America dominates the global tech economy because freedom.
The freedom to think what you want, and be who you want, is now the key to economic growth.
This is a point that’s widely ignored by American elites today. Americans love to talk about what’s wrong and have overestimated our global adversaries since 1776.
It’s most obvious now in our economic competition with China.
China is a great manufacturing power. But it continues to trail in software and science. It deliberately put down its Cloud Emperors for threatening the state. It can’t deliver the latest semiconductor technology.
Software is the product of hands and minds. You can’t automate its production, the way you can a car. You can improve productivity with better tools. But organizing a team requires that coaches listen as well as speak. Man management, they call it.
The best scientists, coders, and writers are all motivated by something inside. We’re not doing it for the money, we’re not doing it for an ideology. We each have our own reasons. In my case, it’s a desire I’ve had all my life to be heard, to be seen, to be part of the conversation. If you want to get the most out of us, you must respect that. China’s government doesn’t respect that.
The result is something akin to the competition between open source and closed source software. That competition is settled. Open source won because it let more hands on the code. Progress is faster when you share a common platform. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel even if, as I’ve seen for 45 years now, technology is always doing just that. From records to CDs, DVDs to streaming. From Usenet to the Web to the cloud. From the Apple II to the MacOS to the iPhone.
What’s old becomes new when there’s innovation. Innovation can’t be demanded. Creativity can’t be forced. It must be coaxed, nurtured, encouraged. A business, or a society, that fails to do this will fall behind.
Americans don’t want to admit this, but China is falling behind. They can copy what we do. They organize well. They’re lousy at innovation. China is filled with phony scientific papers, cut-and-paste jobs, and people who move up because they suck up.
You can’t legislate brilliance. You never know where it will come from. Are you gay, are you female, are you an immigrant or disabled? It doesn’t matter. You could be Stephen Hawking. To do your best, you need to be free of all constraint, except the self-imposed constraint of the work. Our minds must be free, and the supply of minds will increase as more achieve some degree of physical comfort.
There’s only one thing that can change our trajectory. That’s our politics.
Everything the Republican Party stands for today is constraint. Don’t say gay, don’t enjoy bodily autonomy, don’t think anything outside what your church elders tell you. Don’t question the economic order, don’t invest in people, don’t invest in anything that delivers a shared return.
If you want to give the future to China, that’s the recipe for it. Be like Xi, only call Xi Trump. Be like the party, only call it the Church. Embrace Putinism, and only let those who love you live.
Or you can dance with what brought you here, America. Liberty. Democracy. Competition. And a little looking out for the other guy.
Can you see now?
