America has no plan
And, wow, is it killing us
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By Mike Meyer
What kind of world do we want to have? That’s an important question that really needs to be answered and the resulting answer turned into a broad definition before we start fixing what exists. Or before allowing random, less than knowledgeable people doing things that affect all of us.
In America we don’t have any plan. I don’t see anyone actually concerned with this. Politicians have “policies” or “A Plan for Healthcare”. Usually only one or two and those are usually so specific and based on unquestioned assumptions that they are worthless. Shouldn’t we have a general plan with subsequent adjustments for the country? Is this an outrageous suggestion?
The basis for human civilization is taking the time to figure things out. Our improvements in life, now fully expected to arrive weekly, are and must be the result of research, planning, more research, and testing. As we learn every time we try to organize something larger than a trip to the bathroom a little research and planning does wonders.
Of course ideology screws this up periodically and seriously. In the last four hundred years in both the West and East, Europe and China, there have been ideological problems with setting large plans, respectively. There are two ways to screw up a better future though planning. One way is to refuse to plan anything at all and the other is to declare that there is no need to plan as you are already there.
China during the middle of the Ming dynasty (明朝) as the result of a series of disasters and problems made a decision to ignore the rest of the world. This killed one of the greatest and technologically most sophisticated periods of world exploration several decades before the Portuguese got started around Africa in the 1480s.
China was supreme and needed nothing but decided to go have a look to be sure. The Yongle emperor (永乐) commissioned an admiral, Zheng He (郑和) to build a fleet and find out if there was treasure that the Chinese did not know about.and found it interesting but mostly worthless. The emperor died and his…
