See, and I thought the Telecom Act of 1996 was just such an example of "big firms acting in concert with government." But you were there, and I wasn't.

I keep going back to this "false dichotomy" - here, we either have "centralized statist planning" or "decentralized entrepreneurialism," which sounds all too much like the tired old debate about market vs. planning.

I think any national response to the challenges posed here will require some planning, whether centralized or decentralized with a generous dose of traditional American individual initiative.

I don't see, for example, how we can wean ourselves off of foreign oil without better public planning of all kinds: land-use, transportation and infrastructure investment, etc, whether at national, state, or local levels. Tax codes will have to be re-designed to encourage "greener" approaches in all of these areas. Is this "statism"? Who cares? It's essential to do the things we need done.

Thus it makes no sense to rehash these old "state v market" debates. We need both. We need to be making the case for open, democratic government under the rule of law at all levels with expanded capability to analyze these problems, and propose and execute solutions (with much more public participation than has usually been the case, I would hope). Alongside, and facilitating individual entrepreneurship. Not in opposition to it.

The world is changing. That causes a new mix of winners and losers. Once the world was an agrarian economy displaced by manufacturing. Manufacturing also destroyed cottage industries across the globe. We live in an age of fear. The Left terrorizes people over the issue of economic change and the Right over
"Islamo-fascism." Both groups seem to have no grasp on the real world and the real threats and the interrelationship between the two sets of fear.

It is true that Asian economies and Sweden, we will see how the new government of Sweden deals with this issue, but how individualistic are those societies, especially in Asia? Japan has just gone through a 15 year recession depression after reliquifying the United States. How and where will these economies get their capital?

Government has to mitigate the pain that those who are not going to benefit from the new global economy. It seems very doubtful that they will really be able to stop it as they will not be able to force people to either innovate nor part with their money for investments.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

I recently heard of a medical report (and I will try to track down the source and link it) that said people who were fired or laid off died much younger on average then people whose job security was never in doubt.

I would be all for deregulation if deregulation actually led to more diversity in the private sector. It doesn't.  All it does is allow the big companies to gain a monoplistic control in the marketplace.  But, Reed, if you are suggesting that we somehow throw open our marketplace to real competition it might help...but the benefits wouldn't even begin to be felt until 10 years out at a minimum.  Ten years out is not how politicos look at policy.  They want to support policies that have real and immeadiate impact.  And on top of that those same politicos who have been lavished with money from corporations are the same people you look to take the competitive advantage away from the corporations...and those companies would say to that "over my dead body".

But getting to health care I don't think the private sector is the way to go.  We need a radical departure from free market "for profit" health care if we want to be economically competitive in the global marketplace.  That means socialized medicine where everybody can have access to medical care with little or no money out of their pocket.  That means taking on insurance companies, trial attorneys, and a whole host of businesses getting rich off of keeping people healthy.  And have health care professionals be worried about only one thing...their hippocratic oath.  A healthy population will be a productive population.

Buzzword Salad

Good Buzzwords used: open markets bolster entrepreneurship at the individual and company level by launching, encouraging and extending the information revolution, with accompanying market boom & bust, job growth and income growth unbundling confronts the potential for creative destruction and its many chaotic, positive consequences would be unbounded open closed markets, create new markets, start more firms, disrupt more of the status quo, explosion of scarcely planned, near chaotic, rightly directed but tactically unguided entrepreneurship in the creation, distribution and consumption.

Bad Buzzwords used: statism, by big firms acting in concert with government, by a so-called national strategy, centralized state-directed taxation or reallocation of benefits or funded programs.

Geez

We will need a little oil on that salad.

Sadly, I also have a gift for being an obnoxious jerk, as Artappraiser will tell you and I'll freely admit. Unfortunately, I think that these qualities are inseparable.

If we have to have creative destruction, the risks should be borne by those who are most capable of withstanding the losses, not by those who are just trying to take care of their families. But the whole point of modern management theory is to displace risks onto someone else, without regard to the identities of the victims.

My old Corporate law professor, quite a character by the way, name of Art Braid. Polio victim got around on crutches, and moved faster than most of us wayward students once shocked me.

"What's the easiest way to generate credit for your business?" he said. "Don't pay your bills."

Could have knocked me over with a feather. It was that blunt and counterintuitive.

But his point was that if you can offload your costs onto someone else, then thats the same as making money. If you can get away with not paying your bills, you're ahead. If you can get someone else to pick up the tab, you're great.

The reality of modern business, of all business, in contrast to Reed's fervent proselytizing is 'risk management' not 'risk taking.'

The reality is that 'risk taking' is basically gambling. The very concept of risk is uncertainty. Neither rewards or losses are guaranteed, both are a possibility. Statistically, everyone loses eventually.

The most successful businesses are the ones that are most effective at managing risks. Complain all you want about crony capitalism or the military industrial complex... but both of those areas of capitalism are effectively risk free. No matter what mistakes you make, how many, or how huge, you can't fail. Risk eliminated.

Corruption, direct or systemic of elected officials eliminates or reduces risk. Monopoly and oligopoly minimizes or reduces risk. Predatory business tactics reduce or minimize risk. It pays off, and it pays off big time.

Of course, risk doesn't ever actually go away. What you are doing is merely shifting around who gets to undertake or underwrite that risk, those potential losses. Usually the government, the consumer, the workers.

Reed imagines that if we can just jigger the system right, then everyone will go out and be risk takers and we'll have some creative, explosive, chaotic utopia where all problems are solved by the endless efforts of all to sell hats to all.

Okay, I'll admit its a genuinely better vision than some darwinian 'war of all against all.' But still, I don't see it as all that realistic or viable.

The reality is that even if Reed jiggered the system correctly, he wouldn't necessarily get more than a burst of risk takers. What invariably happens when a frontier is opened is that a whole bunch flood in, and then half of them lose their shirts immediately. Then a few start to figure out how to game the system or transfer their risks or simply cheat, and they pull ahead. Sometimes, often, there's an element of luck. Then eventually, the big guys start to purge the little guys, as part of risk elimination. And finally, there's just a few big guys left, and they're usually cooperating to ensure stability. Standard oil at the turn of the last century, Wal-Mart and Microsoft at the turn of this century. The players change, but the play remains the same.

It is one thing to theorize at 30,000 feet. It is something else to go through living hell. Not to know the difference strikes me as almost sociopathic.

Not sociopathic. Just human nature. Reed is not a stupid guy. Reed knows Reed very well indeed. Reed knows guys like Reed very well, and they know him. And frankly, if its simply confined to Reed and his circles and his class, that would be fine.

The trouble is that Reed doesn't know you, or your level or your class or conditions. Its a foreign reality to him, its not quite real. And that's kind of dangerous.

But that's not an issue confined to Reed. Elites are notorious for their tunnel vision, where all they talk to is each other and all they know is what they hear from each other. It's the sort of tunnel vision that got people into Vietnam, and that got the Bush administration into Iraq.

Hell, I shouldn't even talk about Reed like I know anything about him or his life experience. I don't.

All I can assess of Reed is his writing, and there's a viewpoint expressed which I find all too often representative of a certain kind of elite tunnel vision. But that's a judgement as to certain things he's written, not the person himself.

And even if that is the sum of Reed right now... a knowledgable fool, a guy who knows a lot about *his* world but nothing about *the* world then that's still not the end of the story for Reed. It is within him, always, to become larger, to become wiser, to see beyond his limits, to come to know a larger world.