You are called upon by the next President of the United States to head up a....

[damocles]

.........to head up a task force to recommend a national program to rectify the current situation in which the United Staes finds itself.

You have 100 days to prepare an answer.

Using open sources to supply data to support your program, make your presentation.

Remember that you only have two and a half trillion dollars with which to work.

Remember that the petroleum upon which our civilization depends has topped off in deliverable quantiites as of 2004.

Remember that India and China are exploding economies desperately searching for their own oil supplies.

Remember that flash wars brought on by the incompetent dictators of this world mean you cannot cut too deeply into the conventional or strategic forces of the United States, for despite what many people believe, we are actually at the minimums necessary for US security.

And the timer is ticking. Population increases and the oil runs out.

There is that heat pollution, toxin pollution, and species die-off thing. Not to mention the decreasing arable land thing.

The national capital/labor working tax base is shrinking, as is the industrial infrastructure.

The population is becoming older and less well-educated as the public education system collapses.

President Condileeza Rice has a Roosevelt-sized crisis facing her. She turned to you for answers.

How about it?

This is a PRACTICAL exercise. What will you recommend that will get past CONGRESS?

It's Roosevelt's 1933 in replay-only much worse.

Now I'll sit back and read what unfolds......

As always, best wishes;

[Michaelangelica]

The first thing I would do would be let out the poor silly Australian who has been locked up and tortured in atiny cell in Guantanamo Bay without charge for 5 years
The second thing I would do is close Guantanamo Bay and other illegal CIA jails
and start acting like a Democracy that respected Human Rights.
(not acting like another China)

[Boerseun]

Awesome thread, Damocles!

You're gonna have to give me some time to formulate a reply, though...

The clock is ticking!!!

[InfiniteNow]

I first spend time bringing in subject matter experts on each relevant topic, and ensure three of each per topic so there will be more than one view being discussed.

I would make the findings open, public, and do so internationally. I would continue bringing our ideas to the people of the world and not just their governments, recruiting people who have fresh insights and practical answers for implementation.

I would listen first, contemplate second, reflect my thoughts back to them third, refine the policies fourth, and implement fifth.

The biggest factor would be that our policies and decisions were made with global well being as our guide, and we would need to obtain support from high percentages of the Earth's population.

I've left out specifics in this post becasue I haven't yet performed step one... Meet with at least three subject matter experts and listen.

[UncleAl]

Consider a car engine without the oil or coolant. Bad things happen but damage can be nominally repaired. The whole car is immersed in ocean water for a week. It can be nominally repaired.

Now consider the GM Cadillac 8-6-4 engine. No amount of repair would make it nominally work because it was not designed to work. Intel's sour Pentium math processor could not be aftermarket fixed. Its faults lay in its design.

Starting wth Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal," exploding with Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society," and gutted by Bush the Lesser's cronyism we have a government that cannot possibly work. Its persistence is based upon cheap raw material inputs, massive deficit spending, a supportive citizenry mythos, and massive theft of value from Baby Boomers. Stealing an extra $10K/year each from 50 million productive families is $500 billion/year in cold cash mad money.

This is is self-supporting - a hollow eggshell under axial compression - until somebody else tries squeezing the egg just as hard but in a different direction. CRUNCH! China is sucking up the world's entire production of steel, cement, and petroleum with no end in sight. Baby Boomers will be retired by 2015. They will demand $2 trillion/year in free eats plus unlimited Medicare, with no inputs to the system.

What would you do, conquer raw materials suppliers and euchre China to permanent Third World status? Terminate Welfare, Medicare, and Social Security? Transform slum bunnies into literate middle class patriots?

The First World is already dead. There is no saving it. The entire planet wll descend into transcendent barbarism and four billion corpses by 2050, possibly by 2015. We have scraped away everything of value down to a depth of two miles. There will be no coming back after the miracles of technology become priests' lies.

Consider New Orleans. It could be repaired and recovered in any of a number of sound engineering ways. None of them will obtain - people have rights and politicians have appetites.

[UncleAl]

What will harbinger the end? Entities of unchanging international value - coinage metals - will explode in price as fiat paper money is admitted to be worthless. It happened in late 1930's Germany, in "Boys from Chicago" Chile, during the downfall of the USSR and in each of its puppet states... and it is happening right now to the dollar, as you read this

The price of gold is shooting skyward and will insanely continue. Silver, historically 1/16th the value of gold since Roman times, will zoom even faster to restore parity. Copper will go wild. Your savings in US dollars will be rendered worthless. Stock prices will zoom with inflation then utterly collapse with economic ruin.

The US stopped circulating gold coinage at the Great Depression. It ended silver coinage, silver certificates, and bronze pennies in 1964, forecasting 1970s hyperinflation. Check out the prices of gold, silver, copper, and platinum in today's commodity markets.

[Pyrotex]

Well, then... let's start planning for the next civilization. We need some way of massively increasing the probability of survival (POS) for those people in good touch with Reality, and with average and above-average intelligence. Or at the very least, insure that they have a higher POS than those who genetically indulge in self-delusions, confuse fantasy with Reality, suffer aversions to education, "aren't good at math", or have chronic slack syndrome.

Perhaps we could design, grow and distribute a bacterium that sterilizes only people of low IQ????

Then we need to bury copies of the Library of Congress at key locations around the world for our descendants to dig up.

[Kayra]

Originally Posted by Pyrotex

Well, then... let's start planning for the next civilization.

Perhaps we could design, grow and distribute a bacterium that sterilizes only people of low IQ????

Sadly, it was intelligent people that got the US into the mess it is in.
The issue is one of human nature, not human intelligence.

Technology permitted the country to grow to it's current size and support it's economy. Technology is the only thing that will allow that to continue for any reasonable length of time.

It would be with that intended direction that I would subscribe to InfiniteNow's suggested methods.

[damocles]

Originally Posted by InfiniteNow

I first spend time bringing in subject matter experts on each relevant topic, and ensure three of each per topic so there will be more than one view being discussed.

What are the relevant topics?

Originally Posted by InfiniteNow

I would make the findings open, public, and do so internationally. I would continue bringing our ideas to the people of the world and not just their governments, recruiting people who have fresh insights and practical answers for implementation.

Consider economics as a subject. You have 100 days to crank out a solution and present it to the world. There are what; 400 plus spoken languages and 300 written ones? Time=100 days.

Originally Posted by InfiniteNow

I would listen first, contemplate second, reflect my thoughts back to them third, refine the policies fourth, and implement fifth.

The American society is 80% on its way to political/economic collapse within my lifetime. This is literally the last chance we have to go to hydrogen fuel cells, and to a fusion economy, deal with thermal and toxin pollution, try to stabilize the bio-deversity in the range that Americans control, and you want me to reflect my thoughts back to whom? Congress?

Originally Posted by InfiniteNow

The biggest factor would be that our policies and decisions were made with global well being as our guide, and we would need to obtain support from high percentages of the Earth's population.

I don't want war as a possible solution, and you just prescribed it.

Originally Posted by InfiniteNow

I've left out specifics in this post becasue I haven't yet performed step one... Meet with at least three subject matter experts and listen.

Again, we don't have TIME. We have to ACT.

As always, my best wishes;

[Zythryn]

Originally Posted by damocles

Again, we don't have TIME. We have to ACT.

Action without thought is what got us into this mess.
The first thing that comes to mind to describe action without thought is destruction, the second is mistakes

Now, thought doesn't need to take months or years and I don't think that is what Infi was stating.

I think those were a great outline, and wish more politicians would take to heart.

I also agree with you that the situation is dire (not sure if I think it is as dire as you do, but I do think it is very dire).