Mark Andriessen: It's time to create for ourselves (It's Time to Build)

All Western institutions were not prepared for the coronavirus pandemic despite many previous warnings. This grandiose failure of institutional effectiveness will be given away for the remainder of the decade, but it is not too early to ask why and what we should do about it.

Many of us would like to connect the reason with this or that political party, with this or that government. But the harsh reality is that everything failed - not a single western country, state or city was prepared - despite the hard work and often extraordinary casualties from many people in these institutions. That is, the problem lies deeper than your favorite political opponent or your nation.

Part of the problem is clearly in shortsightedness, lack of imagination. But another part of the problem is what we did not do in advance and what we are not doing now. This is a lack of action, and in particular our total inability to “build / create”.

(Note per.: I, as a generous dictator, single-handedly chose the translation of the word "build" how to build / create ")

We see this on the example of things that we urgently need, but which are not. We do not have enough coronavirus tests or test materials, including, surprisingly, cotton swabs and ordinary reagents. We do not have enough fans, rooms with negative pressure, beds in intensive care rooms. In addition, we don’t have enough surgical masks, eye protection, medical gowns - while I am writing this, New York is desperately asking for raincoats to use as medical gowns. Raincoats! In 2020! In America!

We also have no therapeutic drugs or vaccines, despite years of prior warnings about bat coronaviruses. Our scientists, I hope, will invent medicines and a vaccine, but then we may not have the production factories needed to scale their production. And even after that, it will still be clear if we can distribute the medicine or the vaccine fast enough - it took scientists five years to get permission to test the new Ebola vaccine after the outbreak of the infection in 2014, which cost many lives.

In the United States, we cannot even provide federal funding to people and businesses in need. Tens of millions of laid-off workers and their families and many millions of small enterprises are in serious trouble right now, and we do not have a direct way to transfer money to them without potentially fatal delays. The government, which collects money from all citizens and firms every year, has not built a system for distributing money to us at times when it is most needed.

Why don't we have these things? There is absolutely no higher mathematics in medical equipment and financial channels. Yes, therapies and vaccines are hard! Mask production and money transfers are easy. We could have these things, but chose not to have them. Specifically, we chose not to have mechanisms, factories, systems for creating these things. We chose not to * build / create *.

This complacent calm, this satisfaction with the state of things and the unwillingness to build / create are visible not only in the pandemic or in healthcare in general. They are visible throughout the life of the West, and specifically throughout American life.

They are visible in housing and in the guise of our cities. We cannot build enough housing in cities with growing economic potential, which translates into the wild cost of housing in places like San Francisco. Because of this, it is almost impossible for ordinary people to come and work in the industries of the future. We can no longer build the cities themselves. When the producers of the series "Wild West World" wanted to show the American city of the future, they did not shoot in Seattle, Los Angeles or Austin. They went to Singapore. We must have sparkling skyscrapers and impressive living spaces in all of our best cities, far better than what we have now. Where are they?

They are visible in education. Yes, we have leading universities, but they can only accept a negligible percentage of 4 million new 18-year-olds in the US every year, or 120 million new 18-year-olds in the world every year. Why not educate every 18 year old? Isn't that the most important thing we can do? Why not build a lot more universities or scale the ones we have? The last major innovation in secondary education was the Montessori approach back in the 1960s. Since then, over the course of 50 years, we have been conducting research in the field of education, which have never received practical application. Why not build a lot more great schools using our new knowledge? We know that individual lessons can objectively increase learning outcomes by two standard deviations (Bloom effect with two sigma);we have internet; why didn’t we create a system that allows us to compare each young student with a senior mentor in order to significantly improve student success?

They are visible in production. Contrary to popular belief, the productivity of American industry is higher than ever. But why are so many industries moved to places with cheap labor? We know how to build highly automated plants. We know the huge number of well-paid jobs that we would create to design, build and operate these factories. We know - and live right now! - The strategic problem of relying on offshore production of key products. Why don't we build “alien dreadnought” Ilona Mask - huge, sparkling, advanced factories that produce all kinds of products of the best quality and with the lowest price - all over the country?

They are visible in transport. Where are supersonic aircraft? Where are the millions of delivery drones? Where are the high-speed trains, soaring monorails, hyper loops, and, yes, flying cars?

