- We're well on our way to squelching what gives this country
an edge. What would it take to kill innovation altogether?
As a casual observer of what makes this country work and what stops it
cold, I hereby offer a few suggestions on how we can ruin American competitiveness
and innovation in the course of this century. I think the reader will agree
with me that we are already far down the road on many of them:
1) Allow schools to fall into useless decay. Do not teach civics or history
except to describe America as a hopelessly fascistic, reactionary pit.
Do not expect students to know the basics of mathematics, chemistry and
physics. Working closely with the teachers' unions, make sure that you
dumb down standards so that children who make the most minimal effort still
get by with flying colors. Destroy the knowledge base on which all of mankind's
scientific progress has been built by guaranteeing that such learning is
confined to only a few, and spread ignorance and complacency among the
many. Watch America lose its scientific and competitive edge to other nations
that make a comprehensive knowledge base a rule of the society.
2) Encourage the making of laws and rules by trial lawyers and sympathetic
judges, especially through class actions. Bypass the legislative mechanisms
that involve elected representatives and a president. This will stop--or
at least greatly slow down--innovation, as corporations and individuals
hesitate to explore new ideas for fear of getting punished (or regulated
to death) by litigation for any misstep, no matter how slight, in the creation
of new products and services. Make sure that lawsuits against drugmakers
are especially encouraged so that the companies are afraid to develop new
lifesaving drugs, lest they be sued for sums that will bankrupt them. Make
trial lawyers and judges, not scientists, responsible for the flow of new
products and services.
3) Create a culture that blames the other guy for everything and discourages
any form of individual self-restraint or self-control. Promote litigation
to punish tobacco companies on the theory that they compel innocent people
to smoke. Make it second nature for someone who is overweight to blame
the restaurant that served him fries. Encourage a legal process that can
kill a drug company for any mistakes in self-medication. Make it a general
rule that anyone with more money than a plaintiff is responsible for anything
harmful that a plaintiff does. Promulgate the pitiful joke that Americans
are hereby exempt from any responsibility for their own actions--so long
as there are deep pockets around to be rifled.
4) Sneer at hard work and thrift. Encourage the belief that all true wealth
comes from skillful manipulation and cunning, or from sudden, brilliant
and lucky strokes that leave the plodding, ordinary worker and saver in
the dust. Make sure that society's idols are men and women who got rich
from being sexy in public or through gambling or playing tricks, not from
hard work or patience. Make the citizenry permanently envious and bewildered
about where real success comes from.
5) Hold the managers of corporations to extremely lax standards of conduct
and allow them to get off with a slap on the wrist when they betray the
trust of shareholders. This will discourage thrift and investment and ensure
that Americans will have far less capital to work with than other societies,
while simultaneously developing that contempt for law and social standards
that is the hallmark of failing nations. Hold the management of labor unions
to no ethical standards.
6) While you're at it, discourage respect for law in every possible way.
This will dissolve the glue that holds the nation together, and dissuade
any long-term thinking. Societies in which the law can be clearly seen
to apply to some and not to others are doomed to decay, in terms of innovation
and everything else.
7) Encourage a mass culture that spits on intelligence and study and instead
elevates drug use, coolness through sex and violence, and contempt for
school. As children learn to be stupid instead of smart, the national intelligence
base needed for innovation will simply vanish into MTV-land.
8) Mock and belittle the family. Provide financial incentives to people
willing to live an isolated existence, vulnerable and frightened. This
guarantees that men and women of sufficient character to bring about innovation
will be psychologically stifled from an early age.
9) Develop a suicidal immigration policy that keeps out educated, hardworking
men and women from friendly nations and, instead, takes in vast numbers
of angry, uneducated immigrants from nations that hate us. This, too, leads
to the shrinking of our knowledge base and the eventual disappearance of
social cohesion.
10) Enact a tax system that encourages class antagonism and punishes saving,
while rewarding indebtedness, frivolity and consumption. Tax the fruits
of labor many times:
First tax it as income. Then tax it as real or personal property. Then
tax it as capital gains. Then tax it again, at a staggeringly high level,
at death. This way, Americans are taught that only fools save, and that
it is entirely proper for us to have the lowest savings rate in the developed
world. This will deprive us of much-needed capital for new investment,
for innovation and our own personal aspirations. It will compel us to ask
foreigners for ever more capital and allow them to own more of America.
It will also promote an attitude of carelessness about the future and,
once again, encourage disrespect for law.
11) Have a socialized medical system that scrimps on badly needed drugs
and procedures, resorts to only the cheapest practices and discourages
drug companies from developing new drugs by not paying them enough to cover
their costs of experimentation, trial and error.
12) Elevate mysticism, tribalism, shamanism and fundamentalism--and be
sure to exclude educated, hardworking men and women--to an equal status
with technology in the public mind. Make sure that, in order to pay proper
(and politically correct) respect to all different ethnic groups in America,
you act as if science were on an equal footing with voodoo and history
with ethnic fable.
My list need not end here. But I stopped at a dozen because I realized
that this is already, in large measure, the program of so many of our elected
representatives. The debauchery of our tort system is already in place,
and the rest of the agenda is under way.
Benjamin J. Stein is a lawyer, economist, writer and actor, and host of
the game show Win Ben Stein's Money.
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- http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/fo/20021213/bs_fo/2002_12_how_to_ruin_american_enterprise&e=2
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