Welcome to Creative Capitalism: A Conversation

By Michael Kinsley and Conor Clarke

Thanks for coming to the site. Here's a brief explanation of what this project is all about.

Creative Capitalism: A Conversation is a web experiment designed to produce a book -- a collection of essays and commentary on capitalism, philanthropy and global development -- to be edited by us and published by Simon and Schuster in the fall of 2008. The book takes as its starting point a speech Bill Gates delivered this January at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In it, he said that many of the world's problems are too big for philanthropy--even on the scale of the Gates Foundation. And he said that the free-market capitalist system itself would have to solve them.

This is the public blog of a private website where a group of invited economists have spent the past couple of weeks criticizing and debating those claims. Over the next couple of months we'll be posting much of that material here, in the hopes of eliciting public commentary. Some of the public commentary -- the comments posted on this blog -- will also be used in the book. (Comments to the effect of "capitalism is evil and Bill Gates is a fool" probably won't be used. But we're genuinely open to opinions of all stripes, and all of the contributors who do end up in the finished product will be paid on a per-word basis, which should work out to between one and two dollars per word.)

The same goes for economics bloggers who write about the stuff here on their own sites: If we can get permission, we'd like to use that material too.

We also invite contributions by email. You can send submissions to conorjclarke [at] gmail [dot] com. (Anything you send can be posted here, though we might edit it a bit first.) We are especially interested in contributions from economists and anyone working in development. But we welcome pretty much anything that's interesting and well-written.

So feel free to comment. You can start with the Gates speech, along with the transcript of a conversation we've recorded between Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. You'll also find commentary on the speech from Michael Kinsley, William Easterly, Richard Posner, Gregory Clark, Ed Glaeser, Gary Becker, Steven Landsburg and more. (For a list of others who have agreed to contribute to the project, click here.) And since we'll be posting more in the days and weeks to come, please subscribe to our feed.

Have a look around. Contact us if you have questions. And thanks for coming.

--Mike Kinsley and Conor Clarke

Comments

[Steve Sailer]

NPR "Can we reasonably expect 100 percent of high school students to become college students?"

Melinda Gates "Yes, I think we can. And, in fact, I'm here today in the Chicago school district visiting with students – huge number of Latinos and African-American populations, and guess what? I'm in schools where 95 to 98 percent of these kids are going on to college, and it's because they started freshman year with teachers who believe in them and said, 'These kids can do it.' And maybe they are not coming in with the right reading or math skills, but we are going to bring them up, and we are going to have high expectations of them. And guess what? Those kids are succeeding, and those kids are getting into college."

NPR "That would be a dramatic increase of the share of high school students, if 100 percent went on to college. I mean, you would be effecting an enormous social change if you could reach –"

Mrs. Gates "Correct, and that is the idea."

NPR "How many years do you think it would take to achieve that particular –"

Mrs. Gates "I think it is going to take us quite a while. I think that this is a long-term effort and I think it's one that the foundation is going to be at for a very long time. But it ought to be our goal as a nation. We shouldn't let this number of students drop out. I think it's a moral crisis that we're failing students this way."

Considering that Mr. Gates didn't bother finishing college (and neither did Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, or Michael Dell), why is Mrs. Gates trying to inflict college on every single kid in America?

Some people are so smart that college is a waste of their time; a lot of people are so not smart that college is also a waste of their time.

[Steve Sailer]

In Los Angeles, the Gates Foundation has been working to do serious harm to many children, to prevent decent kids from graduating from high school just because they aren't smart enough for the University of California.

The Gates Foundation was the main driver behind the Los Angeles school district (the nation's second largest) outsourcing its high school graduation requirements planning to the elite University of California, which only allows in high students who have passed its rigorous "A-G" curriculum of required courses.

A 2005 press release from the Gates Foundation trumpeted:

"In June, the LAUSD board approved a plan requiring all high school students beginning with the class of 2008 to complete a 15-course series, known as the A-G Curriculum, in order to graduate. This is the same requirement for admission to the University of California and California State University systems."

