I was hoping Wired would put this article up. I don’t post it for you to read about Iraq’s issues nor to see some bravado about these Web 2.0 people. The main thing that caught my eye was this wonderful paragraph about the situation in Iraq. Have a read:
“But Iraq’s biggest high tech hurdle has nothing to do with a lack of twisted fiber or 3G networks. This is a country drained of entrepreneurial vigor. Decades of government control have smothered the belief that ordinary people can build a company or develop a product on their own. And although officials of the new government pay lip service to the idea of privatization, in practice the bureaucrats really haven’t changed their thinking.”
When I teach my students about the differences between England and France in the 1600s, the point is that England decided to pursue a government of “constitutional monarchy” while France became the best example of “absolute monarchy.” In reality, France became the immediate winner with a series of great leaders, but long-term, England won. They won not with better leaders, better natural resources or better/bigger population. They won because their style of government opened the door for multiple participants across a broad spectrum of society.
They won because they embraced freedom and rights. They agreed that people should be allowed to own property and as citizens, make an investment in the country. They won because they accepted Adam Smith’s concept that we now call capitalism that was based on this notion of freedom and the Lockean notion of the social contract–that everyone wins when everyone is free to pursue what they want and that THE GOVERNMENT IS LIMITED.
When you do any cursory glance at the top countries, the places that people want to live, where the standard of living is high for everyone–the children of England’s system stand out. Places like Australia, Canada and the United States quickly leap into the fore. Meanwhile, the children of France and her absolutist sister, Spain, lag far behind. That is not because of some racial reasoning, but because of the very thing written about Iraq.
Here’s the kicker–in the past 2 years, the USA government has been doing to us what this author rightly complains about the Iraqi government–“smothered the belief that ordinary people can build a company or develop a product on their own.” The US government wants to control the banks, the auto industry, the health industry, the energy industry and apparently almost any other industry out there. They seem to “pay lip service to the idea of privatization” but in reality, Obama and the government seems to want to control everything.
If you know your history, then you know that another leader talked about the same sorts of control, saying that his government could allow some small businesses to emerge as long as he controlled the “Commanding Heights” which were communication, banking, energy, heavy industry (sound familiar).
That leader was Lenin and his country was Russia. Maybe in another 20-50 years, a magazine writer from a different country will write a similarly sad paragraph about the USA where we no longer value the tradition of private ownership and private enterprise, but merely sit around waiting on the government to do stuff for us.
Sad times indeed.