The American Experience: Land Rush Or Land Bubble?

Land Rush

I was watching the Today Show yesterday doing a segment on the North American Auto Show opening in Detroit. The segment was focused on General Motors and its Chevrolet Volt electric car. At some point, a t-head ( talking head ) said that it was not yet clear that the government's investment in GM would pan out; not clear that the Volt would be a success. It struck me that the government bloody well should be investing in electric car technology. It should be investing in hydrogen power technology. The way things are going now, everything is tending back to gas and oil. The pipelines for gas and oil are already established, the companies researching hydrogen are slacking off, the price of oil has fallen and SUVs are actually staging a comeback. The very ESSENCE of America is INNOVATION and DISCOVERY ! In 1492, we saw the beginning of a massive land rush. Land - enormous amounts of land - had become available. The land was expensive: one had to secure passage on a boat and endure a long and difficult voyage, one had to deal with unknown terrain and unknown inhabitants, but eventually the costs came down dramatically, until it cost no more than getting there and homesteading for a period of time. There must be a Murphy's Law for Land, too. (Not Murphy's Law! Whatever the name of the law by the really brainy guy about computer processing capacity or whatnot...that's what I mean.) This process of utilizing the land made available led to the Railroads, the Telegraph ( and eventually the Telephone), and ultimately to the Automobile. Each one of these innovations were massive and created wealth on a large scale, larger than the historical norm. There is the normal work of the economy, normal creativity and innovation and building of wealth; then there are the abnormal jumps. America was and is the Land of Opportunity precisely because of a sequence of these abnormal jumps, which increased available wealth beyond the range of what hitherto had been the norm. The two most recent jumps were the Automobile and the Computer; think how they transformed the landscape. In fact, everything we think we know about America, everything we dream and hope, is pretty much based on the Automotive and the Computer and Tech Revolutions. Our idea of the American standard of living derives directly from the automobile, with some new inputs from the computer. In short, the government had bloody well be investing in the Volt! If it had any sense, it would be investing a heck of a lot more into the Volt, and a large chunk into hydrogen. I have said before that if these efforts fail, the USA will be doomed to live out a dreary existence of looking back at its golden ages when GDP could jump through hoops! America was and is Discovery in its very nature. To deny this will deny its nature. In that dim future, when economists scratch their head and wonder why economic growth is so slow and regular, they will dream of escaping from the prisons made in the past: they will bemoan the fact that the exploration of Space was left to others, they will weep at the loss of innovation and discovery on truly massive levels. Then America will be the Norm. I only hope that there is some other group that will take up the baton and run forward. I do not wish to think of a moribund Earth sinking into decrepitude while the divide between the haves and the have-nots reaches Rift Valley proportions.