Jaron Lanier (
Wikipedia ) is mostly known for his dreadlocks and technological inventions. He has recently been chosen as one of the world's
top 100 public intellectuals by The Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines and has a new post up at the
Huffington Post. In it he brings a new perspective to many of our nation's problems... blame it on 'The Hand'.
Lanier starts with our badly backward system of health care (or lack there of):
The improper use of ERs is a staple trope in the health care reform debates. The uninsured use ERs not as a last resort, but as an only resort for care. This is a dumb setup, because health care costs are in general lower if problems are caught earlier. And ERs would handle genuine emergency cases better without the overhead.
Which he eventually links to the ongoing failure of companies like GM, United, Northwest, and other large companies:
A creativity gap between the best and worst Airlines exists, but not to an existential degree. Southwest and JetBlue ARE innovative, but only marginally more so than their elder brothers.
The main problem for old companies is that if you've had a workforce for a long time, the health care and pension bills pile up. Much to my amazement I have a sideline as a consultant to industry, because I'm thought of as an "Out of the box" technical guy. A benefit to me of this unlikely gig is that I have had opportunities to talk to top executives of businesses such as airlines and hear their side of the story.
From them (and other classic big American concerns like the Detroit car companies) I always hear complaints about a walloping big "Tax-like expense" they have to pay for health care and pensions, a tax that foreign competitors are excused from. It's as if we have an anti-protectionist trade policy.
This is very true and it amazes me that none of these companies are taking the lead on reforming our national healthcare system.
Lanier then makes a frightening prediction:
Is this what an America in decline will look like? When Google has been around long enough to have a middle aged staff instead of a gorgeous crowd of healthy young people, will investors dump it for a new Googalike that can hire kids again to get out from under health care and pension costs? Of course the early Google employees made tons of money from stock, and can provide their own pensions, but most employees by then will find themselves in the big base of the pyramid, just like workers at Ford or United today.
He calls this a big unproductive pass-the-buck pyramid scheme. It's one our leaders have become experts at playing. Look at Frist with HCA, Bush with the oil companies, and of course Cheney with Halliburton.
Why is this going on? There is a philosophy behind it. Lanier links it to Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" crossed with Moore's Law (Wikipedia). This worked great for a while, only now the numbers no longer add up. "Voodoo Economics" was supposed to stimulate the Hand and keep the economy going, but:
Electronic chips get exponentially better as described by Moore's Law. Does that mean everything humans do will also get exponentially better? That would have to be true in order for ANY economic design to work as well as the Hand is expected to work by true believers. They ask us to let go and not impose cautionary checks on the free market, for it will succeed faster than our problems can multiply, if we only give it a chance.
How much longer are we going to be expected to give this neo-con version of voodoo economics a chance? Until the nation is totally bankrupt and dry? It surprises me that more corporate CEOs don't wake up and see that there is no man behind the curtain anymore. That the path we are on is a deadly spiral and not a long tail.
Thanks to Jaron Lanier for sending this wakeup call. We should mail it to every CEO in America.