The UC system is restricted by law to the top 1/8th of California high school graduates and the Cal State system to the top 1/3rd. It's absurd and harmful to make high school graduation dependent upon course requirements aimed at the top 1/3rd of graduates.

The new A-G Curriculum requirement will mandate two years of foreign language (i.e., Spanish, as instruction in other languages are being phased out in LA). Obviously, this is intended as a gift to Hispanic immigrants. But it will be another cross to bear for African-Americans, who have never shown much enthusiasm for learning Spanish.

Worse, every public high school student in LA will have to pass not just Algebra I and Geometry to graduate, but also Algebra II!

There are going to be a lot of decent, reasonably hardworking kids who will have to go through life bearing the stigma of being high school flunkouts because they weren't born smart enough to pass Algebra II.

[Nelson Handel]

you should reach out to Mats Lederhausen at www.be-cause.com. He is wise in the way of CSR and purposeful capitalism. Tell him Nelson sent you ;-)

[John Bragg]

Thoughts for the most socially productive use of the Gates fortune:

PowerSat technology. Solar power satellites which use microwaves to beam electric power down to earth-based transmitters.

Operating costs: Negligible.
Startup costs: Astronomical.

But at some level of world oil prices, are the capital costs close to justifiable?

[George D. Bittner]

Mr. Kinsley,

I can not find a site to contact you more directly. I note that your list of advisors/contributors to a book on creative capitalism contains not one psychologist, biologist (or perhaps most critically) a neuroscientist. This is relevant because capitalism is usually defined as economics based solely on acting in self interest. This fundamental assumption is in conflict with what many biologists, geneticists and neuroscientists (including psychologists) now know: namely, that homo sapiens and other animals often/can act in altuistic manners.
One could predict that communism would eventually fail because of a biological false assumption that homo sapiens can be taught (and maybe genetically programmed re Lysenko) to act always (or usually) for the benefit of the group. Similarly, one can preduct that pure capitalism has or will fail because of a false biological assumption that homo sapiens always act in their own individual best interest and that any altruistic-type behavior is a socialist commie subversion of a biological truth. The biological (and psychological) truth lies somewhere between the pure communist or socialist assumptions about human behavior based on human genetics and neurobiology. There is MUCH evidence on this point. A blog is not the place to cite that evidence. I speak as both an academician and a capitalist.
George D. Bittner, PhD, AAAS Fellow
Professor of Neurobiology CEO, CertiChem, PlastiPure
University of Texas 11212 Metric Blvd# 500-600
Austin, TX 78712 Austin, TX 78758
bittner@mail.utexas.edu gbittner@CertiChem.com
gbittner@PlastiPure.com

[Ron Mwangaguhunga]

How do we "find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well"? I agree that economic self-interest is one of if not the most powerful motivating forces in the world, and harnessing that energy towards uplifting the quality of life of the poor is a smart thing to do. We'll never arrive at 0% global employment, to be sure, but the closer we approximate that figure I'm betting that wars and famine and disease and the perennial geopolitical frictions that distract us, as human beings and as civilizations, from doing The Great things, would lessen significantly. Consider the potential of all the children in the so-called Third World that never make it to adolescence. Imagine the lost potential! Leo Strauss used to say something to the effect of that he, per se, was not philosophizing, but merely preparing the ground for the Burmese philosophical genius in 2020, who will take up where Aristotle left off. What if that genius of world-historical dimensions dies of cholera in South America, unheralded and unsung? And what if the CEO of the next Microsoft, or the warrior of the next Kuhnian scientific revolution is killed by the janjaweed in Darfur over water use?

There is so much spiritedness -- the Greeks called it "Thumos" -- going on on Wall Street and London and Chicago and other places. That energy, if harnessed, would be a perfect alternative energy source for the planet. How does one do it? You've assembled some great minds, but I'd ask only that you maybe consider some philosophers on the panel. A theoretical examination into the nature of "Thumos" -- which is what you guys are trying to make work for the betterment of the poor -- might be an intersting starting point.

[Ron Mwangaguhunga]

0% global employment = 0% global unemployment; theoretical examination = theoretical inquiry.

