That Used to be Us

I am loving this book.  Last night I was reading it, and I began marking pages with great quotes or ideas.  I found myself literally marking every page.

That's when I know I've found a great book.  I'm toying with the idea of using it in my College Comp II class next year, but some of it is pretty dense.  Maybe we'd be better off just examining a few chapters in it.

Here are some of the basic ideas that I think are important -

The book starts out with a story about when Tom Friedman travels to China for a convention.  The conference took place at the Tianjin Meijiang Convention Center.  Here are some facts and figures on the convention center: "it contained a total floor area of 230,000 square meters and that 'construction of the Meijiang Convention Center started on September 15, 2009, and was completed in May, 2010."

As if that's not impressive enough (building that convention center in 8 months), but Tom notes that just 5 years ago it took a 3.5 hour car ride to get to the city.  But now?  You land  and head to the Beijing South Railway Station - "an ultramodern flying saucer of a building with glass walls and an oval roof covered with 3,246 solar panels" - and you buy a ticket from an automated kiosk.  Then you take the world's fastest bullet train, which covers the 72 miles in just 29 minutes.

Now, Friedman contrasts that with the current infrastructure system in America.  It's not even close.  We have become complacent allowed much of our mass transit systems to go to rot or become clumsy and outdated.  Friedman notes that one escalator in a Washington DC subway was under repair for six months - and still not fixed.

How can the Chinese totally update Tianjin and we can't manage to get one single escalator fixed?

That's a major part of American's problem; we have become complacent with mediocrity or sub-par systems.

And if we don't get our act together, it's going to bite us in the ass.  Big time.

Here is a long quote (from Eric R. in a response to an article Friedman wrote in The New York Times) that I hope to use as a prompt in my class:

"We are nearly complete in our evolution from Lewis and Clark into Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam.  We used to embrace challenges, unsure privation, throttle our fear and strike out into the (unknown) wilderness.  In this mode we rallied to span the continent with railroads, constructed a nation highway system, defeated monstrous dictators, cured polio and landed men on the moon.  Now we text and put on makeup as we drive, spend more on video games than books, forswear exercise, demonize hunting, and are rapidly succumbing to obesity and diabetes.  So much for the pioneering spirit that made us (once) the greatest nation on earth, one that others looked up to and called 'exceptional.'"

Now the authors of the book are not into America bashing - as people are prone to do - they note they are optimists when it comes to America's future.  They just acknowledge that they are a couple of frustrated optimists.

The authors focus on what they call "The Big Four." These are the big issues America will have to deal  with these challenges.

1.  How to adapt to globalization


2.  How to adjust to the information technology revolution


3.  how to cep with the large and soaring budget deficits 


4.  how to manage a world of both rising energy consumption and rising climate threats

Again, the authors state that meeting these challenges is not out of American's ability.  Just look at our past for evidence of that.  But too often we ignore our past (such as people binding together - despite their differences - to achieve a goal).  I think - as do the authors - that this is almost foreign to us today.  If one party passes something (doesn't mater which side it is either), the opposing side doesn't back it - even if it's good for American - instead they just focus on attacking it and repealing it when they inevitably gain power.  This is one reason America is not meeting these challenges the way she should.

As Tom said in a podcast "Political venom is the one thing this country has a total surplus of."  And that's correct.

How can America rise to meet these challenges?  Again, just look at our past.  Here is what America has done to make itself the world power it is.

1.  Educate its citizens up (and beyond) to the current level of technology (whether it's the cotton gin or steam engine or PC).


2.  We had the best infra structure in the world.


3.  We had the best research and development facilities in the world to allow our businesses to thrive


4.  We had an excellent immigration policy (Friedman notes that between 30-40% of the massively successful start ups in Silicone Valley were started by immigrants).  In short, our world class universities and businesses, attracted the best and the brightest.  They cam and stayed and thrived.  As a result, our country thrived as well.  


5.  We had a very successful system of government regulation over businesses.  It wasn't too strict to allow innovation and growth and it wasn't too broad to allow abuse and monopolies and exploitation.  The sub-prime mortgage mess, the authors point out, is but one example of how far we have gotten away from this policy.

In effect, these four elements were the best private/public partnership of money and talent and work ethic in the history of the world.  And it made America the world's greatest power and place to live.

But we have gotten away from those five elements.