The most frightening thing you'll read today 1189

We are now, a highly developed technological society! And with that, state of being, comes responsibilities, opportunities and caveats that our founders could not even dream of, not even in their wildest imaginations or dreams.

What once took platoons of highly send-trained people to do, is now done by mere desktop computers. From managing shipments at our ports, to the vast "bookeeping" enterprises of the insurance, banking, and utility companies. We rely heavily upon our technological prowess and infrastructure to support the high population levels we have achieved.

Then there is the way of the world in it's persuit of "economic stability". "Economic Stability", is a misnomer in a sense, because the word "stability" in it doesn't really mean absolute stability but relative stability. Economies depend for their maintenence, obsolescense being what it is, upon innovation. Innovation is the function that not only builds greater efficiencies into the system, but it also create new products, which in their turn become new resources, new materials for "artists" to use and make newer creations.

For example, it took many years before lenses of high quality became widely available to the mbuttes. Until then each researcher had to learn and develop the skills needed to make their own. This, of course, took time away from the researchers main project and interfered with his-her focus. So progress was significantly speeded up when lenses became commercially available. You can trace this process through the electronics industry, where the widespred and easy availability of various components "off the shelf", made many new experiments possible by a wider variety of people, which resulted in ever more rapid discovery.

Now China enters the fray. There you will see them wrestle with their absolute authoritarian form of gov't while trying to develop their economy. If they continue along this path, you can easily see why they must fail. Their innovation must come in from offshore. Why? Because authoritarian forms of gov't must surpress innovation! And without innovation their gov't must constantly chase after innovative new products or fail.

It is this chase for innovation that builds the leading edge skills needed to make the next leap forward. And innovation cannot be demanded of anyone, it certainly cannot be obtained by coersion or "at the point of a gun". Innovation must be coaxed from the citizentry by encouraging them to engage in experimental processes, even if their many endeavors have no immediate or recognizable commercial applications or value. Authoritarian gov't's simply do not have access to these higher human functions, simply because they cannot even allow any kind of artistry to range free. To sustain the centralized power, they are forced to meddle with everything and impose some sort of opinion everywhere.

In an America where innovation would cease to function, as it would under any authoritarian or theocratic rule, innovation would quickly vanish. Our in-place systems would become obsolete and devalue, and our standard of living would rapidly begin to decline. Without hope of attaining "state of the art" skills, simply because they would be "troublesome" in gov't eyes, and because mere maintence skills would rate much higher and be less risky. We begin a slow process of "dumbing down" our society.

When crtical technological functions fail, there will be few if any, around with well developed cutting edge tech skills. Meaning that much of our tech infrastructure would have to be abandoned. In the course of doing that, our capacity to effciently maintain our large population would decline. There would be many rests as our industries switched back to less effcient, more labor intensive means.

China, for example, will have to either learn to create an atmosphere wherein creativity-innovation can thrive, or be forced to constantly import innovation at a very high cost! "License fee", for innovation would climb to take most of her profits, while leaving her saddled with the most onerous-objectionable-risky tasks of borrowing to re-tool, borrowing to manage marketing campaigns, investing in and maintenence and shipping and handling of inventory and things like that. While those outside her legal boundaries reap large easy profits in the form of licensing fees.

We could become a "China", ourselves with dramatically disasterous results. We didn't become the great nation we did by cutting off debates, by being intolerant of different ideas, or by arresting dissent(ers). The greatest times human history has known was during periods of "free thinking". The worst times, history will show, come during times of strict authoritarian rule.

That said, we'd better all get on our "P's & Q's", really soon and stop pandering to these jingoistic idiocies, "1984'isms" as it were, and get back to basics of good commonsense, logic and reasoning really fast. Most of the population relies heavily on "men of letters", knowing these kinds of things, and therefore, honestly staying on the course in persuit of truth. When these "men of letters", abandon the quest, for whatever reasons, we're all at risk. Because the mbuttes don't, as a rule, learn that bad-wrong decisions have been made-persued, until it's way too late to do much about anything in any rational or civil way. And we all know what that euphimism means.

Obwon