[Tom Hunter]

This is precisely what Bill Gates should do:

i.) Build a gargantuan Seawater Desalinization plant somewhere in the Southwest. Run the pipeline to the Baja penninsula.

ii.) Construct a new solar-cell factory to supply the largest Solar array to date to power seawater de-salization. Use half of the sea water for growing trees and the other half to make hydrogen. (A brine is sent back along a smaller, companion pipeline to the Gulf, but deep into the ocean so as not to degrade the inflow.) The half of the fresh water thus generated will be allowed to flow in a downhill direction through any desert area, with best-option trees along the course that develops. The other half of the fresh water will be divided up into hydrogen.

iii. Bill you and Warren must agree to fund a Manhattan-project-style contest, funding several competing teams to the hilt and staffing them with the best money can buy, to make practical light, hydrogen powered cars. Then, fund ahead of the eventual public money a network of hydrogen stations. Make it happen. Keep bureaucrats like Steve away from this. When you're done, give the Chinese and the Indians direct incentive to adopt the technology immediately. Do not just buy these supplies on the open market, make your own factories so you create new supply, obviously a growth industry.

[PHB]

People have been talking about ways to harness the power of capitalism since Marx. Most times the result has been that ideology has trumped pragmatism.

A case in point is given in Fiasco which describes the futility of giving a group of young, inexperienced, movement conservative ideologues the task of rebuilding Iraq in the wake of the invasion. It was essentially a Maoist approach: lots of noise, little action, no real results. They saw no reason to ask any questions because they already knew the answers. And when reality refused to deliver the results their ideology promised they created their own.

A much better way to look at the problem is to consider capitalism, free-markets and de-regulation as simply a tool and one that may require a certain level of development and infrastructure to take advantage of.

Nobody would claim that a developing economy could make maximum use of the Internet with an illiterate population. Why should we imagine that there is no similar 'entry qualification' for capitalism?

What you need here is pragmatic capitalism. Or better, just pragmatism. Traditionally, conservative parties formed to serve the interests of the rich have been able to attract votes of the poor and the middle class because they have offered pragmatic government. Pragmatic government designed primarily to support the interests of the rich was more often than not judged by voters to have served the interests of the middle class (and frequently the poor albeit less frequently) than an ideological government devoted to their own cause.

Today the situation is reversed. Conservatives have been offering ideology rather than pragmatism and the result is that many of the wealthiest plutocrats now support pragmatic progrssives for much the same reason.

[Geraldine Pease]

Dear Sir,

I read your article and Bill Gates' speech. Capitalism is creative (as one of your commentators mentioned), look at "subprime swindle". The term "social capitalism", mentioned by Mr. Gates in his speech, would be a better name, but perhaps the word 'social' is too similar to 'socialism', therefore, he is reluctant to use it because it might scare away capitalists. It's kind of ironic that Mr. Gates gave his speech from Davos, Switzerland, a darling little spot for the very wealthy.

[Rick Perlstein]

I think the second sentence must contain a typo. I can't imagine a site beginning today can yield a book by "the fall of 2008."

[Jeff Mowatt]

What's in a name, one might ask. As I read it, it might also be described as social capitalism. Then again, that might be considered politically unpalatable.

Over the past decade, I've seen roots in Jed Emerson's Blended Value, John Mackey's Conscious Capitalism and not least the work of Muhammad Yunus with his Social Business Enterprise.

Collaboration and cooperatives are long established principles, so this is more than John Nash and the Rochdale Pioneers.

Capitalism to-date has offered the most effective mechanism for economic development. Our perception is one of an intrinsic link between between democracy and free market capitalism in which our economic and social rights are discrete from the profits returned from our corporations. This applied in a trickle down approach, at best reaches 75% of population and a single hurricane may be enough to prise out this reality.

Capitalism in the absence of democracy, on the other hand, returns 100% electoral support and manure for the workers. As we'll find anywhere in the world where democracy is 'managed' and political opposition cowed by brutality.

Now if we create business whose stakeholders are the most disadvantaged that can operate alongside existing business and within our free-market system of economics, we've created capitalism which is social.

