California Expert Software

Introduction
This week Goldman Sachs released a report about the future of the global economy: What they say is remarkable and startling. Here is the abstract:

"Over the next 50 years, Brazil, Russia, India and China-the BRICs economies-could become a much larger force in the world economy. We map out GDP growth, income per capita and currency movements in the BRICs economies until 2050.

The results are startling. If things go right, in less than 40 years, the BRICs economies together could be larger than the G6 in US dollar terms. By 2025 they could account for over half the size of the G6. Of the current G6, only the US and Japan may be among the six largest economies in US dollar terms in 2050."

http://www.goldmansachs.com/insight/research/reports/report6.html

Being egocentric, I read the report with great interest because it supports what I've thought all along. The United States is on the way to becoming #2 or less, while China and India are the world's future.

This sort of change doesn't happen overnight, and there is nothing - absolutely nothing - that forces it to be so. What happens is the cumulative result of trillions of interactions among the human players: what time you get up, what the other guy does after work, who plows the field in Tibet, & c. We Americans can change our destiny; all we have to do is change our lives.

That's simple enough isn't it?

Little Things

How will this diminution of America come about? Is this really possible?

Think about the SUV you or someone you know bought. It probably gets less than 12 miles/gallon of gas. Due to a quirk in Federal and State law, SUVs don't have to meet the stricter environmental regulations that apply to regular cars. So, about one-third of all the oil we use passes through a tail pipe. If we rid ourselves of vehicles like SUVs, there is an immediate saving of 10% of all the oil we use. We wouldn't have to import oil from the Arab states.

Meanwhile, California voters - usually strong environmentalists - selected Arnold Schwarzenegger in the recent coup d'etat; a muscle man who prefers Hummers.

The California legislature has global climate change on its agenda. Despite immense conservative propaganda to the contrary, and a Presidential decision to remove the science from an EPA report, the National Academy of Science concluded that human activity is almost certainly responsible for global climate change (or "global warming"). California's Governor-elect declares himself an environmentalist, but acts otherwise in his personal life. What will California do about global climate change?

Environmentalists are strongly opposed to nuclear power, and most Americans are suspicious of it. The coal and oil industries have the ear of the Bush Administration, and spend millions advertising their virtues every week. So, we have new regulations that don't require old plants to upgrade their anti-pollution equipment when they upgrade their furnaces and other equipment that make pollution. The coal industry ads, particularly, emphasize how efficient their plants are in producing 15% of US electricity, while ignoring the toxic consequences.

Meanwhile, nuclear plants continue to pump out 20% of all US electricity. They do not create any greenhouse gases, and they don't produce CFCs. They do release heat into the environment, and create high-level radioactive waste. It is worth noting that the total volume of radioactive waste produced in 20 years is less than the toxic ash and gases released by a single coal plant in one year. But, people are convinced nuclear electric plants are just atom bombs in disguise.

Think about all those things you and me are buying at Wal*Mart, or K-Mart, Target, or somewhere else. Take a look under the hood of your late model car, or inside your computer, VCR or anything else. What you're looking for is the "Made in ?" label. You know - we all know - what the "?" in most of those labels is: China, Thailand, Malaysia, Mexico, etc. You want it cheap, and you're getting it.

The reason for all that cheap stuff is that most of the people making it get little or nothing. While things are improving, oh so slowly, overseas, the fact is the Asians and Latin Americans don't get union-scale benefits or, for most, any benefits. Oliver Twist is reborn by the millions in those 'far away places with the strange sounding names.'

Meanwhile, those foreigners cannot afford to buy expensive American products. Thus, we have an increasing trade deficit. In the past, the trade deficit was financed by foreign purchases of stocks and Treasury bonds. Lately, investing in the United States has been less popular; i.e., foreigners are sometimes demanding their money instead of leaving it "on account." If foreign investments are sold en masse, the effect will be to force up interest rates, depress the stock market, and increase the Federal deficit dramatically. A stop-gap measure is devaluing the dollar, which has been the controversy of the last year or so. Devaluing your currency means you are putting your product on sale; i.e., you are willing to take a pay or profit cut. Now, whose hide will that come out of?

Last week, the New York Times ran a story about the Japanese economy being bogged down by increasing numbers of elderly retirees. While this is not unexpected, many economists won't apply a similar analysis to the United States. We all know the Baby Boomers will start retiring in numbers in about 7 years; what does that imply?

