My plan to spend 15 minutes at lunch at work blogging didn’t materialize. But perhaps before I go to bed tonight in anticipation of getting up at 5am to do an update to our company’s web site…
This blog started around issues of “creative class,” motivated in large part by the Richard Florida book. But as I read more, I realize my interest in economic development is much more global and comes from a perspective of social problem solving. There is only so much interest one can sustain in how rich, privileged Americans are choosing to live an IKEA lifestyle in hip and trendy cities.
I have not lost interest in that topic–and I don’t mean to insult, by trivializing, the issues of creative class, in comparison to such “big” issues like world hunger, poverty, and ethnic conflict. But I believe in order for us to effectively interact with a world economy, we need to understand the raw forces at work in the emerging economies of the world.
Competitiveness is not just about “us” being better than “them.” In the truly long run picture of things, the rise of India and China has a certain inevitability to it–either those economies will grow to surpass our own, out of the sheer necessity of population numbers, or their failure to do so will create an international crisis that will affect us in some other way. I don’t believe the answer to securing our future is to simply focus inward. We need to anticipate how to work with these growing economies. We have so many advantages–our challenge and our responsibility is to help steer the future. If we turn away and try to stay on top, I think in the long run, we lose.
Our current foreign and domestic policy could not be more antithetical to this. Forget about Iraq even…forget about all the left-wing and right wing conspiracy theories. If you strip away the wedge issues, you are left with a core set of Republican, neo-conservatives beliefs that shape an American view of the world that is not helpful to maintaining our influence and ultimately our power in this world.
I want to explore that direction, in the limited time I have each day and night, by posting questions and some ideas here…
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