Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
I will be my great privilege to speak about America 3.0, as part of the Heartland Institute Author Series Thursday, December 12, 2013, at The Heartland Institute library, One South Wacker Drive, Suite 2740, Chicago. Lunch will be served. $10.00 for the event, or $30 for the event and a copy of the book. Additonal books can be purchased onsite for $20.00 each.
You can register for the event here
I hope to see many of you there. Here is your chance to get the book and get it autographed!
I will be speaking about America 3.0 on November 20, 2013 at a meeting of the Chicago Tea Party.
The meeting is at the Ugly Step Sister Art Gallery, 1750 S. Union Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60616 at 7:00 p.m.
The Chicago Tea Party announcement reads as follows:
Our second speaker will be long-time Chicago Tea Party member Mike Lotus. Mike will speak about his new book, America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st Century-Why America’s Greatest Days Are Yet to Come. America 3.0 explains why the post-industrial, networked, decentralized society we are going to build does not need Big Government anymore. America 3.0 explains that the current crisis we are going through is not the end of America, but a transition period. What is ending is the 20th Century welfare state. America 3.0 explains why technology and our underlying culture are going to help us make a successful transition to a free and prosperous future. Mike will speak about the critical importance of the Tea Party in the fundamental political changes that we are going to have to make. These are indeed revolutionary times. Whether we like it or not, we are part of a new founding generation. Be strong, it’s going to be hard. Be happy, it’s going to be great.
I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak to my friends in the Chicago Tea Party.
Remember the three Tea Party principles: Fiscal Responsibility, Limited Government, Free Markets.
That’s what it’s all about.
Our distinguished FIRST speaker will be Doug Truax:
Doug Truax is a candidate for United States Senate, running in the Republican Primary in March 2014 and then taking on Dick Durbin in November 2014. He’s 43, he’s been married to Nicole for 21 years, they have three teen-agers, and live in Downers Grove in Dupage County.
Doug went to West Point, was active duty Army for six years, he attended Ranger and Airborne school, was a platoon leader and aide to a general, and then left the Army as a Captain.
He then went on to executive management at one of the country’s largest commercial insurance brokerage and consulting firms. After over 10 years in Corporate America, Doug went out on his own. He co-founded and is Managing Partner of a very successful employee benefit brokerage and consulting firm that helps companies control their medical insurance costs.
He knows and understands Obamacare and knows what we need to do to fix the Healthcare System in this country.
He’s been Chairman of the Board of Almost Home Kids in Naperville and Chicago and is Vice Chairman of the Board at CareNet of Dupage, a crisis pregnancy center.
I look forward to hearing Doug speak about his plans to capture the nomination, defeat Dick Durbin then take on the monster on the Potomac!
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.
Our friends Ed and Sushma were spotted recently in India, on elephant-back, reading a copy of America 3.0!
A close up will confirm the sighting:
We have not confirmed a rumor that America 3.0 is available at most of the top-quality elephant kiosks in India. We can only hope that the tentacles of Encounter Books‘ marketing operation reach so far.
Be sure to look at Ed’s excellent blog The John Wilkes Club. (A few words about John Wilkes. And here’s his picture.)
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.