Is there a problem with money? It's hard to believe when we have money for endless wars in the Middle East and multiple aid packages to banks, airlines and the auto industry. The federal government has just approved a $ 2 trillion rescue package for coronavirus in two weeks! Is there a problem in capitalism? I agree with Nicholas Stern when he says that capitalism is how we care about people we don’t know. All these areas are already very profitable and should become the main area of ​​capitalist investments, useful for both the investor and consumers. Is there a problem with technical competence? Obviously not, or we would not have houses and skyscrapers, schools and hospitals, cars and trains, computers and smartphones that we already have.

The problem is desire. We need to * want * these things. The problem is inertia. We need to want these things more than we want to prevent these things. The problem is the manipulation of regulatory bodies. We should want new companies to create these things, even if the current dominant companies do not like it, if only to force them to build / create such things. And the problem is in the will. We need to build / create these things.

And we must separate the imperative of building these things from ideology and politics. Both parties must contribute to the creation of the new.

The right is in a more appropriate, albeit spoiled, position. Rightists generally favor production, but are often corrupt by forces that inhibit market competition and the creation of things. Right-wingers must fight against Kumov’s capitalism, regulatory capture, ossified oligarchy, risky offshore and investor-friendly share buybacks instead of customer-oriented (and in the long term, even more profitable for investors) innovations.

The time has come for full, irreconcilable and uncompromising political support by the right of investments in new products, in new industries, in new factories, in new science, in big leaps forward.

Leftists have a greater bias towards the public sector in many of these areas. To this I will say: show an exemplary model! Show that the public sector is able to build the best hospitals, the best schools, the best transportation, the best cities, the best housing. Stop trying to protect the old, ingrained, irrelevant; fully devote the public sector to the future. Milton Friedman once said that the main mistake of the public sector is to evaluate policies and programs according to their intentions, and not according to the results. Instead of taking it as an insult, take it as a challenge - build a new one and show the results!

Show that new models of the public health sector can be inexpensive and effective - how about starting with the Department of Veterans Affairs? When the next coronavirus arrives, hit us! Even private universities like Harvard are generously endowed with public funding; why in the year 100 thousand or a million students cannot attend Harvard? Why don't regulators and taxpayers require Harvard to start building / building? Resolve the climate crisis with construction - energy experts say that the entire carbon production of the world can replace several thousand new zero-emission nuclear reactors, so let's build them. Maybe start with 10 new reactors? Then 100? Then the rest?

In fact, I think that by building / building we can restart the American dream. The things that we create in large quantities - computers, televisions - are rapidly falling in price. Things that we do not create - housing, schools, hospitals - soar in price. What is an American dream? The opportunity to have your own home and family that you can provide. We must stop the rapidly rising prices for housing, education and healthcare in order to be sure that every American can fulfill this dream, and the only way to do this is to build / create.

To build / create is not easy, otherwise we would all have been doing this. We need to demand more from our political leaders, heads of enterprises, businessmen, investors. We need to demand more from our culture, from our society. And we need to demand more from each other. We are all necessary and we all can contribute to creation.

At every step, we must ask everyone around us the question: what are you building / creating? What do you create yourself, or what do you help others create, or teach others how to create, or support those who create? If the work that you do does not directly lead to the creation of something or does not support people, then we have let you down and we must provide you with a position, occupation or career in which you can contribute to creation. Even in the most ruined systems, there are always outstanding people - we need to direct all the talent that is possible to the largest of the problems and create solutions to these problems.

I expect this essay to be criticized. Here is a modest offer to my critics. Instead of attacking my ideas about what to build / create, come up with your own! What do you think we should build / create? With high probability I will agree with you.

Our nation and our civilization were based on production, on construction. Our ancestors built roads and trains, farms and factories, then a computer, a microchip, a smartphone and countless thousands of other things that we now take for granted that surround us, define our lives and ensure our well-being. There is only one way to honor their heritage and create the future that we want for our children and grandchildren - to build / create.

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Thank you for the translation of all who participated. If you are ready to join the translation of the following articles by Mark Andriessen - write in a personal email or mail magisterludi2016@yandex.ru