Question Socrates: Part II. Getting it Right this Time! (Issue #484)

From a Socrates all-intelligence-source view of worldwide competition, the nature of generating, maintaining and measuring economic health becomes apparent. Information is in fact highly usable and can be scientifically rendered to make close to optimum decisions, and to direct the necessary course changes in a logical, systematic and strangely intuitive fashion. The economic health of a country, state, region, private or public organization, is dictated by its competitive advantage in the world marketplace, that is to say, its ability to sell goods and services.




The foundation of all competitive advantage is a matter of satisfying customer needs better than the competition. Satisfying customer needs is accomplished with technology (defined as any application of science to accomplish a function). To satisfy customer needs better than the competition, an organization or region must exploit technology more effectively than its competition does. Technology exploitation is both the acquisition and utilization of technology (and note that research and development is just one of the many mechanisms for exploitation). To be most effective, exploitation will have aspects that are both offensive and defensive, relative to competitors. Various competitors will attempt to outmaneuver each other in the acquisition and utilization of technology, like chess players moving pieces on a game board all trying to excel at satisfying their customers’ needs better than the other guy. In so doing, competitors constantly seek to acquire and maintain a competitive advantage through technology-based planning.



Technology-based planning, not economic-based planning, is by far the most effective foundation for the full range of decision-making needed desperately in this country. Counter-intuitively, almost all current plans to tackle our economic crisis address science and technology as it were nothing more than a global research and development and education race with each country attempting to “out-R&D” and “out-educate” all the other countries to get to the finish line first. To those who propose such plans, winning the race requires little more than America increasing its R&D and education spending—again, back to manipulating the economics rather than manipulating the technology.



Fortunately recent legislation introduced by Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) begins to address U.S. competitiveness through sophisticated acquisition and utilization of technology, and the continued strategic use of technology-based planning. Wolf is one of the first congressional leaders to make the shift in thinking so essential to re-entering the path towards real and sustainable prosperity. With the recent mid-term elections over, socialism and shared scarcity schemes seem less likely than before, but the GOP and its new class of Tea Party freshmen have yet to find a consensus over specific policies to pursue. It is time to reexamine a smarter path than throwing good money after bad at the fiscal problems—indeed a path that Reagan first charted nearly thirty years ago but then was unable to pursue to completion when the big spenders in both political parties took over and led us to the terrible brink of economic ruin. Says Michael Sekora, now the president of Quadrigy, a technology-based strategy consulting firm based in Austin, “[We] are where we were back in 1983,” but he adds this time there really is no room for error.



The prospects for our economy do not look good, even if political fortunes have improved. Hard-nosed documentaries based on economic numbers and keen historical analysis, such as “Generation Zero” predict a double-dip recession or depression, or hyperinflation to begin in 2011. Of course, as Reagan was fond of saying, it is within our power to mold our destiny. Clearly it depends much on what the new Congress actually does. Good decisions, much less the attendant actions required based on those decisions, may not come easily. In the current climate there is not a lot of positive excitement for anything that smacks of an earmark for research or proof of principle or prototype, etc., much less something grandiose and “strategic” that sounds more than a little like industrial policy. Lawmakers are going to have to use their better judgment in the national interest. Worst case they certainly won’t be committing the first million dollars of wasted taxpayer money, with our without requisite good intentions. Best case we could avert disaster and regain economic preeminence. If that be the case, then it is critically important when it comes to a methodology for implementation, that this include decentralization of information and power, such that, the new “Socrates” is not an exclusive centralized planning tool for the federal government. Make it the province of States from the beginning. Start with Texas and Virginia.