Government Balance

I wrote an entry back on 10/25/10 entitled Negativity Cascade. It described how a small tilt or lean in one direction can often cause an enormous shift to start.

I was watching a recent Daily Show episode with Philip K. Howard, the founder of a group called Common Good. He is a lawyer that believes government needs reform. He discussed how our government is being hamstrung by our political parties to the point where it is unable to react quickly or decisively. His point was that our government is rendered ineffective by the weight of the bureaucratic system as well as the inertia to continue to do things the way they always have and is in need of reform. He talked about how our politicians often argue about things that are not relevant and how they get tied up in distractions and don't get things done.

When I talked with my wife about the Negativity Cascade effect, she did not see the point of the mental construct. I tried to convince her that knowing this balance and cascade effect was there could be useful. In government, if a leader could always work to tilt the field their way, he might be able to do what is needed to fix our problems. In other words, create a cascade that pushes things their way.

One of the problems with America right now is that there are two main factions that each believe that the other side is actively trying to ruin the country. At the same time, both sides are not at all concerned that their own actions might actually harm individual members in their opposition. Rather than thinking and believing that any gains we can make would come primarily by defeating the other side, we should realize that we are all Americans and that the best course of action should benefit everyone, not a small group of citizens.

On the business side, Dan Carlin was talking about instituting a new entrepreneurial concept to teach people capitalize on their ideas. Capitalism, or I should say capitalistic ideals seem to concentrate on competition and defeating others involved in the same industry It does not teach any of the benefits that come from competition. In reality, competition is good and we benefit from having strong competitors. The goal should not be to crush competitors, but to divide your market with customers that fit your style of doing business and leave the rest to your competitors. Another benefit of competition is that it spurs innovation, ratcheting up the development of new technology and efficiency in production. We must learn to compete in a way that allows for multiple winners. We need to learn to see that we are not threatened by others earning success in a similar way, but allowed to carve out areas of strength within a competitive arena.

I've had some interesting discussions with colleagues lately about competition and globalization. We've seen examples of U.S. companies protecting their ideas and then having Chinese companies steal them and copy them. Sometimes this occurs before the U.S. companies can even fully develop and deploy technologies, sometimes it happens with mature technologies, where plans are stolen, or equipment is procured and copied.

We talked about the entrepreneurial spirit that takes ideas to a successful business model and whether or not we could assist innovators to be good businessmen, too. Although there are a few people that are excellent entrepreneurs, few people with big ideas are also the type that could make those ideas work. One opinion was that this kind of successful formula could not be taught. Many big successes were mostly luck. It was the general consensus that Chinese competition comes from a massive labor force, not from innovation. We've seen few examples of great ideas originating in China. Perhaps this is healthy for the world as a whole, but it's a major disincentive for innovators and inventors to develop the next big idea if it's just going to be ripped off and make someone else wealthy.

One thing is certain, recent events have everything going China's way. So the cascade effect is favoring them at this point. However, with a little bit of wisdom and finesse, we can be ready to ride this tide when it flows back out in the other direction.