America 3.0

Senator Mike Lee has the best article yet about what the new, GOP-majority congress ought to do. It is entitled “Five Steps To Restore Trust, Transparency, And Empowerment.” Please RTWT.

Senator Lee makes several observations which are highly consistent with the picture Jim Bennett and I painted in America 3.0.

America’s health care, energy, higher education, telecommunications, security, and criminal justice needs (to name just a few) appear to be in the midst of transitions, nearing tipping points that will help define our nation in decades to come.
 
Most systems we use to provide government services were designed decades ago, before the tech and telecom revolutions that have changed the way Americans do almost everything else. In 20 years, will we need, say, a Government Printing Office or Internal Revenue Service in anything like their current forms? If disruptive innovations continue to personalize and localize the economy, will centralized, monolithic bureaucracies be the right instruments to regulate it? Or is government just as badly in need of some disruptive innovations that would enable market forces, public desires, and longstanding constitutional principles to once again show us the way and make our institutions more accountable?
 
… we know that our society and our economy have rocketed out in front of our government, and that the bureaucracy in its current form is unlikely ever to catch up.
 
Everything about American life today is becoming more decentralized, open-source, localized and personalized. Everything, that is, except government. An increasingly customizable economy and diverse social networks of mini-communities will not long tolerate the innate incompetence of clumsy, self-serving, Big Government.
 
Let Congress operate less like a nineteenth-century industrial mill, and more like a twenty-first-century open-source network.
 
In today’s world, individual and community empowerment are strengths for organizations who know how to use them.

This is all good stuff.

Yes, America is in the “midst of transitions”, and many sectors are indeed “nearing tipping points”.

Yes, America’s governmental legacy systems were designed before the contemporary “tech and telecom revolutions” occurred and should be fundamentally re-thought.

Yes, “disruptive innovations” will “continue to personalize and localize the economy” and this presents an opportunity to remake government in a more transparent and cost effective way.

Yes, the “bureaucracy in its current form” is doomed to fall behind the revolutionary pace being set by the American people and the innovations they are creating, which is making “everything about American life … more decentralized, open-source, localized and personalized.”

Yes, the old system has to be replaced, to become compatible with an “increasingly customizable economy and diverse social networks of mini-communities.” (That last phrase, a “diverse social networks of mini-communities” is particularly nice.)

Yes, Congress itself has to change from an America 2.0 model, ” a nineteenth-century industrial mill”, and move into America 3.0 as “a twenty-first-century open-source network.” (That will be cool, actually. It can be done.)

Senator Lee is being a visionary realist, the best kind.

Let’s hope his approach will be adopted by the incoming GOP Congress.

Remember: America’s greatest days are yet to come!