The Rhetoric

I’ve recently been having a discussion with a friend about economic philosophies, among other things. The last three books I’ve read have been about economics. I dig the free market, I do, but only one that is heavily regulated. Capitalists serve themselves first, and society maybe never. Taking care of us is the responsibility of the collective we call government.

I read a very interesting article in the current issue of Esquire magazine about Dean Kamen, his inventions and idiosyncrasies (which are many). One quote that particularly resonated with me concerns America and her values.

you get what you celebrate in a free market and America builds momuments to the things it values and unfortunately most of those monuments are giant sports arenas, which don’t contribute anything to the future.
~John H. Richardson, Esquire, December 2008, page 98+

Well said.

economy, politics business, capitalism, economy, esquire, government, politics

I think Paul Krugman should be Obama’s Treasury Secretary. Perhaps that’s a bit over-the-top, because there are so many qualified candidates. I do like Paul’s ideas. Plus, he has a Nobel Prize in Economics (2008).

We need universal (single-payer) health care in the worst way. We very much need New Deal-type stimuli. Some of that public investment should be to finance development of green renewable energy.

Franklin Delano Obama?
Paul Krugman, NY Times, Nov. 10, 2008

the institutions F.D.R. built have proved both durable and essential. Indeed, those institutions remain the bedrock of our nation’s economic stability. Imagine how much worse the financial crisis would be if the New Deal hadn’t insured most bank deposits. Imagine how insecure older Americans would feel right now if Republicans had managed to dismantle Social Security.

Now, there’s a whole intellectual industry, mainly operating out of right-wing think tanks, devoted to propagating the idea that F.D.R. actually made the Depression worse. So it’s important to know that most of what you hear along those lines is based on deliberate misrepresentation of the facts. The New Deal brought real relief to most Americans.

My advice to the Obama people is to figure out how much help they think the economy needs, then add 50 percent. It’s much better, in a depressed economy, to err on the side of too much stimulus than on the side of too little.

In short, Mr. Obama’s chances of leading a new New Deal depend largely on whether his short-run economic plans are sufficiently bold. Progressives can only hope that he has the necessary audacity.

The article’s comments are interesting, too.

Related post:
Book Review: The Conscience of a Liberal

I’m sure whomever Obama chooses to fill his cabinet seats will be well-qualified and not just cronies. I have great hope in our future now that we have an intellectual in the White House.

Obama and the War on Brains
Nicholas D. Kristof, NY Times, Nov. 9, 2008

We can’t solve our educational challenges when, according to polls, Americans are approximately as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution, and when one-fifth of Americans believe that the sun orbits the Earth.

Sad.

As for President Bush, he adopted anti-intellectualism as administration policy, repeatedly rejecting expertise (from Middle East experts, climate scientists and reproductive health specialists). Mr. Bush is smart in the sense of remembering facts and faces, yet I can’t think of anybody I’ve ever interviewed who appeared so uninterested in ideas.

January 20, 2009 cannot come soon enough!

economy, politics barack obama, paul krugman

I recently finished reading Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. It is an excellent primer on the (not-so-new) paradigm of collaboration including wikis, open source, ideagoras, peer-production and truly global corporations.

I was recently asked what could be a better system for improving products than unregulated, free-market, winner-take-all, every-man-for-himself, amoral (and often immoral), profits-above-all-else capitalistic competition. The answer, of course, is collaboration (they are not mutually exclusive). Today, from Flickr to Boeing to Firefox to BMW, collaborative enterprises are improving our world and creating the products we love.

I highly recommend this book to anybody interested in business, economics or the twenty-first century.

From the website:

In the last few years, traditional collaboration—in a meeting room, a conference call, even a convention center—has been superceded by collaborations on an astronomical scale.

Today, encyclopedias, jetliners, operating systems, mutual funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the thousands or even millions. While some leaders fear the heaving growth of these massive online communities, Wikinomics proves this fear is folly. Smart firms can harness collective capability and genius to spur innovation, growth, and success.

A brilliant primer on one of the most profound changes of our time, Wikinomics challenges our most deeply-rooted assumptions about business and will prove indispensable to anyone who wants to understand the key forces driving competitiveness in the twenty-first century.

Based on a $9 million research project led by bestselling author Don Tapscott, Wikinomics shows how the masses of people can participate in the economy like never before. They are creating TV news stories, sequencing the human genome, remixing their favorite music, designing software, finding a cure for disease, editing school texts, inventing new cosmetics, and even building motorcycles.

business, economy book review, wikinomics

People are actually starting to curb their consumption habits.  Whew!  It looks like, for now, $4 is a magic number.  People are driving less and automakers are taking notice.

Oil Isn’t Cheap Anymore
By Kevin Bullis, Technology Review, July 10, 2008

It’s about time!  Last week I heard an interesting advertisement for a local automobile dealership.  The sales promotion gimmick is that when you purchase a new car you’ll also be given a brand new scooter that gets 100 miles per gallon fuel efficiency.  Wow!

What we need is to continue on this path.  The federal government, as I’ve said before, needs to implement policies that will insure gas prices will continue to increase.  It’s like getting a shot; it stings for a little bit but then you start feeling so much better.

Poking new holes in the ground, as many would like for us to do, will only prolonge the inevitable.  The time to sacrifice and invest is now.

economy, politics environment, green, oil