ADD America
Are we that sure the first A in ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) doesn't also stand for America (American Distraction Disease?). We have created a political and economic colossus that has the attention span of a flea. Specifically we have created an environment where:
1) Thanks to the public stock market, corporations can't do things that make sense for a long term strategic horizon, because the investors, who only care about this quarter's numbers, have interests opposed to those of the company, which should be seeking to be successful over a much longer period
2) Thanks to two and four year election cycles, elected officials have no interest in solving any problems that can't show definitive results within their known term of office.
The biggest problems in industry have to do with innovation and the well documented innovators dilemma; that incumbents are almost guaranteed to be killed by the next big thing, even when they see it coming. This is because these companies are forced to obey the public market's obsession with 90 day performance. Even if a company in an innovation industry (is there another kind?) is smart enough to recognize that they must cannibalize their own sales to introduce the next big thing, after their IPO this is not an option. Some "rock star" hedge fund idiot will "protect" this short term performance by buying majority control and replacing any member of the management team with the nerve to do what's right for long term survival.
Even worse, the biggest problems on the planet extend way beyond the survival of high flying corporations. What's at stake is the survival of nations, the human species and possibly the planet. Education, energy, food supply, health care, climate change, and the like are not problems that can be solved in a two or four year term. As a result they are not problems that make sense to spend political capital and opportunity cost on according the the arithmetic of western politics.
As a nation, America is ruled by wall street and the politicians that successful corporations are allowed to buy through our fabulous system of lobbyists and elections decided by advertising spend. With our current cultural priority, making lots of money is admirable - don't bore me with the details - the best and brightest are increasingly applying their talents to creating companies with massive paper worth and zero redeeming qualities or substantive contribution to humanity. Do we need to advance the state of the art for allowing the self absorbed to broadcast their "status" more effectively? These new tools help politicians pour all of their energy into trendy distractions (which Twitter is kind enough to prioritize and quantify - "trending now") while the planet becomes hotter, flatter and more crowded (Thanks Mr. Friedman, for attempting a wake-up call). Although it is obvious to anyone who was able to comprehend high school science and has paid attention in recent decades that a NASA-like initiative to solve climate change, create alternative fuel sources or increase agricultural output would rapidly lead to game changing new inventions, there is zero chance that politicians will execute this. They are owned by special interests such as dirty energy and corporate food production and will be thrown out of office long before they can use the success that would result from long term investments to get re-elected. When I was in school, being too stupid to understand high school science made you one of the cool kids. Today it makes you a danger to the human species, as evidenced by the climate change denier movement. I suspect the ring leaders are actually smart enough to understand the science, but have sold out our species for their own short term comfort. This makes it really scary that we need to compete globally in a world that includes a massive centrally planned economy driven by leaders who understood high school science (No climate deniers in the Chinese politburo) and have the ability to sponsor long term, strategic initiatives to allow their nation to dominate the world.
I wish I knew how to be the agent for change that would allow American's to stop thinking about the next payment on their McMansion and fix our political and economic systems. We may or may not have the best system of government in the world (the bar is set pretty low by others), but that doesn't mean it works worth a damn. The weasels have had 200 years to find the loopholes and hijack the system and they have done so. I would be happy to be part of a generation of realists who are willing to make some short term sacrifices and have fewer useless possessions in order to save humanity. I just can't seem to find where the line is forming to join that movement. The fact that Dick Cheney is pontificating on election strategy while still being enriched by the oil companies he served as an elected official, instead of serving hard time as a war criminal, is all the proof I need that the folks running our democracy love money more than they love America. At lease Dubya had the decency to withdraw from the public eye after the experiment of having an anti-intellectual (i.e. stupid guy) for president (TWICE!!!!) failed. Please don't "mis-underestimate" me, I'm still out there working hard to "put food on my family".
Until we can cure the institutional ADD built into our system and work over the long term on hard problems, we are caught up in the process of slipping into the abyss.
1) Thanks to the public stock market, corporations can't do things that make sense for a long term strategic horizon, because the investors, who only care about this quarter's numbers, have interests opposed to those of the company, which should be seeking to be successful over a much longer period
2) Thanks to two and four year election cycles, elected officials have no interest in solving any problems that can't show definitive results within their known term of office.
The biggest problems in industry have to do with innovation and the well documented innovators dilemma; that incumbents are almost guaranteed to be killed by the next big thing, even when they see it coming. This is because these companies are forced to obey the public market's obsession with 90 day performance. Even if a company in an innovation industry (is there another kind?) is smart enough to recognize that they must cannibalize their own sales to introduce the next big thing, after their IPO this is not an option. Some "rock star" hedge fund idiot will "protect" this short term performance by buying majority control and replacing any member of the management team with the nerve to do what's right for long term survival.
Even worse, the biggest problems on the planet extend way beyond the survival of high flying corporations. What's at stake is the survival of nations, the human species and possibly the planet. Education, energy, food supply, health care, climate change, and the like are not problems that can be solved in a two or four year term. As a result they are not problems that make sense to spend political capital and opportunity cost on according the the arithmetic of western politics.
As a nation, America is ruled by wall street and the politicians that successful corporations are allowed to buy through our fabulous system of lobbyists and elections decided by advertising spend. With our current cultural priority, making lots of money is admirable - don't bore me with the details - the best and brightest are increasingly applying their talents to creating companies with massive paper worth and zero redeeming qualities or substantive contribution to humanity. Do we need to advance the state of the art for allowing the self absorbed to broadcast their "status" more effectively? These new tools help politicians pour all of their energy into trendy distractions (which Twitter is kind enough to prioritize and quantify - "trending now") while the planet becomes hotter, flatter and more crowded (Thanks Mr. Friedman, for attempting a wake-up call). Although it is obvious to anyone who was able to comprehend high school science and has paid attention in recent decades that a NASA-like initiative to solve climate change, create alternative fuel sources or increase agricultural output would rapidly lead to game changing new inventions, there is zero chance that politicians will execute this. They are owned by special interests such as dirty energy and corporate food production and will be thrown out of office long before they can use the success that would result from long term investments to get re-elected. When I was in school, being too stupid to understand high school science made you one of the cool kids. Today it makes you a danger to the human species, as evidenced by the climate change denier movement. I suspect the ring leaders are actually smart enough to understand the science, but have sold out our species for their own short term comfort. This makes it really scary that we need to compete globally in a world that includes a massive centrally planned economy driven by leaders who understood high school science (No climate deniers in the Chinese politburo) and have the ability to sponsor long term, strategic initiatives to allow their nation to dominate the world.
I wish I knew how to be the agent for change that would allow American's to stop thinking about the next payment on their McMansion and fix our political and economic systems. We may or may not have the best system of government in the world (the bar is set pretty low by others), but that doesn't mean it works worth a damn. The weasels have had 200 years to find the loopholes and hijack the system and they have done so. I would be happy to be part of a generation of realists who are willing to make some short term sacrifices and have fewer useless possessions in order to save humanity. I just can't seem to find where the line is forming to join that movement. The fact that Dick Cheney is pontificating on election strategy while still being enriched by the oil companies he served as an elected official, instead of serving hard time as a war criminal, is all the proof I need that the folks running our democracy love money more than they love America. At lease Dubya had the decency to withdraw from the public eye after the experiment of having an anti-intellectual (i.e. stupid guy) for president (TWICE!!!!) failed. Please don't "mis-underestimate" me, I'm still out there working hard to "put food on my family".
Until we can cure the institutional ADD built into our system and work over the long term on hard problems, we are caught up in the process of slipping into the abyss.
posted by DRL at 12:11 PM
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