Social capitalism then, may be a little too radical to utter, but I do know that a paper on this very concept reached the White House on 16th September 1996 and I'm hoping to encourage the author to join us here.

Jeff

[Nanne]

You might think of contacting some people from the World Resources Institute's 'Development through Enterprise' programme, specifically, Allen Hammond. They have some practical experience working on Prahalad's 'Base of the Pyramid' ideas.

Prof. Bittner's point is also worth considering. Your contributors list could do with a few behavioral scientists.

Finally, it would also be a good idea to have a lot more people in the project who come from the proposed target countries. People tend to know where their own shoes are too tight, best. Nothing against the erudite professors, but - perhaps Prahalad aside - they all have an outsiders' perspective.

[Patrick Murphy]

Thanks for pushing this conversation forward. My hope is that most of the content creation on this site gets focused on various real life use cases with debates on their merits. The more local and granular the examples the more likely this forum will help to generate real change.

[Sue Radford]

We need capitalism to do the heavy lifting to solve the climate crisis, but until we have an effective carbon tax in place, that won't happen. For a carbon tax to be meaningful, it has to be steep, and that would bring in unreasonable amounts of revenue to the government levying the tax. To prevent this, the carbon tax must be revenue neutral, meaning that the carbon tax revenue replaces revenue from other tax sources so the total taken in by government remains unchanged. Sounds great, doesn't it?

The revenue neutral carbon tax is politically impossible in the US. Our politicians have nothing to gain and everything to lose by even discussing it, let alone trying to make it happen. This is our democracy in action.

The Canadians are putting a revenue neutral carbon tax in place. Their system of democracy makes it possible for them to use capitalism to solve a problem. Our challenge is to fix our own democratic process to make problem solving possible. Any ideas?

[Doly]

Bill Gates is not particularly well known for being ahead of the curve. He's known for taking a few years to realize what people said some years before was right (he was late to take notice of graphical interfaces -yes, windows- and the Internet, to put two glaring examples) and then take the idea with a vengeance and sell it to everybody.

Like many times before, his idea is a few years old.

Unfortunately for him, some new developments have happened in the meantime. The assumption that capitalism is a tool that always works is right now under scrutiny. In a way, it has been since the times of Karl Marx, but at some times its flaws have been more noticeable than others, and right now the flaws are staring us in the face: "housing bubble", "debt-based economy", "peak oil" and "externalized costs" are a few concepts to think about.

Expecting people to embrace capitalism as part of the solution when right now it seems to be better classified as part of the problem, isn't a forward-looking strategy. But then, Bill Gates isn't particularly good at looking forward, and we all know that.

We should ask instead those who have a proven track record of solving problems in poor countries. As far as I can tell, none of the big names mentioned in the post above are known for being the brains behind a particularly successful project that improved the lives of many poor people, but please correct me if I'm wrong. It appears that all these people know a lot about the economic theory of growth, but where is the expertise on the practical problems of implementing a project in a poor country?

The solution may not necessarily be about how to move money about, though it may well be part of the solution. The solution may be about bringing education to the right people, about growing the right kinds of food in the right way, or about asking the right questions. I don't have an answer myself, but a quick search on the Internet will give you a few names of people that are worth asking.

Please start looking for the answer where it may be found, instead of where there's bright light. At the end of the day, what people need isn't money, but food, clean water, shelter, education, etc. Capitalism is just a name for our name of trading, a name for our particular system of exchanging goods. Instead of thinking about it as if it's immutable like the Sun and the stars, let's consider it's just an idea, and much easier to change than facts such as available land and resources, or the needs of a human being. Let's discuss the practicalities of how to bring the things people need to those who need them, and once the technical solutions are established, let's talk about the theoretical system that can help it happen. But don't do it the other way round.

[Michael Wilkie]

Michael

Philanthropy and capitalism are driven by the needs of the individual. Research has shown that the reward center of the brain reacts favorably when we do something nice for someone else. It also responds favorably when we succeed and are proud of ourselves. I think that the very rich are very reward driven..success junkies who like to stimulate that part of the brain. Doing good works can satisfy that desire just as powerfully.

