![]() ![]() First, the degrowth idea hasn’t caught on widely-the number of advocates in this country would fill only a modest auditorium. Degrowth isn’t the reason for America’s housing shortage. We think our technology will protect us and therefore feel we can continue expanding our impact ad infinitum.ĭerek Thompson misunderstands the degrowth movement. Our economic system is dependent on our ecological system, not the other way around. We live on a planet with limited resources. The great problem of today’s world is not economic but ecological, and Thompson’s idea of “build, build, build” won’t solve it. I saw merit in Thompson’s argument until I reached the final section. Two reactors that had been under construction in South Carolina were canceled, wasting billions of taxpayer dollars.įrom the March 2023 issue: The real obstacle to nuclear power In 1985, Forbes famously called nuclear power “the largest managerial disaster in business history.” And nothing has changed since then, as the only two nuclear plants now under construction in the U.S., in Georgia, are projected to cost at least $30 billion-more than double the original estimate-and are more than six years behind schedule. Every nuclear plant built in the past half century has suffered massive cost overruns and schedule delays. It is because investors have been unwilling to finance an industry that for 50 years has overpromised and underdelivered. I am an antinuclear activist, but I can assure you that the reason we don’t have more nuclear-power plants isn’t the success of the tiny antinuclear movement. But he errs in describing the pitfalls of nuclear power. She established inoculation clinics in several cities, and by 1800, 2 million Russians had been inoculated.Īs an engineer, I agreed with much of Thompson’s article. She used her status as empress to make the issue nonpartisan and nonclassist. Her bravery in receiving the inoculation in 1768, 28 years before Edward Jenner invented the first vaccine, narrowed the trust gap significantly in 18th-century Russia-no small feat, given the slow pace of communication. In light of Thompson’s discussion of the importance of leadership and culture for an invention’s implementation, I wanted to point out that one of the earliest supporters of smallpox inoculation in Europe was Catherine the Great, of Russia. ![]() During this period of divisiveness, we need to remind everyone that government policy and invention, like the internet, can benefit society as a whole. as a nation is to progress, there has to be concern for society in its entirety there needs to be an understanding that government is for all of us. The collective good of the country has not been important to industrial and corporate leaders. Part of what stymies innovation in the U.S. Instead they emphasize strategic behavior that at times amounts to gaming the system rather than doing something useful. Corporate strategies and business-school curricula rarely encourage thoughtful investments that yield reasonable returns for an extended period. The shift that began then-declaring a quest for personal advantage to be a driving force of progress, or, to use Ayn Rand’s phrasing, declaring selfishness to be a virtue-is central to the decline Thompson describes. history-it is the dawn of the Reagan era. But in citing 1980 as the end of “building,” he glosses over an important point: 1980 is not a random year in U.S. Rabbi Ilana Goldhaber-Gordon Palo Alto, Calif.ĭerek Thompson makes a number of insightful arguments about the decline in American progress. I am a rabbi, and I may make it the topic of my High Holiday sermon this coming year. What matters most is what happens next.ĭerek Thompson’s conclusion that societal progress depends on trust is profound and should be shouted from the rooftops. Invention alone can’t change the world, Derek Thompson wrote in the January/February 2023 issue. ![]()
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