Thanks to CommPRO.biz for publishing my recent piece on optimism.
The subtitle of America 3.0 which has provoked the strongest response is this:
America’s Greatest Days Are Yet To Come.
In the article I ask:
Do you agree? Or do you think America’s greatest days are long gone? But if America’s greatest days are yet to come, then our personal lives and our business careers take on a more hopeful cast.
In the USA today we have a shortage of optimism. For the first time, Americans say their children and grandchildren will have a worse life than they did. But despair about America’s future is a factual, historical and analytic error. We are not on an inevitable road to tyranny and poverty. Predictions of the end of American freedom and prosperity are deeply mistaken.
Optimism must be based on facts, or it is just wishful thinking. So, what is the foundation for optimism about our future?
You can get the short answer in the CommPRO.biz article, or get the full and complete answer by reading America 3.0!
Technological advances occur only where government regulation is weak or non-exitent. Regulations have always been strong in 3rd world countries which is why they are stuck in the 3rd world.
The future for America is that regulation will expand until all innovation is terminated. Then technologies will fail one by one as shortages in raw materials emerge, as climate changes, or as plagues and famines re-emerge as uncontrollable forces of nature.
The spurt of technological inventions begun in the 1700s is being squashed. We will return to the technology and social structure of the 1100s (which already rules half the world).
The climate has always been changing but temperatures have been pretty stable for the past decade
Most Americans recognize this and that’s why there’s no appetite for increased regulation in that area.
“The future for America is that regulation will expand until all innovation is terminated.”
It is so comfortable to decide that everybody is doomed.
Then you can seem wise in and world-weary, a self-flattering pose.
And you absolve yourself of your duty to do anything about it.
I saw the movie “The Spy Who Loved Me” (1961) a few days ago. I compared the level of technology in 1961 vs today and I was shocked to see how little had changed. Obviously we have computers and the internet, cell phones, and USB storage devices. But almost everything else is about the same.
Compare a 1960 movie with a 1908 movie. Still 52 years difference – but technological change 1908-1960 is awesome. Telephones, radio, television, autos, planes, spaceships, medicine, computers, clean city water, clean city air – an entire civilization was created.
Look at the movie Cimarron (1930) which shows massive tech progress from 1878 to 1930. Progressives today are dedicated to stopping progress!
Starting with FDR and JFK regulatory agencies have been created to stop change. They have succeeded.
Remember, the tech level of 1700 was almost totally unchanged from 300 BC. 2000 years when people felt that everything needed was already invented. The level of tech we enjoy today is only temporary unless we can get the regulators off our backs.
The United States and the West is in decline as it is hobbled by too much government regulation in all manner of things. This is principally due to the rise of the new ludites who are adherents to junk science, socialism, gaia and other forms of hocus pocus. History repeats itself!
A possibly-useful thought experiment: what technologies (other than computer stuff) most NEED to get developed/commercialized?
In each case, what are the benefits and the main inhibitors?
David, a very useful thought experiment.
Personalized medicine.
Customized, localized, additive, distributed (CLAD) manufacturing.
Driverless vehicles.
Distributed power generation.
Encryption of personal data for privacy.
Others?
Personal data encryption will be essential once the internet of things finally gets going
Grey Eagle, I’m sort of a big Bond fan. You must be talking about Dr. No from 1962.
True, Ursula Andress as a Bond girl has probably not been surpassed, but things have progressed otherwise.
In the movie, the villain was trying to shoot down the Mercury space shot – earlier that year John Glenn orbited the earth a few times.
Now 50 years later India is traveling to Mars, the fourth country to go there (if you count Europe) leap-frogging China.
Or to follow your line of reasoning, Glenn got about 160 miles up when he orbited in 1962. Missions to Mars travel 35 million miles.
Despite the fact that the US seems to be standing still when it comes to manned flights because of political policy errors, we’re still pushing forward into space.
We may be a little late, but now that space flight is becoming privatized we’re closer then ever to the Pan Am space clipper in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Gruray:
Thanks for the correction. I did not see “The Spy Who Loved Me”. After checking IMDB I realize I saw “From Russia with Love (1963)”. These are the examples of tech that I remember.
