China Is Looking toward the Future ─ What Are We Doing? ─ Pretty Much Zip

© 2010 Peter Free

 

26 September 2010

 

Adam Smith’s invisible hand is not manifesting enough American results to match those from China’s highly visible one

 

Thomas L. Friedman, who has been visiting China, observed that the Chinese are engineering the mechanics of a successful economic future.

 

China is doing moon shots. . . . When I say “moon shots” I mean big, multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing investments.

 

China has at least four going now: one is building a network of ultramodern airports; another is building a web of high-speed trains connecting major cities; a third is in bioscience . . . one institute to launch its own stem cell/genetic engineering industry; and . . . Beijing just announced that it was providing $15 billion in seed money for . . . leading auto and battery companies to create an electric car industry, starting in 20 pilot cities.

 

 

© 2010 Thomas L. Friedman, Their Moon Shot and Ours, New York Times (25 September 2010) (paragraph split for online readability)

 

Why we are not keeping up

 

The United States is not keeping up China’s implemented anticipation of the future because:

 

(i) we irrationally continue to believe in Adam Smith’s invisible market hand ─

 

even though “Adam’s Hand” has historically proven itself to require governmental assistance in order to provide seed money, tax breaks, and/or economic incentives for successfully building innovative infrastructure and stay-at-home industries;

 

(ii) we can’t seem to get beyond the idea of a transportation system based on individual automobiles that use copious amounts of imported fuel;

 

(iii) our anti-scientific pseudo-morality derides bio-engineered medical advances;

 

and

 

(iv) we are not motivated enough to agree that raising money to seed new industries requires temporary personal sacrifices.

 

Ultimately, this is a battle between governmental (and perhaps cultural) systems

 

Embarrassingly ─ given America’s historically-displayed innovation and ingenuity ─ we are losing.