Chicago Boyz Archive

Thank you to Dr. George Rebane for his review of America 3.0 on his blog Rebane’s Ruminations.

Dr. Rebane’s post has several good links. The focus of his discussion is the prospect for job creation in the future, and the concern about what the America workforce will do when the economy we currently know is gone — and it is going away fast.

This is a topic that has repeatedly surfaced in discussions about the book. The question of what the future economy will look like, and what people will do once the existing world of “jobs” has gone away, is frightening. We predict that the productive power that is becoming available will collapse the cost of living. It will liberate people to work on projects and tasks of their own choice, rather than be driven by necessity, to a degree that is only known by the very wealthy today. So far, the elimination of older and less productive technology has had the effect of generally increasing wealth throughout society, though there are losers and winners in the transaction, and some people do better than others. Part of the problem is we are familiar with the world that is fading away and we find it hard to imagine something radically different. Think for a moment about what the American Founders would have thought if you told them that in two centuries less than five percent of the people would be engaged in growing food. They would have been astonished, and wondered what on earth everybody could be working on. Human beings are assets. They are creative. Adam Smith famously wrote: “Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.” We cannot imagine what the ingenuity of the American people will produce in the decades ahead, with the astonishing tools that will be available to them. Mostly, we need to get out of their way and let them start building the America 3.0 that is already starting.

Dr. Rebane’s blog review is here.

The Examiner recently published a review of America 3.0, and an interview by Dwight L. Schaub with the authors, Jim Bennett and Mike Lotus. The interview included the following passage:

BENNETT & LOTUS – We inherited language and law and political and economic ideas from England, as well as a culture that is capitalistic and individualistic. The foundation for that culture is a type of nuclear family structure which is almost unique in the world, and we still have it, and most people who have settled here have eventually adopted it.
 
SCHWAB – What is this unique family structure you are talking about?
 
BENNETT & LOTUS – A lot of things about American families sound normal to Americans, but they are actually very unusual in the world. American parents cannot pick their childrens’ spouses; they don’t have to give them equal inheritances; adult children are expected to marry and form their own homes away from their parents; and we have no extended families in the way they do in many foreign countries.
 
SCHWAB – Why does it matter that Americans have had this type of family?
 
BENNETT & LOTUS – It has shaped everything about us, especially by making us independent and enterprising. We are more alone in the world than other people, our parents don’t have to help us, we have no extended families to save us, we make our own marriage choices, our own career choices, we pick our own friends and colleagues, and we have to hustle to succeed.
 
SCHWAB – Does being individualistic mean that we have to live by the law of the jungle?
 
BENNETT & LOTUS – No. Part of the genius of America has been being individualistic but also willing and able to cooperate freely and a high degree of trust with others, to create businesses and other types of voluntary organizations. And there is a role for government, but it will have to be smaller, less intrusive, more efficient, and less centralized in the future. Government will adapt to America 3.0, just as we and our children will.

Thanks to the Examiner and to Dwight Schwab for the review and interview.

On June 17, 2013 I appeared on “Politics Tonight,” a live political talk show hosted by WGN Political Analyst Paul Lisnek.

It was an enjoyable interview. Paul had clearly read our book, America 3.0, and he had good questions.

We recently added this television appearance to the America 3.0 YouTube page. So, while I had previously posted the links to the WGN site, I am re-posting the new YouTube link.

The interview can be found here.

Thanks to WGN and to Paul Lisnek for the kind opportunity to appear on his excellent show.

I recently had a piece on Fox News based on the book I wrote with Jim Bennett: America 3.0. The Fox piece is entitled “The transformation of the USA — here comes America 3.0.”

We are grateful to Fox for running the piece and to Instapundit for linking to it, and quoting this passage:

Today’s political regime is like legacy software, built for an earlier world.
 
Institutions of the 20th Century welfare state that once looked permanent are crumbling. The old operating system has been kludged so many times it won’t work much longer. It has to be replaced.
 
The time-worn liberal-progressive wisdom is simple: See a problem, create a government program to fix it.
 
ObamaCare proves this approach no longer works. . . . The government shutdown, and the failures of ObamaCare, are dramatic symptoms of an old systems reaching its end.
 
But this is a time of transition, not decline.

In the Fox piece I offer some policy proposals for healthcare reform, which are consistent with our vision of where America should be heading.

I get most of the good ideas I may have about reforming healthcare, once Obamacare has been repealed and consigned to the trash heap of history, from my friend C. Steven Tucker. His blog is here, and you should make it a regular stop. Steve was predicting the catastrophic consequences of Obamacare YEARS ago. How could he do this? He is an insurance professional, understanding the law is his full time job. Steve read all 2,000+ pages of the law immediately after it was passed, and more than that, he understood it! He can truthfully say “I told you so!” But like everyone who is not blinded by partisanship, he would much rather that this ruinous law had never been passed in the first place.

President Obama and his Democrat allies have created a huge mess that is just going to get worse, and a lot of people are going to be hurt in the process. It is all tragic and unnecessary. Obamacare is, I hope, the final, massive failure of the 20th Century welfare state model, and that we will survive it, repeal it, transcend it, and replace it with something much better.