The handgun 007 carries was a new design very improved from handguns availabble in 1913, but virtually the same as handguns available in 2013.
The car he drove had tail fins. I can’t remember the make but it was not made by Q. It looked like a Lincoln convertable with a V8, power steering, power brakes, power windows, power seats, radio, and key ignition. In 1913 similar cars did not have windows, no winshield, some had no steering wheel (they used a tiller), had 2 cycle engines started with a crank, no radio and no top. In 2013 the cars have no tail fins, are generally shorter, narrower, taller and clunkier than 1963 cars and cost 10 times more. But they have power windows, brakes, seats and a radio. Some 2013 cars will even talk back to you in you do something wrong. 2013 cars cost ten times more than 1963 cars.
On the whole, there was massive tech advances in handguns and cars from 1913 to 1963, but very, very little from 1963 to 2013.
In 1963 Bond does evesdropping with a reel-to-reel tape recorder using 6 inch reels of 1/2 inch tape. He uses a periscope to watch a secret meeting. Surveilance is one area where 2013 in lightyears ahead of 1963. Today Government agents record and analyse every phone call and every conversation with full video of every person in the US and perhaps the world in 2013. In 1913, government agents only spied on a select few, and that was done in person and they kept handwritten notes (if any).
As far as space. Today (2013) we should have 100s of very large space stations in geostationery orbits at the equator. A cable should hang down 2,400 miles from each space station to the ground to provide free high speed elevator service up and down from the ground up to the space station. Each space station would be the size of the Mall of America and have stores with shopping from all over the universe. Also there wuold be nice resorts and free fall sports and medicine. Weight lifting is easy in zero gravity. Shuttle buses should leave hourly to the moon, mars and other planets. Of course there would be aliens running the stores on the mall and it would be possible to book flights to other solar systems.
NASA really dropped the ball. Indians sending a rocket to Mars is nothing. Progress is made by free men using free markets, never by Wise Government Leaders.
In short, starting with FDR and JFK/LBJ, federal government regulations have shutdown innovation where ever it happens.
One area of steady advancement is motorcycle speed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fastest_production_motorcycle.png
The 1913 Flying Merkel supposedly could hit 100 mph. In the 60’s the Triumph Bonneveville was the “World’s Fastest Motorcycle” and could hit 110 before becoming too unstable to ride.
Nowadays, we’re close to 200
Technology definitely ebbs and flows and leaps and stagnates, but its all evolutionary.
Travel from Europe to N America existed since at least 1000 AD. It was a big change when Lindbergh first flew non-stop, but he was really only doing the same thing everyone else had done only in a faster medium. We topped out with the Concorde, but hypersonic transportation is certainly possible.
Technology changes, but what we want from it also changes. Traveling isn’t as novel or even as necessary anymore because of communication advancements. We’ve moved on to the next necessary technological platforms.
In the 1860’s I wonder if anyone was wondering what happened to halt all our great advancements in travel by horse. The Pony Express ran from coast to coast in ten days, but then abruptly ended leaving us with a horse technology stagnation.
Even with the transcontinental railroad almost a decade later, it still took that long because of forced layovers.
There are some who have a vision for a better future, however they are suppressed by what Grey Eagle has delicately described here as “regulations”. Based on experience, I have a tendency to broaden up that description to expose inability of inventors and entrepreneurs to proceed under ignorant and highly overpaid appointed, yet not-elected “well-connected and inexperienced opportunists” whose abuse of the “regulations” simply squashes technological development.
While those sporadically accessible individuals are paid on average $30,000 a month (http://www.openthebooks.com/search/?PensionCode=12&perpage=100), an inventor and/or prospect entrepreneur must enjoy his/her life on $240 a month in Food Stamps!
Here, Lexington Green can count on them because they DO HAVE a vision and they ARE MOTIVATED “to persevere and make the personal sacrifices necessary to achieve the vision”.
If only in Chicago, they are able to push-button start production of the:
1 Magnetically Levitated trains (360 mph),
2 Theromo-PhotoVoltaic Window Panes and Sidings,
3 Super-light areogel structures for areospace industry
– in addition to what Lexington Green has listed above and knows about them.
Now, should our greatest days yet to come, let’s talk on how to change the economic situation of those inventors and prospect entrepreneurs first.