12.30.2009

Chasing the Future

So...I finally finished "Chasing Molecules" (by Elizabeth Grossman), and the overall story seems to be that, despite the fact that you should probably never touch or buy anything made in any sort of traditional chemistry (from the past 50 years) ever again, there is hope for the future...if, and only if, people are willing to work together and eschew the slow, bureaucracy-riddled ways of government....

I never used to see the point of New Year's celebrations--what's a number, anyway, considering that the fiscal and academic calendars at the very least don't look the same at all; and, more importantly, that you have to study history in patterns, not in years--but now it seems like a good idea to have some sort of reference point.

Like, now, I could call 2010, and the upcoming era, the era of privatization. It's funny if you think about it, because this sort of thing has been really cyclical--in the early Industrial Revolution era, big business had it all; then along came TR and Taft and all their trustbusting, and now it seems we're back to the start, except that now lobbyists are a lot quieter about what they're up to.

So, resolutions for the government:

*Transparency
*Privatization where feasible, and where there are enough third party or nonprofit agencies around to prevent it all from tipping in favor of the old system of sticking to whatever works, even if it doesn't actually work that well

And for the world:

*Stop global warming! Start reversing damage!
*Do not be a silly place any more


If you'd like to put a wager on any of these things happening in the next ten years--no bet.

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