April 25, 2008
FRETTING BY TALKING HEADS ISN'T QUITE THE SAME THING AS FLEXIBILITY:
The Future of American Power (Fareed Zakaria, 4/25/08, Foreign Affairs)
The United States has been and can continue to be the world's most important source of new ideas, big and small, technical and creative, economic and political. (If it were truly innovative, it could generate new ideas to produce new kinds of energy.) But to do that, it has to make some significant changes. The United States has a history of worrying that it is losing its edge. Today's is at least the fourth wave of such concern since World War II. The first was in the late 1950s, a result of the Soviet Union's launching of the Sputnik satellite. The second was in the early 1970s, when high oil prices and slow growth convinced Americans that Western Europe and Saudi Arabia were the powers of the future. The third one arrived in the mid-1980s, when most experts believed that Japan would be the technologically and economically dominant superpower of the future. The concern in each of these cases was well founded, the projections intelligent. But none of the feared scenarios came to pass. The reason is that the U.S. system proved to be flexible, resourceful, and resilient, able to correct its mistakes and shift its attention. A focus on U.S. economic decline ended up preventing it.The problem today is that the U.S. political system seems to have lost its ability to fix its ailments.
You bet, but for our amazing flexibility Communism would have worked, secular Europe and the kingdom of the Sa'uds, and Japan would all be fabulous success stories. The reality is that we did nothing much, they all just had such fundamental structural flaws they were doomed. But at least Japan and Europe rose to affluence before they collapsed. India and China will implode while still rather poor.
MORE (via Bryan Francoeur):
India to crack down on doctors aborting girls (Randeep Ramesh, 4/25/08, The Guardian)
The Indian government yesterday signalled that it would be imposing tougher sentences on doctors who illegally abort female foetuses - a tacit admission that the law was not working.Posted by Orrin Judd at April 25, 2008 3:26 PMExperts estimate India has lost 10 million girls in the past 20 years. Yet in the 14 years since selective abortion was outlawed only two doctors has been convicted of the crime - and officials admit one of those is back in business.
"The concerns well founded, the projections intelligent".
Only to someone in the media or to rabid nativists. When I read (in 1989) that the real estate in Tokyo was worth more than all of California, I chuckled. Just like when the Japanese tycoon bought Pebble Beach - only to lose his shirt within about 4 or 5 years.
And intellectuals have been favoring Europe for a hundred years. You would think they would begin to see a trend - after all, isn't that what intellectuals do?
And the problem that the US can't fix its political ailments? That is laughable. While entitlements pose a real risk going forward, what other "ailments" is he talking about? On social issues, America is way ahead of the rest of the world. America is exceptional, but no intellectual wants to admit it.
Posted by: jim hamlen at April 25, 2008 5:15 PM