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The joys of an agrarian society await us all

Submitted by Prometheus 6 on April 15, 2005 - 4:04am.
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Quote of note:

It's as if we have an industrial-age presidency, catering to a pre-industrial ideological base, in a post-industrial era.

As if??

Bush Disarms, Unilaterally
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: April 15, 2005

...We have a Treasury secretary from the railroad industry. We have an administration that won't lift a finger to prevent the expensing of stock options, which is going to inhibit the ability of U.S. high-tech firms to attract talent - at a time when China encourages its start-ups to grant stock options to young innovators. And we have movie theaters in certain U.S. towns afraid to show science films because they are based on evolution and not creationism.

The Bush team is proposing cutting the Pentagon's budget for basic science and technology research by 20 percent next year - after President Bush and the Republican Congress already slashed the 2005 budget of the National Science Foundation by $100 million.

When the National Innovation Initiative, a bipartisan study by the country's leading technologists and industrialists about how to re-energize U.S. competitiveness, was unveiled last December, it was virtually ignored by the White House. Did you hear about it? Probably not, because the president preferred to focus all attention on privatizing Social Security.

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Did someone say "agrarian soc
Submitted by allaboutgeorge on April 15, 2005 - 8:05pm.

Did someone say "agrarian society"?

OK, I remembered Rafe's all o
Submitted by allaboutgeorge on April 15, 2005 - 8:09pm.

OK, I remembered Rafe's all over that particular link.

We have an administration tha
Submitted by James R MacLean on April 16, 2005 - 3:26am.

We have an administration that won't lift a finger to prevent the expensing of stock options, which is going to inhibit the ability of U.S. high-tech firms to attract talent - at a time when China encourages its start-ups to grant stock options to young innovators.

Look, I'm rabidly foaming at the mouth at both this Administration and this country's lack of an industrial policy, to the point of being a sociopath about it. But they aren't really connected.

And allowing companies to not expense stock options is not good governance (and moreover, it's not terribly effective at stimulating innovation).

Unfortunately, Friedman is a newcomer to this issue, and that's the flaw in his new book The World is Flat. His observations might have been original and fresh in 1980, but that's a quarter century ago. His conclusion is really good--the country could embrace energy independence as a national mission--and I'm glad he's stumping for it, but he really needs to take a hard look at how this country is run.