I think that Daniel Goleman has some research on this.

[Geraldine Pease]

Brainstorming:

"Creative Capitalism", the term Mr. Gates would introduce is redundant, capitalism is already 'creative'...so maybe Mr. Gates is referring to himself... that he is creative.
'Social Capitalism' might be more appropriate, but it sounds too much like Socialism for good capitalists to accept.
'Social' implies people, good, giving, caring while...
'capitalism' implies possession & ownership (hence word "capital"), gain, individual, increasing, expanding, money, at the extreme end - greed & grabbing.
'Ownership' & 'Giving' are at opposite ends, no?
The core of capitalism is competition & education teaches us competition, therefore,
to change capitalism at its core, we must change education that is based upon competition...

Geraldine Pease
Austin, Texas

[Andrew Ellis]

What are the differences between taxation and charity?

The nature of charity is that the donor decides for him- or
herself where the need is greatest for the resources. The
record of wealthy people is mixed. Some of them have
left legacies for the world far beyond the number of
dollars they donated would have suggested.

But others have donated their money to opera, symphony,
ballet and art museums. Now, these may be valuable
projects, but they are projects which appeal, largely,
to wealthy people. In short, the wealthy often donate
to causes that improve the quality of their own lives
without much impact on those of ordinary people.

You know, when low-income people donate money, they
give the money they have -- usually post-tax dollars
and don't file for the deductions on their taxes. (In
any case, the pseudo-progressiveness of the tax code
means these deductions are worth far less to them, on
a dollar-for-dollar basis, than they are to the rich.)

What would be better? It would be better to have a
tax system that puts more of the resources in the
hands of the people's representatives. As it is now,
the tax treatment of donations to, say, Doctors
Without Borders, is identical to giving to, say,
the Metropolitan Opera. Is that reasonable? I'd say
no.

Instead, what if we were to apply a tax to the wealthy
that would give all of us a say in how money is allocated,
instead of only the wealthy?

And, before you get to huffy about all of this, consider:
Most of the wealthy did nothing to earn their money except
win a birthname lottery. (Bill Gates is exceptional in this).

The GOP successfully managed discussion of inheritance tax
into a "Death Tax" mantra, just as they now claim that
small businesspeople are the beneficiaries of policies
that favor the wealthy.

In fact, an inheritance tax makes a great deal of sense to
me. If it means that the children of the wealthy might
not start out with the huge lead over other kids that
their families' wealth provides, that's ok with me.

For opera lovers: Spare me discussions of children's
opera performances and such. Community programs could
duplicate many of these programs at much less expense
than world-class opera (or symphony, or ballet...)
companies cost.

So, what's my plan: Here it is: No more charitible
tax deductions, period. Want to give your money to
a cause? Go ahead. But you don't get to use that
to offset your obligations as a member of society.
No doubt, the causes dear to the wealthy will always
survive. They just won't do so at the cost of programs
we all control.

[Herrington]

This "creative capitalism" intellectual experiment is too late by centuries. The question has been posited and the answer has been obvious for so long that it is pathetic even to ask.

The capitalist benefits more from an educated, ethical, law abiding and civil society than does any other. What price can be put on living and conducting commerce in a country that adheres in its most fundamental principles to the rule of law and that law emphasizing personal liberties by its charter? How much is it worth to live in a country in which your neighbors, customers, legislators, civil servants and even military adhere strictly to a code of conduct that respects your individual rights? How much money would it take to buy a society in which to live in which your rights are sacrosanct? The rights and wonder of America were bought with ideas backed with the blood, bone and sinew of the brand of liberty that carved equality, as a principle, out of the hard granite of an unjust world.

The price is civility itself. The benefit is civility. It is easy and inexpensive if you consider the alternative.

If you place profit over the well being of your fellow man, your fellow man will respond in kind. If you hoard and abuse power, your neighbor will do the same. If you imagine that your philanthropy will assuage your avarice, then you are to be disappointed.

The world does not need Bill Gates’ money. What the world needs is no Bill Gates.