The course of history is probably not determined by Great Men, not Achilles, Augustus Caesar, Napoleon or FDR. The farther away we get from old times, we more we can "explain" what happened by factors other than human intervention. Thus, it appears history's Heroes were just the right people in the right place in the right time.

There is no known force or Book of Predestination that guides history. History is something we discover or invent; it exists only in our minds. While we can make predictions and speculate about the future, generally history is only a suggestive guide to what might happen. We don't have a rule book that says what will happen.

It's just that the all too human desire to have everything, to be served by others, to grow old peacefully and die in one's own bed make it all come true.

All that is predicted could be otherwise. All you have to do is change your life.

Big Things

Now, here's a compendium of circumstances that I think need to be changed, in order to change the outcome. Maybe I'm wrong, and there's some other list. One thing is certain, if things go the way they have been going, the future is likely to be what Goldman Sachs' soothsayers suggest.

Global climate change is mostly the result of human activities. We have to stop the increase of greenhouse gases before the change becomes irreversible. (Note that we cannot even predict what the change will be, because of the instability of the climate system.) Global climate change is most directly related to burning carbon-based fuels. It doesn't matter whether the fuel is coal, oil, natural gas or wood; all of these combust with oxygen to produce carbon oxides and other gases that promote climate change. Therefore, the most likely way to avoid climate change is reduce and eliminate using carbon-based fuels. This means developing large scale wind, solar and nuclear power sources.

Environmentalists need to change their thinking, and accept the physical and chemical facts of life on this planet. Renewable sources won't suffice for a modern lifestyle. There just isn't enough wood on Earth to meet everyone's needs; that is, if you include the Chinese and Indians. American environmentalism implies a curious assumption about the continued, permanent poverty of most of Earth's people. The real problem is how to raise everyone's standard of living, while not destroying the resource base. This means developing very efficient, clean energy sources, and getting our food and fiber from new kinds of plants and animals.

People want to live to a good, old age with the fewest possible problems. This is why the demand for medical care just keeps increasing. The US medical care system meets the needs of some people - the rich and wealthy - but not everyone. The nationalized medical systems of other countries - developed and developing - take care of a larger proportion of the population with very good results, but don't spend vast sums to develop new medicine and drugs. This allows much lower costs. What needs to be done is extend fully socialized (nationalized) medical care to all populations, at the lower cost that does not include very costly R&D and specialized procedures (e.g., plastic surgery). Almost everyone can get by with a KIA; very few need a LEXUS. There are two remaining problems: (1) how to allocate care in the last 6 months of life [50% of all US medical expenses] and (2) how to internationalize the costs of R&D. If we can solve the problem of terminal triage [how do we know it is the last 6 months?], and rationally spread the costs of medical research, we will have gone very far toward solving the costly, growing medical care problem.

Alas, solving one problem only creates another. When people are leading longer, healthier lives, there will be an increased need for food, clothing, shelter, education and medical care than otherwise. Of course, we could choose to create a "Logan's Run" society, just sending people on "Carnival" when their time is up. But, I don't know of any society that is going to do that; the Nazis were the last to envision such a solution. The alternative is that all nations will have to be far more careful in using resources. Population control will eventually be necessary everywhere to limit and balance the population structure. If Earth's human population keeps on increasing, there will be a catastrophe sooner or later. This means birth control by genetic selection will be used sooner or later, however repugnant that may be.

The increased median age of the population requires the nature of work to change. More and more of the muscle work will have to be done by machines. More and more of society's consumables will have to be produced by robots. The main thing that has changed about work since ancient times is now machines are the slaves. No one can lead a "human life," in its modern conception, without widely available, inexpensive goods and services, mostly standardized, and mostly made by robots. The most unfortunate thing about the "race to the bottom" is that Asian workers are competing against robots for jobs; a competition humans are unlikely to win.

Another study mentioned in last week's Wall St Journal reports the amazing result that manufacturing employment is declining everywhere, even in India and China (as a fraction of total employment), not just in the United States and Europe (where it is declining absolutely). This reflects not only the export of increasingly low paid jobs (the 'race to the bottom'), but also the increasing automation of grunt work ("productivity") everywhere - even in developing countries.

But this is exactly what is required to allow aging societies to survive. The old and infirm require servants, and what better ones than cheap, thoughtless, faithful machines?

