January 30, 2006
GOD, SMITH, SIMON, MOORE, & WRISTON VS. MALTHUS, EHRLICH & GALBRAITH:
Predicting the Future: Part II (Rich Karlgaard, 02.13.06 , Forbes)
This column's chief goal is to supply you with a worldview--a mental operating system--that will be as good 30 years from now as it is today. If this column causes you to see opportunity beyond the defeatist smog, then I'll have done my job.Three eternal truths sit at the core of our mental operating system. The first: Natural resources will never run out. Etch this into your brain--man discovers or creates resources faster than he uses them up. Whale blubber started to run out in the early 1800s. The Paul Ehrlichs of the time were in a panic. Then in 1859 Edwin Drake drilled the world's first oil well in Titusville, Pa.
The second eternal truth: Success is not a zero-sum game, though most academic economists, pundits and politicians act as if it were--maybe because they vie for glory in zero-sum professions. (There can be only 1 U.S. President and 50 senators, for example.) The third eternal truth: The Golden Rule is more than a spiritual truth, it is a business truth. You get ahead in business by serving others. Sure, you can try to cheat or cut corners--and you may succeed. But the odds overwhelmingly favor the company that serves its customers with great products and services at a fair price. This is even truer today, in the age of Internet price transparency and activist consumers.
Beyond these eternal truths are modern truths. Moore's Law is one. We know that digital technology progression occurs at a predictable rate: Chips double in performance every 18 months; storage every 12 months; bandwidth every 9 months--or close enough, anyway. I know a billionaire venture capitalist who says his secret of success has been simply "to project Moore's Law into the future and to imagine what new products and services it would bring." Moore's Law has been a billion-dollar idea to this investor.
Another modern law was best described by banking legend Walter Wriston, a great thinker who died a year ago. Let's call it Wriston's Law of Capital. In the age of electronic money transfers, said Wriston, "Capital will always go where it's welcome and stay where it's well treated."
Yet folks still can't figure out why there's suych demand for our debt. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 30, 2006 4:06 PM
"Capital will always go where it's welcome and stay where it's well treated."
And it will leave Blue States where it's not.
"There can be only 1 U.S. President and 50 senators".
Uh, aren't there 100 senators?
Posted by: Ed Driscoll at January 30, 2006 6:05 PMOJ,
There is also a high demand for gold. (and climbing)
It isn't that I don't agree with Karlgaard's optimism, it's just that there is much to be pessimistic about as well.
You argue that there is deflation. I agree. But there is inflation as well. You can't print money ad absurdum and not be "inflating."
If the demand for our debt drops, we are in a bit of a pickle.
..on the flipside...the upside is that we got cheap goods, cell phones, flat screens, and steel, and they got worthless paper. At some level, we are the unscrewable pooch.
Posted by: Bruno at January 30, 2006 6:14 PMBruno:
Yes, Indians are getting rich and they've a gold fetish.
Posted by: oj at January 30, 2006 7:52 PM"This column's chief goal is to supply you with a worldview--a mental operating system--that will be as good 30 years from now as it is today."
And there I thought that was the job of a liberal education.
P.S. they have already hit the wall on Moore's Law.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at January 30, 2006 10:11 PM