[xman]

the land of creative capitalism

http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=42851

[Thor Hempel]

Soliciting workers to labour on a project using hype, compensating only those efforts that are marketable and then paying for it on a piece work rate of a dollar or two per word is Capitalism at its worst.

Some creative steps in this venture may be as simple as rethinking your compensation model.

[John David Galt]

I'm very pro-capitalism, but I also believe it's hypocritical for Bill Gates to be promoted as a "star" of capitalism and creativity when he continues to sponsor and fund one of the world's biggest efforts to stifle creativity and stop competition without any cause: namely the patent-troll case SCO v. Linux.

[Terrence O'Brien]

The Solar Superhighway

I’ve been reading and thinking a lot about our dependence on fossil fuels for energy. Recently, I’ve seen articles extolling the virtues of nuclear, geothermal and “clean” coal power plants. All of these options have significant drawbacks. For the most part, they all depend on some future breakthrough in technology to make the energy safe and affordable. I would like people to seriously consider solar power as a long-term solution to our energy, national security and global climate issues.

Most people don’t know that every day the sun bathes the planet in enough energy to satisfy all power demands for a period of four years. If we could capture and store just 1% of that daily supply, it would meet the planetary demand for two weeks. The only serious criticism I’ve heard about solar energy is that its’ cost is two or three times higher than coal.

If you look at the big picture, I believe that criticism can be deflated. Your friendly local energy corporation tells you that coal is too cheap not to use as a primary source of energy. A little research will tell you that they usually leave out some key cost components.

No one seems inclined to calculate the cost of all the tons of mercury that are released into the air and water of your community. It isn’t safe to eat seafood too often, and the incidence of heavy metal contamination on the ecosystem hasn’t been calculated or incorporated into the cost of coal.

Coal puts thousands of tons of small particulates (soot) into the air. The presence of soot in the air can cause or exacerbate lung disease. In the last 30 years there has been a marked growth in the number of people who suffer from asthma and other respiratory problems. The medical cost of these problems isn’t part of the coal energy cost calculations.

Last, but not least, there is the cost associated with global climate change that is caused by carbon dioxide emissions. An effective, economical method of capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide generated by coal burning utilities may well be 20 years in the future. Meanwhile, increasing levels of Greenhouse gases could push the ecosystem into a positive feedback loop that would accelerate climate change at a rate far beyond all the computer models that have been used to forecast rising sea levels, catastrophic weather incidents and drought.

Solar energy has none of these drawbacks. There are no pollution issues. There are no moving parts. The average solar panel can be expected to work, with little or no maintenance, for 50 years or more. The chief raw material needed for solar panels is sand. The high cost of solar energy calculations is based on the most common solar panel installation on the rooftop of a home or business. Here is a solution to that problem that doesn’t require any technological breakthrough.

There are three cost components of solar energy that we can dramatically reduce by changing the site of the installation. First, every rooftop requires an expensive ($3,000 - $5,000) inverter to convert the solar panels’ DC output to the AC electricity that your home uses. Secondly, time and labor costs are high because each rooftop is different and most work must be done on ladders. The installation of most solar panels is done on mounting racks that must be attached to the roofs. The installation of these racks requires holes be drilled in your roof so the racks can be attached to the main beams of the roof. These penetrations must then be sealed and waterproofed. Finally, most installations include a UL approved, bi-directional power meter to ensure that you get credit when your solar panels make more electricity than you use on any given day.

All that hardware adds a lot of cost to the few kilowatts of power generated by the average rooftop installation. It would be far more cost effective to have a dozen large solar installations that tied directly into the electric grid. The other major cost center is a result of the conversion of sand into high-grade silica for the solar panels. This could be resolved with the construction of a couple more silica production plants.

At present, there are only two or three of these facilities in the world. The lions’ share of the output from these silica production plants is reserved, via long term production contracts, for computer chip manufacturers. Intel, AMD, IBM and others are only paying about $20.00/kg for this raw material. When solar panel manufacturers buy the same material for their solar panels, they have to pay up to $70.00 per kilogram. If the federal government were to subsidize the construction of one or two domestic production facilities, it would not be difficult to cut the cost of solar panels in half.

