You can decide for yourself if the book would be a waste of time. Here is what on respected reviewer said:
“Clyde Prestowitz gets it: America faces a changed world of great opportunity and great change. This book is a wake-up call for everyone who thinks we can cruise into the future without making major policy changes to sustain our competiveness.”
Craig Barrett, CEO, Intel
You did not address my central point, which is that China’s economy is expected to maintain its recent high rate of growth well into the foreseeable future. There are undoubtedly cultural problems, as well as infrastructure problems, but that has not stopped them from hyper-growth up to this point and isn’t likely to do so into the future. Perhaps the board members of Cysco, Intel and other hi-tech giants are totally wrong and China’s recent surge is merely temporary. However, I sure would not put my money on that.
You seem to believe that we don’t need to worry about economic competition and competing in the global marketplace because we have more nukes than anyone else. I don’t follow that line of reasoning. Are you saying that we can solve any economic challenges we may have by initiating a shooting war?
I completely agree with the Intel CEO and that is why we need to amend the Constitution and enact the FairTax for starters. But I do not need to read a book to find out that someone ‘gets it’.
As for the point about China, I had mentioned that China is dependent for the foreseeable future on the US and the West for its market stability. They are DEPENDENT. They do not have the cultural or governmental wherewithal to advance their economic progress without the dependency they have already been allowed to manifest.
Therefore, their economy is in recession despite reports to the contrary. I have first-hand information that factories and entire industries are collapsing in China. Expectations to the contrary are spotty at best, likely focused on a few companies in a few manufacturing sectors. Their numbers are every bit as suspect if not more than ours are.
The only thing going for China is Hong Kong. An international lawyer friend of mine who sets up trade contracts and oversees related transactions tells me that there is a still a huge disconnect between Hong Kong and the rest of China, even more so than existed between West and East Germany due to the cultural divide. Hong Kong operates under the British model of the rule of law. The rest of China with exceptions to certain traders in Shanghai are really in the dark. It will take generations at least coupled with fortuitous events to bring China into its own, not dependent on other markets and yet capable of driving technology AND MARKET ADVANCEMENT.
Even though technology is attractive, it takes more than technology to make an advanced society. For example, my former wife’s father died in a hospital in Lithuania. He was a cancer patient but he did not die of cancer. He died of a brain abcess. While he was alive her brother had assured her that the Onco ward where he was admitted had ‘all the latest technology’ and that the Oncologist was ‘very knowledgeable’. The cancer was removed successfully but his immune system was not attended to. He died as a result. The cancer surgeon had no liability and no concern, he had performed his function.
In general, the system around the world outside of the US and the West, is mainly a system of individuals who do not work in concert with one another. And there is no legal liability or rule of law that compels such individuals to work as a team.
An analogy is that China can build a basketball court, put up the latest and best equipment, the best arena and graphics, etc., choose the tallest and most talented players they can find, but if each player does not work with the others, they lose.
So there is in general an interaction effect that is lost on societies without a rule of law and a competitive underpinning. China has facades of both without a real foundation.
Another example deals with practicality and usefulness. In Japan, as it was recently aired on a PBS special, the Japanese health system has lots of razzle-dazzle techonology. A liberal acquaintance of mine pointed out to me about the one example of Japan’s Fast MRI scans and their comparatively low cost. Why didn’t the USA have these? was his question. Little did my liberal acquaintance know that many years back I was involved in the design of Fast MRI scanning at the University under a GE funded research grant. Our team actually designed, tested and tuned the statistical algorithm that used only one-tenth of the data normally generated by a full body scan in the tank for one hour. In other words we could produce a comparable MRI image in six minutes rather than sixty. And the ramification was that MRI would be dollarwise competitive with plain film XRAY. We had thought we had achieved a real tech breakthrough and had relegated XRAY to the past.
Well, that’s where American standards for practicality stepped in and squashed our giddiness. Every medical device or new medical treatment has to have a HCFA code. And HCFA required us to show that the new tech would be effective in practice.
So we designed a statistical study using radiologists and a group of patients with lower back pain. We split the patient groups into those receiving standard XRAY and those receiving new Fast MRI scans.
Long story short, the physicians reviewing the Fast MRI group wrote orders of magnitude more scripts than the control group. And they did so because they ‘saw’ more information and more problems, potential or otherwise. They had to write scripts for any problems seen because of their malpractice liability, their defensive practice of medicine.
And, the result of the increased number of scripts, meaning more surgeries, more pain medication, more precise injections, etc. did not increase the well-being of that patient group.
What had happened is that the physicians had attempted to make perfect what is not perfect and never will be perfect. We all have ‘problems’ internally that are not solvable because we see them better. In fact the old XRAY tech was ‘sufficient’ to catch problems that were degenerative and posed a progression that would become debilitating or life threatening.
But a PBS reporter can wander over to Japan and see better technology. But it doesn’t make a hill of beans to improving health.
That PBS reporter was clueless as to practicality and usefulness.
And I think some of what you read falls in the same category.
As far as your impression of me not caring to be competitive yada yada, of course I am concerned. that’s why I spend hours on these FairTax threads to try and keep the information clean.
As for my reference to our military superiority, I tied that attribute to the fact that no one will take away our aces. That we will always be a fortress of security, ergo our markets will be top tiered and preferred.
Security stands at the perimeter of free market stability and activity. To destroy our markets requires destroying our security. To destroy it from within requires overthrowing our Constitution in toto. It’s not to say there won’t be attempts or limited successes at pieces of it, but it will be very difficult in toto. It would be easier for the Island population of Pitcairn to launch a successful manned mission to Mars and back, than it would be to overthrow the US Constitution in toto.
Unless of course we do nothing. Leave it to the Ayn Rand readers to discuss that.