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.

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.

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.)

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.

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?

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!