The last piece to the solar puzzle is the location for future large arrays of solar panels. The ideal solution to this issue is to build solar arrays in the medians of Interstate Highways. The land has already been bought and paid for. There will be no cost to construct access roads to these locations. Most Interstate Highways are located in close proximity to high voltage power lines. Since large solar arrays will generate much higher voltage than any home installation can, there will be far less hardware needed to tie into the electric grid. No bi-directional meters will be needed. The largest savings may well be realized in labor costs.

Because the highway system has standardized slopes and widths, the mounting brackets for solar arrays can also be standardized. There will be no time spent mounting panels to rooftops. The pre-fabricated mounting stands can be installed on the ground in minutes instead of days. In addition, the solar panels can be pre-installed on these pre-fabricated stands, at night, in a centrally located assembly site. The units can be wired and bench tested before they are moved to the median for final installation during the day.

In order to meet the demand for electricity in the U.S. we need to build about 15,000 miles of solar arrays in the highway medians. If you check out Interstate Highways 70, 80 & 90, you will find that more than half of that amount is available right there. Throw in a few North/South interstates and you have all the real estate needed. This project would need to be stretched out over a period of about 25 years. If state and federal government made a serious commitment to this project, then the long-term costs would decrease as manufacturers realized that there would be steady demand for solar panels, mounting brackets and installers. The final significant benefit would be realized at the end of the project. If we construct sufficient solar installations, we will find that the arrays produce more electricity than daytime demand requires. We can use the excess electricity to economically produce hydrogen from water. The hydrogen can be stored and used in cars and power plants.

This ambitious project can free America from the machinations of OPEC, lower the cost of national defense, clean up our air, protect our health and provide good jobs for thousands of Americans for the next 25 years. No technological breakthroughs are needed. All that is needed is the will to transfer the government subsidies that we are presently giving to the Oil, Nuclear and Coal Industries to a new solar super highway project.

[David L Steinhardt]

It's not capitalism, per se, that is so psychotic. It's laws that demand that corporate directors pursue maximum profit, at the peril of shareholder lawsuits, that not only encourage, but demand amoral behavior.

It would either take a constitutional amendment, or political will in all the states (even Delaware and South Dakota...) to fashion laws that enshrine respect for the rule of law and community responsibility into corporate charters, allowing those directorships, however rare, that might pursue profit with a conscience the protection to do so without fear of civil liability for their good behavior.

[Annoyed]

Steve Sailer, please stop reposting the same comment everywhere on every single blog you can find. You haven't changed one word, and the pitiful attempts to be a "blog" power remain pathetic. Retreat back to your own base - where others actually appreciate. Otherwise, please stop posting the exact same comment everywhere.

[Kevin Carson]

The idea that if the average person can improve his economic prospects by going to college, then the economic prospects of the average person will increase if everyone goes to college, is a fallacy of composition.

Joe Bageant put it this way: the Empire needs maybe 25% of its population in administrative and technical jobs that require a college education. Increasing college education beyond that 25% simply creates an oversupply of administrative and technical labor-power, and drives the salariat's income down. It also amounts to a subsidy of those forms of enterprise that are most reliant on managerial and technical labor, resulting in an artificial market shift toward hierarchy, deskilling and labor market segmentation.

In the meantime, it increases the number of people fighting tooth and nail for those 25% of jobs at the top of the pyramid, the end result being higher educational requirements for burger flippers and bedpan emptiers. It also creates a ruthless, dog-eat-dog mentality of "I got mine." The result is decreased social solidarity and greater amenability of control, as people spend their leisure time retreating from the snake pit of what used to be "civil society" and lobotomize themselves with reality TV and marked up plastic dreck.

In short, Bill Gates supports universal higher education because it shifts the cost of reproducing technical labor power from Microsoft to the taxpayer.