Workplace rules must eventually change everywhere. The French have shown the correct solution: a reduced work week (even if there are problems, and conservatives are still extremely unhappy about it). Increased productivity and lower costs require the use of ever-diminishing amounts of human labor. The demanded "living wage", and the huge number of people, simply force things to be arranged so that everyone makes a fantastic wage or salary for whatever effort they make. The primary reason for full employment is that most people go "stir crazy" when they don't have something to do, and don't have a place in society. Aristotle was right: "Man is a social animal," and, in the end, that is one of most important facts about our species. Assigning work fulfills social needs; sooner or later, that will be more important than economics. For the elite ruling (managerial) classes, that has been so for thousands of years. What happens when every man is a king, and each woman a queen?

Following Clark Kerr's philosophy of the Multiversity, our educational system has become more and more goal-oriented, less "cultural." Thus, our grammar schools are busy teaching "social adjustment," while our junior and high schools are preparing children for a job or college. The ones who go to college and graduate school get prepared for a supposedly more technical job than the others. What we do less and less of, is teach children how to be students, thinking people, Renaissance people. Thus, English majors are ignorant of modern science, while scientists and engineers are unacquainted with the "civilizing" nature of, say, Shakespeare. This creates a supposedly educated population which is incapable of ruling itself, of making sensible decisions. Almost everyone lacks the comprehensive information to have a "general view" of the world, or a problem. This leads either to bureaucratic, technocratic solutions of problems, or to elite, authoritarian direction. Either way, democracy is destroyed; human society becomes a glorified imitation of the ants and bees. We need to slow down just a bit, and inculcate classical "education" in our children; i.e., the education of independent thought and analysis, reflection and holding of "human" values. Our goal should be generations of "Renaissance People," not just technicians and bureaucrats. I emphasize this goal, as it is both critical in solving all the other problems.

International relations must improve, and the use of military force decline. Little by little, the peoples of the world are being more and more linked together. In the end, there will be just one world, one government, or nothing at all. If we cannot resolve our conflicts, sooner or later someone will let loose the Doomsday Machine (as in "Dr Strangelove"). Given modern technology, there really is very little middle ground. The recent proliferation of nuclear weapons to India, Pakistan and North Korea demonstrates that, sooner or later, everyone will have the power to destroy everyone else. It doesn't take a spy or traitor to spread the knowledge and the power; high school students can figure out this problem. (I calculated the essential numbers from library books when I was 13.) So, all countries must come to see themselves as part of ONE WORLD, not individual, autonomous players. This means the foundation of modern, Western, international relations, the Treaty of Westphalia, must be generalized and superceded by new principles and an improved theory. We must abandon von Clausewitz and other theorists of the State - including recent Republicans, such as Henry Kissinger, and neo-conservatives, such as Paul Wolfowitz - who view war as an extension of foreign policy "by other means." The reason neo-conservatives hate MAD (mutually assured destruction) is it excludes "by other means." But, I think MAD just shows the peoples of the world got irrevocably married after World War II "until death do us part."

In this "new world order," in which multi-lateral relations are the sine qua non of any relations, what happens in the internal affairs of States is now visible. The assumption of Westphalia in 1648 was that foreign policy need only concern itself with the "real" acts of States, not how those acts were contemplated and realized. Thus, the popular school of realpolitik, which doesn't work anymore. It stopped working at Versailles, when Germany was blamed and penalized for World War I. The Triple Alliance - especially Clemenceau - threw away the time honored idea in its desire for revenge against the Triple Entente. Only Wilson's League of Nations saved international relations, diplomacy, from crumbling altogether. Then, Versailles led to World War II, partly because the League was ineffective in imposing its will, but more because leaders of the time did not fully realize the implications of what they had done. In the multi-lateral world, States must give up some sovereignty in the interest of more peaceable and profitable arrangements. Thus, NAFTA, the WTO and the International Criminal Court. The alternative is the retrogression of the Bush Administration: pre-emptive, unilateral action. But, as we are all seeing, a little bit at a time, that doesn't work anymore.

I could extend this list of Big Things To-Do. Suffice it to say these are exemplary. Note that neither conventional Democrats nor Republicans accept the full implications of everything on my list. They won't "get it," until they change their thinking entirely.

Obnoxious Specs

So, let me, as usual. offend everyone, by being quite specific about things Americans need to do to avoid the fate predicted by Goldman Sachs.

