🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 16 Sep 2005 21:07:26 GMT, "Kurtz" <the
horror@HG.com> wrote:

  Right you are Kurtz to keep up the good fight for our
Constitutional form of gov't.  To do anything else is
patentedly insane.  What Bush doesn't know,  and many
Republican Congresspeople don't realize yet is; they
are totally dependant upon a free and vibrant society,
open to debate the widest spectrum of issues in the
widest varieties of ways.

  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 skilled/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 masses.  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 deaths 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
masses 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

  
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  Liars share with those they deceive 
  the desire not to be deceived.
                        --Sissela Bok
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