As for his gushing about "Creative Capitalism": if there's really anything to creative capitalism, other than another exercise in self-congratulation for Bobos, it will be the death of everything Bill Gates stands for. The real "creative capitalism" going on out there is in networked, open-source design and production, along the lines of Torvalds and Stallman (not to mention Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation). The subsidized, state-cartelized corporate dinosaurs, the Copyright Nazis at Microsoft, the RIAA and MPAA, will fall harder than the USSR. And a networked economy of cooperatives, desktop manufacturing, desktop recording/podcasting/publishing, and peer design, all functioning in a genuinely free market without subsidies or special monopoly privileges, will pick up the pieces.

[Kevin Carson]

The idea that if the average person can improve his economic prospects by going to college, then the economic prospects of the average person will increase if everyone goes to college, is a fallacy of composition.

Joe Bageant put it this way: the Empire needs maybe 25% of its population in administrative and technical jobs that require a college education. Increasing college education beyond that 25% simply creates an oversupply of administrative and technical labor-power, and drives the salariat's income down. It also amounts to a subsidy of those forms of enterprise that are most reliant on managerial and technical labor, resulting in an artificial market shift toward hierarchy, deskilling and labor market segmentation.

In the meantime, it increases the number of people fighting tooth and nail for those 25% of jobs at the top of the pyramid, the end result being higher educational requirements for burger flippers and bedpan emptiers. It also creates a ruthless, dog-eat-dog mentality of "I got mine." The result is decreased social solidarity and greater amenability of control, as people spend their leisure time retreating from the snake pit of what used to be "civil society" and lobotomize themselves with reality TV and marked up plastic dreck.

In short, Bill Gates supports universal higher education because it shifts the cost of reproducing technical labor power from Microsoft to the taxpayer.

As for his gushing about "Creative Capitalism": if there's really anything to creative capitalism, other than another exercise in self-congratulation for Bobos, it will be the death of everything Bill Gates stands for. The real "creative capitalism" going on out there is in networked, open-source design and production, along the lines of Torvalds and Stallman (not to mention Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation). The subsidized, state-cartelized corporate dinosaurs, the Copyright Nazis at Microsoft, the RIAA and MPAA, will fall harder than the USSR. And a networked economy of cooperatives, desktop manufacturing, desktop recording/podcasting/publishing, and peer design, all functioning in a genuinely free market without subsidies or special monopoly privileges, will pick up the pieces.

[Barry]

Michael, I'd seriously suggest banning Steve Sailer. He's notorious racist, who runs the VDARE website.

[James M. Ridgway, Jr.]

The post WWII economic and middleclass bubble extended roughly from 1946 to 2008. Following WWII America’s enemies were in ashes and its friends bankrupt. This left the US not only a military super power but an economic giant as well, as recovering nations were compelled to come to us for much of their goods and services. Along with the economic bubble came a middleclass bubble distorting the traditional distribution of wealth that is pyramidal in shape, a few super rich at the top and a large numbers of poor forming the base. Indeed, with industries pilling up record profits manufactures could afford to meet union demands for high wages for a working class that soon evolved into an artificially large middle class.

But starting around the mid 70’s, as nations began to recover from war and their manufacturing base became competitive, our much swollen industrial capacity peaked, undercut by cheap foreign competition. By 2000 and the Dot Com bust our creative and technological advantages, too, were fast eroding as the world not only caught up to us in science and education but in many instances surpassed us. Of course as our economic advantage began to slip away it placed enormous pressure on our bloated middleclass, as high paying industrial jobs gave way to lower paying service jobs.

However, average Americans conditioned for more than a half century to living high on the hog in what had become the richest nation on earth did not willingly expect to give up the high life. And so Government, the private sector and individuals went on a borrowing binge in order to maintain the nation’s boom time ways. By 2007 credit was stretched to the limit causing the housing market and financial institutions to take a nosedive.

There is perhaps enough overall momentum left in the post WWII boom to carry the stock market to a new peak in 2008. But as the boom time momentum fades, along with positive demographics (the baby boomers are passing their peak spending years), there should finally come an end to America’s post war superrich status, forcing a collapse of the bloated middleclass and retuning the shape of the nation’s distribution of wealth to the more traditional pyramidal form. Such a realignment of wealth will likely threaten political stability, causing politicians to evermore look to external enemies and wars to keep the public distracted from its economic woes.