First off, you have to get rid of George W Bush and all his minions. No favorites here, you have to get rid of Toms Delay and Daschle and their henchmen as well. And, there's the Clintons and all the other machine politicians who dominate our lives and times. You have to replace the Establishment entirely - incumbents all - with people who just see things differently. This would be the biggest political revolution since FDR and the New Deal, or Abraham Lincoln before that.

Then, you need to dump the ultra-capitalists, robber barons and plutocrats. Teddy Roosevelt was the last one to do this. We just need to have a thorough housecleaning every so often.

The hardest task is, at the same time, to eschew Imperialists like Teddy Roosevelt and most politicians and diplomats since Word War II. Cleverly disguised, the United States is still another Empire, which was why we spent so much energy fighting the USSR. Empires cannot live with each other, because each Empire believes in its own "manifest destiny." Somebody must be master; someone else slave. The US government must stop thinking in Imperialist terms.

If the United States was not an Imperialist State, it would have been realized some years ago that we don't need so many soldiers in Europe or Japan. Henry Kissinger made an interesting comment in an interview a few weeks ago; something like: 'the United States has never withdrawn its troops from a country in which it fought a war.' That is exactly right, and always the way with Empires; to withdraw is to collapse.

Nonetheless, it is time to re-evaluate our worldly interests. We need to decide who we can trust, and who will voluntarily co-operate with us. We need to recognize that Europe is probably headed toward independence, even if England remains "America's Poodle." We need to make sure Japan remains our ally, to counterbalance China in Asia. In that goal, we are on the defensive; there will be no 'containing' China. The recent harassment of President Bush in the Australian Parliament, followed the next day by the three day toasting of China's Premier Hu Jintao demonstrates where we stand.

Anyway, after you've changed our Executive leadership and most of the Congress, and changed our foreign policy, then you can get down to business. There's things to do:

Reconfiguring the military as a non-Imperialist defense force; a task equal to cleaning the Augean stables.

Restructuring the Social Security Act - that includes unemployment, welfare and many other benefits, not just retirement payments. The idea is to make people more secure in their jobs and lifetime income, by providing for lifelong education, job training and other benefits. In this respect, America should look more like Europe, not less. We should figure out how to streamline all these services, which is best done by having a new and different concept of the interaction of service agencies and the people they serve.

Establishing a National Health Service, and eliminating most private insurance. This will be much easier than restructuring the pharmaceutical industry, and the billions we spend every year on NIH (National Institutes of Health) and similar agencies. We need to find a better private-public mix of medical research, and some way to involve other countries in the process. If this can be done, the change would be every bit as revolutionary as Pasteur's discoveries.

Redefining the terms and conditions of employment, including wages, hours, etc. This will require limiting what corporate managers are paid, and change the relationship between workers and management in most large businesses. This will be as revolutionary as the changes after 1935 in employer-employee (union) relationships.

Changing the accepted relationships between men, women, the races and ethnic groups. It would be nice if, once and for all, sexism, racism, nativism and a lot of other prejudices were removed from American life.

Rethinking how the economy works, and especially the relationship between the Federal and State governments and private business. This involves restating the right of the government to regulate private interests. Federal debt, monetary policy, taxation, Federal Reserve policies, and many other things need to be reconsidered. I don't think Chairman Greenspan, for example, has done a good a job as his reputation claims.

All these things are a tall order, tasks worthy of the great heroes such as Hercules, Achilles and Odysseus. Just electing another President won't by itself change the outcome. Electing a government willing to change things radically might do it, but, even then, the result in fifty years is not guaranteed.

All of this should keep people busy for a long time. Consider it job security.

Road Not Taken

The problem is not as simple as one road or another, although Robert Frost suggests the pathos of a life changed by a step.

The road we're on, if the Goldman Sachs people are right, is going to be pretty tough on Americans. Jobs will continue to disappear, and we'll have a tough time paying for the sick, the old and the unemployed. The only salvation is inventing something that we don't even know what it is.

It doesn't have to be this way. It is possible to change one's life, and maybe the life of a friend or neighbor. If this happens, maybe everything - the life of a nation - will change.

One final hardship: thinking it or intending it is not good enough. 'I am a good person' does not earn a passing grade. You have to go through the wrenching changes, the disruption, the pain of actually doing it.

So, what will it be?

The Path Taken