also promote an attitude of carelessness about the future and, once again, encourage disrespect for law.

Tell that to Bill Gates. Fortunes are still being made in America. Though Gates doesn't have much to do with innovation, there are others who've made high-tech fortunes in the system he condemns, and a whole lot of us who'd be happy to give it a try given access to venture capital.

11) Have a socialized medical system that scrimps on badly needed drugs and procedures, resorts to only the cheapest practices and discourages drug companies from developing new drugs by not paying them enough to cover their costs of experimentation, trial and error.

Which country does he think he lives in? The USA has the most expensive medical system in the world on either a per capita basis or in terms of total dollars. Attempts to introduce universal health care have been uniformly squelched by millions of dollars spent by the US health care industry and in particular, insurance companies who would be forced to stop profiting from health care if the US health care system became "socialized".

12) Elevate mysticism, tribalism, shamanism and fundamentalism--and be sure to exclude educated, hardworking men and women--to an equal status with technology in the public mind.

With the exception of the Xtian fundamentalists, all the groups he's whining about are very well represented in technological innovation. Anyone who doesn't quite get this should try googling for:
technopagan VRML

Make sure that, in order to pay proper (and politically correct) respect to all different ethnic groups in America, you act as if science were on an equal footing with voodoo and history with ethnic fable.

If he'd had the guts to go after fundamentalist Christians pushing "Creation Science", I'd agree with him. As far as I know, this is the only significant example of religion overriding science that's going on right now.

My list need not end here.

Would it be uncharitable to suggest that it ended because he'd run out of ideas? Perhaps a few more hours of listening to Rush Limbaugh would have given him some.

But I stopped at a dozen because I realized that this is already, in large measure, the program of so many of our elected representatives. The debauchery of our tort system is already in place, and the rest of the agenda is under way.

The only agendas I see in progress right now are that of restricting civil liberties in the guise of "protecting us from terrorists" and the Hollywood content cartel's anti-tech agenda. Either are as dangerous to America's ability to innovate and compete as the decline of public education. Ben Stein deals with neither. If Ben Stein got paid for this article, Forbes should retract the article and try to get their money back from him.

Ben Stein was practically the only GOP contributor among the ranks of Hollywood entertainers, look him up. (search under individual donors, enter STEIN, BENJAMIN)

Benjamin J. Stein is a lawyer, economist, writer and actor, and host of the game show Win Ben Stein's Money.

If Ben Stein ever devotes a show segment to public policy and has an honest judge score the contestants, he's going to lose a bunch of Ben Stein's money. The guy does have style, but I never realized before reading his article how little he's got to back it up with.