Paradigm shift anyone?

The media and the Obama administration are asking the public for any idea they might have on how to turn the economy around. Apparently, all the “kings horses and all the kings men are having problems putting Humpty Dumpty together again." Therefore, call or email CNN or the federal government with those ideas. However, if a person has a good idea what incentive is there for them to reveal it to the rest of the country? Self-satisfaction, patriotism, or religious faith is apparently the prize for presenting the United States government or CNN with a way out an economic crisis.

Unless a person already works for a think tank or some government agency, there is little chance of benefiting from ones ideas. If a BA, MA, or PhD does not back the idea, then the intelligential community will always discourage the concept. Once a person has the credentials, they publish their ideas and they make money because people pay to read their work: that’s just how it works. Otherwise, the ideas that people spend their time on are just scooped up by individuals already in the position to advance their careers. The one thing a person can count on is that once your ideas are scooped up by one of these individuals they will just take credit and reap the benefits. So the lesson is keep quite get a degree and then publish your concepts.

CNN is getting free reporting from their “I reporters” and the only compensation the satisfaction of having your few seconds of images aired on their channel. That kind of reward might work for day-to-day "I report" opinions and rantings but it's not motivation for a bonafide solution to the economic problems the U.S. and other countries face. If President Obama and CNN want creative solutions to the economic problems of the U.S., they should consider using real, all American incentive: Cash. In fact, CNN is predicating that the economy will start to recover in one or two years: in the meantime what to do? Talking heads have their ideas of how the U.S., and other economies, managed to lose upward economic momentum. Consider that economist live in the same subjective world that everyone else inhabit and do not sit on a privileged objective platform: no person does. A “paradigm shift” as Thomas Kuhn would put it or a Foucault like rupture is as difficult to view as the image in an autostereogram without the proper viewing technique. Once a person has seen the image the viewer can never go back or they cannot un-see the image. So, one must be careful to guard their intellectual secrets.

To deny that a “silver bullet” exists and that it can turn the economies of the world around is as ridiculous as forgetting what impact electricity had at the end of the 19th century. It reminds me of those people that laughed at the horseless carriage. Let us please remember the impact of a consumer driven economy on the former Soviet Union. The multiple “five-year” plans Stalin insisted on helped the USSR to a degree but they ultimately were not enough. The United States is embarking on its version of those five-year plans. However, are U.S. citizens as sturdy as Russians who are capable of sacrificing themselves, say, like at the Moscow “show trials” for the sake of keeping their country together on the verge of WWII?

There is no doubt in my mind that the U.S. has the gumption to succeed or overcome this crisis. If the herculean attempt to fix our economic troubles does not bestow fruit, a new approach or an altered one may be in order. Leadership might need a little assistance seeing the image in the autostereogram? In the meantime for the sake of country, I hope the Obama plan works and I will keep my ideas to myself until I am paid or they’re published: but feel free to share yours!